Beloved did not look at Paul D; her scrutiny was for Sethe. She had no coat, no wrap, nothing onher head, but she held in her hand a long shawl. Stretching out her arms she tried to circle it aroundSethe.
"Crazy girl," said Sethe. "You the one out here with nothing on." And stepping away and in frontof Paul D, Sethe took the shawl and wrapped it around Beloved's head and shoulders. Saying,"You got to learn more sense than that," she enclosed her in her left arm. Snowflakes stuck now.Paul D felt icy cold in the place Sethe had been before Beloved came. Trailing a yard or so behindthe women, he fought the anger that shot through his stomach all the way home. When he saw Denver silhouetted in the lamplight at the window, he could not help thinking, "And whose allyyou?"
It was Sethe who did it. Unsuspecting, surely, she solved everything with one blow.
"Now I know you not sleeping out there tonight, are you, Paul D?" She smiled at him, and like afriend in need, the chimney coughed against the rush of cold shooting into it from the sky. Windowsashes shuddered in a blast of winter air.
Paul D looked up from the stew meat.
"You come upstairs. Where you belong," she said, "... and stay there."
The threads of malice creeping toward him from Beloved's side of the table were held harmless inthe warmth of Sethe's smile.