Once before (and only once) Paul D had been grateful to a woman.Crawling out of the woods, cross-eyed with hunger and loneliness, he knocked at the first backdoor he came to in the colored section of Wilmington. He told the woman who opened it that he'dappreciate doing her woodpile, if she could spare him something to eat. She looked him up anddown.
"A little later on," she said and opened the door wider. She fed him pork sausage, the worst thingin the world for a starving man, but neither he nor his stomach objected. Later, when he saw palecotton sheets and two pillows in her bedroom, he had to wipe his eyes quickly, quickly so shewould not see the thankful tears of a man's first time. Soil, grass, mud, shucking, leaves, hay, cobs,sea shells — -all that he'd slept on. White cotton sheets had never crossed his mind. He fell in witha groan and the woman helped him pretend he was making love to her and not her bed linen. Hevowed that night, full of pork, deep in luxury, that he would never leave her. She would have tokill him to get him out of that bed. Eighteen months later, when he had been purchased byNorthpoint Bank and Railroad Company, he was still thankful for that introduction to sheets.
Now he was grateful a second time. He felt as though he had been plucked from the face of a cliffand put down on sure ground. In Sethe's bed he knew he could put up with two crazy girls — -aslong as Sethe made her wishes known. Stretched out to his full length, watching snowflakes streampast the window over his feet, it was easy to dismiss the doubts that took him to the alley behindthe restaurant: his expectations for himself were high, too high. What he might call cowardiceother people called common sense.
Tucked into the well of his arm, Sethe recalled Paul D's face in the street when he asked her tohave a baby for him. Although she laughed and took his hand, it had frightened her. She thoughtquickly of how good the sex would be if that is what he wanted, but mostly she was frightened bythe thought of having a baby once more.Needing to be good enough, alert enough, strong enough, that caring — again. Having to stay alivejust that much longer. O Lord, she thought, deliver me. Unless carefree, motherlove was a killer.What did he want her pregnant for? To hold on to her? have a sign that he passed this way? Heprobably had children everywhere anyway.Eighteen years of roaming, he would have to have dropped a few.No. He resented the children she had, that's what. Child, she corrected herself. Child plus Belovedwhom she thought of as her own, and that is what he resented. Sharing her with the girls. Hearingthe three of them laughing at something he wasn't in on. The code they used among themselvesthat he could not break. Maybe even the time spent on their needs and not his. They were a familysomehow and he was not the head of it.
Can you stitch this up for me, baby?
Um hm. Soon's I finish this petticoat. She just got the one she came here in and everybody needs achange.
Any pie left?