It made him dizzy. At first he thought it was her spinning. Circling him the way she was circlingthe subject. Round and round, never changing direction, which might have helped his head. Thenhe thought, No, it's the sound of her voice; it's too near. Each turn she made was at least threeyards from where he sat, but listening to her was like having a child whisper into your ear so closeyou could feel its lips form the words you couldn't make out because they were too close. Hecaught only pieces of what she said — which was fine, because she hadn't gotten to the main part— the answer to the question he had not asked outright, but which lay in the clipping he showedher. And lay in the smile as well. Because he smiled too, when he showed it to her, so when she burst out laughing at the joke — the mix-up of her face put where some other coloredwoman'sought to be — well, he'd be ready to laugh right along with her. "Can you beat it?" he would ask. And "Stamp done lost his mind," she would giggle."Plumb lost it."
But his smile never got a chance to grow. It hung there, small and alone, while she examined theclipping and then handed it back.
Perhaps it was the smile, or maybe the ever-ready love she saw in his eyes — easy and upfront, theway colts, evangelists and children look at you: with love you don't have to deserve — that madeher go ahead and tell him what she had not told Baby Suggs, the only person she felt obliged toexplain anything to. Otherwise she would have said what the newspaper said she said and no more.Sethe could recognize only seventy-five printed words (half of which appeared in the newspaperclipping), but she knew that the words she did not understand hadn't any more power than she hadto explain. It was the smile and the upfront love that made her try.
"I don't have to tell you about Sweet Home — what it was — but maybe you don't know what itwas like for me to get away from there."Covering the lower half of her face with her palms, she paused to consider again the size of themiracle; its flavor.