Baby Suggs's Broken Heart

Tells the story of Baby Suggs from a life of loss to a short season of freedom, preaching, and joy, and then to the despair that ends her days.

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A Life of Losing Children

A Life of Losing Children Eight Children Gone Baby Suggs has eight children by six different fathers, and every one is taken, sold, or chased away. She remembers only one thing clearly about her firstborn: she loved the burned bottom of bread. The rest is a blur of loss. The Self That Never Was She has never had a map to discover what she is like. She does not know if she can sing, if she is pretty, if she was a good mother. Slavery has erased her in her own eyes. The One Who Remained By some mercy, they let her keep her last son, Halle. He stays with her, watches her limp, and decides to buy her freedom with his own labor.

Freedom and the Beating Heart

Freedom and the Beating Heart The Ride to Cincinnati Mr. Garner drives Baby Suggs to the Bodwins in Cincinnati. She chooses the hard thing that makes her son happy, though she wonders what a sixty-odd-year-old slave woman needs freedom for. My Heart's Beating On the wagon, Baby Suggs puts her hand to her chest and feels her own heartbeat. The discovery is so simple and dazzling that she laughs out loud: "These hands belong to me. My heart's beating." The Birth of a Self It is the first time she owns herself. The Bodwins give her the house on Bluestone Road, and she begins to build a life not as a mother of vanished children but as a woman with a heart.

The Reigning Heart

The Reigning Heart Unchurched Preacher Baby Suggs becomes an unchurched preacher, visiting pulpits and holding services in the Clearing. She does not tell people to sin no more; she tells them to love their flesh, which is the only grace they can imagine. A House Full of Life 124 becomes a way station where runaways find food, safe messages, and children to play with. Baby Suggs mends shoes, sets fractures, and feeds anyone who appears. Her heart is in everything. The Center of the World The community is drawn to her, but her abundance also breeds envy. She has no idea that her generosity is laying the ground for a terrible fall.

The Whitefolks in the Yard

The Whitefolks in the Yard The Garden and the Smell When schoolteacher arrives, Baby Suggs is in the garden hoeing rue. She has just smelled the disapproval and the dark thing coming, but she cannot stop it. The whitefolks come into her yard anyway. The Blood in the Shed She sees Sethe emerge from the woodshed with a child bleeding in her arms. Baby Suggs tries to clean and comfort, but she cannot undo the act. Her own yard has become the site of the very evil she preached against. The End of the Word The shock kills something inside her. She tells Stamp Paid later, "They came in my yard. That's all I know." The faith that held her upright proves worthless in the face of this invasion.

The Bed and the Colors

The Bed and the Colors Quitting the World Baby Suggs gets into bed and stays there. She asks for lavender, pink, blue, then yellow. She tells Sethe that there is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks, and that she is tired to the marrow. The Argument with Stamp Stamp Paid urges her not to quit the Word, but she says the Word was taken away from her. She is looking for what she was put here to look for: the back door. She wants out. The Soft Death She dies with no interest in leaving or living, her mind fixed on color. Her funeral is fractured by the community's anger, and only Stamp Paid carries her body to the grave. The broken heart ends the story of the holy woman.

the decades before Sweet Home

the day Halle buys her out of Sweet Home

the ten years of freedom before Sethe arrives

the day of the four horsemen

the last years of Baby Suggs's life