The Community's Reckoning with 124

Shows how the black neighborhood of Cincinnati moves from celebratory love to jealous shunning and finally to a saving intervention.

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A Feast for Ninety

A Feast for Ninety Stamp Paid's Blackberries Stamp Paid risks his skin and his sanity to pick two pails of blackberries from a hidden ravine, then brings them to Baby Suggs. What begins as a thank-offering for Denver's birth grows into a massive celebration of Sethe's escape and Halle's children. The Generosity of 124 Baby Suggs turns the berries into pies, and the feast expands: five turkeys, fried perch, corn pudding, strawberry mash poured over ice. Ninety people come, eat, laugh, and sleep in the yard. The house rocks with voices far into the night. The Sour Morning The next morning the neighbors wake angry. Too much, they think. Why is Baby Suggs always the center? Their envy curdles into disapproval, and the scent of their resentment hangs over 124 like a storm.

The Smell of Disapproval

The Smell of Disapproval The Garden Foreboding While working in the garden, Baby Suggs smells something dark and coming behind the sharp odor of her neighbors' disapproval. She closes her eyes and sees high-topped shoes she does not like. She has survived slavery, but she cannot survive the moral condemnation of her own people. The Community's Distance The friends and neighbors who once filled the Clearing with dancing now hold back. They have decided Baby Suggs has overstepped, that her generosity is pride, and that her family's good fortune is unearned. The connection between the feast and the coming disaster is the community's withdrawn protection. No One Warns Them Because no one sends a fleet-footed son to warn 124, the four horsemen arrive without resistance. The community's jealousy literally clears the road for the tragedy.

Shunning After the Misery

Shunning After the Misery The Judgment of the Town The people of Cincinnati do not lynch Sethe, but they do not forgive her either. Her crime of killing her own child becomes a mark of shame, and her refusal to explain or apologize is read as arrogance. No one visits 124, and no one speaks to Denver or Sethe. The Solitary House Baby Suggs stops preaching, the lamp no longer burns all night, and the way station closes. The community lets 124 become a haunted house, both literally and socially. Sethe returns the rejection with the potent pride of the mistreated. The Price of Pride Both sides harden. For years the silence is absolute, broken only by the noise of the ghost. The shunning is a quiet form of exorcism, casting Sethe and Denver out of the human community.

Denver's Bridge to the Neighbors

Denver's Bridge to the Neighbors A Girl on the Porch Denver, starving and desperate, steps off the edge of the world and walks to Lady Jones's house. Lady Jones gives her tea and food, and then the community begins to respond. Anonymous gifts appear on a stump: a sack of white beans, a plate of rabbit, a basket of eggs. Names and Memory Denver returns the dishes and says thank you. The donors write their names on slips of paper, and with each visit she learns a little more about the woman her grandmother was. The neighbors are not merely feeding her; they are reclaiming her. A Different Kind of Safety For the first time in her life, Denver discovers that the yard is not the only safe place. The community's kindness gives her the strength to work, to plan, and eventually to save her mother.

The Thirty Women March

The Thirty Women March Ella's Conviction Ella, who has no patience for past errors taking possession of the present, decides that the devil-child in 124 must be driven out. She gathers thirty women—some with charms, some with prayers—and they walk down Bluestone Road in the heat. The Sound That Breaks Words When they arrive, the women do not pray as they usually do. They begin with a sound, an inarticulate moan that grows into a wave of singing wide enough to knock the pods off chestnut trees. The sound breaks over Sethe, shaking her like baptism. The Rescue Their voices pull Sethe back to herself at the critical moment. When she runs at Edward Bodwin with an ice pick, the women are there to stop her. The community that once shunned her now saves her life, completing a long arc of abandonment and return.

twenty days after Sethe arrives at 124

the day before schoolteacher arrives

after Sethe's trial and release, for eighteen years

the spring when Sethe and Beloved begin to starve

a summer Friday, just before sunset