Baby Suggs's Outpouring and Collapse

Traces the arc of the freed slave woman who becomes an unchurched preacher and then is broken by the return of white power in her own yard.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

Bought by Her Son

Bought by Her Son The Price of Love Halle, Baby Suggs's last child, works five years of Sundays and overtime to buy his mother out of slavery. When she crosses the Ohio River, she has no idea of the gift she has received; she only knows she has left the country that wore her out. The New Heartbeat In the wagon to Cincinnati, Baby Suggs suddenly sees her hands and thinks, " These hands belong to me." She feels her own heartbeat for the first time and laughs out loud. The freedom that scared her becomes the beginning of a new self. A House and a Purpose Mr. Garner takes her to the Bodwins, who give her the old house on Bluestone Road. There she will begin the work of mending other broken lives, but the future also carries the wound of the eight children she lost.

The Clearing Sermon

The Clearing Sermon Unchurched Preacher Baby Suggs, holy, becomes a preacher without a church. She holds her services in the Clearing, a wide-open place in the woods, and every black man, woman, and child who can walk comes to hear her. Love Your Flesh Her great message is the body: love your hands, your neck, your liver, your heart. "Yonder they do not love your flesh," she tells them. "You got to love it." The people laugh, cry, dance, and let go. The Source of Her Power Baby Suggs's preaching is not doctrine but presence. She offers the only grace they can imagine, giving them back their bodies in a world that has tried to steal them.

The Feast of Blackberries

The Feast of Blackberries Stamp Paid's Offering Stamp Paid brings two buckets of blackberries to celebrate Denver's birth and Sethe's escape. Baby Suggs decides to honor the fruit with a feast worthy of his labor. What begins as pies becomes a massive cookout for ninety people. A Moment of Abundance 124 shakes with laughter, goodwill, and food. Turkey, fried perch, corn pudding, and strawberry mash fill the yard. Children sleep in the grass, and the whole community eats its fill. The Seed of Jealousy The very extravagance that makes the feast glorious also makes the neighbors angry. They swallow soda the next morning to calm their stomachs, and their envy begins to harden into the disapproval that will isolate Baby Suggs.

The Yard Then the Silence

The Yard Then the Silence The Dark and Coming Thing Standing in the garden, Baby Suggs smells the neighbors' disapproval and a darker thing behind it—something that comes with high-topped shoes she does not like. She knows the whitefolks have come into her yard. The Shed When the four horsemen ride up, Baby Suggs sees Sethe emerge from the woodshed with blood on her hands and a dead child. The community gathers, but no one helps, and Sethe is taken away to jail. Baby Suggs is left to clean the blood and the broken children. The Collapse The joy of the Clearing and the feast is buried under this vision. Baby Suggs goes into the keeping room, lies down, and decides she has been wrong: there is no grace, only the meanness of whitefolks that can enter any yard.

Bed, Color, and Death

Bed, Color, and Death A Life of Pondering Color Baby Suggs stops preaching, stops leaving the house, and lies in bed asking for lavender, pink, blue, yellow. She tells Sethe that whitefolks have taken everything she had or dreamed and broken her heartstrings. She is not waiting for death; she is studying the harmless. The Unredeemed Faith Stamp Paid tries to argue with her, telling her she cannot quit the Word. But Baby Suggs answers that she knows no more than she sees: a nigger woman hauling shoes. The Word has been taken away from her, so she turns to what the world can hold: color. The Last Lesson Before she dies, she rises once to tell Sethe, "There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks." Then she goes back to bed and pulls up the quilt. She leaves a legacy not of hope but of protective distrust, which Denver will have to overcome.

before the novel, when Halle pays off Baby Suggs's freedom

the years before Sethe arrives, in warm weather

twenty days after Sethe arrives at 124

the day schoolteacher's party arrives

the years after the Misery until her death