Amy Denver's Deliverance at the River

Tells the story of the ragged white girl who saves Sethe in the woods and helps give birth to Denver, leaving her name on the child.

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The Meeting in Wild Onions

The Meeting in Wild Onions A Girl Looking for Velvet Amy Denver is a poor white girl running away to Boston to buy velvet. She finds Sethe collapsed in the wild onions, nearly dead and pregnant. At first she is frightened, then curious, then determined to help. The Voice That Keeps the Baby Quiet Amy talks endlessly—about velvet, Boston, catfish, Lady Button Eyes—and the rhythm of her voice settles the baby in Sethe's womb. Sethe realizes that some whitepeople are not the mossy-toothed monsters of her imagination. Names and Lies Sethe calls herself "Lu" to avoid giving her real name. Amy gives her care without asking for anything in return except the privilege of getting to her velvet.

The Lean-to and the Spiderwebs

The Lean-to and the Spiderwebs Pushing Through the Woods Amy helps Sethe crawl through the brush to a lean-to full of leaves. She piles leaves into a bed and gathers rocks to raise Sethe's swollen feet, saying she knows what it is to have them cut off. The Chokecherry Tree Amy unfastens Sethe's dress and sees the whipped back. She names the scars a chokecherry tree, with trunk, branches, leaves, and blossoms. The naming gives Sethe a language for her pain and makes it visible to another human being. The Mist of Magic Amy drapes spiderwebs on the wounds and massages Sethe's legs until she cries. She says, "Anything dead coming back to life hurts." The sentence becomes a truth Denver will remember all her life.

The Boat and the Birth

The Boat and the Birth A Stolen Rowboat Amy finds a leaking rowboat with one oar, and the two women push off toward the Ohio side. Sethe's labor begins in the middle of the river, and her water breaks to join the current. The Head Stuck Amy has to push and pull the baby's head out while river water seeps into the boat. She curses Jesus's daddy and works with her strong hands until a tiny foot kicks against the boat's bottom. The child is born in a welter of blood and water. Denver's First Moment The baby whimpers, and Amy wraps it in her skirt. They clamber ashore, surrounded by spores of bluefern. The world is new, and the girl has a name waiting for her.

The Naming of Denver

The Naming of Denver Amy's Departure As twilight comes, Amy says she has to go, and she makes Sethe promise to tell the child who brought her into the world. "Say Miss Amy Denver. Of Boston." Then she walks off toward the Pike. The Gift of a Name Sethe, falling into exhausted sleep, thinks the name is pretty: "Denver. Real pretty." The child will carry the white girl's name for the rest of her life, an unlikely monument to an alliance across the color line. The Impossible Kindness Amy disappears from the story, but her name remains in Denver, and her words echo in Sethe's memory. She is the one piece of the white world that is not poison, the proof that not every white person is a schoolteacher.

Denver Remembers the Story

Denver Remembers the Story The Story She Loves Of all the stories her mother tells, Denver loves the story of Amy and her birth best because she is at the center of it. She tells it to Beloved in the dark, constructing a net out of strings she has heard all her life. The Face of the Other Amy's good hands, her ragged hair, and her talk of velvet become a kind of secular scripture in Denver's imagination. The story proves that the world outside 124 contains not just the meanness of ghosts and whitefolks but also unpredictable mercy. A Name That Cannot Be Erased When Denver walks out into the world to ask for help, she carries Amy's name like a passport. It is a reminder that deliverance can come from the least likely place.

during Sethe's escape, 1855

the same night, before Denver's birth

the next day, at the Ohio River

just after the birth, on the riverbank

years later, as Denver tells Beloved the tale