Bare feet and chamomile sap

Bare feet and chamomile sap is a song fragment that recurs in Toni Morrison's Beloved, intimately tied to Paul D and Sethe's reunion and the novel's exploration of memory and trauma. The phrase first surfaces as Paul D's spontaneous improvisation while he repairs the house at 124 Bluestone Road, and it later returns as a haunting refrain during the community exorcism, underscoring the persistent grip of the past on the present.

Origins and First Appearance

The song emerges in the aftermath of Paul D's arrival at 124, a moment of tentative renewal for Sethe. After he has driven out the baby ghost and begun to mend the broken furniture, Paul D sings fragments of songs he learned on the prison farm in Georgia or during the War. These songs, with their flat-headed, pounding rhythms, do not fit the domestic chores he is engaged in, so he improvises, and what occurs over and over is "Bare feet and chamomile sap,/ Took off my shoes; took off my hat." The lines evoke the very scene of their reunion: Sethe, barefoot and with chamomile sap on her legs, had just rounded the house carrying her shoes and stockings. The song thus becomes a private, almost involuntary memory of that first encounter, a verbal snapshot of the moment when the last of the Sweet Home men found Halle's girl alive.

The Song's Role in Paul D's Emotional Landscape

For Paul D, the song is a fragile link to a past he has tried to bury. He is tempted to change the words to "Gimme back my shoes; gimme back my hat," a variation that reflects his restlessness and his fear of settling down. The original lines, however, capture a moment of vulnerability and connection—Sethe's bare feet, the chamomile sap, the removal of shoes and hat as a gesture of staying. The song's persistence in his mind signals the opening of the "closed portion of his head," the part he had shut down after his ordeal in Alfred, Georgia. It is a marker of his growing attachment to Sethe and his tentative hope for a life together.

The Song's Return During the Exorcism

The refrain returns at a critical juncture, during the community exorcism of Beloved. As the thirty women gather outside 124 and raise their voices in a wordless, collective sound, the narrative intercuts with Paul D's song: "Bare feet and chamomile sap. Took off my shoes; took off my hat." This time, however, the lines are followed by a darker variation: "Lay my head on a potato sack, Devil sneak up behind my back." The song, once a tender memory, now carries an undertone of menace and loss. It is as if the past, which the song had helped to hold at bay, has surged back with the force of the exorcism. The juxtaposition of the song with the women's communal sound highlights the tension between individual memory and collective healing, between the personal and the communal attempts to lay the past to rest.

Thematic Significance

The song encapsulates the novel's central concerns: the inescapability of memory, the fragility of new beginnings, and the way the past can both nourish and haunt. "Bare feet and chamomile sap" is a concrete, sensory image that grounds the abstract theme of rememory in a specific moment of connection. It is a song of arrival and departure, of taking off shoes to stay and of being forced to move on. Its recurrence at the novel's climax suggests that the past cannot be simply exorcised; it must be acknowledged, sung, and carried forward. The song, like the novel itself, refuses to let go of what has been lost, even as it gestures toward the possibility of a future.