Beloved appears at 124

Beloved appears at 124 is the pivotal event in Toni Morrison's novel where a mysterious young woman emerges from a stream and is taken in by Sethe, Denver, and Paul D, setting the stage for the novel's central haunting and the unraveling of Sethe's past.

The Emergence from the Water

A fully dressed woman walked out of the water, barely gaining the dry bank of the stream before she sat down and leaned against a mulberry tree. She spent all day and all night there, her head resting on the trunk in a position abandoned enough to crack the brim in her straw hat. Everything hurt but her lungs most of all. Sopping wet and breathing shallow, she spent those hours trying to negotiate the weight of her eyelids. The day breeze blew her dress dry; the night wind wrinkled it. Nobody saw her emerge or came accidentally by. If they had, chances are they would have hesitated before approaching her, not because she was wet, or dozing, or had what sounded like asthma, but because amid all that she was smiling.

It took her the whole of the next morning to lift herself from the ground and make her way through the woods past a giant temple of boxwood to the field and then the yard of the slate-gray house. Exhausted again, she sat down on the first handy place—a stump not far from the steps of 124. By then keeping her eyes open was less of an effort; she could manage it for a full two minutes or more. Her neck, its circumference no wider than a parlor-service saucer, kept bending and her chin brushed the bit of lace edging her dress. Women who drink champagne when there is nothing to celebrate can look like that: their straw hats with broken brims are often askew; they nod in public places; their shoes are undone. But their skin is not like that of the woman breathing near the steps of 124. She had new skin, lineless and smooth, including the knuckles of her hands.

The Arrival at 124

By late afternoon when the carnival was over, and the Negroes were hitching rides home if they were lucky—walking if they were not—the woman had fallen asleep again. The rays of the sun struck her full in the face, so that when Sethe, Denver, and Paul D rounded the curve in the road all they saw was a black dress, two unlaced shoes below it, and Here Boy nowhere in sight. Denver was the first to notice, exclaiming, "Look," and asking, "What is that?" For some reason she could not immediately account for, the moment Sethe got close enough to see the face, her bladder filled to capacity. She said, "Oh, excuse me," and ran around to the back of 124. Not since she was a baby girl, being cared for by the eight-year-old girl who pointed out her mother to her, had she had an emergency that unmanageable. She never made the outhouse. Right in front of its door she had to lift her skirts, and the water she voided was endless. Like a horse, she thought, but as it went on and on she thought, No, more like flooding the boat when Denver was born. So much water Amy said, "Hold on, Lu. You going to sink us you keep that up." But there was no stopping water breaking from a breaking womb and there was no stopping now. She hoped Paul D wouldn't take it upon himself to come looking for her and be obliged to see her squatting in front of her own privy making a mudhole too deep to be witnessed without shame. Just about the time she started wondering if the carnival would accept another freak, it stopped. She tidied herself and ran around to the porch. No one was there. All three were inside—Paul D and Denver standing before the stranger, watching her drink cup after cup of water.

The Stranger's Identity and Name

Paul D took off his cap and remarked, "She said she was thirsty." The woman gulped water from a speckled tin cup and held it out for more. Four times Denver filled it, and four times the woman drank as though she had crossed a desert. When she was finished a little water was on her chin, but she did not wipe it away. Instead she gazed at Sethe with sleepy eyes. Poorly fed, thought Sethe, and younger than her clothes suggested—good lace at the throat, and a rich woman's hat. Her skin was flawless except for three vertical scratches on her forehead so fine and thin they seemed at first like hair, baby hair before it bloomed and roped into the masses of black yarn under her hat.

Sethe asked her, "You from around here?" She shook her head no and reached down to take off her shoes. She pulled her dress up to the knees and rolled down her stockings. When the hosiery was tucked into the shoes, Sethe saw that her feet were like her hands, soft and new. She must have hitched a wagon ride, thought Sethe. Probably one of those West Virginia girls looking for something to beat a life of tobacco and sorghum. Sethe bent to pick up the shoes. Paul D asked, "What might your name be?" "Beloved," she said, and her voice was so low and rough each one looked at the other two. They heard the voice first—later the name. "Beloved. You use a last name, Beloved?" Paul D asked her. "Last?" She seemed puzzled. Then "No," and she spelled it for them, slowly as though the letters were being formed as she spoke them. Sethe dropped the shoes; Denver sat down and Paul D smiled. He recognized the careful enunciation of letters by those, like himself, who could not read but had memorized the letters of their name.

The Aftermath and Significance

Sethe hung her hat on a peg and turned graciously toward the girl. "That's a pretty name, Beloved. Take off your hat, why don't you, and I'll make us something. We just got back from the carnival over near Cincinnati. Everything in there is something to see." But bolt upright in the chair, in the middle of Sethe's welcome, Beloved had fallen asleep again. Paul D shook her gently, "Miss. Miss. You want to lay down a spell?" She opened her eyes to slits and stood up on her soft new feet which, barely capable of their job, slowly bore her to the keeping room. Once there, she collapsed on Baby Suggs' bed. Denver removed her hat and put the quilt with two squares of color over her feet. She was breathing like a steam engine. "Sounds like croup," said Paul D, closing the door. Sethe wondered if she was feverish, but Denver said she was cold. "Then she is. Fever goes from hot to cold," Sethe observed. Paul D speculated, "Could have the cholera." "All that water. Sure sign." Sethe lamented, "Poor thing. And nothing in this house to give her for it. She'll just have to ride it out. That's a hateful sickness if ever there was one." But Denver insisted, "She's not sick!" and the passion in her voice made them smile.

Four days she slept, waking and sitting up only for water. Denver tended her, watched her sound sleep, listened to her labored breathing and, out of love and a breakneck possessiveness that charged her, hid like a personal blemish Beloved's incontinence. She rinsed the sheets secretly, after Sethe went to the restaurant and Paul D went scrounging for barges to help unload. She boiled the underwear and soaked it in bluing, praying the fever would pass without damage. So intent was her nursing, she forgot to eat or visit the emerald closet. "Beloved?" Denver would whisper. "Beloved?" and when the black eyes opened a slice all she could say was "I'm here. I'm still here." Sometimes, when Beloved lay dreamy-eyed for a very long time, saying nothing, licking her lips and heaving deep sighs, Denver panicked. "What is it?" she would ask. "Heavy," murmured Beloved. "This place is heavy." "Would you like to sit up?" "No," said the raspy voice.

It took three days for Beloved to notice the orange patches in the darkness of the quilt. Denver was pleased because it kept her patient awake longer. She seemed totally taken with those faded scraps of orange, even made the effort to lean on her elbow and stroke them. An effort that quickly exhausted her, so Denver rearranged the quilt so its cheeriest part was in the sick girl's sight line. Patience, something Denver had never known, overtook her. As long as her mother did not interfere, she was a model of compassion, turning waspish, though, when Sethe tried to help. When Sethe inquired if Beloved had taken a spoonful of anything, Denver retorted, "She shouldn't eat with cholera." "You sure that's it? Was just a hunch of Paul D's." "I don't know, but she shouldn't eat anyway just yet." "I think cholera people puke all the time." "That's even more reason, ain't it?" "Well she shouldn't starve to death either, Denver." "Leave us alone, Ma'am. I'm taking care of her." "She say anything?" "I'd let you know if she did." Sethe looked at her daughter and thought, Yes, she has been lonesome. Very lonesome.

Beloved's arrival marks the beginning of a new haunting at 124, one that will consume Sethe and Denver, and ultimately lead to the community's intervention. The event is a turning point in the novel, as it brings the past into the present in a tangible form, forcing Sethe to confront her actions and their consequences. The appearance of Beloved, with her mysterious origins and her uncanny knowledge, sets the stage for the novel's exploration of memory, guilt, and the possibility of redemption.