stamp always leave the old sty open when there's a crossing. knots a white rag on the post if it's a child too. my name's ella. where you headed?
when was this one born?
hard to say. let's try to get these on your feet.
where you been keeping yourself? i told john must be cold if stamp stay inside.
out where?
what you want there? somebody invite you in?
ain't no new negroes in this town i don't know about. what she look like? you sure that wasn't denver?
you sure?
might see anything at all at 124.
better ask paul d.
he's sleeping in the church.
yeah. asked rev. pike if he could stay in the cellar.
can't nobody read minds long distance. all he have to do is ask somebody.
unrile yourself, stamp. it's only a few days he been there.
he ask, i give him anything.
i don't know him that well.
stamp, don't tear me up this morning! i don't feel like it.
her who?
hold on! don't jump if you can't see bottom!
well, who can tell what went on in there? i never even knew who sethe was or none of her people.
i ain't sure i know that. baby never laid eyes on her till she showed up here. and how'd she make it and her husband didn't? and where is he? and how she have that baby in the woods by herself? said a whitewoman help her. shoot. you believe that? well, i know what kind of white that was.
anything white floating around in the woods - if it don't got a shotgun, it's something the lord tells me i don't want no part of.
till she showed herself.
i ain't got no friends take a handsaw to their own children.
what run him off? tell me that!
you?
you didn't tell me that. i thought he already knew.
he knew baby suggs?
and he left when he found out what sethe did? what you say casts a different light on it, i guess. i thought-
but you didn't come here talking 'bout paul. you came asking about a new girl.
well, paul d. must know who she is. or what she is.
you know as well as i do, stamp, that people who die bad don't stay in the ground.
it's sitting there. sleeps, eats and raises hell. whipping sethe every day.
nobody got that coming.
no, and the children can't just up and kill the mama. what's fair ain't necessarily right.  now you all know how i felt about the whole thing. i know the rage sethe felt in that shed that day. we all do. but what i could not understand, and still don't, was her reaction to it. prideful. too damn complicated for a black woman in her position before god. but whatever she done, i don't like the idea of past errors taking possession of the present. i don't cotton to sin moving in on a house, unleashed and sassy. every day life takes enough, takes all a woman has. "sufficient unto the day is evil thereof" and nobody needs more. nobody needs a grown up evil sitting at a table with a grudge. as long as that ghost showed itself from a ghostly place, i respected it. but once it take on flesh and come into this world, well, the shoe's on the other foot now. i don't mind a little communication between worlds. but this here's an invasion.
uh-huh. first. then we got to get down to business.