Beloved looked at the sweet bread in Denver's hands and Denver held it out to her. She smiledthen and Denver's heart stopped bouncing and sat down — -relieved and easeful like a travelerwho had made it home.
From that moment and through everything that followed, sugar could always be counted on toplease her. It was as though sweet things were what she was born for. Honey as well as the wax itcame in, sugar sandwiches, the sludgy molasses gone hard and brutal in the can, lemonade, taffyand any type of dessert Sethe brought home from the restaurant. She gnawed a cane stick to flaxand kept the strings in her mouth long after the syrup had been sucked away. Denver laughed,Sethe smiled and Paul D said it made him sick to his stomach.
Sethe believed it was a recovering body's need — -after an illness — for quick strength. But it wasa need that went on and on into glowing health because Beloved didn't go anywhere. There didn'tseem anyplace for her to go. She didn't mention one, or have much of an idea of what she wasdoing in that part of the country or where she had been. They believed the fever had caused hermemory to fail just as it kept her slow-moving. A young woman, about nineteen or twenty, andslender, she moved like a heavier one or an older one, holding on to furniture, resting her head inthe palm of her hand as though it was too heavy for a neck alone.
"You just gonna feed her? From now on?" Paul D, feeling ungenerous, and surprised by it, heardthe irritability in his voice.
"Denver likes her. She's no real trouble. I thought we'd wait till herbreath was better. She still sounds a little lumbar to me."
"Something funny 'bout that gal," Paul Dsaid, mostly to himself.