Beloved

Back in the present, while Stamp Paid and Paul D are working at the slaughterhouse, Stamp Paid shows Paul D a newspaper clipping about Sethe’s arrest after she was found with her murdered child. Stamp Paid explains that on the night of the celebratory feast, the schoolteacher came with his men to take Sethe and her children back to Sweet Home. While the neighbors generally have a system of notifying one another when slave catchers are on the road, nobody alerted Grandma Baby Suggs at the time. Although many claim that the oversight was due to the community feeling tired and sluggish after the feast, Stamp Paid believes that everybody resented Grandma Baby Suggs’ life and “just wanted to know if Baby really was special” (185). Since Grandma Baby Suggs and Sethe did not know that the schoolteacher and his men were coming until too late, Sethe made the impulsive decision to bring her children with her to the shed and take matters into her own hands. While Stamp Paid relays this story, Paul D does not seem to register its details. He repeatedly gestures to the image of Sethe in the newspaper clipping and says, “That ain’t her mouth” (181).