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Although he does not say so, Sethe knows that Paul D isn’t coming back. Analysis: Chapters 15–18 When, after many years of service, Baby Suggs asks the Garners why they call her Jenny Whitlow, she reveals a gap in her self-knowledge.
Denver had learned to take pride in the haunting of their house, but now Paul D has scared the baby’s ghost away. Sethe thinks about Denver’s idea that the baby has plans. She reflects that she does not trust the future enough to make plans, but now, with Paul D, wonders if she might be able to plan a future.
Part 3, Chapter 26 Quotes. Yet [Denver] knew Sethe’s greatest fear was...that Beloved might leave.... Leave before Sethe could make her realize that far worse than [death]...was what Baby Suggs died of, what Ella knew, what Stamp saw and what made Paul D tremble.
Baby Suggs is that person you go to with all of your deep, scary problems—the kind of problems you can't tell your parents or even your best friend. She's the all-loving earth mother/therapist/pastor, "the unchurched preacher, one who visited pulpits and opened her great heart to those who could use it […]
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Stamp looked into Paul D’s eyes and the sweet conviction in them almost made him wonder if it had happened at all, eighteen years ago, that while he and Baby Suggs were looking the wrong way, a pretty little slavegirl had recognized a hat, and split to the woodshed to kill her children.
Sethe goes outside and is surprised to find Paul D, an ex-slave who also worked on Sweet Home, sitting on her porch. He asks about Baby Suggs and Sethe tells him that her death was easy and that “being alive was the hard part.”
Yep—Paul D has finally found his sensitive side. The clincher, though, is when he discovers Sethe all bed-ridden in Baby Suggs's old room. Break out that box of tissues because his words to Sethe at the end—"'You your best thing, Sethe. You are'" (27.273)—is enough to make even the most macho man cry.
