In the evening when he came home and the three of them were all there fixing the supper table, hershine was so pronounced he wondered why Denver and Sethe didn't see it. Or maybe they did.
Certainly women could tell, as men could, when one of their number was aroused. Paul D lookedcarefully at Beloved to see if she was aware of it but she paid him no attention at all — frequentlynot even answering a direct question put to her. She would look at him and not open her mouth.
Five weeks she had been with them, and they didn't know any more about her than they did whenthey found her asleep on the stump.
They were seated at the table Paul D had broken the day he arrived at 124. Its mended legs stronger than before. The cabbage was all gone and the shiny ankle bones of smoked pork werepushed in a heap on their plates. Sethe was dishing up bread pudding, murmuring her hopes for it,apologizing in advance the way veteran cooks always do, when something in Beloved's face, somepetlike adoration that took hold of her as she looked at Sethe, made Paul D speak.
"Ain't you got no brothers or sisters?"Beloved diddled her spoon but did not look at him. "I don't have nobody.""What was you looking for when you came here?" he asked her.
"This place. I was looking for this place I could be in.""Somebody tell you about this house?""She told me. When I was at the bridge, she told me.""Must be somebody from the old days," Sethe said. The days when 124 was a way station wheremessages came and then their senders. Where bits of news soaked like dried beans in spring water— until they were soft enough to digest. "How'd you come? Who brought you?"Now she looked steadily at him, but did not answer.
He could feel both Sethe and Denver pulling in, holding their stomach muscles, sending out stickyspiderwebs to touch one another.
He decided to force it anyway.