“Here," she said, "in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love theskin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Thoes they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise they up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that eaither. You got to love it, you. And no, they aint in love with your mouth. Younder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead No, they do't love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver- love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize." (page 89).
Baby Suggs lives in a world where you can’t love, you can’t love your family- because they’ll be taken from you. You can’t love your friends, because they’ll betray you for freedom or unmet needs. Baby Suggs preaches to love oneself, though. Because otherwise there is no one to love you, and you need love.
This understanding of love was created from a life of slavery. Out of her eight children, only one did she keep long enough to see into adulthood. As it was, her eight children had six different fathers, she couldn’t even love the men she slept with. A man ain’t nothing but a man, but a son? Well now, that’s somebody.” (Morrison 23) Baby Suggs never had a son. She may have given birth to six boys, but she never had a son. Baby Suggs’ story is arguably the saddest story in Beloved. Her whole life she has had nothing given to her. “It made sense for a lot of reasons because in all of Baby’s life, as well as Sethe’s own, men and women were moved around like checkers. Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn’t run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized.” (Morrison 23)
In the passage we see that anybody Baby Suggs had grew to love had been killed, or worse, taken away to work on some other slave plantation. It’s interesting to see Morrison describe the people in her life as checkers. When you think about it, checkers are the last thing you want your loved ones to be like. All the pieces must move away from you, one slow step at a time. Occasionally a piece is taken away, and eventually nearly every piece you ever had has left you. On rare occasions, however, a piece may come back to you. Baby Suggs had only one piece come back to her: Halle.
“’God take what He would,’ she [Baby Suggs] said. And He did, and He did, and He did, and then he gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn’t mean a thing.”(Morrison 23) Halle went around and rented himself out to raise the money just to pay for Baby Suggs’ freedom, but Baby Suggs didn’t want freedom then. Why? Baby Suggs had spent her whole life having things taken away. Two of her daughters were sold, and she didn’t even get to say goodbye to them. Her sons were sold, and she had gotten pregnant from her master. “That child she could not love and the rest she would not.” (Morrison 23) She had gotten so used to things being taken away from her that she didn’t want to get emotionally attached to anything, lest it be wrenched from her leaving her broken yet again.
To her, Halle was the closest thing she had to a son. “Halle she was able to keep the longest. Twenty years. A lifetime.” (Morrison 23) Halle was the nearest she could call family. He bought her freedom, but for fear of him being taken away too, Baby Suggs chose to keep him at arms length, for inevitably he too would leave her (even if not by his own will). And so Baby Suggs never had herself a son. “’A man ain’t nothing but a man,’ said Baby Suggs. ‘But a son? Well now, that’s somebody.” (Morrison 23)
When Suggs comes to 124, she slowly sheds all the fear she has towards love and treats everyone in a loving and compassionate manner. “[Baby Suggs] decided that because slave life had ‘busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue,’ she had nothing left to make a living with but her heart—which she put to work at once.” (Morrison, 87) In response, the people of the town come to her, to hear her preach and to celebrate life with her. “Accepting no title of honor before her name, but allowing a small caress after it, she became an unchurched preacher, one who visited pulpits and opened her great heart to those who could use it.” (87) They see Baby Suggs is a resilient woman. After all the hardships of living her life as a slave, her spirit never truly was broken. Indeed, they have seemed to give her a stronger spiritual connection to the world and to her fellow African Americans. Her spiritual connection is not altogether religious, but rather a universal energy that she wants others to tap into. “She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glorybound pure. She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it.” (88) One specific example of the sense of community formed between Baby Suggs and her fellow African-Americans is a man who goes by the name Stamp Paid, who loved Baby Suggs, enough that when he saw Suggs’ daughter-in-law with a new born, he went out into the forests and gathered two buckets full of berries to give to the child. It was this example of love, kindness, and a sense of community that lead to the downfall of Baby Suggs. She took the preciously gathered berries and used them as inspiration to create a feast.
Much like the feast of the last supper, in the Bible, Suggs was surrounded by friends and family, all joining in the merriment of the night. So comfortable and happy were the people gathered at Suggs’ feast, that they woke up in Suggs’ yard “tired, overfed children asleep in the grass, tiny bones of roasted rabbit still in their hands- and got angry.” (Morrison, page 137). Again, there’s a flashback to the fall of Christ; after sharing in the feast and love and kindness of Jesus, the people crucified him. In the same way, Suggs’ family and friends got angry at Baby Suggs,
Too much, they thought. Where does she get it all, Baby Suggs, holy? Why is she and hers always the center of things? How come she always knows exactly what to do and when? Giving advice; passing messages,; healing the sick, hiding fugitives, loving, cooking, cooking, loving, preaching, singing, dancing, and loving everybody like it was her job and hers alone (page 137).
Baby Suggs noticed, she though, “The scent of their disapproval lay heavy in the air.” (137)
That’s why Baby Suggs remembers her old life, her life at Sweet Home, where she learned about love. It was here that Baby Suggs wasn’t knocked down, what with her bad hip making it hard to walk. She spent day after day working with Mrs. Garner, the lady of the house whom hummed as she worked. That’s when her world flipped out of control for the first time, not in a bad way, but to change the way she thought and felt. Halle, her only child to grow up with her, paid Mr. Garner with work for Baby Suggs’ freedom. It was with this freedom that Baby Suggs didn’t know how to continue living her life, because she had never been free. The lack of freedom also lead to a lack of self-knowledge, “Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me?” (page 140) “Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed,” she said, “and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks.” (89)
Baby Suggs underwent one other life changing experience, which finally broke her. Suggs’ relationship with her daughter-in-law was very beautiful. Baby Suggs really taught Sethe how to love, how to love with all your heart. Later, once Suggs had died, Sethe would still remember her words, “She wished for Baby Suggs’ fingers molding her nape, reshaping it, saying, ‘Lay em down, Sethe. Sword and shield. Down. Down. Both of em down. Down by the riverside. Sword and shield. Don’t study war no more. Lay all that mess down. Sword and shield.’ (Morrison 86) Baby Suggs is telling Sethe to forget her worries, her regrets. For this ephemeral time, let all of her emotions and feelings escape her. There is no need to mask her pain, her sorrow and her suffering. Here, there is no need to defend yourself, to fight. Leave all of your worries here. Do not put on this façade of normality and pretend that nothing is wrong. She wants Sethe to tell her, her troubled feelings.
Sethe, despite her arrival to 124, is still fearful of what the future brings. She is still suffering from the death of Beloved and is hopeful for Halle’s return, although she does not truly believe he will come. Baby Suggs calms her and relaxes her. She eases the burden of her emotions and Sethe finds comfort within Baby Suggs. Now in the present, Sethe longs for that familiar touch on her neck; the peaceful feeling that Baby brings to her.
“Now she sat on Baby Suggs’ rock, Denver and Beloved watching her from the trees. There will never be a day, she thought, when Halle will knock on the door. Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder.
Just the fingers, she thought. Just let me feel your fingers again on the back of my neck and I will lay it all down, make a way out of this no way. Sethe bowed her head and sure enough-they were there. Lighter now, no more than the strokes of bird feather, but unmistakably caressing fingers. She had to relax a bit to let them do their work, so light was the touch, childlike almost, more finger kiss than kneading. Still she was grateful for the effort; Baby Suggs’ long distance love was equal go any skin-close love she had known. The desire, let alone the gesture, to meet her needs was good enough to lift her spirits to the place where she could take the next step: ask for some clarifying word; some advice about how to keep on with a brain greedy for news nobody could live with in a world happy to provide it.” (Morrison 95)
Sethe wants baby Suggs to lift her worries; she wants the soothing fingers on her neck once more to help her open up herself to her feelings. (Lay it all down.) Sethe sits on the rock in the Clearing that used to be Baby Suggs’, hoping that visiting there will trigger those comforting hands on her neck and reassuring feelings back so long ago. She wants Baby Suggs to tell her once more to “Lay it all down. Sword and shield.” She wants to feel the way she felt when Baby Suggs was alive and there to help her through her distressing emotions.
But back at the time of the incident, when the Schoolteacher, a nephew, a slave catcher, and a sheriff came to 124, Sethe freaked out. After all Sethe had done to protect her children from losing their identity, she couldn’t bear to see it taken from them by slavery. So Sethe went to go kill Beloved. As a witness, Baby Suggs was flabbergasted. How on earth could a woman kill her child? Where was the love, the human in her? Had everything she preached been ignored? So Baby Suggs gave up.
“Saturday coming. You going to Call or what?”
“If I call them and they come, what on earth I’m going to say?”
“Say the Word!” He checked his shout too late. Two whitemen burning leaves turned their heads in his direction. Bending low he whispered into her ear, “The Word. The Word.”
“That’s one other thing took away from me,” she said, and that was when he extorted her, pleaded with her not to quit, no matter what. The Word had been given to her and she had to speak it. Had to….
“You got to do it,” he said. “You got to. Can’t nobody Call like you. You have to be there.”
What I have to do is get in my bed and lay down. I want to fix on something harmless in this world.”
“What world you talking about? Ain’t nothing harmless down here.”
“Yes it is. Blue. That don’t hurt nobody. Yellow neither.”
“You getting in the bed to think about yellow?”
“I likes yellow.”
“Then what? When you get through with blue and yellow, then what?”
“Can’t say. It’s something can’t be planned.”
“You blaming God,” he said. “That’s what you doing.”
“No, Stamp. I ain’t.” (178-179)
“When she told him what her aim was, he thought she was ashamed and too shamed to say so. Her authority in the pulpit, her dance in the Clearing, her power Call (she didn’t deliver sermons of preach—insisting she was too ignorant for that—she called and the hearing heard)—all that had been mocked and rebuked by the bloodspill in her backyard. God puzzled her and she was too ashamed of Him to say so. Instead she told Stamp she was going to bed to think about the colors of things. He tried to dissuade her. Sethe was in jail with her nursing baby, the one he had saved. Her sons were holding hands in the yard, terrified of letting go. Strangers and familiars were stopping by to hear how it went one more time, and suddenly Baby declared peace. She just up and quit. By the time Sethe was released she had exhausted blue and was well on her way to yellow.”