With that, she gathered her blanket around her elbows and asc.ended the lily-white stairs like abride. Outside, snow solidified itself into graceful forms. The peace of winter stars seemedpermanent. Fingering a ribbon and smelling skin, Stamp Paid approached 124 again. "My marrowis tired," he thought. "I been tired all my days, bone-tired, but now it's in the marrow. Must bewhat Baby Suggs felt when she lay down and thought about color for the rest of her life." Whenshe told him what her aim was, he thought she was ashamed and too shamed to say so. Herauthority in the pulpit, her dance in the Clearing, her powerful Call (she didn't deliver sermons orpreach — insisting she was too ignorant for that — she called and the hearing heard) — all thathad been mocked and rebuked by the bloodspill in her backyard. God puzzled her and she was tooashamed of Him to say so. Instead she told Stamp she was going to bed to think about the colors ofthings. He tried to dissuade her. Sethe was in jail with her nursing baby, the one he had saved. Hersons were holding hands in the yard, terrified of letting go. Strangers and familiars were stoppingby to hear how it went one more time, and suddenly Baby declared peace. She just up and quit. Bythe time Sethe was released she had exhausted blue and was well on her way to yellow.

　　At first he would see her in the yard occasionally, or delivering food to the jail, or shoes in town.

　　Then less and less. He believed then that shame put her in the bed. Now, eight years after hercontentious funeral and eighteen years after the Misery, he changed his mind. Her marrow wastired and it was a testimony to the heart that fed it that it took eight years to meet finally the colorshe was hankering after. The onslaught of her fatigue, like his, was sudden, but lasted for years.

　　After sixty years of losing children to the people who chewed up her life and spit it out like a fishbone; after five years of freedom given to her by her last child, who bought her future with his, exchanged it, so to speak, so she could have one whether he did or not — to lose him too; toacquire a daughter and grandchildren and see that daughter slay the children (or try to); to belongto a community of other free Negroes — to love and be loved by them, to counsel and becounseled, protect and be protected, feed and be fed — and then to have that community step backand hold itself at a distance — -well, it could wear out even a Baby Suggs, holy. "Listen here,girl," he told her, "you can't quit the Word. It's given to you to speak. You can't quit the Word, Idon't care what all happen to you."They were standing in Richmond Street, ankle deep in leaves. Lamps lit the downstairs windowsof spacious houses and made the early evening look darker than it was. The odor of burning leaveswas brilliant. Quite by chance, as he pocketed a penny tip for a delivery, he had glanced across thestreet and recognized the skipping woman as his old friend. He had not seen her in weeks. Quicklyhe crossed the street, scuffing red leaves as he went. When he stopped her with a greeting, shereturned it with a face knocked clean of interest. She could have been a plate. A carpetbag full ofshoes in her hand, she waited for him to begin, lead or share a conversation. If there had beensadness in her eyes h............