Denver climbed up on the bed and folded her arms under her apron. She had not been in the treeroom once since Beloved sat on their stump after the carnival, and had not remembered that shehadn't gone there until this very desperate moment. Nothing was out there that this sister-girl didnot provide in abundance: a racing heart, dreaminess, society, danger, beauty. She swallowedtwice to prepare for the telling, to construct out of the strings she had heard all her life a net to holdBeloved.

　　"She had good hands, she said. The whitegirl, she said, had thin little arms but good hands. Shesaw that right away, she said. Hair enough for five heads and good hands, she said. I guess thehands made her think she could do it: get us both across the river. But the mouth was what kept herfrom being scared. She said there ain't nothing to go by with whitepeople. You don't know howthey'll jump. Say one thing, do another. But if you looked at the mouth sometimes you could tellby that. She said this girl talked a storm, but there wasn't no meanness around her mouth. She tookMa'am to that lean-to and rubbed her feet for her, so that was one thing. And Ma'am believed shewasn't going to turn her over. You could get money if you turned a runaway over, and she wasn'tsure this girl Amy didn't need money more than anything, especially since all she talked about wasgetting hold of some velvet.""What's velvet?""It's a cloth, kind of deep and soft.""Go ahead.""Anyway, she rubbed Ma'am's feet back to life, and she cried, she said, from how it hurt. But itmade her think she could make it on over to where Grandma Baby Suggs was and...""Who is that?""I just said it. My grandmother.""Is that Sethe's mother?""No. My father's mother.""Go ahead.""That's where the others was. My brothers and.., the baby girl. She sent them on before to wait forher at Grandma Baby's. So she had to put up with everything to get there. And this here girl Amyhelped."Denver stopped and sighed. This was the part of the story she loved. She was coming to it now,and she loved it because it was all about herse............