Chapter 22
"I am Beloved and she is mine. I see her take flowers away from leaves she puts them in a round basket the leaves are not for her she fills the basket she opens the grass I would help her but the clouds are in the way how can I say things that are pictures I am not separate from her there is no place where I stop her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too a hot thing" Chapter 22, pg. 210
Beloved goes on in fragments about memories of a dead man on top of her and her fascination with his pointed, white teeth, all the while referring to "a hot thing." She talks about white men who do unspecified things to Beloved and unknown others. She talks about being able to see a woman with a round basket of flowers, then with iron around her neck, and then with diamond earrings -- but she is unable to reach her. She thinks the woman is going to smile at her, but then she says:
"I see the dark face that is going to smile at me it is my dark face that is going to smile at me the iron circle is around our neck she does not have sharp earrings in her ears or a round basket she goes in the water with my face" Chapter 22, pg. 212
Then she talks about standing on a bridge to look at the woman in the water who is going to smile at her and how she expects and wants her face to join that face. But the face in the water eats her own, and her old self floats away on the water. After her old body floats away, she looks for a place to go, and she finds 124.
"I am not dead I sit the sun closes my eyes when I open them I see the face I lost Sethe's is the face that left me Sethe sees me see her and I see the smile her smiling face is the place for me it is the face I lost she is my face smiling at me doing it at last a hot thing now we can join" Chapter 22, pg. 213
Topic Tracking: Memory 8
Topic Tracking: Loss 11
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