Picking her way through the brush she hollered back to Sethe, "What you gonna do, just lay there and
foal?"
"I can't get up from here," said Sethe.
"What?" She stopped and turned to hear.
"I said I can't get up."
Amy drew her arm across her nose and came slowly back to where Sethe lay. "It's a house back
yonder," she said.
"A house?"
"Mmmmm. I passed it. Ain't no regular house with people in it though. A lean-to, kinda."
"How far?"
"Make a difference, does it? You stay the night here snake get you."
"Well he may as well come on. I can't stand up let alone walk and God help me, miss, I can't crawl."
"Sure you can, Lu. Come on," said Amy and, with a toss of hair enough for five heads, she moved
toward the path.
So she crawled and Amy walked alongside her, and when Sethe needed to rest, Amy stopped too and
talked some more about Boston and velvet and good things to eat. The sound of that voice, like a sixteen-
year-old boy's, going on and on and on, kept the little antelope quiet and grazing. During the whole
hateful crawl to the lean-to, it never bucked once.
Nothing of Sethe's was intact by the time they reached it except the cloth that covered her hair. Below
her bloody knees, there was no feeling at all; her chest was two cushions of pins. It was the voice full of
velvet and Boston and good things to eat that urged her along and made her think that maybe she wasn't,
after all, just a crawling graveyard for a six-month baby's last hours.
The lean-to was full of leaves, which Amy pushed into a pile for Sethe to lie on. Then she gathered
rocks, covered them with more leaves and made Sethe put her feet on them, saying: "I know a woman had
her feet cut off they was so swole." And she made sawing gestures with the blade of her hand across
Sethe's ankles. "Zzz Zzz Zzz Zzz."
"I used to be a good size. Nice arms and everything. Wouldn't think it, would you? That was before
they put me in the root cellar. I was fishing off the Beaver once. Catfish in Beaver River sweet as chicken.
Well I was just fishing there and a nigger floated right by me. I don't like drowned people, you? Your feet
remind me of him. All swole like."
Then she did the magic: lifted Sethe's feet and legs and massaged them until she cried salt tears.
"It's gonna hurt, now," said Amy. "Anything dead coming back to life hurts."
A truth for all times, thought Denver. Maybe the white dress holding its arm around her mother's
waist was in pain. If so, it could mean the baby ghost had plans. When she opened the door, Sethe was just
leaving the keeping room.
"I saw a white dress holding on to you," Denver said.
"White? Maybe it was my bedding dress. Describe it to me."
