Explore "Beloved" by Toni Morrison on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
BELOVED WAS shining and Paul D didn't like it. Women did what strawberry plants did before they shot out their thin vines: the quality of the green changed. Then the vine threads came, then the buds. By the time the white petals died and the mint-colored berry poked out, the leaf shine was gilded fight and waxy. That's how Beloved looked-gilded and shining. Paul D took to having Sethe on waking, so that later, when he went down the white stairs where she made bread under Beloved's gaze, his head was clear.
In the evening when he came home and the three of them were all there fixing the supper table, her shine was so pronounced he wondered why Denver and Sethe didn't see it. Or maybe they did. Certainly women could tell, as men could, when one of their number was aroused. Paul D looked carefully at Beloved to see if she was aware of it but she paid him no attention at all-frequently not even answering a direct question put to her. She would look at him and not open her mouth. Five weeks she had been with them, and they didn't know any more about her than they did when they found her asleep on the stump.