Water images abound, such as Nan pointing out to Sethe her mother wading in the flooded indigo field, the convicts' escape during the flood, and the flow of amniotic fluid from Sethe's womb as the infant Denver forces her way into the light. The shape of the canoe, an oversized replica of the female vulva, emphasizes the importance of the birth of the one child that Sethe intends to hang on to. After Beloved's water-soaked wade from the Ohio River shore, Sethe experiences a recurrence of flooding waters, this time from an incontinent bladder inordinately full of urine. Beloved, croupy and thirsting, gulps four cups of water, and then sleeps for four days and wets the sheets, which Denver rinses in secret. Upon Paul D's arrival at 124 Bluestone Road, he detects the female "shining" on Sethe's bare legs, the same symbolic seminal fluid she wiped from her skin the day that she accepted Halle from among the five lustful brothers at Sweet Home.
Temporarily, water freezes into ice firm enough to hold the three women, sliding on one whole pair of skates and one shared pair. Like their tenuous family triad, the happy scene results in slips and mishaps, and then crumbles into unforeseen tears from Sethe. Her solution is the liquid of life, the warm milk that they drink to warm themselves, just as they did in babyhood when Sethe held her breast to their thirsting lips.
