The relationship between Sethe and Beloved, which will later turn sadomasochistic, begins innocently with storytelling, the oral tradition that forms the core of black history and black literature. Violating her unspoken pact with Baby Suggs to leave memories of slave days out of conversation, Sethe "[gives] short replies or rambling incomplete reveries" in response to Beloved's many questions. Her memories cause her pain in exchange for Beloved's pleasure. Like the pull of an infant mouth on a mother's tender breast, Beloved's intense delight in Sethe's past seems to nourish an inner need to know more about the crystal earrings and about Ma'am, Beloved's unnamed grandmother.
Offsetting the hurt of child to mother is Sethe's massaging of Denver's wet hair with a towel. A motif introduced by Paul D's reverent touching of Sethe's scarred back in the first chapter and by Amy's attentions to her swollen feet when she first escaped from Sweet Home, the concept of a healing touch evolves in later chapters into a powerful message. The characters, who are incapable of obliterating the hurtful memories of enslavement, minister to each other in imperfect human fashion, applying fingers and hands as a kind of tangible blessing, flesh to flesh. Together with the repeated image of breastfeeding, Morrison frequently delineates methods by which one human being comforts another.
