Beloved - Memory, Rememory, and the Power of the Past

In Chapter 9 of Beloved, Sethe takes a trip to the Clearing, where Baby Suggs used to preach, for spiritual guidance. Baby Suggs had been there for Sethe when she needed her after Denver was born, and she remembered how Baby Suggs had been so caring with her and had acted almost like a mother toward Sethe when she was vulnerable. Sethe knew Baby Suggs and her hands well enough to know that when she was being strangled, it was not done by the ghost of Baby Suggs. She thought, "Baby Suggs had not choked her as first she thought... Sethe remembered the touch of those fingers that she knew better than her own," (115). Sethe comes to the conclusion that it was something from the 'other side.' She ponders, "But for eighteen years she had lived in a house full of touches from the other side. And the thumbs that pressed her nape were the same. Maybe that was where it (the ghost) had gone to," (116). Sethe remembers the feeling of Baby Suggs' fingers, knowing they were not hers that choked her. Yet, it was a spirit of some kind. Sethe has a rememory of all the times she had been in the presence of the ghost baby, and so she knows what that should feel like. The past can be reawakened by parallel happening that occur and allow for the remembrance of it in the present.