As Sethe, Paul D, and Denver return home from the carnival, a young Black woman about 19 or 20 years old emerges from a nearby stream and settles on the porch of house 124. She wears a dress of black lace and a broken straw brim hat, resembling the “women who drink champagne when there is nothing to celebrate” (60). When Sethe discovers the woman on her porch, she immediately feels an urge to relieve herself. The urge is so strong that she does not make it to the toilet and urinates outside her outhouse. The lack of control reminds her of giving birth to Denver, when “there was no stopping water breaking from a breaking womb” (61). When Sethe returns to the house, Paul and Denver are pouring many cups of water for the dehydrated woman. After they ask her for her name, she tells them that it is “Beloved” (62). She does not have a last name.

Over the next few days, Sethe, Paul D, and Denver tend to Beloved, who appears to be ill with fever or cholera. Beloved sleeps in Grandma Baby Suggs’s old bed while Denver takes care of her.