The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

     "What baby?"
     "She left me."
     "Aw, girl.  Don't cry."
     "She was my best thing."
     Paul D sits down in the rocking chair and examines the quilt patched in carnival colors.  His hands are limp between his knees.  There are too many things to feel about this woman.  His head hurts.  Suddenly he remembers Sixo trying to describe what he felt about the Thirty-Mile Woman.  "She is a friend of my mind.  She gather me, man.  The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.  It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."
     He is staring at the quilt but he is thinking about her wrought-iron back; the delicious mouth still puffy at the corner from from Ella's fist.  The mean black eyes.  The wet dress steaming before the fire.  Her tenderness about his neck jewelry--its three wands, like attentive baby rattlers, curving two feet into the air.  How she never mentioned or looked at it, so he did not have to feel the shame of being collared like a beast.  Only this woman Sethe could have left him his manhood like that.  He wants me to put his story next to hers.
     "Sethe," he says, "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody.  We need some kind of tomorrow."
     He leans over and takes her hand.  With the other he touches her face.  "You your best thing, Sethe.  You are."  His holding fingers and holding hers.
     "Me?  Me?"

--Toni Morrison, Beloved