When I put that headstone up I wanted to lay in there with you, put your head on my shoulder and keep you warm, and I would have if Buglar and Howard and Denver didn't need me, because my mind was homeless then. I couldn't lay down with you then. No matter how much I wanted to. I couldn't lay down nowhere in peace, back then. Now I can. I can sleep like the drowned, have mercy. She come back to me, my daughter, and she is mine. (20.3)
Sethe was "homeless then." Does that mean she isn't homeless now because she has Beloved back? Just wait until she finds out what kind of home Beloved offers. Are home and family related in Beloved?
Quote 8
"I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened." (3.88)
Here we get the first significant moment in which Sethe uses the word "rememory" to mean "memory." Why "rememory"? Well, you could think of "re" as an emphasis on a memory's replayed or reimagined nature—it's something that's being recalled again. See what we mean? We can't even explain it without using a bunch of words that use "re-" as a prefix. Oh, language. You are so sneaky.
Quote 9
But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day. (7.79)
Typical Sethe—totally immersed in and obsessed with the past.