My Name Is Sally Little Song

Chapter 4
The news spread in whispers

Late the next day

Master and the Missy gone

Up Savannah way

Not sure how long

They gonna be away

Brethren got worries

Is what they say

Delilah turned sickly in the three days since the baby came and Mama has to be by her side. So I took Mama's job grinding corn into meal. The shed was cool like a spring morning and though I was pleased to be out of the sun, there was no one to talk to. So, I made up another song.

"Grindin' corn, grindin' corn, grindin' corn, ain't so bad. But pickin' cotton, pickin' cotton, pickin' cotton, makes me sad." I sang it over and over as I ground the corn into meal and put it into sacks.

I was just working and singing, singing and working, the corn grinder humming, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw something small and quick burst through the shed door. At first I thought it was a bobcat until I saw her. It was January July.

January July was nearly nine, scrawny like me, and everyone in the quarter, young and old, complained she was the laziest gal they ever knew. She was named January July by her mama and pa because she was born one January when Master and the Missy were away. Then they added July because it just sounded right. So the white foreman had recorded it in the book, January July Harrison and no one can tell you why but the Missy never changed it.

"You 'bout scared the ghost outta me!" I yelled.

"You scared a everything, Sally May," she teased.

"Is not," I said.

"Is so."

"What you run in here for?" I asked, "Hidin' from the foreman agin?"

January July grinned. "Sur'nuf."

"Might as well help me then," I told her.

"Don't know how," she replied.

"I could learn you...see. You put the dried corn in here and turn this handle. And when the meal comes out here, you put it in one of these sacks."

January July grabbed handful of yellow kernels and spilled them into the grinder, "Like this?"

"Yessiree," I said, and started singing again. "Grindin' corn, grindin' corn, grindin' corn ain't so bad..."

"What you singin'?" January July asked.

"A song I made up."

"Why come?"

"To help me keep my mind."

"Where could it go?"

"Somewhere's"

"Who telled you that?"

"My mama."

But when I started singing the corn song again and January July joined in, I suddenly wished I didn't have ears to hear. Her voice sounded like two crows cawing.

"January July, you cain't hardly sing."

"I knows," she chuckled.

The sound of rolling wheels and horses hooves made us stop working and peek through the tiny window. Alongside the corn shed was a narrow road that divided Harrison land from the Sullivan plantation across the way. Two white men, one with bright red hair, both carrying rifles, rode beside a wagon that was being driven by a third white man. In the back of the wagon sat a huge colored man, chain around his dark thick neck, his body bloody, face bloodier. His head was held down like he was barely alive. One of the white men jabbed him with his rifle and the huge colored man sat up straight.

"Stay alive, nigger," The white man said. "We got a big bounty to collect."

I whispered to January July, "A runaway."

She replied softly, "Sur'nuf."

"They's sure to hang him," I told her.

"Why come?"

"'Cause he run off," I replied and returned to grinding corn.

"Then he gonna be dead?" she asked, still peeking through the window.

"Dead as could be."

January July shook her head. "I ain't never runnin' off."

I agreed. "Neither me."

January July loaded more kernels into the grinder and as we ground the corn we sang, "Grindin' corn, grindin' corn, grindin' corn ain't so bad..."

Later that night, as the fire flickered, I told the story of the runaway.

"Likely they'll hang him," Pa said.

"You ever ponder runnin' off, Pa?" Abraham asked.

Mama put her finger to her mouth, "Shhh."

"Cain't nobody hear us, Dessa," Pa said.

"Well, did you?" Abraham asked again.

"Yessiree, a heap of times. Ever since I was a youngin' I been lis'nin to tales of colored who made it North, some all the way outta 'Merica clear to Canada where there ain't no such thing as slavery. I even hear'd tales 'bout folks who tried to go back to Africa."

"Africa...where your pa come from?" I asked.

"Sur'nuf, Sally girl, clear across the ocean." Pa got a dreamy look in his eyes. "I see'd it once from the shores of Carolina."

"Africa?" Abraham asked.

"Naw, son. The ocean. Piece of water that carries your eyes as far away as the moon."

I leaned my head on Pa's shoulder. "That where Africa is...far away as the moon?"

"Seems to me it just might be."


"True to the child's voice, the terse, first-person narrative...brings close the backbreaking labor and cruelty of plantation life, then the flight to freedom, the sadness, and the hope." --Booklist, starred review.