Introduction to Sally

I’ve been working on the NaNoWrite Month - not sure if I’m going to make the 50,000 word deadline yet, but this is my introduction.  The story is about a lady I met when I was eight years old.  She was born in 1858, died in 1969, living to be 110.  She was born into slavery.  The History Mystery was about researching her life.  This is next day, after staying up until the wee hours of the morning for several nights, actually. I have a splitting headache, down to my fingers, and don’t want to even look at this writing project for a few days. Part of me feels like I don’t deserve to be a winner.  My total word count was 50,135, but, few of the words are edited, and their are tons of red underlines and green underlines, denoting misspellings and improper sentence structure.  A portion is copies of records researching Sally’s life, plus my notes in interviewing people.  A lot of this will be edited out if I complete this project.  I’m going in so many different directions with it, but I guess the purpose was just to make yourself write, so I’ll try to quit being too hard on myself.

As of 5 PM yesterday I began writing in a totally different manner trying to look back on life as Sally would reflect on it, from sitting in her chair at the nursing home.  A portion is below the introduction.  When I started doing this the words just started pouring out, and changing into the way she may have spoken the words.

Introduction

I embark upon a pilgrimage of sorts, not a pilgrimage to distant places to find answers, but on a pilgrimage exploring my own soil. As Dorothy tapped her ruby slippers and said there is no place like home, I too awaken to the realization that our roots provide our greatest and wisest vantage point. The strongest pilgrimage is finding those genuinely sacred places in our own back yard. This is a quest to awaken the spirits who once toiled, shed tears, laughed and loved here and to connect with them. The center point of this trek is a woman named Sally.

A life in the public eye is celebrated with magnification of every victory or every fault. But what of the billions of lives lived out in a seemingly mundane existence? How do we celebrate those? This is the story of one of those lives.  This is the story of one of those humble lives, the life of Sally.  Although her life was humble, it was far from mundane. As each life reaches out as a droplet in the wave touching the lives around it, sometimes a life will extend beyond the wave it’s a part of touching generations to come with a soothing comfort.  Sally’s life was such a particle of water.  It had the force to eject out from the wave and land on you and cool you on a hot summer day.

Why are we born were we are born? Most of us if we haven’t already will ask this at some point in our life. As the planet spins, most of us race along in rotational sync from place to place looking for that hallowed ground burning with a gravitational rooted sacredness that calls out to us. A few of us will stand firm on the soil on which we were born, or we might sit restless at the place of our birth looking for meaning in the dust beneath our feet. It is often said that the grass is greener on the other side. I am finding that the grass is quite green where I sit, even emerald. So I meditate on my own grass and wonder what lives were lived on this very soil as the sun rose and the sun sat, as moons changed, as flowers bloomed into momentary splendor and then withered.  Babies were born, some living to be old men and old women, while others journeyed onto this earth only shortly. All as droplets of water rose and receded with the wave dancing the cosmic dance both alone and together, sometimes in rhythm and sometimes out of step. Lessons were studied. Lessons were learned. A few roles were perfected. A spray of new waves rolled upon the sand as the previous waves after playing out their brief drama both paying their dues and reaping their rewards were called back to the vast ocean from whence they had emerged.

The multitude of particles within the waves beating against the shore deposited mostly simple lives; yet as I found to be the case with Sally, the simple, uncelebrated lives, are the most complex.  One day they arise again, a watery ghostly tide, begging for celebration. The celebration follows from recollections both true and false, both exaggerated and understated, generations removed. The generations removed look back and reflect while looking for meaning to their own cosmic dance.

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She sat in her large stuffed chair.  They always reserved this one for her.  It was a place of honor because of her age.  Everyone was always making such a ruckus about her age.  What did it matter?  Oh, I guess it mattered enough.  She had seen more than most had ever seen, more than most would want to see.

She sat for hours at a time, looking out the window.  There was nothing else to do now.  She just waited, waited for what would happen next.  She had her faith.  She had her Jesus.  She knew would be going home soon.  Sometimes she was already there.  She would drift in and out.  She knew her time had to be soon.  She knew her time had to be soon even though she just kept going on whenever everyone around her didn’t.  She had seen so much death during her long lifetime.  There were how many wars?  Well, there was the big one.  Most people think the big one means War World II.  No, she thought, there was the really bad one, not that they all weren’t bad, but the one that had to do with her and her kind.  She was always running behind the Missus to get away from the Yankees.  The Missus was always scared that the Yankees were going to come and steal everything they had.  There were always rumors.  There was always a coming and going of people.  There was always talk.  She was only a child, a child without a mother.  She knew enough to be scared.  But Mammy Nell said she would take care of her, that she wasn’t to be scared.  She got through it good enough.  Look at how long she lived.  She had gotten through so much.  Sally had forgotten more than most people remember.  She just sat very still and gazed out the window.  The nurse came in the room.  She would feed her dinner, and talk to her kindly, like she was a child.  The nurse was a mere child.

She was being fed now and waited on.  She had always been the one to do the feeding, to do the waiting.  She didn’t care.  She liked making people happy.  A man came to see her yesterday.  She tried to remember who he was, but her memory faded in and out.  He looked like Ben.  But he said, no, no, when she called him Ben.  Now she remembered, Ben was dead.  Poor Ben.  She had outlived them all, all except Ted.  Oh, that Ted.  A smile came to her face.  That Ted.  He was always causing trouble.  She raised her hand to cover her mouth as she slightly let out a laugh.  She was always warning Ted that he was going to get into serious trouble.  She told him, “Ted, don’t you think I don’t know what you are doing, while you think I’m asleep.  I know what you’re doing over there when her husband isn’t home.  Don’t you think the neighbors don’t know.  You are going to get yourself in a heap of trouble if you don’t stop.”  Still, Ted was her favorite.  No, she shouldn’t say that, they were all her favorites.  She loved the children.  The children always treated her good.

She thought back.  She was all alone.  She was at Boone Furnace, and there had been an explosion.

(a bunch skipped)

It was morning.  She felt the sunlight coming through the window.  How she longed to be outside again.  The man came out of nowhere.  Ben saw him first walking by foot down the lane towards their garden.  Ben was barely a man yet.  Sarah was well grown.  The man was dark like her.  She hadn’t seen a Negro man in the longest time.  They all left after the war.  There was nothing for them here.  They all thought that after the war they could leave Kentucky and do better for themselves.  She had been hoeing.  It was so hot.  Ben had been messing with the tiller.  The blade kept getting stuck.  Funny how after all this time you remember the simpliest things.  But the simple things was what made up life, she thought.

She remembered how her heart started pounding as the man got nearer.  Ben just looked at it as some kind of opportunity.  He was always a pranking around.  Ben was Marthie’s favorite.  He teased so.  Marthie was back at the house fixin the noon meal.  Sally kept trying to keep her bonnet straight.  It just didn’t want to stay straight that day.  She had put too much starch in it.  Her gringly hair didn’t help matters.  She kept pushing it back behind her ears.

The man got closer.  Ben said, “Hi, how can I help you today.”  The man just stood there for the longest time.  He looked straight at me.  It gave me such a scare.  Then he took off his hat and wiped off the dust from his clothes.  He said, “It’s a mighty hot day.  Could you give a fellow a drink?”  Ben went over towards the creek and just left me standing there.  The man just took the water and thanked Ben.  Then suddenly he just up and said, “You don’t know of a woman I could take for a wife?”  Ben told him, “He didn’t know but he might ask me.”  I just got so scared.  I had been getting so tired and hungry from all that hoeing.  But right fast I got a burst of energy and dropped my hoe and ran all the way back to the house.  I hid behind the door until the man left.  Marthie didn’t know what to make of it and kept asking me what frightened me so.  The man finally went on his way.  Ben got the best chuckle out of it for the entire night.  Everyone else did for that matter.
Maybe I should have married the man.  I wonder how different life would have been.

(more left out)