do—with broad stitches that always caused her mama’s stout arm to extend in a wide arc so the long thread may be pulled tight through the rough weave of the Penistone cloth; and that her missus, seeing this lavish movement, frowned and with a wagging finger said, ‘No, no, no, not like that,’ before insisting upon the tiniest stitches upon her delicate fabric; stitches that did cause the needle to nip July’s fingertip, sharp as the bite of a rat, if her eye should stray from its dainty path. No. It was the length of time July was required to sit in almost perfect stillness within her missus’s chamber to perform the task. All day! And July had legs that just did not want to keep her there.
For they were used to spending their working day leading the pickaninny third gang of slaves—their wooden pails swinging easy in their tight fists as they walked, skipped, jumped and dilly-dallied down to the river, twittering like chicks. July, sitting with her missus, would make one stitch, two stitch, three stitch, before her legs would start to jiggle. Four stitch, five stitch, and they would jump up to walk about. ‘Are you finished?’ her missus would call. July, meek as a bullied dog, would sit back upon her seat to begin again. One stitch, two stitch, three stitch, as she did think of those ragged children of the third gang struggling their thirst-quenching loads out to the cane strips of Dover and Scarlett Ponds. How, with their pails full of water, their progress was slow as a line of mourners and they did grunt like crones and strain double to raise the brimming vessels far enough from the ground to carry, not drag, the slip-slopping water upon the long journey to the thirsty mouths of the slaves working the cane pieces.
Six stitch, seven stitch, eight stitch, and she would listen as familiar sounds rode in on the breeze that blew at the long window: the chant of a work song; was that Ned the mule braying? Here them all tramping up to Virgo; that be the ugly driver cracking his long lash; come, is that the massa I hear, agalloping his horse? Why they be yelling? Oh, they be running to catch the cart! And her legs would begin their jiggling once more.
Is it to anyone’s wonder that July, instead of sewing the repair to the pocket of the frock (a small hole made by the missus’s jagged fingernail), took the scissors and carefully cut around the little ear of fabric until the pocket was removed from the dress entirely. Then, hiding the severed pouch away under her skirt, she brightly told her missus, ‘Me done.’
Her missus, inspecting the repair, placed her hand within the pocket, up to her elbow, before she realised that all was not well. Turning the dress inside out so her eye might inspect what her hand already knew, she threw the dress upon the ground and grabbed July by her wrist. With July’s hand splayed in front of her, she picked up a needle, twisted it to perform like a dagger, and stabbed July upon her hand four times with its sharp point.
‘Every time you do something bad when you are stitching,’ her missus said, ‘then I must punish you, or you will not learn,’ before pricking her hand two more times. And July cried out like a man lashed with a cat-o’nine-tails.
‘Mama, Mama, Mama!’ July yelled as she jumped up and down upon the spot. And the little severed pocket of the dress then floated down from where it was hid, on to the floor. All at once her missus’s face began to span the room as she leaned in close to July to yell, ‘Your mama is sold away. She is sold away, you hear me? Sold away. You are mine now.’ And her puffing cheeks were red as Scotch Bonnet pepper as July cried out for her mama once more.
Sitting in a corner of the kitchen, behind the stone of the fireplace under the shelf that held teetering dutch pots and jestas, curled up in as tight a ball as her knees and arms could make, you could always find July in those early days, snivelling and weeping. The longing for her mama became a pain within her fierce as hunger. When anyone came in upon the kitchen—darkening the blazing light at the door like a cloud before the sun—she would look up yearning. For