Walking Home to Rosie Lee. A. LaFaye

      

      W

      AR’S OVER. Government say we free.

      Folks be on the move. Getting the feel for freedom.

      Not me. I’m looking for my mama, Rosie Lee.

      Master Turner sold my mama away from me.

      Haven’t seen her since they put me in the fields to

      work, but I remember how she smell like jasmine

      flowers in the summer sun.

      SHE’S PROBABLY HEADING for freedom like every other

      body on the road. They walk all day, singing songs, telling stories,

      and dream-talking of the lives they’re gonna live now that they’re

      free. Mr. Gary gonna get him a job on the railroad, laying track.

      Yancy’s looking for them three brothers he’s always telling me

      about. Miss Sherona wants to be a teacher in one of them new

      schools you see cropping up like cotton in any old place you can

      put up a chalkboard and sit yourself down with a book.

      THESE FOLKS have freedom on their minds and they

      talk it out over the nighttime fires that light up their faces

      like lanterns—all hope and hurry on.

      Me, I got my mama, Rosie Lee, on my mind. Can almost

      see her bright gray eyes, smiling back at me when she’d

      walk to the fields in the morning.

      Papa used to say Mama could bake a pie so sweet, the

      birds flew out of the sky to have them a taste. Then Papa

      took sick and left this here world.

      All day, all night, I’m looking for folks I don’t know,

      asking if they’ve heard of my mama, Rosie Lee.

      I TELL THEM how Mama always wore a scarf ‘round her

      neck to hide the scar from being dragged for trying to run free.

      When I thought on it at night, I’d put my hands around my

      neck, stare up at the North Star like it might be the eye of God

      Himself and pray Mama be all right. Be looking for me. And

      finding me ‘fore too long.