Rnel-Jenkins
Sara I Love You, is the story about a young black girl whose only wish is that her family move away from the farm town that has perplexed her young life. (Sara thinks the small town has been mysteriously and purposely separated from the rest of the world.) At the tender age of six, she is already learning to play her father’s guitar. She hopes that she will become famous. Her grandmother, Misses Deeds, who truly loves her granddaughter in a way that no one else could love a child and her father who does not share her dreams, molds her. The story sweeps from a creek that is surrounded by a tiny farm town located in The Heart of Dixie to the soaring architectural designs of New York City.
Her father sees to it that one of her wishes comes true. In the town of Britton, Alabama, where Sara has just moved, she meets a strange face that deliberately convinces her that not all white people hate colored people. “Sara, do you believe in God . . . you believe in God, just remember that he made us all,” said Serley.
Sara trips and falls, and he takes her in his arms. “Don’t cry. You know I hate it when you cry,” said Serley. Standing there beside him, remembering those words, and focusing on a moon that seemed frozen, her forehead touched his nose. She held him tighter, and she smiled.
In mid 1970s, Sara was in Bethesda Hospital, and she is unaware of her surroundings. The forefinger and pinky finger of her right hand flutter, and her top lip moves in such a way that Serley is confidant that she understands what he is saying. Then he utters the words that Sara had waited so long to hear.
Ruby Nell Jenkins (Williams) was born in Evergreen, Alabama. New York Telephone Company employed her while she was still a high school student. She recently retired from Verizon’s Bell Atlantic where she was an employee for twenty-five years. Ruby is a graduate of The University of Rhode Island with a B.S. degree. Her avocation is writing poetry. She has contributed poems to anthologies: Into The Unknown, Of Sunshine and Daydreams, Essence of a Dream, The Best Poems of 1997, The Best Poems of 1998, and The Ever-Flowing Stream, all publications of The National Library of Poetry.
Ms. Jenkins has lived in Providence, Rhode Island since 1974. She has four children, Willie C., Tracy, Earn-nette and Tory. She also has six grandchildren.
‘Misses’ Deeds pushes open the noisy screen door, "Sara, Sara!" Frantically, she wiped sweat from her forehead. "Have mercy! Don't tell me that gal's down that creek again. Lawd let me go down here 'fore she done floated on away from here told her time after time to stay away from that water, little Sara you better stay way from that place fore you fall in, but did she listen?"
Leaving the kitchen and her bowl of flour dough, Sadie Deeds, scampered down the weeded path wiping the flour from her hands onto her apron. "I don't know what's more troubling that old wooden box and her or her and God's cooling pond."
"Sara!" She call once more. Jostled by an oak branch that obstructed the path, and the sound of splashing water, Miss Deeds sucked her teeth and continued to round the bend whilst searching and calling out for Sara. "Gal don't play wit' your grandmama, ahm too wor'out now."
Miss Deeds grabbed Sara by the hand and practically dragged her out of the wooded area onto the dirt road. She knew how impossible it was for the child to sit stay in one place for any amount of time. "The child’s just restless!"
Growing up in a town where the only thing for a little girl to do was to take off to the creek, that and watch the farmers tend livestock. Watching farmers
their hybrid animals or the beheading of some overweight animal, was not all that conducive to being a hipped teen while stuck in the 1950's.
In order to cope with her surroundings, Sara busied herself by doing what every other child in her neck of the woods did; such as homework and daily chores handed out to them by their parents or by an older bossy sibling. Or she’d cut out models from her grandmama's
National Belles Hess, catalog and use them as paper-dolls. The prettiest pictures got to keep their extremities, heads and necks, and became little people, while the less attractive ones became wardrobe symbols. Cutouts were made so that the imaginary clothing attached to the model’s shoulder, or Sara would use paste to hold them on. It was either that, or observe chickens as they shit all over the backyard.
Also, she would spend hours singing doodlebugs out of their dirt homes. Doodlebug, doodlebug your house is on fire, come out-
The unseasoned voice would tell the story repeatedly until the tiny bug scratched and dug its way to the top of the earth. Then one day Misses Deeds told because it had the good sense to think that it’s home was burning down, or because of the sound of her voice. Nor did the beetle-like, grayish bug come out of the hole willingly, but that she had poked the poor, tiny insect with the splintered piece of oak, and wrecked it's home causing it to emerge from what was once a comfortable place for it. "How’d you like somebody to scare you outa your home?"
Boredom was a vital part of Sara's country life. This led in many directions, causing her to switch gears in the midst of things.
