Read an extract from The Long Song by Andrea Levy

SO, READER, KITTY’S ONLY child is born in upon the world at last. Kitty called her daughter July, for when she was still a callow girl, Miss Martha, who did oversee the infant workers of the third gang, had once ventured to teach Kitty to write in words the months that make up the year. Although the month of her pickney’s birth was December, it was only the graceful wave of Miss Martha’s arm as she scratched the flowing curls of the word July in the dirt that the older Kitty could call to mind. Kitty softly whispered the word July into her pickney’s ear and July her daughter became.

And what a squealing, tempestuous, fuss-making child she was. The quivering pink tongue and toothless gums in July’s shrieking mouth were more familiar to her mama than her baby’s arms and feet. With such agitation coming hourly from this newly born creature, Kitty did believe that this pickney must have been ripped from some more charmed existence. That she howled for the injustice that found her now a slave in an airless hut, in a crib too small, and being mothered by an ugly-skinned black woman who did not have the faintest notion as to why her pickney did yell so.

Kitty paced her tiny hut for most of the hours in the night to try to bring peace to this cursed child’s heart. Then, when the child was calmed enough for Kitty’s eyelids to at last close in sleep, the driver blowing a shrill note upon the conch bade her open them once more for another day of work. Only when Kitty was ready to feed this baby, so her working day could commence, did this child decide the time was right to sleep like the dead. And only after she had wrapped the sleeping child to her back and begun her work on the second gang—clearing and carrying the bundles of spent cane from the factory to the trash house—did Kitty feel the gentle swelling of her pickney’s lungs as July awakened to demand her missing food.

Come, only the firing of the driver’s cowskin whip, as he directed which to be taken where, did all within that second gang confess, was more vexing to them than the torturous din that emitted from the tiny creature tied to Miss Kitty’s back. ‘A likkle rum ’pon the child’s tongue, Miss Kitty,’ Peggy Jump, from the first gang, did yell from her door at the close of each day. While, ‘Shake the pickney soft!’ was Elizabeth Millar’s suggestion and, ‘See, Obeah—she mus’ haf a likkle spell,’ was the thinking of Kitty’s friend, Miss Fanny.

But what Kitty’s neighbours did not observe was that sometimes, late into the still of night, Kitty could calm July by singing a song soft unto her. ‘Mama gon’ rock, mama gon’ hold, little girl-child mine.’ Then July would turn her black eyes on to Kitty, her lips gently mimicking the movement of her mama’s mouth as she sang. That beguiled child would then hug Kitty—her little arms squeezing about her neck while she fondly dribbled tender wet kisses upon her mama.

Kitty would bounce her precious girl-child upon her knee and July would chuckle with an unbounded mirth that chirped as bright as fledglings in a nest. At those times there was no slapping, no cussing, no cursing, for July would gaze upon her mama with so deep an expression of love that Kitty felt it as heat. ‘Mama gon’ rock, mama gon’ hold, little girlchild mine.’ Sometimes, within this fond reverie, all was good. Until, that is, Kitty did venture to lay July back down upon her crib to sleep, for then that rascal child’s mouth would suddenly gape wide as a hole made for cane, as she began her yelling once more.

Excerpted from The Long Song by Andrea Levy. Copyright © 2010. Excerpted by permission of Headline Publishing Group. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.