I'll Sing You One-O - Hardcover

Nan Gregory lives in Canada. She has written three picture book texts that received Canadian awards, including the 2000 Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award for text.

I’ll sing you one-o, Green grow the rushes-o, Oh, what is your one-o?
I’ll sing you two-o, Green grow the rushes-o, Oh, what is your two-o?
I’ll sing you three-o . . .”

I’m out behind the hen house hanging on as hard as I can to Pippi Longstocking, who is squawking her head off and struggling to get free of my lap. My eyes are squeezed shut, and I’m singing the question song at the top of my lungs. I have it in my mind that if I sing it to a hundred without stopping and without opening my eyes, the faces on the other side of the chicken-wire fence will disappear, and I’ll be safe to stay here on the farm forever. This is my first try at sorcery, but right now magic seems my only chance. I sing to ten and open my eyes a squint. They’re all still there, staring in at me. Beloved Mr. A.nd Mrs.
A. and Jess and Arlie and Darren and Meg. Poppy-faced, alleged Uncle Dave. Freckle-blotched, so-called Aunt Moira The Burdettes. Moe-EYE-rah.” She said it very clearly and precisely when we were introduced just minutes ago in the front yard. Moe-EYE-rah.” Making sure I’d get it right next time. Then she waited for me to say it, so I did. Moe-EYE-rah.” Good,” she said. Now run it together: Moira.” Then she smiled with her thin lips drawn back and her teeny, perfect teeth shut tight. It was the click of them coming together that sent me fleeing through the house and into the chicken yard. The third Burdette, my scrawny, supposed-to-be twin brother, Garnet and what kind of a name is that? clings half hidden behind her, as if the sight of a girl scrunched in the corner of a chicken coop invoking a spell to blast him to atoms is a horror beyond his wildest imaginings. I clamp my eyes closed again and sing harder. Pippi squalls. The rest of the chickens cluck up a protest.
The rooster crows manfully. They are unused to me in my sorcerer mode. They don’t care for my noise. We are all singing for our lives.

I’ll sing you twenty-o, Green grow the rushes-o . . .”

I hear the gate squeak inward. Pippi is batting me frantically with her wings and pecking at my face with her poor, bent beak. Her legs, which are astonishingly strong, gallop against my body. I let her go out of pity for her panic, and wad myself up into a ball.

I’ll sing you twenty-five-o . . .”

Someone’s arms lock around me and hug me hard. It’s Mr. A. I can tell from the smell, field and fresh sweat, and the brush of his mustache on my cheek. I keep myself curled against his chest and slow down my singing to the rhythm of his heart beating under my ear. If he and I both wish as hard as we can, surely we can magic things back to the way they were before. He lets me get through thirty. Then he gives me a little shake and tells my ear Enough” in a quiet, anything-more-means-war-with-me voice. I’m not against him. It’s for love of him, and Mrs. A., and my foster sibs, Jess, and Arlie, and Darren, and little Meg for the whole farm that I’m doing this. And now he’s saying no. He holds my hand back to the house. We count under our breaths together, One thousand one, one thousand two, . . .” He taught me thousands when I first came to the farm, back when I was four. I arrived not talking at all, just singing the question song over and over as high as I could count and throwing tantrums all over the place. Mr. A. saw right away how I like numbers and showed me that counting thousands was better than bursting into fury at the bristle of every little hair. Numbers are still good for calming me down. They’re steady and come in a reliable order, and you can depend on them always staying the same. Thinking this doubles me over because of how everything else is falling apart, and I lose count, and Mr. A.
lifts me to my feet and waits until I’m ready to walk. In the kitchen, Mrs. A. disinfects the chicken scratches on my bare legs, spruces the straw and feathers off my T-shirt, and sends me to change into a clean pair of shorts.
Arlie holds Meg in her arms and shushes her whimpers. Darren and Jess watch from the doorway. Jess’s fingernail goes skrrrr, skrrrr up and down the screen door. No one says, Quit making that creepy noise” or Cut that out,” the way they usually do. No one says anything, because there’s nothing left that we haven’t said a million times. Goodbye, goodbye, sorry, sorry, miss you, miss you. Once I’m all neatened up again, Mrs. A.
brushes a brisk kiss on my forehead. I go to flood into her arms, but she holds me away. Mr. A. picks up my suitcases and leads us acrooss the yard to the shiny new van where my fake family waits for me in shocked and icy stillness. I climb in. The door rolls shut. The electric window hums up, and I see my beloved true family dimmed away by the faint green of the glass. I wave and wave. The van booooounces down the long rutted driveway and turns past the FOR SALE sign we kids cursed and kicked at every day all summer long. I look back. The farmhouse is tiny at the top of the rise. I think I can see Jess, still waving.
The van picks up speed. Farmlands rush past the window, blur to a washrag, and wipe away my life as ever I’ve known it.

Copyright © 2006 by Nan Gregory.
Reprinted by permission of Clarion Books / Houghton Mifflin Company.