"Doin' the Best I Can," the first chant to which I gave birth, popped out effortlessly one crisp fall morning on my walk to Stanford Law School from Crothers Hall, the law students' dormitory. It was a work song. In my inner ear, a hand-clapping, foot-stomping community accompanied me. An internal chorus of voices, improvising parts, recreated the rowdily reverent sing-alongs of my youthful rides in the back of the bus on the way to A.M.E. church conferences. The sonic company and hills the color of Momma's skin helped me endure the law school's deafening silences about the strengths and challenges of communities like the one from which I came.

Rachel Bagby is a vocal artist, writer, and composer. She has toured with Bobby McFerrin's Voicestra and has released two recordings of original compositions: Reach Across the Lines and Full.

The chant enjoyed an immaculate conception, with no distance to sing of between its genesis and its life in the air. Its 4/4 rhythm, marked out by each step I took, held me steady on the path. "Doin'" sprang spontaneously to my lips as if in answer to an unconscious prayer for sonorous solace on my daily pilgrimage of few external steps but many internal struggles toward becoming a lawyer.

In 1977, I was a first-year law student at Stanford, one of thirty-five women and seven blacks in a class of 172. I was the first in my Mommaline to attend law school.

The law school's environmental club sponsored a camping trip to Yosemite the weekend following our first week of classes. Only five or six of us decided we could afford to take that much time away from our studies. California was suffering through one of its cyclical, severe droughts. As a consequence, many of Yosemite's reputedly breath-snatching waterfalls were bone dry. I was disappointed to hear variations of "you should've seen this waterfall last year" over and over as we walked past or to the edge of unfathomably large bolders piercing the air like asymmetric lingams erected in praise of Shiva.

Annoyance yielded to a queasy gratitude when our trail leader turned around to tell us that we were lost and that a nearby sans-water rockfall plummeting down to our left led to a trail she was sure would lead us back to camp before dark. Our choices were to shimmy down water-forsaken rocks during the bit of light left or find ourselves in the hard place of being lost in Yosemite at night.

What choice? Shimmy we did, forty-five minutes' worth, down 'sposed-to-be-wet rock. My tent mate and I, both first-time campers, stayed within whispering distance of each other as we made our way down, our butts warmed by what felt like miles of near verticality. As tent mates and trail buddies, we were responsible for each other's safety. She was vociferously afraid of heights. My own fear was lulled by my minute-to-minute reassurances of us both. I chanted, "It's okay, we're doin' fine, we're gonna be all right," until we firmly planted our feet on level ground.

We both survived our sojourn uninjured, though a part of me was claimed by the warm danger of that land. Yosemite initiated me into a deeper relationship with Life. Right then and there, in that place of cliffs the color of my Momma's skin, a place that sustains sequoia, mixed conifers, and manzanita groves, I began to give my voice to Life.

Back on campus, I silenced first-year-law-student anxieties by regularly chanting "Doin' the best I can" on the five-minute walk to school in the mornings.

I found most of the recreational options offered by the school less than nourishing. When the rampant elitism apparent everywhere in this elite law school (what did I expect?) took a liking to my next-to-last nerve, I'd slip into the stairwell and chant echoing rounds of:

Go down Moses
Way down in Egypt land
Tell old Pharoah
Let my people go

Fast-forward to New Year's Eve, December 31, 1981. I am twenty-five years old and standing at the sink in my Momma's house, washing the dinner dishes. What was to have been a semester-long leave of absence from Stanford Law School has stretched out into an entire year.

I went back to my childhood home to begin my life anew. I went back because every other time I turned around in California some pitiful or lustful or shameful or hate-filled white man grabbed at my body or soul, and I felt helpless to stop them.

I went back to my Momma's house to get the stories of the women in my family.... I went back to Momma's house to fetch what was missing, to begin my life again.

I went back to my Momma's house to get the stories of the women in my family. Something I musta left in Philadelphia made me dangerously vulnerable. I went back to Momma's house to fetch what was missing, to begin my life again.

Momma and Dad both come in and invite me to go to church with them for candlelight service. I decline. The only time I feel a sense of true peace in that house is when both of them leave. I miss the silence of forests. I want to be alone. I don't want to be alone.

All I know is that I want out, out of my boxed-in life. I look outside my Momma's kitchen window at the small patch of frozen dirt that will be lush with food and flowers next growing season. The yard is surrounded by chain-link fence to keep burglars out. The yard scene looks like a scaled-down version of those surrounding prisons I've worked in. I've got to get out of here.

"Why not?" I ask, caressing a chef's knife. An Ellingtonian big band responds, horns ascendant. The bassman's fingers are Lindy Hopping all ova his strings. A voice blending the gifts of Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln, and Diane Reeves leaps in, singing:

What a miracle
We live, we got
So much-a life to share
So much-a love to give
And the joy of laughter song work and play -- I say
What a blessing is today, yeah, yeah
What a miracle
We live, we got br>So much-a life to share
So much-a love to give
And the joy of laughter song work and play -- I say
Thank you, thank you, thank you
Thank you, thank you, for today*

With chant and bebop, plea and persuasion, some mysterious you-name-this-NON-it heard my call and responded in an irresistibly syncopated YES-CAN-GO-DO-LIVE!

Excerpted from Divine Daughters, HarperSan Francisco, 1999.

* from Gratitude, by Rachel Bagby ©1982 Breathing Music.