IF I WERE TO BE SOLD at age four, the price I would bring, after being weighed on the scale, would be about $ 300. A little shady girl like myself isn't worth much. And then only if I sold along with my mother, whose price would be about $1,100 because she is such a good nurse and seamstress.

I already knew that at age four. I heard Massa talk about it, though I knew he would never sell off me and Mama. Only planters of no account sell off their own daughters, although some have been known to do it.

But no matter how much I am worth, here is how I lived and why.

Me and Mama lived in a cabin in the quarters, where all the slaves lived on this elegant plantation. We each had a bed, and the mattress was made of corn shucks, which was stuffed afresh about once a year. We had a fireplace with pots hanging in it, ready for cooking, but we never used it. We always ate in the kitchen of the big house because Mama was nurse to the Burwell children. And there were ten of them. And she was the one and only seamstress in the whole house.

At four I already knew how to ply a needle. Mama had taught me. I was stitching calico for a patchwork quilt. Mama allowed me to use long straight stitches because they were easier. By the time I was six, I was learning to put together a man's shirt. But I get ahead of myself.

I thought it magic what Mama could do with that needle and wished for the day I would be a seamstress for some grand lady.

But my regular work was not so special. I followed Missus Burwell around. I fetched for her. I stood by her side and fanned away the flies. I did her errands and even went on calls with her, dressed in my finest gingham.

We ate good. We had boiled greens and meat and fish, hoecakes made of cornmeal and cooked on a fire rake. Real butter and molasses. We had pot likker.

The negroes in the quarters got bacon and meal on Saturdays. All week they ate corn and ashcakes, with a little meat on the side. At Christmas they got fruit.

But they were allowed to fish in the creek, something they did at night while fires burned on the edge of the water, in what made the prettiest sight you ever did see. They were allowed to hunt. With dogs, not with guns. When Massa took a fancy to hunt, he would take his two oldest sons with him and some chosen slaves. They went out after possum, coon, and fox. And they took Massa's best hunting dogs to tree the animals.

My grandma was named Sarry. She was Mama's mama and she was the cook, which is part why we got such good victuals in the kitchen. She was also the mistress of the herbs that got given to the slaves when they were sickly. She fed all the little negroes in a trough in the backyard. Nothing fancy, but good rib-sticking food. They ate with oyster shells out of that trough, the oyster shells the only thing that kept them from acting like little piggies.

I ate at the kitchen table with a proper dish and spoon.

The negroes in the quarters get up at four to the blowing of a conch shell by the head overseer, Big Red. They went to the fields when it was still dark and came home after sundown. Or as they say, "From can't see to can't see." Lunch was brought to them in the fields.

We chilluns didn't have many chores, so we hunted for turkey nests and got a tea cake for every one we found. I don't know what those white folk did with those turkey nests. As I got older I pondered it out. They did it to keep us busy or when they wanted us out of their sight.

The slaves all had linsey-woolsey clothing for winter, all spun and made on the plantation's own looms. We house slaves had to make a better appearance so Massa purchased fabric from the Petersburg factory in checks and plaids, and it was soft and pretty to wear.

Sometimes poor white folk from the area would come and stand around the quarters and try to trade with the slaves. They'd trade their calico and snuff for slave food. That's how poor they were. The slaves in the quarters all looked down on them.

I tried not to get sick, 'cause if I did, Grandma Sarry would give me turpentine for a sore throat. As it was, in winter I had to wear a bag of asafetida around my neck to keep away all kinds of ailments. In spring I had to take Jerusalem oak seed in syrup for nine mornings. Grandma Sarry said nine was a magic number and by then I would be rid of the worms.

For headaches she gave me jimsonweed; for warts, nine grains of corn; for measles, corn-shuck tea; for mumps, fresh marrow from the hog jowl. Oh, she knew all the magic one needed to get well. And she was often down to the quarters attending to a sick slave.

I had friends, of course. Jane was one of them. So was Amos. And I can't think of a better way to tell you how things could go bad for us than to tell you their stories.

Oh, yes. We have three drivers on this place. Drivers, or overseers, keep the slaves in line and working. Massa has a rule. The ordinary driver is allowed to give no more than six lashes for an offense. The head driver, twelve, and Big Red, the overseer, twenty-four. Anything can be an offense. And we learn that fast.