I BELIEVE THAT Moses and Solomon in the Bible were negro, that lightning never strikes a sycamore tree because Jesus blessed them, and that springs of water in the ground come from the steps of angels. All these things my mama taught me. And I'll always believe them, because not to believe certain things is to die.

For the first four years of my life I believed in the Burwells. I stopped putting any trust in them after what happened with my friend Jane.

To begin with, it was a bad day on the plantation. When I came to breakfast in the kitchen, Grandma Sarry told me it was a day full of bad omens. "Somethin' about to happen," she said. "You mind yourself today."

I believed her because she was known to sense such things. And sure enough as I sat there at the table eating my hominy and molasses, who came through the door spreading the blue devils but Big Red, the head overseer.

Big Red is so called because of his fiery red hair. And he is over six feet. Mama says she would never want to have to make a shirt for him. He carried his rawhide whip all curled up in his left hand.

I'd never seen Big Red without that whip. I think he must sleep with it.

"It gives him his strength," Mama told me.

At that same time Robert came through the other door, from the corridor connecting the kitchen to the house. At fourteen, Robert was Massa's oldest son.

"Got some coffee, Grandma?" he asked. Everybody on the place called Sarry "Grandma." And she spoiled Robert so. I liked him. He paid special mind to me. Grandma said he spoiled me.

Grandma also said I was never to think of him as a half brother. "Make things more difficult when you both get older," she'd told me.

I'd noticed that Robert paid less and less mind to me of late. Even though he used to favor me when we ran and played in the yard. Robert had taught me to play stickball, checkers, even to know my letters, which I knew better than any white child on the place. He'd sat me on his knee and told me ghost stories.

But now he was fourteen and I was four. And I was a nuisance to him at best, and a trial at worst. He'd become embarrassed if I spoke to him in public, glower at me, and tell me to mind myself and leave him be.

I wasn't wanting to be a trial to any of the white folk. I'd leave him be if that was what he wanted. But I still looked up to him and worshipped him.

He and Big Red exchanged greetings as if Grandma and I did not exist.

"Mornin', Big Red," Robert said.

"Mornin', Master Robert."

So now. Something else had changed. Big Red, who answered only to Massa, had taken to calling Robert "Master." Well then.

"I got some bad news," Big Red said.

Robert nodded, as if bad news was to be expected and he could abide it without a wink.

"Sit down," Grandma Sarry told Big Red. "Have some coffee and put down that whip."

Big Red sat. He put down his whip. Grandma was the only negro on the place who could order him about, or order anyone about, for that matter.

Grandma put a dish of hoecakes in front of him. And some coffee.

"You found Basil," Grandma said.

Big Red nodded. Basil, an important negro on the place because he could do so many things, had gone missing last night. There had been a terrible rain during the night, the Devil's own, Grandma called it, cold and slashing and unforgiving.

"He daid?" Grandma asked. She was not afraid to steer things along, even in front of Robert. She'd boxed his ears many a time and he was still afraid of her.

"Yeah," Big Red answered. "I found him in the creek this mornin' floating facedown."

"Anybody tell Hannah?" Hannah was his mother.

"No. I was hopin' you would," Big Red answered.

Grandma just nodded and sighed, pushed me, and told me to stop staring. I went back to my hominy and molasses.

If I was good, Grandma would give me a little coffee later, very little with lots of milk and sugar. I loved her coffee.

"What was he doin' near that creek in this weather?" Grandma said.

"Ran off," Robert put in. "To Bartlett's likely, to see his wife, Lily."

Lily worked for the Bartletts, two miles down the road. Basil was allowed to visit her only once every few months, but he ran off regular-like to his wife.

"And last night he had to cross the creek to get home," Big Red put in. "He couldn't swim."

"What did you do with the body?" Robert asked.

"Outside, in the wagon," from Big Red.

There was silence for a moment while Grandma attended to the pots hanging in the fireplace and Robert and Big Red talked small talk about the funeral, which was to be tonight.

Then, of a sudden, Big Red looked at me. "How old is she?" he asked Grandma.

"All of four," Grandma answered.

"Old enough to pick worms off tobacco leaves." He stated it flatly. Then said to me, "You sickly, girl?"

"Her name is Lizzy," Grandma said.

"What you good for, Lizzy? Just settin' around and eatin' all day? Or do you work?"

"She's my mother's girl," Robert put in.

"Can't she talk for herself? She dumb or something?" he pushed.

"Talk, Lizzy," Robert ordered.

"I fetch for Mistress," I said. "I serve her. I'm four."

"She isn't ever going to work in the fields," Robert told him flatly. "She's special."

"What makes her special?" Big Red asked.

Nobody said anything. But the silence was so full you could feel it. And then Big Red said, "Oh, oh I see, another one of the master's special ones." Then he got up and walked to the door that led into the corridor to the house. "Too many special people around here if you ask me."

"Nobody's askin'," Grandma said. "Why don't you go into the dining room and tell Massa 'bout Basil. He'll want to know."

Big Red harrumphed and left.

"You'd best go to breakfast with your family, Robert," Grandma told him. "Or I'll hear it again 'bout your hanging around the kitchen and eating."

He got up. He did not look at me. But he said something. "Long as I'm around, you won't be picking worms off tobacco," he said. And then he went into the house.

We went to Basil's funeral that night, but before the funeral, before night fell, something else happened on that blue-devil day. And it concerns my friend Jane.