"Belonged to a widow named Edna Mitchell. That was in Tennessee near Jackson. Oh Lawd, my missis was good to all her niggers—if you should call 'em that.
"She had two men and three women. My mother was the cook. Let's see—Sarah was one, Jane was two, and Eliza was three. (I was Eliza.) Then there was Doc and Uncle Alf. I reckon he was our uncle. Anyway we all called him Uncle Alf. He managed the business—he was the head man and Doc was next. And Miss Edna raised us all to grown.
"Now I'm tellin' you right straight along. I try to tell the truth. I forgits and I can't remember ever'thing like it ought to be but I hit at it.
"Things is hard this year and I don't know how come. I guess it's 'cause folks is so wicked. They is livin' fast—black and white.
"How many chillun? Now, you'd be s'prised. I hardly ever tell folks how many. I had fifteen; I was a good breeder. But they is all dead but one, and they ain't doin' me no good. Never raised but two. Most of 'em just died when they was born.
"I'd a been better off if I had stayed single a while longer and went to school and learned how to read and write and figger. But I went to another kind of a school.
"But I sure has been blest. I been here a long time, got a chile to cook me a little bread—don't have to worry 'bout dat.
"I had to send clean back to where I j'ined the Metropolitan to get my age. That was in Cairo, Illinois 'cause I'd lived there fifteen years. But when my daughter and her husband come here and got settled, why I come to finish it out.
"Yes ma'am, I sure have worked hard. I've plowed, split wood, and done a little bit of ever'thing. But it was all done since freedom. In slavery times I was a house girl. I tell you I was a heap better off a slave than I was free.
"After freedom we had to go and get what we could get to do and work hard.