Lapeer County, November 1864
Mary sat on Loretta’s bed, two-month-old George upon her breast. No one knew that that was what she called her baby boy. When he was born in September, she had written to Nathaniel to give him the news and ask him what he would like to call the baby. As she waited for his reply, the child was referred to as “the baby” by the rest of the household. But in her mind and in private moments, Mary could not help but call him George.
“Still nothin’ from Mr. Balsam?” Loretta asked as she tucked Simon in for a nap.
“Not yet.” She tried to keep the concern out of her voice.
“They just movin’ fast, is all,” Loretta said. “They winnin’ now. Mr. Lincoln voted back in and there ain’t nothin’ can stop ’em now.”
Mary smiled. Surely that had to be the case. Nathaniel’s letters had become a bit more sporadic lately anyway. Though this was the longest she had waited without word in some time.
“You write him more than once, right? Just in case it got lost? You write lots of letters.”
“Yes, more than once.”
In fact, Mary had only sent two letters to Nathaniel. The rest Loretta had seen her writing were for George. She had taken to writing the body of the letter first, with no salutation, just in case someone should come in unexpectedly or the letter should be misplaced. Only at the very last would she write Dearest George at the top and With Love, Mary at the bottom. Then she sealed the letter in an envelope, wrote his name on the outside, and handed it directly to him the next time the two of them were alone.
George still started his letters with the formal Dear Mrs. Balsam. But Mary had noted with a flutter in her stomach when he had replaced Sincerely with Love. Thinking of his last letter, Mary felt a warm stirring inside. He had been careful to keep his words guarded, but she could read between the lines. Their ardor for one another grew with each passing week, and the longer it remained contained by standards of decorum, the more fierce it became.
“You hot, Mrs. Balsam?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your face is all red, and your chest.” Loretta pointed to Mary’s chest, which was indeed flushed with her secret thoughts.
“Maybe I am,” Mary said. “This baby gets so hot when he nurses. It’s as if I’m holding a big baked potato.”
“I’ll nurse him for you a bit if you want. Give you a breather.”
Loretta opened up the bodice of her dress again and sat down beside Mary. Mary broke the suction and handed the baby to Loretta, who had him resettled and suckling from her breast before he could even manage to get out a cry.
Mary fanned herself with her hand. “Thank you.”
The first time Loretta had suggested helping with nursing when the baby was just a couple days old, Mary had been shocked. Coming from the South where slaves routinely served as wet nurses for their masters’ children, Loretta found Mary’s strong response to her offer shocking as well. Then one night, as the baby was screaming and Mary herself had succumbed to tears of exhaustion, Loretta swept into her room and didn’t wait to be asked. She took the squalling infant from Mary’s arms and put him on one of her own full breasts. From that moment, Loretta and Mary became friends in the true sense of the word, rather than a desperate woman and her benefactress.
Now Mary tried to recover from her runaway thoughts about George while her pale baby boy suckled at Loretta’s brown breast.
“What was it like with Simon’s father?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you love him?”
Loretta laughed. “Naw, I didn’t love that man. That man was a no-good, dirty rascal. He slept with all the girls. Had a whole passel a little half-breed children runnin’ round that plantation, pickin’ his cotton and servin’ his white children like they was royalty.”
“Did he . . . force himself?”
“On some, yeah. Rest of us learn it was better to just let him, just wait it out. Went better for you that way. Girls that fought back look like they been trampled by horses the next day. He was gonna get what he came for no matter what. I didn’t want to get beat, so I let him do his thing when he came to me. Once he knew a girl was pregnant, he was back most every night. Didn’t have to worry ’bout gettin’ you pregnant if you already was, so he stick with you till the birthin’ pains come. Then he move on.”
Mary realized her mouth was hanging open and shut it. “How dreadful. That’s what happened to you?”
“Twice. Year ’fore I had Simon, he got me with child, but it died.”
Mary thought of her own dead baby girl in the frozen ground outside. “I’m so sorry, Loretta.”
“I ain’t! I’s glad for the thing. When you dead you ain’t nobody’s slave. You reignin’ with Jesus then. And when I had Simon and he was healthy, I got out fast as I could. No child of mine gonna grow up a slave like I did, and for certain not in his own father’s fields.” Loretta pulled the now sleeping baby from her breast.
Mary took her little son back into her arms as Loretta buttoned up her bodice. “Loretta, you amaze me. You all amaze me. I don’t know that I could have made the journey you did. I don’t think I would have had the courage.”
Loretta regarded her. “I think you would, Mrs. Balsam. You got courage enough. Takes courage to do what you doin’ here.”
Mary shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“And it takes courage to give your heart away like you done.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You all in pieces, Mrs. Balsam. A piece of you is on the battlefield and a piece of you is in your little baby there and a piece of you is in all those letters you writin’ to George.”
All Mary could manage was a breathy, “What?”
“Don’t you worry,” Loretta said with a smile. “Your secret’s safe with me. I ain’t gonna tell nobody.”
“But how did you know?”
Loretta gave her a confused look. “I think you been mighty tired with your little bundle of joy here. Don’t you remember givin’ me that last one to read? You handed it right to me when I asked what you had in your hand.”
Mary searched her memory. “I didn’t—I don’t think I meant to do that. No one else knows, do they? You didn’t say anything to George?”
“’Course not. Ain’t none of my business anyway. I don’t know Mr. Balsam well, but from what I seen of him at Christmas, as far as I’m concerned he’s like every other white man I know.”
“What do you mean? Wasn’t he kind to you?”
“Oh, he’s kind, all right. But he ain’t no saint.”
Mary’s mind raced. “Did he do something to you?”
“Not me, Mrs. Balsam. Ain’t no man doin’ nothin’ to me no more I don’t want him to. I’d kill ’im first. But when I was comin’ back from town with Jacob one day, I seen Mr. Balsam comin’ outta that no-good Margaret’s house a shame.”
Now Mary truly could not speak. A pitiful cry from the baby told her she was squeezing him too tightly. She came to her senses and loosened her grip.
“I don’t mean to be spreadin’ no stories, so I ain’t said nothin’ to nobody. Jacob didn’t see it on account a he was facin’ front in the wagon. I was in the back facin’ where we come from. But I just thought maybe I’d tell you that so you don’t feel so bad ’bout lovin’ another man.”
Mary felt sick to her stomach. “I think I need to go lie down.”
Loretta stood when Mary did. “Mrs. Balsam, I’m real sorry. I shouldn’t a said nothin’ ’bout it. But the world is full of a whole lot of rotten people. You one of the good ones. You can’t help who you love.”
Mary walked as if in a trance out of Loretta’s room and into her own, where she put baby George into his crib. She sat down in front of the portable writing desk she had moved into her room when her letter writing to George had become more intimate. In front of her, upon the leather-covered writing surface, was a blank piece of paper. She stared at it, unblinking.
Could Loretta be telling the truth? Mary had never known her to lie. In fact, she was honest to the point of embarrassment. Perhaps she had just been mistaken and it was some other man. Mary tried to recall the faces of all the men she knew in town. So many were dead now. None of them could have been visiting a house of ill repute. So many others rarely emerged from their homes, deformed as they were from burns and amputations and disease.
She thought back to the short days of Nathaniel’s furlough. They had made love the first night and the second, but with each new day she felt his growing judgment of her management of the household and farm. The third night they came together again, but her spirit was not in it. She had hoped he wouldn’t notice. But after that, they had not made love again until his last night at home. Had she driven him to a prostitute in the meantime with her coldness? Had he visited that Margaret woman and then come home and slept with her?
At that moment, something snapped inside Mary’s brain. If Nathaniel could defile their marriage bed with no thought to the consequences, she would say precisely what she wanted to say to George without thought to the consequences as well. Hands shaking, she picked up her pen, dipped it in ink, and began to write.