Then, in the spring of 1805, both Deborah and Lovey found themselves with child, but waited to tell each other until their figures told for them. As they went about in tandem, their bellies poking out as if in some slow, absurd competition, they were the subject of whispered jokes. The fact that they were never came to Deborah’s attention, of course, and when it came to Lovey’s, she flew into such a rage that nobody dared again to laugh or even smile in her presence until she was delivered of her child.

Deborah’s boy was born on December 24, 1805 and named Leon. Lovey’s boy was born on January 2, 1806 and named Floyd. Neither delivery was complicated, although Deborah’s took longer. She tried in vain to nourish her babe, whereas Lovey’s breasts soon plumped with milk that sometimes seeped from her nipples and made damp patches on the bib of her dress.

Floyd ate and slept. The little milk Deborah produced upset Leon’s stomach and made him fret and cry. Nursing their babies one morning in Deborah’s bedroom as they talked over the day’s duties, Lovey studied poor Leon squirming and kicking against Deborah’s meager bosom; then, without a word, she took him from his mother and gave him her free breast. Both women stared as the two babes sucked life from Lovey’s body. White and brown, they fed until content. Their jaws and mouths relaxed; their fists and feet pushed against Lovey’s soft flesh no longer; they slept. Lovey smiled down at them with pride and satisfaction. Deborah covered her bosom and never offered it to Leon again.

Thereafter Lovey fed both boys at the same time. Her doing so became one of the familiar sights of the plantation day. Deborah was casually grateful to Lovey for freeing her to attend her main concerns as mistress of Beulah Land. There was an epidemic of influenza that winter, and she was more often attended by Ezra than Lovey as she went from cabin to cabin feeling heads and necks for fever and administering a liquid medicine for coughs which Ezra had concocted of peach brandy and sulphur.

When winter ended and spring came warmly on, the plowed, sown fields were fragrant with loamy promise, and the two boy babies were together for most of the day. When they were not feeding side by side, they were set on a quilted pallet which was moved from one place to another as Lovey moved from one activity to another.