Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule (7 page)

“That would be only once or twice a year.” Ulys turned a worried, appraising glance upon Julia. “But I’ll do whatever’s best for Julia.”

Papa shook his head, frowning. “I always knew Julia wasn’t suited to be an army wife, but I’m sorry to be proven right.”

Ulys sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. “Is that what you want, Julia?” he asked gently. “Would you like to stay with your father while I go on alone?”

“No, no, no,” said Julia, distressed. “If you’re going—and you must—I’ll go with you. I couldn’t bear to be left behind.”

And so she dried her tears and told Papa that her place was with her husband.

When Papa nodded and withdrew, Ulys interlaced his fingers through Julia’s and held her gaze steadily. “We’re never to be parted,” he said firmly. “Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Julia replied. They had lived apart too much already. “Never again will we be separated. Wherever you go, I’ll follow.”

N
OVEMBER
1848–A
UGUST
1854

I
n the first few weeks after the newlyweds departed, Jule felt an exhilarating rush of emotion she supposed was something like freedom. While the Dents anxiously awaited the mails and read bits of Julia’s precious letters aloud to one another, news from far-off places called Sackets Harbor and Lake Ontario and Madison Barracks, Jule felt like a colt unharnessed, still confined within corral fences but able to run and buck and kick as she pleased.

“Don’t let them catch you idle,” Annie warned her one afternoon when she came upon Jule in the kitchen garden, picking herbs.

“Who’s idle?” protested Jule, indicating her basket. “The herb lady taught me how to brew up a potion to ease sunburn.” A few days before, young Miss Emma had neglected to wear her bonnet on a picnic with friends, and the skin of her apple-red cheeks had begun to slough off in thin, white flakes, sending the missus into lamentations of worry about permanent damage to her complexion. If Jule could win the missus’s gratitude while soothing Miss Emma’s discomfort, that would make for a good day’s work.

Annie planted a fist on her hip and fixed Julia with a hard, worried stare. “A slave with nothing to do’s always the first to get sold when money’s tight.”

Unsettled, Jule went about her work more quickly, and the next day, when she overheard Nell and her mother discussing a friend’s betrothal, she suggested that they offer the bride-to-be Jule’s hairdressing services for the day of her engagement party. Nell’s friend was so delighted with her elegant tresses—which attracted the admiration of every other young lady at the party and won a special compliment from her fiancé—that she begged Nell to extend the favor again on her wedding day.

“This a gift to her from you like last time,” Jule asked as she was packing up her little satchel of combs and ribbons and pomades, “or are you hiring me out to her?”

A thoughtful glimmer came into Nell’s eye. “A gift, as before,” Nell said, but a musing tone in her voice satisfied Jule that she had planted the seed of an idea.

Soon thereafter, the missus summoned Jule to the parlor and informed her that in Julia’s absence, the Dent family intended to hire Jule out to ladies who required her special skills. “I realize you don’t often go out amid strangers, but you needn’t fear,” the mistress assured her. “You’ll work only for families we know well and trust, and none beyond the Gravois Settlement.”

“Yes, missus. I ain’t afraid of strangers.” That wasn’t entirely true. Jule wasn’t afraid of ladies, even the short-tempered ones. Their menfolk, though—they made her wary.

“Your wages you will bring to me,” the mistress continued. “Anything you earn above that, whether gifts or gratuities, you may keep.”

As the months passed and Jule’s fame as a skilled hairdresser spread, the old master crowed over her earnings, paid off debts, and bought his wife an exquisite pearl necklace to thank her for her ingenuity. He persuaded her to send Jule farther afield, hiring her out to acquaintances in St. Louis and then to strangers recommended by friends. Jule walked to work when the family resided in the city, but when they moved out to White Haven, Gabriel drove her to her appointments. Afterward, if they were not expected back too soon, Gabriel would direct the horses through neighborhoods where free colored folk lived.

The freeborn and manumitted colored residents of St. Louis thrived in humble alleys and grand neighborhoods, and although they could not vote or hold office, some, the self-described Colored Aristocracy, acquired great wealth and the power that accompanied it. Jule’s heart quickened whenever she glimpsed the famed Madame Pelagie Rutgers, a former slave of Haitian descent who had married the mulatto son of a wealthy Dutch merchant. She had amassed a fortune in real estate, from selling tracts of land at huge profits as the city expanded and by renting her own commercial properties and tenements to white businessmen. Rumor had it that Madame Rutgers was worth almost a half million dollars, a vast, almost incomprehensible amount. To Jule, who had no surname and knew few women of color accorded so much as the respectful title of “missus,” Madame Rutgers’s honorific was as much a sign of her status and success as her furs and jewels and fine residence. Jule hoped someday Madame Rutgers would find herself in need of a hairdresser, and that a satisfied customer would recommend her.

“I’m saving every cent I earn,” Jule told Gabriel one humid afternoon as they lingered on the bluff above the Mississippi, gazing across the churning expanse of muddy water to the Illinois shore, postponing as long as they could their return to White Haven. “I’ll buy our freedom. You can be a minister in a church and I’ll dress hair, and we’ll keep a little house all our own.”

Gabriel kept his gaze fixed on the brown ribbon of water winding ever southward. “That’s a nice dream.”

“Miss Julia’s dreams sometimes come true. Why not mine?”

“Jule—” He sighed, shifted the reins to one hand, and rested his elbow on his knee. “It’ll take years to save enough to buy freedom for even one of us, and that’s if the old master agree.”

“Then I’ll buy my own freedom first. Once I can keep all my earnings, I’ll save up faster.” Jule studied him. “You know I mean it when I say I’m not bringing any babies into slavery.”

“Then we better make sure you don’t get any babies anytime soon.”

Jule frowned and looked away. “Maybe Miss Julia will speak to the old master for me, make him set a fair price.”

“Or maybe she could get him to set you free in his will.” The forced agreeability in Gabriel’s voice told her he was saying so only to please her. “She might do it. She likes you.”

Neither of them mentioned that Julia might like her too much to let her go.

With a rueful glance at the sun in its declination, Gabriel chirruped to the horses and turned the wagon toward White Haven.

Julia liked her, Jule reminded herself resolutely, and her new husband’s people were abolitionists. The longer they were married, the longer Julia lived in a free state, the more likely it was that Julia would adopt their ways.

Julia had been away so long in the North, surely she had come to see slavery for the evil it was.

•   •   •

Julia and Ulys spent their first winter as husband and wife at Madison Barracks in Sackets Harbor, a bleak, remote outpost on Lake Ontario in New York State. When spring came and the ice broke up, they moved on to Detroit, where Ulys assumed the post of regimental quartermaster. Julia quickly became popular among the officers of the garrison for her excellent dancing and lovely singing voice, and her generous, friendly ways made her a favorite among their wives and children. Though Ulys was not happy shifting papers, ordering supplies, and supervising commissary affairs, he was proud to serve his country.

Less than a year after their arrival in Detroit, the couple discovered that by late spring they would become a family of three.

As the months of waiting and preparation passed, they debated where their child should be born. Julia dreaded to leave Ulys, but she knew that when her labor began, she would want Mamma, her sisters, and Jule close by. And so in early spring she and Ulys parted at the train station in Detroit with a kiss and a promise that they would be reunited as soon as Julia and the baby were strong enough to travel.

The joy of her long-awaited reunion with her family eased the unhappiness of her separation from Ulys. Papa and Mamma, her siblings and friends, White Haven itself—so familiar, so beloved, changed slightly with the passing of the years but still somehow exactly as she remembered.

Jule’s welcome sounded the only discordant note to her homecoming. She had greeted Julia with a warm smile and kind inquiries about her health, but there was a new aloofness to her manner, as if her mistress’s needs commanded only a portion of her attention. She had blossomed into new beauty in Julia’s absence too. Her skin had always been a lovely ginger color, but it had become deeper and richer and seemed to glow from within. She was much prettier than her mistress, Julia privately admitted, or she would have been if not for the firm set to her jaw, the deep crease of worry between her brows, and the guarded look in her eye.

That first night, after Jule helped Julia ease carefully into bed, she fluffed the pillows, straightened, and fixed Julia with a determined gaze. “Since you been gone, I ain’t been sleeping at the foot of your bed.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you to,” said Julia, although she had not given the matter any thought. “Mamma or my sisters wanted you closer to them, I assume.”

“No, Miss Julia,” said Jule. “I stay nights in the hayloft with Gabriel now.”

“Oh, I see.” Julia felt faintly embarrassed by all that the brief admission implied, but since Mamma had apparently not forbidden it, it was not for Julia to punish the indiscretion. “You may remain there for now, if you prefer, but after the baby comes, I’ll need you back in the house.”

“You going to hire a wet nurse?”

Of course. That explained Jule’s reticent, almost defiant manner. She worried that she would be replaced. “No, Jule,” she said, smiling reassuringly. “I intend to nurse my child myself, and you can help me with everything else.”

Jule nodded, but curiously, she seemed no less ill at ease. “Can I ask you, Miss Julia,” she ventured, “what Northern ladies do for help?”

“They hire servants, German and Irish immigrants, mostly,” Julia replied. “I sympathize with them. I don’t know how they manage.”

“Them and they,” echoed Jule. “You mean the servants or—”

“I mean the employers, of course,” Julia interrupted. “The Irish and German girls welcome the work, and they’re fortunate to have it. But their employers—let’s just say they’re obliged to have lower expectations for their households than we do here.” She sighed and settled back against the pillow. “Nothing makes you appreciate the customs of home more than spending time away.”

“I wouldn’t know, Miss Julia.” Jule’s voice was oddly flat. “You need anything else tonight?”

Julia did not, so she reminded Jule of a few chores for the morning and dismissed her. Bemused, Julia put out the light, wondering why Jule had not seemed more pleased by the tacit compliment.

Nevertheless, Jule remained the same dear, faithful servant she had known almost all her life, and Julia was so glad to see her that she could forgive her a few small, unwitting slights.

•   •   •

On May 30, 1850, Julia gave birth to a strong, healthy son. As she and Ulys had agreed, she named the robust little boy Frederick Dent Grant, in honor of her father. “Someday this boy will be a general,” Papa proudly declared, which Julia decided to take as a compliment to Ulys.

Little Fred was almost a year old when Ulys was assigned once more to Sackets Harbor. There Fred grew into a lively toddler and the adored mascot of the regiment—and Julia discovered that their little family would welcome a younger brother or sister for him in the summer of 1852. Happily, Julia dreamed and prepared, but in springtime, official orders from Washington threw all her plans awry. Ulys’s regiment had been reassigned to Columbia Barracks, Oregon Territory.

One spring afternoon while Fred napped, Julia pulled out the trunk holding his old baby clothes. Ulys, home early from work, found her sitting on the parlor floor beside the trunk, inspecting each garment to see what could be packed for the journey to Oregon Territory for the new baby. “Julia,” he scolded gently, hurrying over to help her into a chair, whether she liked it or not. “You shouldn’t be sitting on the floor in your condition.”

“I’m fine,” she assured him, laughing. “Indian mothers-to-be sit on the bare ground when they aren’t on horseback, or so you’ve said.” Something about the set of his mouth, wariness or determination or both, chased away her amusement. “What’s wrong, Ulys?”

He sat down in the chair beside her. “Julia, I’ve decided that it would be unwise for you to come with me in your condition.”

Her heart thumped. “What do you mean? I’m perfectly healthy.”

“You’re with child.”

“Yes, I know.” A trifle angrily, she gestured to her unmistakably rounded abdomen. “I recognize the symptoms from last time.”

“Julia, darling.” He reached for her hand. “The doctor agrees that you shouldn’t hazard such a long and dangerous voyage.”

“Many of the officers’ wives are going, and some are taking their children,” she protested. “Mrs. Gore. Mrs. Wallen. Most of my friends—”

“None of them are a few weeks away from being delivered of a child.”

“You promised we would never be parted again. We promised each other.”

“Yes, but now we have your life and Fred’s and the baby’s to consider.” Gently he touched her cheek. “It’s too great a risk.”

“I know,” she admitted, fighting back tears. For weeks she had worried over what would become of her and the child if her pains came upon her aboard ship or, worse yet, as they were crossing the Isthmus of Panama. “You’re right. It would be best for the baby and a great comfort to me to be among family when I face my ordeal.” Then she faced him squarely so he could not mistake her resolve. “After the baby is born and we’re both well and strong, I want to join you, wherever you may be.”

Ulys regarded her for a long moment in silence. “If you have the baby before the regiment departs for California, I’ll come for you and the children, and we’ll sail from New York together.”

Julia knew he would offer her no more than that, and so she agreed. Within a week, she and Fred left to join Ulys’s family in Bethel.

On July 5, Ulys departed Governors Island in New York with his regiment aboard the
Ohio.
Less than a fortnight later, with Hannah supervising and Ulys’s sisters tending to her every need, Julia gave birth to a vigorous, red-faced little boy, Ulysses Simpson Grant Jr., who had his father’s wide brow and regular features, but was more like a Dent in his expressiveness.

Julia held him in her arms and kissed him, and wept that Ulys was not there to marvel at his sweet perfection.

•   •   •

Julia soon learned that Ulys had been wise to discourage her from accompanying him to California. Against the regimental physician’s warnings, the soldiers attempted to cross the Isthmus of Panama in the midst of a cholera epidemic, and by the time Ulys’s namesake took his first breath, nearly a third of his comrades had perished and had been laid to rest in the jungle.