Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings (15 page)

S
ally Hemings is dead. The yard behind her house in Charlottesville is loud with the braying of mockingbirds. The rag-and-bone man's cart clatters on the cobblestone street out front. Her children are gathered around her bed: her three slump-shouldered sons and her daughter, who has not been back to Virginia in thirteen years and who arrived only minutes after her mother breathed her last.

Sally Hemings's dead children are there also: the daughter taken by fever after she had learned to walk but before she could ever run; the daughter who, small enough to cradle between elbow and palm, never recovered from the trial of being born; and the one Sally Hemings always called “La Petite,” who had been conceived in Paris and who, no bigger than her mother's fist, came into this world on a river of blood and was buried at Monticello in a ceramic pot.

The dead children grieve, but their grief is gentle, like a winter fog over a yellow field. The grief of her living children has turned them to stone. They do not talk. They are waiting for something to change, and nothing will ever change. The youngest son is holding a violin, but he has left the bow in the front room.

Outside the window the trees heave in a sudden wind. The sky grows dark, and the mockingbirds fall silent. For long moments rain is about to fall, but after a rumble of thunder the wind recedes and the sun returns.

Now Thomas Jefferson, who has been dead himself for more than eight years, is also in the room. Sally Hemings looks at him but doesn't say a word.

Minutes pass before he finds the strength to tell her, “I wanted you to be happy, but you were never happy.”

“I was happy,” she says.

“With me?”

“Yes,” she says. “I was happy.”

But Thomas Jefferson does not believe her. He does not believe her because he himself was never happy. There were many, many times when he pretended otherwise: the time when she acted out the story of Cinderella
with a teacup, a soup spoon and two forks, and the two of them laughed and laughed and laughed; or the time they spent the whole day riding, then cooled off with a swim in Johnson's Creek and then made love on a horse blanket spread over a bed of mint; or that afternoon when he was sitting beside her on her bed, bouncing three-month-old Beverly on his knee, and suddenly the tiny boy's delighted squeaks and coos came together in a chuckle and then a full belly laugh—his first ever. Thomas Jefferson knew many such moments with Sally Hemings and managed to believe, each time, that he was happy, that Sally Hemings was happy, that no two people could be happier. But now he knows that on every one of those occasions his own happiness had been infected by fear, by his sense that what he believed was happiness could not, in fact, ever exist in this world and that in a moment he would have to live in the world as it actually was: a place of unending loss and shame.

He takes the empty chair between two of their living sons and across the bed from the third son and their daughter. “No,” he says. “You were never happy. There is no need to lie anymore.”

“I am not lying,” she says, but after that she can think of nothing else to say.

For a long time the silence in the room only deepens. Then a mockingbird launches into a fleet and fragmentary improvisation.

“Y
ou cannot pretend to be ignorant of the effect you have upon me,” says Thomas Jefferson.

It is the evening following le Comte de Toytot's flight. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings are seated across a corner of the dining-room table, before the fire. There are two wine bottles between them, one empty, the other not quite. There are also two glasses. Thomas Jefferson has just finished his. Sally Hemings's is almost full. This is her third glass. He has been counting. Or maybe her fourth.

“And what is more,” he says, smiling tenderly, “you cannot pretend that you do not share my feelings. I can see it in your eyes.”

Sally Hemings is not, in fact, looking at Thomas Jefferson. She is looking at her hands, her right thumb massaging repeatedly the center of her left palm.

“I could see it,” he says, “when you took my hand out on the field. Do you remember? Just as le Comte de Toytot was borne into the air?”

Thomas Jefferson wants her to look at him again. He reaches across the table, places the edge of his bent index finger beneath her chin and lifts.

Now she is looking into his eyes, her own eyes tremulous in the flickering firelight.

There is a plunging in his breast that is equally pain and joy. “My God!” he says. “You are so beautiful.”

Sally Hemings pulls her chin away from his still-extended finger. “No.” She is looking again into her lap.

“Yes!” he insists, allowing his finger to lightly stroke her cheek as he withdraws his hand. “You are a vision!” He refills his glass, then swirls the dark fluid once.

“No,” she says, still not looking at him. “I
didn't
take your hand.” At the word “didn't,” her head lifts and she looks him straight in the eye. Her gaze is firm, but he can see that she is trembling, that she is afraid, that in a moment she will begin to cry.

“I'm sorry.” He takes a deep sip from his glass. “I am sorry. I have been presumptuous.”

“No,” she says. “You have—”

He cuts her off: “I am
sorry.
” There is anger in his final word, and he is ashamed of his anger. Now he is the one looking down. “I have allowed myself to be blinded by feeling.”

“No.”

“Please,” he insists. “I am sorry.” This time he speaks the word with a suitable tenderness. “You are a beautiful young woman, Sally, but that does not give me the right—”

He stops speaking when he sees that her gaze has fallen to her lap.

“What?” he asks softly. When she doesn't answer, he slumps in his chair. “And now I am making everything worse.”

“No,” she says. And she looks up at him with a small, shy smile. Again that plunge of joy and pain. He wants to pull her into his arms but only takes another deep sip from his glass. She is still smiling, and he begins to wonder if he might hope.

“What?” he says again, even more softly. He leans toward her.

“Nothing,” she says. “I had a lovely day. I will never forget it.
C'était un vrai miracle de voir un homme voler dans le ciel.
”

“Yes,” says Thomas Jefferson. “Wonderful.
Vraiment.
” She has stopped smiling. He sees the trouble in his own face reflected in hers. “Perhaps you had better leave me alone, Sally. I have work to do.”

The smile returns weakly, then vanishes as she pushes her chair back from the table and stands.

“Certainly,” she says and, as she backs away from the table, “Sorry.”

Then she is gone.

Alone in the warm, illuminated room, Thomas Jefferson finishes his glass and pours another.

. . . It was a true miracle to see a man flying in the sky. . . .

F
irst Sally Hemings sees a golden shimmer along the top of her door, and then she hears the whisper of a leather sole on wood. A knock. So light that she is able to pretend to herself she hasn't heard it. Then another knock. She has been lying flat on her back for more than an hour, unable to sleep. For much of that time, she felt herself listing sideways in the darkness, as if her bed were a boat swept along by the current of a mirror-smooth river. It was the wine. She has never drunk so much wine. She feels it still, as a wisp of nausea at the base of her throat. And the listing. That is still there, too.

But it isn't only the wine.

No sooner did she stretch out under her covers than the moments of her day began to repeat inside her head: le Comte de Toytot waving happily as he drifted over the trees, the low vibration of Thomas Jefferson's voice filling her ear, the feather touches of his lips, his sweating hand—but also what he said while she was drinking her wine: “You are so beautiful. You know that, Sally, don't you?” His nose was red, his eyes and mouth drooping, as if his face were melting in the heat of the fire. “Beautiful,” he said. Over and over. At first, as she heard these words, the hot thickness in her throat felt like embarrassment, but then it hardened into a sense of something wrong—maybe something very wrong. “Beautiful,” he said. “You cannot pretend to be ignorant—”

Another knock. “Sally?”

Him.

He knocks again. “I'm sorry to disturb you.”

It is raining. She hears the echoey clatter of water in the gutter pipes and the gust-driven rain like sand flung against the windows.

“Sally?”

“One second,” she says.

She is already standing, her bare feet on the cold floor. She doesn't know what to do. The cold is creeping up her body inside her shift. She wants to find her yellow gown, but she doesn't know where she left it. There is no light in her room. She can't see anything at all except the wavering glow around the door.

“I'm sorry,” says Thomas Jefferson.

Maybe she threw the gown across the chair beside her chest of drawers. As she takes a step in that direction, her middle toes slam against the corner of her night table. A flare of pain illuminates the blackness. The enamel chamber pot clanks but doesn't spill.

“Sally?”

“One second,” she groans, balancing on one foot, clutching her throbbing toes with both hands.

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine.”

She has found the chair—nothing on it but a single stocking. Now her knee collides with the chest of drawers, but only enough to rattle the glass knobs. No pain, but somehow the fact that she keeps knocking into things leaves her feeling helpless and faint. She is trembling.

She knows what is happening, or what seems to be happening, but she doesn't know it at the same time. White men do such things. Her own father did. But she cannot make herself believe—even now—that so gentle, sad and wise a man as Thomas Jefferson could be like that. And the disparity between what she is able to believe and what seems manifestly to be happening makes her feel disconnected from the world.

“I'd just like a word with you,” he says. “One word.”

She steps toward the wavering golden outline of the door. There is something soft under her foot. Her gown. And now she remembers that in her haste to bury herself under her covers she simply threw the gown onto a chest, from which it must have slipped to the floor. She picks it up, puts it over her head and slides her hands down the sleeves. Now she is standing just inside the door, the back of her gown unbuttoned to her shoulder blades.

“It's late,” she says.

“I know. It won't take a minute.”

The door is not locked. He could have opened it and come in at any time. Maybe everything she's been thinking is foolish. Maybe there's nothing at all to fear.

She lifts the latch and pulls the door inward, peering around the edge, keeping her body out of sight, pressed flat against the paneled wood.

“Oh, Sally!” Thomas Jefferson gasps softly, and then gives her a happy smile. His hair is a mess, as if he has been gripping it in his closed fists. His eyes look gelatinous in the glow of his candle. Even as he stands without moving, he is clearly having difficulty staying on his feet.

“Might I come in?”

For reasons that Sally Hemings will never be able to comprehend, she backs away from the door as soon as he asks this question, and then she runs to her bed—which she realizes instantly is exactly the wrong thing to do.

Thomas Jefferson is in the room, and he has closed the door behind him. He hurries toward where she stands, puts the candle on the night table and takes her hand as he sits on the edge of the bed.

“My sweet girl!” he says.

He is holding her hand in both of his. She does not resist. She is paralyzed and feels as if she is hovering a few feet above her own head, watching what is happening and not particularly caring—feeling nothing but a hurtling sort of numbness.

Thomas Jefferson squeezes her hand gently. “I just had to see you,” he says. “Do you understand? I couldn't stop thinking about you.” He smiles crookedly. “I think you do understand. You are, of course, the most innocent and modest of girls, but”—he looks straight into her eyes—“I think you do.”

He stands, looming so large in the darkness that he seems twice her size. Now his mouth is on hers. She feels the prickliness of his lip and chin, his tongue attempting to push between her lips. “Oh, Sally!” he gasps. “Oh, Sally! You are so lovely! So utterly lovely!”

Now he is kissing her neck, her throat. His hands are running up and down her body, touching her in places, front and back, where no one has ever touched her before. The feeling of his fingers on her body fills her with loathing. She wants to slap his hands away. She wants to shout, “Leave me alone!” She wants to bite his tongue. But she does none of these things. Looking down from above, she sees herself as a limp rag doll. If he weren't holding her up, she would fall to the floor.

“I will make it good,” he says between kisses. “I will be gentle. You will see. Gentle. I will make it good.”

And now he has lifted both her gown and her shift over her head. And now he lays her naked body on the bed. He is kissing her breasts, her belly, that part of her down below. He is making the husky groans and ripping sighs of animals.

All at once he pulls away. He is standing beside the bed, tearing at the buttons on his breeches. She knows what is going to happen. It cannot be possible. But that makes no difference. It is happening. It is inevitable. And there it is. Like a club sticking up out of him. Like a skinned fish.
Like an enormous mushroom that is practically all stem. She never imagined that it could be so repulsive.

But now something else has happened. Her entire body has gone rigid. He tries to move her legs apart, and he can't. He cannot move her hands from her sides.

He laughs softly. “Sweet girl! Don't worry. I will be gentle. You will see. I promise. I understand. I will make it good.” He is talking between kisses. And he is kissing his way up her body. She feels his blunt, hot thing bump just above her knee, then press into her thigh—lightly at first, then harder.

When his mouth reaches hers, she keeps her lips clamped shut. She is shivering. Her whole body is icy in the icy air, and she can't stop the shivering.

He pulls back his head. “Sally?” He starts to smile, but then his smile fades.

She makes a small shriek, like a rabbit in the jaws of a dog, and shakes her head once, hard. She cannot speak.

“Are you all right?” he says.

Again she shakes her head.

For a long moment, he only looks at her, his disconcertion resolving slowly into something like profound exhaustion.

“Oh, God!” he says. “Oh, God! How could I be such a fool?” He turns away from her. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he puts his elbows on his knees and his forehead into his hands, clawing at his hair. “I'm sorry! I am so sorry! Oh, God.” He stands and pulls his breeches up from around his ankles. “I can't believe I . . . I can't believe . . . What a fool . . . Unforgivable . . .”

Then he is gone. The door has closed behind him.

His candle is still on her night table. The flame drops and flutters as a gust seeps around the window casing.

Outside her door she hears an abrupt, hollow thundering. He has stumbled on the stairs. Quiet. An exhalation. He cannot see. Unsteady foot thumps quieten as they recede. He must make his way in total blackness. By touch alone.