Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings (24 page)

T
homas Jefferson's last words before leaving in that blackest hour of the night: “I must go now. . . . I can hardly bear it! . . . I must go, before birds rouse the rest of the house. But . . . Oh! . . . One more . . . And now— Oh! Oh! . . . And now I really must— No, I must . . . I must.”

I
n the morning Sally Hemings feels hollow. It is not just that the place where she and Thomas Jefferson were one now seems, for the first time in her life, an emptiness rather than just a part of the amorphous interior of her body; it is that all her strength seems to have drained out of her. Also, there is the pain—a dull gnawing that, because of what it signifies, is almost pleasant.

As she descends the back steps from her bedchamber, she has to steady herself against the wall with a tremulous hand. The very world seems to have weakened and waned overnight. The light through the windows is pale. Deep shadows seem places where physical reality reverts to the nothingness from which it sprang. Even the stone walls of the Hôtel seem like veils hanging in empty air.

Thomas Jefferson has clearly been waiting for her. No sooner does she emerge from the back stairway into the narrow passage beside the kitchen than she sees his shadow loom outside the door to his study. He is entirely in silhouette against the light from the dining room, and he doesn't make a sound, but she can tell from the twitching of his shoulder that he is beckoning her.

He withdraws into his study as she approaches and closes the door once she is in the room. He strokes his fingertips lightly across her shoulder and kisses her, not on the lips but on the temple. “You are even more beautiful in the light,” he says, then takes a big step away from her, to sit on the edge of his desk. “Please.” He points toward the solitary chair in the room not covered by books, papers and mechanical devices.

She does as she is told, then places her hands on her knees and waits. He, too, seems weakened. Restless. Pale. Capable of being stirred by the wind. In the scant instants before he speaks, his eyes do a dance with hers. Their gazes meet, glance away, then meet again.

“I hope you know,” he says, “how terribly grateful I am that you allowed me to . . . to take liberties. I will never cease to be . . . I will never forget, I mean.” He looks at her firmly now, his mouth a straight line, his upper lip perspiring. “I am not sure what is going to happen. I feel such
a terrific . . . I hardly know how to put it . . .
unity
with you, one that I don't dare imagine is reciprocated.”

He looks away. Sighs heavily. In the morning light his hazel eyes seem almost golden. Sally Hemings is afraid.

“But I think we both know,” he says, “how very wrong . . . how what happened between us ought never to have happened. And, more to the point that . . . it ought never happen again.”

She interrupts him with a sharp intake of breath.

He holds up his flat hand, palm toward her. “Dear girl!” he says. “I don't want to speak on that now. That is something”—his mouth turns down grimly at the corners—“for later. I don't think either of us is sufficiently clearheaded to draw any reliable conclusions. I only want to say two things. First, as I am sure you understand, no one must ever know about last night. No one at all, but most especially Patsy and Polly. You do understand that, don't you?”

After a moment Sally Hemings makes a small nod.

“And second, you must understand that however relations may be conducted between us in the future, I will never be able to give my love to you . . . publicly, I mean.”

Thomas Jefferson stands and looks at her firmly, as a teacher might look at his reprobate student. He lifts his hands to grasp his coat lapels firmly. “I trust that you also understand why this must be so,” he says.

All Sally Hemings can hear in Thomas Jefferson's voice is contempt. And when she replies, her voice, too, expresses nothing but contempt. “Of course!” she says. “Do you think I am an idiot!”

As soon as she has spoken, sounds go tinny and the walls around her start to whirl. She is not sure she will ever be able to get up from her chair. She feels as if her grasp on being has grown so feeble that she could easily, in the next instant or the one after, expire.

. . . Over the years people have intimated to me, sometimes with words but more often with glances and lingering expressions, that they know why I did what I did, that they think I have had a very fortunate life and that they would have done the same thing had they had the choice. But such commiseration, which I have gotten most frequently from my own mother, has always made me sick at heart, because it means people are seeing me in the worst way, as if I am just an animal, living in a world where only the shameless and cruel survive—although I suppose that is exactly what I am and exactly where I do
live.

The most effective way of dealing with my hateful sympathizers has always been to concede some of what they say, and so the only part of my association with Mr. Jefferson that I have talked about is our children. And I have to say that even after all that I witnessed today—or is it yesterday?—I do not remotely regret having these four good and kind people in my life. They have been, and will always be, the purest happiness I have ever known. I also do not have one regret that now all of my children are free and that their children and their grandchildren and all the generations that shall follow them will grow up as independent and proud as any citizens of this great Republic and will never have to suffer the humiliation, pain and fear of the cousins left behind in Virginia.

As for the rest of my life . . .

Well, I've said it all. I don't even know why I'm still writing.

What more is there to say? . . .

A
week passes, and then it happens again. It seems so simple this time. A glance. A smile. A hesitation. Then a touch. After a while he tells her he wants to do something for her. He wants to give her a gift. “Turn your back to me,” he says. And when she does, he places his hand between her legs, and with his finger he touches that place that only he, of all other people, has ever touched, that place where even she had been ashamed to put her fingers. But this time she feels no shame. This time she only feels a delicious heat radiating from that tiny organ into her thighs and up her belly and spine, into her mouth and throat and all along the surface of her breasts. It comes in waves, and then she begins to make noises that sound to her like the cries of deer and foxes and kittens. And when she feels that he has pushed into her, she thinks that she has never known anything so wonderful. And then they are both making those noises together, and they are thrashing and writhing and rocking, and then all at once a feeling starts in that place where he has filled her up and where he has his hand, and it is like a wave surging all through her body and suffusing her head with light and breaking down the walls around her and the ceiling and the floor so that there is nothing but her own body trilling, humming, surging in the midst of a trilling, humming, surging void, and as soon as the huge wave that has taken hold of her seems to recede, it comes back again, and then again, and all the while he is making his noises as she is making her noises, and he is driving his thing into her again and again and again, until finally his noises are so loud the whole house must hear, and he stops moving, and starts again, and stops, then starts, until finally he curls around her back and makes a soft moan into her ear and holds her tight, and this is all like nothing she has ever known before.

W
eeks later . . . It's hard to keep track of time here, where the “daylight” comes from nowhere in particular and is little more than a repeating interval of blue dimness amid gloom. . . . So maybe only days later. Or months. But, in any event, eventually I come across a couple sitting on a log beside a low-burning fire. I have, in fact, been walking in their direction for some time now, drawn by the odors of sage, crispy skin and liquid chicken fat. By the time I am close enough to see their slick chins as they each gnaw happily on drumsticks, I am so hungry that my stomach seems to be digesting itself. I haven't eaten in a very long time.

As I approach the fire, the man raises his hand and calls out, “Hello! My friend!”

It is Thomas Jefferson, and the woman sitting beside him is Sally Hemings, though her skin is much darker than I ever imagined it would be—coffee with just a dollop of milk. Perhaps she has spent time in the sun.

“This is my friend,” Thomas Jefferson tells her. “The one I told you about. Remember?”

Sally Hemings stops chewing. Her face goes entirely blank.

“I told you about him,” says Thomas Jefferson. “There was that terrific wind? I sat down next to him on this very log?”

“Nope,” says Sally Hemings. “Gone.”

“Sit down! Sit down!” Thomas Jefferson pats the log beside him. “Help yourself!” He points at the half-eaten chicken, still on a spit over the fire. “Take as much as you want.”

I rip a handful of white meat off the hot carcass and take the proffered seat. I do so with some reluctance, remembering the potent stench that emanated from Thomas Jefferson's person and clothing the last time I saw him, but now a faint freshness of shampoo and toothpaste settles over me like a tropical drizzle.

For a good minute and a half, I can think of nothing but what is happening in my mouth, throat and stomach.

“Might I have a little more?” I ask when there is nothing else to do but lick my lips and ferret flesh fragments out of my teeth with my tongue.

“Of course!” says Thomas Jefferson. “We're done. Aren't we, love?”

“Just one more nibble,” Sally Hemings says, cracking a thighbone off the cadaver. “Okay—all yours.”

I pull the chicken off the skewer, and while I hold it between my knees and tear strips of flesh off the gray bones, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings talk to me.

“We've figured it out!” he declares. “Everything is so vague here because our minds are dominated by probability.”

“It's like truth being stranger than fiction,” Sally Hemings says.

I have no idea what they are talking about.

“The probable world is like a world created by a committee,” says Thomas Jefferson. “It's all compromises and averages, guaranteed not to offend anybody, so of course it's vague and boring and doesn't make any sense.”

“Whereas in the real world,” says Sally Hemings, “probable things happen and so do improbable things, and they are equally real, so everything is much more vivid—”

“Though sometimes a bit harder to take,” says Thomas Jefferson.

“Which is
exactly
how you know it is real,” says Sally Hemings.

“The point is,” says Thomas Jefferson, “it's not vague, only confusing. There's a difference.”

Sally Hemings nips a last meat shred off her thighbone. “Now all we have to do is figure out how to get there from here.”

“Where?” I say.

“The place where things are actually real.”

“The problem is,” I say, “that I've seen the place you are talking about”—I can't bear to tell Thomas Jefferson that I have seen it through his own eyes—“and it's not any more real than this place.”

“What do you mean?” says Sally Hemings.

“It's vivid, all right. And clear. Maybe too clear. But at the same time there's no meaning there. And nothing makes any sense. Really it's more like a hallucination.”

“Fuck you!” She flings her thighbone at me. “You're the hallucination!”

Thomas Jefferson grabs her forearm. “Sally!”

“Go on—get out of here!” She makes a scat motion at me with her free arm and hand.

“Sally!” says Thomas Jefferson. “He's delusional. He hasn't eaten in days.”

“Fuck you, too!” she says. Then swings her foot in a wide arc around his legs and kicks me in the shin.

“Go on!” she says. “Beat it! Scram! Begone!”

R
eading lessons are no longer possible. The only way that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings can manage being together when anyone else is around is by studiously avoiding each other's gazes and exchanging only the most commonplace remarks. And when they are alone, reading is something less than a top priority. She shows Jimmy the primer that Thomas Jefferson bought and asks if he will at least help her memorize the sounds of the letters, and he just shakes his head and looks away. “Seems to me,” he says in a low voice, “that you got too many other things to worry about to bother with reading.” When she asks him what he means, he says, “Nothing at all. You just seem like you got a lot on your mind.” She decides not to pursue the conversation any further.

Sunday morning, shortly before lunch, Patsy is on the window seat, frowning into a slim pamphlet that she clutches with both hands. Sally Hemings is sitting on a small chair nearby, embroidering one of Polly's pillowcases with a scene of Monticello: Three wide, upside-down green V's representing the Blue Ridge Mountains. A dozen horizontal yellow rows representing August wheat. And to the right a burgundy square with white columns and a low white roof: the great house. She glances at Patsy again and again, and when she catches the girl's eye, she smiles and asks, “What are you reading?”

Patsy lowers the pamphlet to her lap. “Abbé Sieyès,” she says.

“Is it good?”

“It's supposed to be.” Patsy sighs. “But I think every one of his ideas was stolen from Papa.”

“Why did he do that?” says Sally.

“Because Papa is a brilliant man. His ideas have changed the world. And Abbé Sieyès wants to be the Thomas Jefferson of France.”

Sally Hemings becomes thoughtful for a moment. Then she says, “I wish I could read.”

“You should learn.”

“But there is no one to teach me.”

There is an odd expression on Patsy's face: irritation competing with
some gentler emotion. Finally she says, “I can teach you.” She pats the upholstered bench beside her. “Come here.”

As Sally Hemings puts her embroidery into a silk-lined basket, Patsy squints at the pamphlet in her hands. She closes it and places it on the seat beside her. “It is better if you learn to read English,” she says. “Bring me that book over there.” She points to a row of some dozen books atop the mantelpiece.

“Which one?” says Sally Hemings.

“That one,” says Patsy. “On the end.”

Sally Hemings pulls the indicated book off the mantelpiece and goes to sit next to Patsy. The two girls' eyes are exactly the same shape, though Patsy's are chestnut brown. The girls also have the same high cheekbones and long jaw, though Patsy's jaw is fuller—“more feminine,” is how she describes it; she thinks of Sally Hemings's face as “pointy.”

“This book is by Papa.” Patsy opens the book and points to two words in squarish lettering on the first printed page. “Thomas,” she says, and, “Jefferson.” Sally Hemings thinks she probably could have figured out what those two words were, but she is not sure whether that would have qualified as reading. Then Polly runs her finger slowly under the six large words on the top half of the page, saying, “Notes . . . on . . . the . . . State . . . of . . . Virginia.” She takes Sally Hemings's hand, grasps her index finger and puts it under the first word. Once Sally Hemings has successfully copied the motion of Patsy's hand and repeated the words she has just heard, Patsy says, “Very good. You can read!”

Sally Hemings smiles in a way that she hopes hides her irritation. “Tell me the sounds of the letters,” she says.

Patsy complies but has only gotten through “Notes” when Thomas Jefferson appears in the doorway and says, “Dinner, my dear!”

Patsy eagerly closes the book and puts it on top of the pamphlet by Abbé Sieyès. She hurries over to her father and kisses his cheek. “Greetings, Pa-
pah
!”

Thomas Jefferson looks across the room at Sally Hemings with an expression that seems equally likely to become a smile or a contortion of grief.

Sally Hemings can hardly bear to look at him, but she also can't look away. She is standing, but her legs are suddenly so restless she has to fight to keep still.

“What have you been doing?” he asks his daughter absently.

“I've been teaching Sally to read. We're starting with your book!”

Thomas Jefferson laughs in surprise. His expression has become a broad, happy smile, but he is looking at Sally Hemings with such fierce longing that she has to sit back down.

Patsy's eyes move from the very strange expression on her father's face to the dazed, almost frightened expression on Sally Hemings's, then back again. She does this several times.

“That's wonderful,” says Thomas Jefferson. He puts his arm around his daughter's shoulders, steers her out of the room and, over the top of her head, gives Sally Hemings one last, lingering glance.

Patsy also casts one last glance over her shoulder, her expression rendering confusion on the verge of becoming a threat.