Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings (28 page)

S
mall as her fist. Its own fists like the pistils of daylilies, curling in front of the blue bulges where its eyes would have been. Not it—
her. Her
eyes.
Her
fists. Mere wrinkle between her legs, which are smaller than the front legs of tree frogs. Gigantic head that reminds Sally Hemings of nothing so much as the tip of a man's thing—though she is ashamed to even think that.

Her mother says, “That head's why the Lord let her go. The Lord always has his reasons.”

Sally Hemings hopes so. But to her it seems that most things don't happen for any reason at all. She washes the little one herself. La Petite
.
Puts her into the jam jar herself. The one he got her that time in Paris. Apricot preserves. The time he wanted her to think better of him. She seals the jar with grease paper and twine. She wraps the jar in burlap and ties the burlap in twine, too.

She told him when she was going to do it. He nodded and looked as if he were made of sorrow, but he did not say he would come.

He is not here.

She holds the jam jar against her belly. Her mother is with her. And Thenia and Critta. And Jimmy. Jimmy is carrying the pickax. Peter has the shovel.

The sky is filled with snow, but the snow is not falling. The earth is pink and hard. Tow-colored grass. The bare trees are the many colors of bruises. She looks back toward the house, but he is not there.

She walks first; the others follow. When they get there, he is not waiting.

Jimmy thinks what they are doing is sacrilege. Witchcraft. Only those who have lived should have funerals. But he has come anyway. And when they arrive, he holds the pick with both hands and asks where she wants him to dig.

“No,” she says.

She gives the jam jar to her mother and takes the pickax. The first time she strikes the frozen earth, the vibration snaps like a cowskin lash up her
arms to the center of her spine. She has made only a knuckle-shaped dent in the earth amid splayed grass blades. But she hits again and again and again, feeling it is right that she should suffer for this poor creature to whom she could not give life.

He still has not come when, at last, she lays the jam jar at the bottom of the knee-deep hole and covers it over with the chips of frozen earth and tangled bits of the tow-colored grass. On top of it all, she puts a squarish flag of stone that Peter removed from the wall along Mulberry Row.

“
Au revoir, ma petite
,” she says. She also wants to say, “
Je t'aime
,” but she can't. The steam of her breath dissipates in the frigid air.

When she starts to walk away, her mother grabs her arm.

“No!” Sally Hemings says. “Let me go!”

Jimmy says, “She'll be all right.”

Her mother just stands there, ash-faced, looking.

Down the hill. Down. Down. Not along the road but through the woods. Hands skin-stripped and blistered, crammed into the pockets of her greatcoat. Lifting her skirts over fallen trees. Shoving aside or ducking under face-level branches. Feet making a constant
shush, shush, shush
in the pale-copper leaves.

It is good to get away. She feels nothing but good. Her burning hands throb in her pockets, but the cold air is sweet in her lungs.

Down past the lake, which is sealed beneath a dull-glinting sheet of ice: black and mottled gray, shifting yellow reeds along its shore. She crosses the path where he takes his daily rides. She wills herself not to look for him. She wills herself not to hope she will see him hurrying home, distraught because some accident kept him from her side. Or hurrying
from
home, filled with sorrow and anxiety, wanting only to find her, to get down on his knees and beg her forgiveness. She has resolved to hate him. She will be as cold and hard to him as the earth beneath her pickax.

First she hears a gentle ticking on the fallen leaves, and then she sees the snowflakes, millions of them, drifting between the upreaching branches of the hickories and oaks. Then she is standing by the black river, dank mustiness filling her sinuses, the hissing roar of water over stones filling her ears. The snow is heavier now, obscuring the far shore in its diagonal sweeps and swirls. The world is whitening. Her shoulders are shrouded with snow, and the upper surfaces of her sleeves.

When she felt the warmth trickling down her legs, then saw the blood, she entered into a sort of fog and a numbness that was less grief than a
terrific confusion, a profound lostness. But that's all over now. Her mind is utterly clear. Here in the cold beside this loud river, she feels more alert and alive than she ever felt in Paris. Here in this wild land where she was born—the only place where she can feel that she is truly herself and in the living world.

Some hour later, almost back to Monticello, she stops on the edge of a sloping field, now entirely white with snow. The wind has stilled, and the flakes are bigger now, the size of feathers. Rocking. Drifting left, then right. Endless numbers of them, falling all around her in perfect silence. And as she watches, she feels that what she is watching is the settling of grief upon grief upon grief that has been occurring, without relent, for all the centuries since creation.

T
he glasses in the hands of the guests are like balls of fire, each reflecting the hundreds of candles that Sally Hemings has been replacing constantly ever since the white sun touched the iron clouds over the western hills. That was at four-thirty; it is now after ten.

“Love,” says Thomas Jefferson, his face red, candlelight glinting in his eyes, “is our greatest gift.”

The guests are being served champagne from bottles carried around the room by Jupiter, Thenia and Critta. Some of them sip from their glasses immediately; some are waiting for Thomas Jefferson to finish.

“Without love,” he says, “our homes would be as comfortless as caves. Our labors would have no purpose, for what is the point of straining our backs and going exhausted to bed if not to bring happiness to those we most want to be happy?”

Some of the guests gaze with fixed grins into empty space, as if they hear and see nothing of what is happening around them. Old Mrs. Randolph is seated in the corner, her chair entirely concealed beneath the lavender heap of her skirts, her head against the wall, her eyes closed. Her son, Tom, is standing beside her, shifting restlessly from foot to foot, constantly looking down into his glass. And between him and Thomas Jefferson, her cheeks bunched into shiny pink balls from the huge smile that has not left her face all day, stands Patsy—although she has announced that as a married woman she wants to be called only by her Christian name: Martha. She is seventeen. Not to be outdone, Polly, eleven years old, has announced that she only wants to be called Maria, although the name she was given at birth is Mary. She is not in the room, however. Sally Hemings has not seen her for more than an hour.

“Without love,” says Thomas Jefferson, “the word ‘home' would have no meaning, for what else makes our homes places of solace and joy than the love that we find in them?”

A candle is guttering on the sideboard just behind Thomas Jefferson, but Sally Hemings is not going to replace it. She remains on the opposite side of the room, staring directly at him, although he has yet to notice her.

“But love,” he says, “is not merely a gift we are given; it is a gift we give. Our labors in office, field or manufactory are not meaningless, because they are the gifts we give to our wives and to our children—to the people we love—and their labors in the home are their gifts to us.”

Sally Hemings has not moved. She is waiting. But Thomas Jefferson has not looked her way.

“When Tom,” he says, “first visited us in France, I loved him already as the son of my dear cousin.” He glances at old Mrs. Randolph, but seeing she is entirely unaware of what he is saying, he continues. “But when I noticed the looks he turned toward my dearest Martha and I saw the blushes those looks engendered, my love for him redoubled, not merely because he is, as everyone in this room knows, a fine and responsible young man but because he had the power to give dear Martha the greatest happiness in life—by meeting her love with an equal love of his own.”

Tom Randolph lifts his gaze from his glass and trades an embarrassed glance with his ferociously grinning bride.

“And on this day, when the feelings they share have been sanctified before God and in the hearts of all in this room”—Thomas Jefferson lifts his glass, as do all the guests—“I want to make a toast to the sentiment that binds these two young people and without which none of us could bear to spend a day on this bleak earth.”

As he raises his glass above his head and says, “To love!” his gaze at last turns to Sally Hemings, who holds it for a long instant before turning her back and leaving the room.

T
he guard bangs her billy club against the bars of the prisoner's cell. He is lying on his cot, the side of his head swollen—purple and red, capillary laced. She speaks.

—Morning! Rise and shine!

— . . .

—Don't worry. I'm in a much better mood today.

— . . .

—What's the matter? You look so glum.

—I don't see any reason why I should talk to you.

—Well then, maybe you haven't learned your lesson.

—What lesson?

—That you have no rights.

—It's not in your power to deprive me of my rights.

—On the contrary. I can do absolutely anything I want to you.

—I won't deny that you can treat me any way you want to, but that doesn't mean you can deprive me of my rights. My rights are given by God and exist independently of anything you do. You may make it impossible for me to enjoy my rights, but that doesn't mean I don't have them.

—Don't get all academic on me.

— . . .

—If you can't exercise your rights, then you don't have them. End of story.

— . . .

—You idiot! You haven't learned a fucking thing. You still don't know that you're a fucking piece of shit. A disgrace to humanity.

—Leave me alone.

—Hah! Fat chance! I'm your judge, jury and executioner. You got that? And I am not going to let you get away with one fucking thing. You won't be able to touch your dick or pick your nose without me seeing it. I'm going to catch you out on your every lie, your every evasion, your every attempt to escape your own conscience.

—Leave me alone, I said!

—No way. I'm with you to the end.

—You're a fucking lunatic! This is so fucking insane!

—Of course it's insane! Justice is relentless. And monomaniacal. It has to be. I mean, do you think that once you commit an evil act it can ever be undone? Give me a fucking break!

The guard laughs. She speaks.

—You can do a thousand good deeds and make a thousand apologies, but the evil is still there. It never changes, and it never ends, and you can never escape it. Justice, too. Justice never ends; it is eternal, universal and implacable. That's the lesson I'm teaching you. I'm going to strip you of every shred of dignity and pride until you are so desperate you fall on your knees and beg forgiveness. And guess what? There will be no forgiveness. But you know that, don't you? You always have. That's why you trembled when you thought that God is just. And actually, that's the beauty of all this. You are condemned, not merely by your most evil acts but by your finest words, those self-evident truths of yours that created a whole new world—a world that will never forgive you for your sins.

M
aria is halfway through embroidering an image of a ship at sea for a pillow cover and has run out of all three of the shades of blue thread she is using for the water and the sky. Sally Hemings is walking down to the stable, a list of the needed shades in hand, hoping to catch Jupiter before he heads into Charlottesville for provisions.

As she nears the stable, she sees Thomas Jefferson's horse rear its head, then leap out into the yard, as if over a snake stretched out in the doorway. Thomas Jefferson pulls the horse's reins tight to steady it, then leans forward, strokes its neck with a gloved hand and murmurs a brief consolation into its ear.

Sally Hemings veers off the road and strides across the crusted snow beside the stable, although she could have no possible business in that direction. She keeps walking even after Thomas Jefferson calls her name but then stops because she realizes her ruse is transparent and she is only humiliating herself.

He calls her name a second time and says, “Could you please come here for a moment?”

She turns about-face and retraces her footsteps without ever lifting her head high enough to meet his eyes. She stops close enough to the horse to smell its breath and keeps her gaze on the red mud, ice and snow beneath the horse's hooves.

Thomas Jefferson's voice is gentle. “Sally, please.” She can feel him looking at her. She knows, even, that his expression is tender, in that way she once thought she loved. “I only want to inquire as to how you are doing,” he says. “I know these last weeks have been . . . especially with Martha's wedding—”

“Fine,” she says.

“I'm sorry?” He is not apologizing.

In a soft but trembling voice she says, “I said I'm fine.”

“Oh, Sally.” He speaks her name so tenderly. “You're not being fair.”

“I'm
fine
, I said!” Her voice is sharper now, though still trembling. “I know
exactly
what I am to you, and I don't care! Not that I have any say in the matter.”

She won't lift her eyes above Thomas Jefferson's shoulder, but she can tell by his silence and by the way his hands clench the reins that she has shocked him.

“Sally,” he says, but it is a moment before he can speak. “You are being entirely unfair—to me and, worst of all, to yourself.”

She, too, is silent a moment, then says firmly, “I don't think so.” Now she looks into his mud-and-gold eyes and sees that his tenderness has given way to anger. “I don't believe in telling lies, Mr. Jefferson,
especially
to myself.”

He says nothing, but she is no longer looking at him, so has no idea what expression he may have on his face.

“Excuse me,” she says. “I am on an errand for Polly.” She cuts a wide arc behind his horse and makes for the stable entrance.

He calls her once, but she doesn't reply or look around. Only after she has entered the stable does she hear him make a double suck-click in his cheek, and horse's hooves begin to drum out of the yard.

Jupiter is standing toward the rear of the stable, buckling Lulabelle into the cart harness. His skin is dark enough that his features are hard to make out in the dimness, but she can tell from the weary set of his eyes that he has heard every word of her exchange with Thomas Jefferson and that he doesn't know what to say.

“Polly asked me to give you this.” She hands him the list. “
Maria
, I mean.” And then she starts to cry.