Jefferson's Sons (13 page)

A small, slim figure darted down the hallway toward the door. Maddy. Beverly smiled. Maddy was seven now. He haunted the great house the way Beverly had when he was younger. Only Maddy wasn't looking for Master Jefferson. Maddy was looking for Miss Ellen, Miss Martha's second-oldest girl.

Miss Ellen was teaching Maddy to read.

“Maddy,” Beverly called, “let me get that.”

It was too late. Maddy had already let the stranger in. It was a white man, of course—a black man would never come to the front door. He was neatly dressed in old-fashioned breeches and a well-made coat. As he stepped inside, the man looked around in amazement—visitors were always amazed by the display in the front hall—and then he looked down at Maddy and smiled.

“Good morning, son,” he said. “What's your name?”

Maddy rubbed one bare foot over the other. He looked at the ground. “James Madison,” he said.

“Sir,” Beverly cut in, “may I help you?”

The man smiled at Beverly. “I'm speaking to this young fellow. Young James Madison here.” The man held out his hand. “How do you do, James Madison?”

Beverly knew the man was making a bad mistake, and when he found out he'd made it, he would not be happy. “Maddy,” he said, “run along.”

Maddy couldn't run along. The white man had picked up Maddy's hand and was showing him how to shake hands properly. Maddy already knew how to shake hands. He also already knew better than to shake hands with a white man.

“Like this, James Madison,” the man said. “You want to make your grandpa proud.”

Beverly took hold of Maddy's shoulder and pulled him backward. “Sir,” he said, flashing the man a bright smile, “can we get you something cold to drink?”

They were almost away, he and Maddy, but at exactly the wrong moment Miss Martha came out to the hall. Her children—the school-age ones, Misses Ellen, Cornelia, Virginia, and Mary, as well as Master James Madison—came out with her.

“Are you here to see my father?” Miss Martha inquired.

The stranger looked her. He looked at the children. He looked at the four girls, with their pretty dresses and beribboned hair. He looked at James Madison Randolph's well-cut breeches, shirt, and waistcoat, and at the loose pants and coarse shirts Beverly and Maddy wore.

He understood. Of course he understood.

The man turned beet red. He waved his hand in the air, as though shaking off Maddy's touch. He bowed to Miss Martha, and he said, with a nervous, angry laugh, “I'll tell you what, I didn't know they grew darkies that white.”

Miss Martha cut her eyes at Beverly. Beverly said, “Yes, ma'am,” and hustled Maddy away.

“What happened?” Maddy asked. “He was nice at first.”

“White people don't like to be fooled,” said Beverly.

“I wasn't fooling him,” Maddy said. “He asked my name, and I told him.”

“Well, don't tell him. Better yet, don't answer the door.”

They walked out of the house and down the path. Beverly kept hold of Maddy's hand. “Where we going?” Maddy asked.

“Down to the shop. We'll get Uncle John to fix the window.”

“Doesn't that man need us to find Master Jefferson?”

“No,” Beverly said. “That man needs us to go away.” He shook Maddy's arm a bit. “What were you doing up there, anyway? Bringing a message from Mama?”

Maddy looked at the ground. “No.”

“What, then.”

Maddy whispered, “Waiting for Miss Ellen.”

“Oh, Maddy.”

“She told me to!”

Beverly sighed. “You've got to quit hanging around her, Maddy. Miss Martha doesn't like it.”

“Miss Ellen likes it. Really she does. She likes teaching me. She wants to be a teacher, she says. That's what she wants to do, instead of getting married. And she likes me 'cause I'm smart and pay attention. I'm a model student, she says.”

“Oh, Maddy,” Beverly said. “You shouldn't mess with them. It makes trouble.”

Maddy stuck out his chin. “Miss Ellen said everybody needs to know how to read. Every-single-body.”

“If we needed to know how to read,” Beverly said, “our father would have had us taught. And he hasn't, so we don't. You're putting your nose in where it doesn't belong.”

“Nobody cares where my nose is,” Maddy said.

“I do,” Beverly said.

“I'm telling Mama,” Maddy said.

“You do that,” said Beverly.

 

Mama listened to the whole story. When Maddy finished, he waited for her to say Beverly was wrong. He knew Beverly was waiting for Mama to say Maddy was wrong, and that made him clench his fists. Beverly thought he knew everything.

Maddy himself knew plenty. For starters, he could name in order all Miss Martha's children: Anne, Jeff, Ellen, Cornelia, Virginia, Mary, James Madison, Ben Franklin, and Meri-wether Lewis. Miss Anne didn't live at Monticello anymore; she had married a drunkard who beat her. That worried everyone, even Mama, but nobody would talk about it. Mister Jeff was grown up too, twenty years old. He ran the Monticello farms. Ben was Eston's age, and little Lewis—that was what they called him—was only a baby.

The middle girls could be snippy, like their mother, and Maddy steered clear of them. Beverly claimed Miss Ellen was the same, but Maddy knew better. Miss Ellen was like Master Jefferson in the way she loved to read and write and learn.

Beverly claimed he couldn't tell the middle girls apart. He said all white people looked alike. Harriet snapped at him when he said that, and said he'd better adjust his attitude before he grew up, and also, was he blind?

Sometimes Beverly and Harriet spoke in riddles. Maddy hated it when he couldn't understand them. That was another thing that made him clench his fists.

He understood everything important. He understood that Master Jefferson was their father. He understood that they would be free and white someday, but that for now they were black and slaves, and that until the magic day of freedom came, they were going to have to keep their heads down. Mama said so. Miss Martha was mistress of Monticello, and she did not want to see any part of the truth about Maddy's family, and it was their business, Maddy's and Harriet's and Beverly's and even little Eston's, to keep their heads down and out of Miss Martha's way.

“But Miss Ellen doesn't mind teaching me,” Maddy said. “She likes it.”

“Huh,” Harriet said. “She just likes being able to boss somebody, for a change.”

“She can boss me,” Maddy said, “so long as she teaches me to read.”

Maddy already knew the alphabet, all the letters from A to Z. Miss Ellen had started to show him how they made little words, two-letter words from the beginning of the primer,
ba, be, bi, bo, bu, by
. Maddy wished he had a primer, or any sort of book at all. The great house was full of books, but Maddy wasn't allowed to touch them. Nobody on Mulberry Row owned a single one. He'd asked all around. Joe Fossett wrote accounts sometimes, and so did Miss Edith, but the accounts were just lists of words and numbers, not really anything Maddy could sit and read.

James, who was Maddy's best friend, told him he was a fool for asking. “Who ever heard of a book on Mulberry Row?”

“Could happen,” Maddy argued. “Somebody might have one shut up in a box somewhere.”

“If somebody's hiding a book,” James said, “that somebody's going to keep it hidden, not take it out and loan it to you.”

There were words in the great house hall. The hall was hung with all sorts of things—a buffalo head, Indian arrows, a beaded shirt made out of leather, paintings and statues of famous men. The words in the hall were written on a piece of paper in a frame, under glass, hung on the right-hand wall. Miss Ellen said they were called the Declaration of Independence, and Master Jefferson—she called him Grandpa—wrote them. They were powerful words that somehow separated America from England, back before even Mama was born. But Maddy couldn't so much as make out the letters to the words of the Declaration of Independence. Miss Ellen said that was because they were written in script, like handwriting, and first you had to learn to read in print, like books. Maddy had to take it one step at a time.

“After I learn to read,” Maddy said now, to Mama and Beverly and Harriet, “I'm going to learn to
write
.”

Beverly raised his eyebrows. “She's never going to teach you that. She knows better. At least, she ought to.” A slave that could read might be useful. A slave that could write was dangerous. A slave that could write could make a pass. Maddy was old enough to understand that.

“She might,” Maddy said.

Beverly said, “If Miss Martha catches her, she'll get the strap.”

Harriet said, “It's against the law.”

“It's
not,
” said Maddy. “Miss Ellen wouldn't break the law.”

Mama laid her hand on his head to settle him. “It's not,” she agreed. “It's against the law for a free black person to teach a slave, or for anyone to be paid to teach a slave. Miss Ellen's white and you're not paying her, so she's not breaking the law.”

“See,” said Maddy.

“Which doesn't mean it wouldn't get her in trouble,” Mama said. “Law or no law. Let me think.” She sat down in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. Maddy waited. “Learning to read, well, of course that's a wonderful thing,” said Mama. “It's a way out. Writing too. If I were better at either I'd have taught you myself.” She looked at Beverly, and uncrossed her arms to run her fingers through her hair. “I should have thought about this beforehand—you all catch me off guard, growing up so fast. White people read, don't they?”

“Not the stupid ones,” said Harriet.

“You're none of you stupid,” Mama said. “There ought to be something we can do. I just don't want to rile up Miss Martha.”

Harriet murmured, “Always the same problem.”

Mama quelled her with a look. “Let me think on it,” she said. “I'll let you know. Maddy—you stay clear of the great house, you hear me?”

 

Maddy knew it was important not to rile up Miss Martha. Miss Martha didn't like to even catch sight of Maddy or his brothers or sister. Beverly said she was nastier now than she had been when Master Jefferson was president. Back then, the only folks who came to visit were friends, like the Madisons, who were specially invited. Beverly said it had been quiet most of the time.

Maddy didn't remember it quiet on the mountaintop. Not ever. White folks came every day without invitation, without even knowing Master Jefferson at all. Some nights two dozen strangers slept in the great house beds, and all Miss Martha's children had to bunk down in the attic on the floor. Miss Martha ran around looking for pillows and blankets. Miss Edith cooked dinners for fifty. Each week in the stables Wormley fed the visitors' horses what should have been a month's worth of hay.

The visitors drank four or five or even ten bottles of French wine in a single dinner. They ate up the good hams and had second helpings of the fancy treats Miss Edith made, the ice cream and macaroni and vegetables turned out in a mold. They ate like it was Christmas dinner, ate for hours and scraped their plates clean.

After dinner the visitors wandered around the mountaintop. They promenaded on the lawn, inspected the gardens, and even walked up and down Mulberry Row. Unhappy-looking slaves made the visitors nervous, so Maddy always had to smile at them, whether he felt like smiling or not. Otherwise one of them might complain to Miss Martha.

Miss Martha's biggest fear was that a visitor would guess the truth about Maddy's family. Harriet looked like Mama, only lighter. Beverly had some resemblance to Master Jefferson, and told Maddy he did too, but Eston, who was four, was his spitting image. Eston looked like Master Jefferson in miniature. Mama tried especially hard to keep him out of the visitors' way.

Beverly told Maddy that Master Jefferson used to listen to him play the violin. Sometimes he went to Beverly's lessons with Jesse Scott. Beverly said that Master Jefferson used to speak to him, and once even put his arm around him. Master Jefferson never did anything like that anymore.

Mama always waited until full dark to go to Master Jefferson's room. The mountaintop people ate dinner in the kitchen, at twilight when the work day was done. Then Maddy's family had time together before Mama went away. Mama sat by the window of their room and looked down Mulberry Row. Maddy sat on the floor beside her and put his head in her lap. Behind them, Beverly tuned his violin.

“Play that song,” Eston said. Master Jefferson's favorite tune was called “Money Musk.” Eston always called it “that song.”

Beverly began to play. Harriet picked up her knitting needles. Eston lay on his back on the floor, humming along to the music. Maddy felt Mama's fingers run soft through his hair. This was his favorite time of day.

“You'd better learn to read,” Mama said. “Maddy. Learn to read and to write, however you can. All of you had better learn. I'm thinking, when you go out in the world, it's something you'll be expected to know. For sure it's a good thing to know. Nobody can take what you learn away from you. You learn, Maddy, and this winter in the evenings you can teach Harriet and Beverly.”

Maddy sighed happily.

Beverly kept playing. He finished “Money Musk” and went on to a quieter nighttime kind of tune.

“Harriet,” Eston said, “tell us a story.” Harriet told wonderful stories. Maddy's favorite was about Mama's trip across the ocean to France. Harriet could make it sound like she'd been there too.