Sally Heming (16 page)

CHAPTER 12

PARIS, DECEMBER
1787

"S
lavery
is outlawed in France. We are on French soil. That means we are
emancipated. Free."

"I don't believe you," whispered Sally Hemings,
as if they were being overheard in the empty pantry under the kitchens.

"It is true!"

"You make so many jokes, James, tell so many
far-fetched stories...."

"Why don't you ask your master, if you won't take your
brother's word? Ask a white man."

"Have you ever asked him?"

"I don't have to ask what I know to be true. There are
white men in Paris and London and Boston who are working for the freedom of
Negro slaves everywhere, but Thomas Jefferson isn't one of them."

"It seems so unbelievable."

"It's not, not if you have the courage to claim what
is yours by right."

"It would hurt him to know we were talking like this.
He is all we have."

"All we have!" James Hemings slapped his sister's
face. It was an instinctive gesture, directed more against his own rage than at
her disbelief. The effect on her was immediate. Her eyes welled tears and she
stopped listening. The enormity of what her brother had said struck her with
the same force as had his hand. She had never contemplated freedom. Freedom, to
Sally Hemings, was a vague, glimmering place no one ever returned from to prove
it really existed. Before she realized it, she spoke her thought aloud.
"What do 'free' people do?"

"They work for themselves and their families,"
James answered. "They get paid for their labor. They go where they want
and do what they want according to the nature and demand of their trade. They
vote. They hold property. No one can imprison them, brand them, beat them, kill
them with impunity, and no one can sell them." James Hemings tried to
control his anger and tried to explain as he would to a child, for he
remembered that his sister was still a child.

"Free people marry and have children, who belong to
them and for whom they are responsible and who in turn take care of them in old
age. Free people do what they want without asking permission of any man. Many
are like us, mulatto, metis, or quadroon, but there are black freedmen as well.
In the French Indies, one can buy one's freedom by accumulating enough money to
buy oneself back. A few slaves have even done it in America." James took a
deep breath and continued. "Freedmen protect their home and hearth and
children and wife. They congregate with their friends when and where they wish.
They choose their holidays and travel without permission from anyone. They have
rights and are protected before the law. Free people have family names that
they pass from father to son. They have property, and they can learn to read
and write."

"But we already know how to read and write, and we
have a family name!" said Sally Hemings. She clung to the one thing she
understood.

"Not our family name—a white man's family name, and
what good does it do us to read and write? To read and write is to be able to
rise in the world, not to amuse one's master or mistress by reciting like a
trained monkey, or reading to them when they are too lazy to do it for
themselves. We must refuse to go back to Virginia and prepare ourselves for the
day we are commanded to do so."

"Stay in France?"

"Or Europe. There are other countries besides
France."

"What would I do?"

"Let me worry about that."

"They have children that really belong to them? They
cannot be sold? Explain it to me again. From the beginning."

"In the beginning ..." James smiled. He smiled
and lifted her up in his arms. "Little sister, you are going to learn;
learn to walk, then learn to run! Then you will learn some other things as
well. Your French is not bad.... And that voice!"

Sally Hemings smiled uncertainly. She found it difficult to
follow James's changes in mood. His ideas, which would spill out of him in a
torrent of words, admonishments, curses, lessons, and silences, always
frightened her. The catlike eyes would gleam with malice one minute and brim
with adoration the next. Sometimes he would let loose such a cyclone of abuse
that the air itself seemed to shrivel. He had done this at home as well,
provoking gales of laughter from the gathered entourage. Her mother had been
glad to see him leave with Master Jefferson; at least it was less likely he
would end up swinging on the end of a rope in Paris than in Albemarle County. Her
half brother Robert called James's swearing raunchy, pole-cat, ornery,
low-life, filthy swearing, and the whole family would burst out laughing, since
Robert would find himself swearing at swearing. Then someone would break down
and plead for one of his imitations, for no one at Monticello possessed the art
of mimicry better than James. He had the ability to make people laugh and make
their blood run cold at the same time. He would choose his words carefully and
would work himself up into a malicious frenzy. This was what he was doing now.
He was taking her carefully through an insurrectionist garden, having her smell
first this flower, then another, leading her gently toward the strong scents,
the bolder colors, the mandrake, and the poison. Little by little, he led her
where he wanted her to go, stopping to explain an idea. All these ideas were
new to her, and James had to explain them to her over and over.

He made her study seriously, she read anything she could
get hold of. They were already planning what to tell their master when the time
came.

Sally Hemings acquiesced to everything. She was borne along
on the tide of her brother's vision and excitement. After a long lesson, she
would make her way to her room, lie on her narrow bed, and stare at the ceiling.

James Hemings knew that it was lonely for his sister in the
ministry. There was no one her age, and she had no official duties besides that
of bathing her master's injured wrist. Except for an occasional errand, or a
visit to the convent, she spent most of her time strolling in the gardens, or
reading.

She applied herself to learning everything she could, the
rudiments of dressmaking, hairdressing, and clothes-cleaning. In a few months
the backwater-country slave had learned to speak the language well. Brother and
sister were now speaking French together. They would also at times combine
their Virginia-slave English with French, inventing their own secret language.
But with Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings spoke only her soft Virginia-accented
English. Thomas Jefferson sought his slave's company more and more. They seemed
drawn to each other, master and slave, by mysterious threads that Sally Hemings
did not completely understand. Thomas Jefferson indulged her as a child rather
than as a servant, laughing when Petit remarked that it didn't matter if she
was useless around the ministry; she was such a joy to be with and to look at.
And often he would gaze at her, staring without realizing it, or without
realizing that he was being watched.

Both James Hemings and Adrien Petit saw this affection
develop. Petit, observing with the cynicism of his race and his caste, and
James like a blind man; he had been away from Virginia and slavery too long.

"James?"

"Yes?"

"Do you remember our father at all?"

"Master Wayles? Sure I remember him, I was nearly ten
when he died."

"What was he like? Was he kind to Mama?"

"I suppose you could call him kind. He never
mistreated her and she had the run of the house, nay, the whole plantation. He
was never there."

"What happened to her husband?"

"He died. At least I think he died. I never knew Mama
to say anything about him."

"And her other children—those who didn't come with us
to Monticello?"

"There were two who became the property of our half
sister Tibby Wayles."

"And Mama's mother, our grandmother?"

"Knew her too at Bermuda Hundred. An Afric she was.
The most beautiful woman on the plantation, and she was old when I saw her. She
had run away many times. She had an 'R' for runaway branded on her chest—it
should have marked her cheek, but at the last moment our father didn't have the
heart to do it."

"Mama never speaks of her."

"I know."

"And on the other side, our father's mother?"

"He was an old man, our father. He died a few months
after you were born. I never saw anybody who looked like his mother."

"So strange to have blood in your veins and not know
where it comes from."

"Yes. Not like the Bible, where you can say he was the
son of... who was the son of... who was the son of... That's what you
mean?"

"Yes," she said, "yes, that's what I mean.
If I could know that the son of the son of my son would have some knowledge of
me, would have something... a portrait of me or a mother or grandmother who
remembered me ... if something of mine, some object or some memory could touch
him years and years and years from now ... That he would know who I am. Who I
was. That it wouldn't all be silence."

There was so much fervor in Sally Hemings' voice that it
stopped James from making a derogatory remark about ancestors. She was right in
a way. Blood was magic. To be able to trace it back was the most precious thing
they had lost. He thought about the plantation and the old people with their
fetishes. They knew blood was magic, a link to the past, a curse or a blessing
on its inheritors, a fearful potent magic. Even their mother, Elizabeth
Hemings, was not completely free of ancestor worship. She knew a few spells
herself. He smiled bitterly. If only she had used them at the right moment.

It was enough for white people to know that they were
"sons of God" straight down from heaven. No intervening generations
to cloud their divinity; their blood was "pure," yet they deigned to
mix it with the blood of Africa, a blood laden with the responsibility of a
million years.

The two young people looked at each other, their eyes
meeting in frail comprehension.

"Yes," James said, "it is as if part of you
is recovered if you claim ancestors and expect descendants."

"But if we don't know them—can't find them or their
graves or anything?"

"Then it is very bad voodoo. Very bad spirits. The
gods are angry and turn away from us."

"And if our gods are angry, can we go to their
God?"

"It seems we started off wrong 'cause of somebody
called Ham. And so we are damned to be waterbearers and woodchoppers and
servants because, all of a sudden, we are back with blood curses. We arrive
here in trouble. Everybody else starts out with a new soul, only we come here
with the curse of Ham around our necks. No purity for us. Christ didn't get
around to it."

"And the Afric gods say this, too?"

"Of course not. They haven't even heard of Jesus. He
hasn't been around long enough to even make the acquaintance of those gods.
Frankly, if people get the gods they deserve, then white people sure got theirs
because He's the meanest God I ever heard of. And the more He loves you, the
harder it's on you. So He must really love us!"

James threw back his head and let out a roar of laughter.

James Hemings had the narcissistic energy of a forest
animal. Almost as tall as his master, he was lean and muscled. His body gave
him a European rather than an American look: the coal-black wavy hair, the thin
flared nose, even the dark-ivory color seemed less exotic here against the rich
brocades and silks of French interiors than in the simpler trappings of
Monticello. His face was a harder replica of his sister's. The shadow of his
heavy beard and eyebrows shaded his face with a kind of violence entirely
absent from hers. The generous mouth was almost always engaged in complaining
and turned down in perpetual discontent. Yet, instead of giving his face a
somber, even disagreeable aspect, his bad nature took on a melancholy and
romantic tinge. Both black and white had always indulged him in this, and
everyone said that he had a handsome, even noble face, despite its latent
anger, which could be dispersed with one delicious smile. This had saved him
from many a reprimand and several beatings.