Sally Heming (32 page)

We worked. My kin, my fellow slaves and I. We worked from
sunup to sundown. We worked so that all, according to my master, would move in
exact equilibrium. No part of the force could be lessened without it having an
effect on the whole, he said. No hand could be stilled without retarding the
scheme of things. And nothing could jeopardize his main design or delay it.
This was his law: the vast rolling motion of this human machine moved according
to the blueprint he had laid down for it. And if a bent back had straightened
and a head shaken sweat like a wet dog, and an eye had stared into the sun, and
a mind or a heart wondered if this was the way God meant things to be; my
master would have said yes. For wasn't he God at Monticello? And if one loved
the man, one could still hate the God.

We stood there on the mountain, silently savoring our last
month of solitude before the August company arrived and Martha and Maria came
home. The deep clay gave gently underfoot, tender and softened by the constant
spring rain. It would be a wet summer, with twice as many wet days as in other
years. A burst of fragrance, from a flowering bush, enveloped us with its
sweetness.

My lover came around and stood near me.

"Sally," he said, putting his hands on my
shoulders, "however far you can see, it is all Monticello. I solemnly
promise you there will never be a white mistress here."

I pressed myself into the broad chest behind me. My master
might own Monticello and my mother might run it, but Monticello was mine. There
had been only one white mistress of Monticello, the first Martha, and she was
buried at the foot of the mountain under a pale white stone etched in Latin.

There will never be a white mistress here.

The echo of his voice followed me through the gardens,
along Mulberry Row, into the workshops of my brothers. I kept hearing that
magic promise over and over in my mind through the noise of construction.

There would be no white mistress at Monticello. He had
promised.

CHAPTER 25

JULY
1795

Going out into the open air, in the temperate, and in the
warm months of the year, we often meet with bodies of warm air, which, passing
by us in two or three seconds, do not afford time to the most sensible
thermometer to seize their temperature. Judging from my feelings only, I think
they approach the ordinary heat of the human body. Some of them perhaps go a
little beyond it... but whence taken, where found, or how generated? ... They
are most frequent about sunset; rare in the middle parts of the day; and I do
not recollect having ever met with them in the morning.

thomas jefferson,
Notes on the State of Virginia,
1790

... blind obedience is ever sought for by power: tyrants
and sensualists are in the right when they endeavor to keep women in the dark,
because the former want only slaves and the latter a plaything. The sensualist,
indeed, has been the most dangerous of tyrants, and women have been duped by
their lovers, as princes by their ministers....

mary wollstonecraft,
Vindication of the Rights of Women,
1792

"What do you think
you're doing?"

I had not expected him back from his ride for hours. He
found me sitting in his room. The only private place in the mansion. I had
taken some of my letters out of my secret place and was reading them.

In two strides Thomas Jefferson was upon me.

"I thought I told you to burn my letters." He was
furious. The two familiar lines of rage etched themselves between his eyes.
"I don't want any letters of mine lying around, do you hear me?"

They were not his letters, they were mine. It said so right
there in black and white. "Sally Hemings." My letters were the only
thing that existed outside him or myself. Sometimes I didn't even bother to
read them as I knew them by heart. I simply stared at my name.

"I always kept your letters in Paris. In a little silk
envelo—"

"Sally, this is Virginia, not Paris! It's dangerous
keeping letters. I told you to burn them. I'll never write you another letter
if you don't destroy them."

"I would have to forget you to burn them. I won't do
it."

"If you won't, I will."

He picked up a handful of my letters and strode toward the
fireplace.

"You burn those letters, Thomas Jefferson, and you'll
sleep alone."

He hesitated a moment and then he threw the letters onto
the smoldering coals. In a flash I was beside him. I shoved him out of the way.
The letters were already going up in flames. I pulled them out with my bare
hands.

"Sally! Darling! You'll burn yourself!"

He lifted me up from my knees and his heavy boot came down
on the flames, until he had stomped out the fire. He then bent and with his own
hands pulled the charred letters from the ashes.

"Here are your letters."

I took them with my good hand.

"At least promise me you'll burn them when I'm
dead," he pleaded.

"Or when it is over," I said.

"It will never be over until I'm dead."

I put the letters in my petticoat pocket.

"You've hurt yourself."

"It's nothing. I'll have some blisters tomorrow."

But a sharp pain shot through my right hand and made me
feel faint. Before I fell, he picked me up in his arms and carried me to the
bed, where he stared at me for a long time, then slowly his head came down
toward me. I reached up with my left hand and untied the ribbon which held his
thick hair. The eyes above me were dark. I recognized the pinch of suppressed
fury, and in them, as always, the inner turmoil.

I felt myself being lifted and borne toward him. He tugged
at my knot and it fell undone in his hands. He gathered my hair like a bouquet
into a cushion under my head and locked his hands into it. His lips came down
on the white scar at my temple.

The letters. They were all of the fragile self I had so
painstakingly built in Paris. And he wanted to burn them. He strove as if he
wanted to undo the small part of myself I had managed to build these past
years. He didn't have to remind me that this was Virginia. Virginia. Virginia.
And it would be Virginia forever. Virginia. That's why I clung to my letters.
But now we no longer remembered if it was Paris or Virginia.

"What shall we do about your hand?" he asked
gently.

"Ask Mama," I said. When he returned, he had a
poultice from Elizabeth Hemings. It smelled of mint and honey. He dressed my
hand and let me go to sleep.

Virginia. I knew that what had happened to us could never,
never have happened in Virginia.

August brought the girls back. Martha was with child. I was
to accompany Maria to her first ball. I looked forward to that evening. As I
had not left the confines of Monticello for more than four years, I wanted to
see the new fashionable dresses, the carriages, the decorations. I wanted to
hear the music, see the latest dance called the
mazurka;
I had been out of touch with even
the small world of Tidewater, Virginia, for too long. I sat with the other
servants and watched Maria dance.

Dancing was one of the things I most regretted. I had loved
it since my first awkward tries with Martha in Paris. I remembered learning how
to surrender to that eternity which was the first note of music. I could be
anything I wanted for as long as the music played. And tonight the music played
and played.

There were as many servants milling around as there were
guests. To us all, whites and slaves, the ball was a chance to break the
isolation and monotony of living on far-flung plantations all the year; to see
new faces, new dresses, new horses, to catch up on Tidewater gossip.

I fingered the bright-yellow bandanna tightly wrapped
around my head and savored the soft night breeze in the lavish gardens of
Prestonfield Plantation. The dresses were more daring than any I could have
imagined. My mother was right. There were new dyes and there was more gauze,
more silk, and less satin and velvet. The crinolines were ridiculously large,
giving the ladies the appearance of watermelons.

I gazed at everything with new eyes. Through the tall
square-paned windows I looked at the swirling figures inside. I contemplated
this world of exquisite food and delicate music, of graceful dances, of laces
and satin, plumes and powder and perfume, of polished cherrywood floors, and
crystal chandeliers.

Why, in the midst of happiness, must I be reminded of
Paris? Look at them! I had heard about the Quadroon Balls of New Orleans where
the white people were being mimicked, so here these provincial whites were
trying to mimic Paris. I sneered at the pretensions of Virginia gentry.

I had known real splendor! What was I doing in this
backwater... this tomb?

After all these years, John Trumbull was coming to
Monticello. I didn't know whether to hide or greet him as a friend. A dinner
had been organized for him, and included in the guest list was my master's
choice for Maria, Mr. Giles, a senator from Virginia. Thomas Jefferson wanted
him as a son-in-law, and he spent his time around Monticello that summer
courting Maria; but in the meantime Maria had fallen in love with her cousin
Jack, the same Jack who had helped me to lure her on the boat to Paris. Isaac
and I commiserated with poor Master Giles as he was kindly but firmly rejected.
Maria was too terrified to tell her father her choice, and begged me to do it
for her.

The night John Trumbull came, I spied on the dinner. It was
not the first time I had spied on my master's dinner guests. I did it
constantly. Later, in the privacy of his bedroom, we would discuss the guests,
their personalities, and their intrigues. Thus my political education continued
despite my isolation. What I didn't learn from spying, I would learn from my
mother and the other slaves. They were a constant and reliable source of gossip
and funny stories that kept my lover entertained.

The dinner with John Trumbull turned into a veritable
disaster. No sooner was the company seated than a lively discussion of the
character, conduct, and doctrines of Jesus began. My master sat smiling and
nodding as Master Giles, a freethinker, led the argument. I could see
discomfiture and then shock on the face of John Trumbull, who defended his
faith as best he could. The Massachusetts-accented voice I remembered so well
rose in indignation over Master Giles's raillery. Then he addressed my master:

"Sir, this is a strange situation in which I find
myself; in a country professing Christianity and at a table with Christians, as
I suppose, I find my religion and myself attacked with severe and almost
irresistible wit, and not a person to come in my defense but my friend Mr.
Franks, who is himself a Jew!"

For just a brief moment his outburst seemed to have some
effect on the company. The conversation became subdued. I could hardly hear
what was going on. But then Maria's suitor returned to the attack and burst out
with as broad and unqualified avowal of atheism as I had ever heard. John
Trumbull was almost in tears. He seemed to look directly at me, but I knew he
couldn't see me.

"The man who has made the previous statement is
perfectly prepared for the commission of every atrocious action by which he can
promise himself the advancement of his own interest or the gratification of his
impure passions, provided he can commit it secretly and with a reasonable
probability of escaping detection by his fellow men."

I froze. No. It was not possible that he saw me. Not even
with his artist's eagle eyes. In his fury they seemed more crossed than ever.
He rose. Thomas Jefferson remained seated, not saying a word. John Trumbull
addressed Master Giles for the last time. He seemed to be addressing me.

"Sir, I would not trust such a man with the honor of a
wife, a sister, or a daughter.... Our acquaintance, sir, is at an end."

My friend John Trumbull. My hand reached for his miniature.
John Trumbull driven from our table. I remembered my last words to him at
Cowes. "God bless you," I had said. God. Why had my exquisitely
mannered lover allowed such a scene at his own table? I was appalled. Of all
things to offend a gentle friend on his religion at one's own table! I clutched
my locket. Now people would say Thomas Jefferson was an atheist! Trumbull had
left the table. It was a dangerous thing to do, I thought. Humiliate a man in
public. In the past years I had learned enough about politics to realize that
one never knew when one might need a friend. Enemies were expensive.
Politicians could only afford so many....