Sally Heming (36 page)

"I think he would."

"Never, daughter, no matter how much he wanted to. His
pride would stop him."

"His pride is great, Maman, but not as great as his
passion for owning things. I belong to him. I'm his, and no other man's. And
he'll keep me. He's given up too many things he's loved in life."

"Got to let you go if the Lord claims you."

I got up and walked toward the warmth of the smoldering
kitchen chimney. I had come for company, as my master was out in his fields. I
hadn't wanted this conversation. For years, I had been avoiding this
conversation....

"Being free isn't so important I'd die for it," I
said, and turned to face her.

"Don't tell me freedom ain't worth dying for! Black
people dying left and right, in the fields and on the ships, being beaten to
death for not yielding, being hunted like dogs for strollin', being killed for
standin' up like men and women instead of grovelin' like dogs! Don't give me
any of your lip about 'not worth dying for'! They's even white folks—
abolitionists who's risking their lives—their white lives for black people,
helping them run. And you, you with your pride! Thinkin' that slavehood would
never touch your precious body, or your precious spirit, that it would not hurt
you and damage you and change you...." My mother's face had darkened. It
always changed colors when she was in a rage. "Pride has given you a worst
burden than any field hand out there, because theirs can be lifted, but yours
never will. Thomas Jefferson playing father to you, me spoiling you like I
didn't know your color. If you had stayed here, you would have learned.... Oh,
Lord Almighty, how I wish I had never put you on that boat!"

My mother had grasped my wrist with her strong rough hands
and had drawn me toward her. I looked at her without expression. I had long ago
abandoned myself to that particular joy of not being responsible for oneself. I
had struggled against everything that surrounded my master and was hostile to
me. I had overcome the fearful disgust which his situation as master and mine
as slave inspired in me.

"If you don't want it for yourself, at least get it
for your children!"

"I have, Maman. I have the promise."

At that moment, I didn't care about that. I still had not
accepted the great ring of household keys, which was my badge of authority,
from my mother. I let her cling to it. The warmth of the fire stole under my
skirts and up the back of my legs and spine. He would be coming home soon. I
looked at my mother with impatience, as she continued to hold on to me.

"What if he grows tired of you?" my mother asked.

"Then," I answered, "I just might think
about dying for freedom." I smiled, and my mother released me. I looked
down at my wrist and saw the rosy mark left on my skin by her fingertips.

"Sally?"

I had been reading a letter from James. I turned toward
him. He was almost shouting, the demolition of our walls making it virtually
impossible to be heard.

"I want to transplant all the rhododendron along the
south hedge. I was going to tell Giovanni to do it, but I wanted to ask you
what you thought."

"What does Petit think?" I asked.

"He said to ask you."

"I liked them where they were," I said. "And
what will you do with all the babies in the nursery, then?"

"Find a new place for them. I thought to make an alley
at the end of the formal garden."

"Oh, no." I hesitated, then called him by his
name. He seemed pleased, and laughed out loud. I had pronounced his name as it
was said in French, dropping the "s."
To-mah.

"Always call me thus," he whispered.

He held out his arms. I looked up at him.

It was more than a year before I had the room I could call
my own. But true to his word, he built it. A tiny winding stairway led from the
foot of his bed to a narrow passageway over the top of his bed alcove which ran
the length of it and was lit by three round windows giving onto his rooms. The
shape of the windows had been inspired by the painting of Abraham and Hagar he
liked so much, as well as those for my room. My room was octagonal, hidden
under the eaves, and looked westward over the mountains. There I waited,
accumulating my account of hours. My small treasures from Paris filled the
room: the onyx-and-bronze clock, my Paris sofa and bedstead, the copper bathing
tub that Joe Fosset had copied for me, my chests full of dresses I never wore,
my linens, my bolts of fine silks and cambrics, my books, my guitar. There I
was free, solitary, away from the multitude of the mansion. I savored entering
his inner sanctum by my own stairway. Only in my official capacity as slave and
mistress of his wardrobe did I enter by the public hall on the ground floor.

Only after he had built the miniature stairway to my room
did he discover to his dismay that the two new wings of his mansion had no
stairs at all! He quickly ordered my brother John to add a stairwell to each
wing. It was barely wider than my own—a mere two feet across— and had to
accommodate not only the bulk of his masculine company but the hoopskirts of
his females. I thought of the great stairway at the Hotel de Langeac, that
monument of rose marble I had fled down that March morning eight years ago.
Only my secret room, with its passageway and tiny staircase, resembled the
great houses of Paris, and it linked us to the past. Soon our private existence
would give way once again to the demands of the public and of power but, for a
while at least, I was safe, happy, hidden, and loved.

CHAPTER 28

PHILADELPHIA, MARCH
1797

"There is nothing
I so anxiously hope as that my name may come out either second or
third—the last would leave me home the whole of the year, and the other
two-thirds of it...."

With these words, our happiness in retirement came to an
end. On Christmas Day
1796.

My master was now the second vice-president of the United
States. So loath was he to leave home that he considered having himself sworn
in at home in Virginia. As for me, I was in mourning. My third child, Edy, had
not survived her first months, and now came the blow that I would lose my
master again to his old mistress, politics. Neither Martha nor Maria were to go
with him to Philadelphia for the inauguration. To cheer me, he offered to take
me with him for the ceremonies.

I looked forward to the eleven long days of journeying;
anything to rouse me out of my deep depression. Perhaps I would have news of
James, from whom I hadn't heard in over a year.

We departed. Day after day, new landscapes sped by as we
traveled farther north. We passed Ravensworth, and Montpelier, Dumfries,
Elkridge, and Georgetown. We had taken the Paris phaeton, and Isaac and Israel
as outriders were charged with the extra horses. We were drawn by the six
beautiful bays of Monticello. On the second of March, after leaving Chester, my
master tried to obtain a public carriage to carry us to Philadelphia, but none
was to be had. We delayed until evening, with the intention of entering the
city in secret, but the yellow-and-lilac carriage with the Monticello coachman
had been recognized and our arrival had been reported by messenger. As we
entered the city, we were greeted by a large, roaring crowd carrying a banner
proclaiming: "Jefferson, Friend of the People," and by a company of
artillery that fired sixteen rounds of ammunition in salute. A cold dread
seized me, and I clutched at my master's sleeve and buried my face in his
shoulder. It had been almost eight years since I had come down off the mountain
that was Monticello. I was once again out into the world. That mountain on
which I had spent almost all my existence had rolled away like a great stone
covering a tomb and let in the light and air of the world, and this world was
pounding on the sides of the carriage and screaming slogans and love as my
master laughed and disengaged his arm from my clutches, the better to lean
forward toward the window and show himself. Burwell, who was inside the
carriage, stuck his head out the other side and watched Davey and Jupiter
soothing the frightened horses, smiling, and waving at the crowd as if they had
been born to do it. I peered out nervously behind the bulk of Burwell onto a
sea of white faces cut into by the booted and spurred legs of our outriders. I
had not seen so many white people at once since Paris. I remembered James's
description of the Bastille mob and the crowds, and I saw myself in the Paris
streets. That memory became one as I glimpsed these friendly Americans come to
acclaim their vice-president. Had I forgotten, on my mountain, that the world
was made up of white people? This howling, laughing, unruly crowd was the white
world. I uttered a small cry and clutched at Burwell as I had at my master, but
he, like his master, was only interested in those faces swarming around us. He
shrugged off my hand and ignored me.

The next day I roamed the streets of Philadelphia, a city
that seemed to be made up of only one color and one material: red brick. The
streets as well as the houses were made of it. The wetness made the bricks
slippery underfoot and, several times, Burwell kept me from falling. We
strolled down Market Street looking into the shop windows, at the street
vendors and the newspaper sellers. I looked for my master's little house at
Seventh Street, noisy and filled with young boys, both black and white, selling
broadsides and pamphlets and newspapers, all proclaiming to have the story on
the first succession to the presidency of the United States. Burwell bought
several of them for the plantation.

In the course of our walk, Burwell would point out the
freed men as they crossed our path, and I couldn't help but stare at them. They
were all wearing neat clothes, and conveyed the feeling of self-confidence. I knew,
of course, that in Charlottesville there were many freed people of color, but
this was the first time that I had looked into the faces of Negroes who had
never been slaves. Some seemed rich, the women with long elegant skirts
trailing the sidewalks, accompanied by dignified men in dark broadcloth and
snowy linen. I had put on my best dress, and although it was years out of
fashion in Paris, it was not noticeable here. I was looking forward to seeing
the elegant ladies tomorrow in their fine gowns, cloaks, hats, and gloves.

The day dawned clear and sunny. We followed our master,
walking to the Senate building, where the swearing-in ceremony was to take
place. I strained my hearing to the utmost, but was still unable to make out
one word, either of the speech or of the prayer he offered for the country. It
was the first time I had ever heard my master speak in public, and after the
first few words his voice lost all its musical resonance, and became little
more than a husky whisper. In order to learn what he had said in a public
speech, one had to have recourse to the printed speech in the newspapers. After
giving his prayers for the happiness, peace, and prosperity of our country, he
led the senators and the crowd to the House of Representatives, where Master
Adams was sworn in. It had been almost ten years since I had last seen John
Adams from the back window of the phaeton taking Polly and me to Paris. He had
not grown slimmer with age, and where he had been square and stout, he was now
round and fat. With his prim countenance, long, pinched nose, and tiny piercing
blue eyes, he resembled nothing so much as a Virginia hare in his pearl-gray
frockcoat, waistcoat, and breeches. I felt an old surge of affection for him,
wondering what my life would have been if he had sent me back to Virginia that
summer long ago. Abigail Adams was nowhere to be seen. Had she not come to
honor her husband on this day?

As I looked around, I realized that there were practically
no women at all. All the fine ladies I had hoped to see had stayed home and
this gathering looked as if there were only men in this United States.

At the side of George Washington was his slave Samuel, as
old and stony as his master. President Washington was dressed all in black: a
tall old man with an old-fashioned powdered wig with rolled curls at the sides,
and with cold, small blue eyes set in a face so white it seemed blue. The nose
was large and his lips were so thin they were invisible until he drew them back
in what was meant to be a smile showing his large, black false teeth, which
were famous. Now and again he waved stiffly at the crowd, and as he did so,
exhibiting his black smile in a pure white face, the slave at his side would
also smile, exhibiting his pure-white smile in a black face. The crowd cheered
the outgoing president and tears began to slide down the face of the president
and that of his slave shadow Samuel. John Adams made a fine speech in his harsh
Massachusetts accent. He too was greatly cheered. To this day, I wonder why
Abigail Adams did not come to see her husband made president of the United
States.