Sally Heming (37 page)

Standing outside the Senate House after the ceremony,
Burwell and Jupiter at my side, I looked over the now dispersing assembly,
trying to recognize friends of my master whom I had seen at one time or another
at Monticello. Suddenly I noticed a short, handsome man. He was magnificently dressed,
wearing buff, with yellow lace showing at the neck and wrists.

His curly black hair was pulled back from an abnormally
high forehead, the pallor of his skin contrasting with the jet-black hair and
eyebrows that were arched in a quizzical expression over deep brown eyes. He
headed directly toward us, stopping once or twice to greet people who hailed
him, turning swiftly from one side to the other on the balls of his feet in a
dancing motion that was most graceful. Finally, he was upon us.

"Davey Bowles! Jupiter! The imperturbable and good
Jupiter! Miss?..."

"Masta Burr, suh. A glorious day for the Republic,
suh. You looking for Masta Jefferson, suh? He went with a group of gentlemen
over to the Representative House ... suh."

Jupiter stepped protectively in front of me as he made his
speech. Jupiter was the same commanding height, as well as the same age, as his
master. He towered over this Master Burr, who came up to his chest.

"Why isn't Bob Hemings here, Jupiter? Where's that
boy?"

"Robert Hemings, he freed, Masta Burr, suh, like
James. He done bought his freedom from Masta Jefferson so's he could join his
wife and his daughter in Richmond, who's slaves of Master Strauss there. Masta
Jefferson, he signed his manumission papers on Christmas Day
'94.
He regretted thoroughly leavin' Masta Jefferson, Masta Burr, but he
jus' couldn't prevail upon hisself to give up his wife and his daughter."

"Well, I wish him well, Jupiter."

"Yassuh."

Aaron Burr didn't take his eyes off me. He waited
patiently, apparently used to Jupiter's evasions, and said nothing.

Finally, Jupiter, after more rambling conversation that
astounded me by its servility, gave in.

"This here child, she's a servant of Masta Jefferson,
too. She's a Hemings, and Burwell here is her nephew. She's called Sally
Hemings of Monticello," Jupiter added unnecessarily. It was the longest
speech about me that I had ever heard Jupiter make.

"Another Hemings of Monticello! Good God, how many of
you are there in this family? And how is James, by the way? I heard he went
back to France. Mr. Jefferson's dinner parties haven't been the same since. As
a matter of fact, he has spent the last year trying to steal other people's
cooks! And this girl, surely she's not a field hand now, is she?"

"She's mistress of Masta Jefferson's wardrobe,
suh," Jupiter replied grandly.

This man called Aaron Burr turned his black and burning
gaze on me as if I were standing before him naked.

"The ... mistress ... of... Thomas ... Jefferson's
wardrobe ... Jupiter?" he uttered slowly.

His eyebrows arched almost up to the hairline of his wide
high forehead and gave him the appearance of Satan himself. His eyes raked me
with such a mixture of contempt and lewdness that my blood turned cold. Never
had a man looked at me thus. I was trembling. When I met his gaze he insolently
held it. He threw back his head and laughed—a high, tinkling, peculiar laugh
that was most unpleasant. I decided then and there that I detested Master Aaron
Burr.

"From the way he dresses, Jupiter, I didn't think he
had a wardrobe, let alone a mistress of it. Except for today," he added,
"as he is looking most elegant in French blue, possibly because he has his
mistress here to dress him ..."

I felt Jupiter tense.

"Je vous en prie, Monsieur. Je suis la femme de
chambre de Mademoiselle Maria Jefferson,"
I interrupted coldly in French. I don't know why I did it. I was
flushed with anger and I was glad my face was half-hidden by my hat. Master
Burr was as astonished as if a dog had started to speak Latin.

"Ah! Que je fus inspiree...."

"Quand je vous recus dans ma cour,"
I replied.

It was the first lines from an aria that Piccinni, the
singing tutor to Marie-Antoinette, had written. Marie-Antoinette was rumored to
have sung it in public to her lover, the Count Fersen, at one of the famous
parties at Trianon. It had been made into a limerick by the Parisian populace.
Everyone who had been in Paris just before the Revolution knew it by heart. I
couldn't help smiling at his astonishment, and he smiled back at me; a wide,
handsome wicked grin. I blushed, sorry that I had smiled at him despite myself.

"Vous parlez tres bien le francais,"
he said with his heavy American accent.
"Vous avez bien dit, une sewante de Maitre Jefferson? C'est a
dire, une esclave?"

"Oui, Monsieur,"
I replied.

He looked questioningly at Jupiter, then at Burwell,
neither of whom answered since they had not understood what we had said.
Burwell too had put his "don't-ask-me-I-just-a-poor-darky" expression
on his smooth golden-brown face.

"Eh bien, ton maitre a tant de choses a celebrer en
plus de son poste comme vice-president..."

"Que Dieu le protege dans sa tache,"
I replied, curtsying low and in the French manner.

"Bien dit
—well said,
indeed. That God protect him. From his enemies and his friends."

So this was my master's rival, I thought, the rich and
famous lawyer from New York, Aaron Burr. I loathed him.

"Burwell, take your aunt out of this mob. Jupiter ...
Davey, Mademoiselle Hemings of Monticello ..." Again he drew out the words
sarcastically.

Outrage filled my breast. If I had been white, he would not
have dared address me so, servant or no servant. Despite my rage, I curtsied
low, and to my surprise, he bowed expertly. He spun on his heels in a curious
dancing movement and walked jauntily away. He spoiled the effect, however, by
looking over his shoulder at me, and promptly bumped into a tall handsome man
who, Jupiter whispered, was Alexander Hamilton. The comic effect of the
formidable Master Burr falling over himself in his attempt to get a last look
at me didn't dispel my hatred, nor the sense of dread the crowd had evoked in
me. "Enemies"? I had thought that in all this great crowd there were
only friends and followers of my master. Who could be an enemy of Thomas
Jefferson and why? Who could wish him any harm? Certainly my master had
complained at times about the envy and the malice of political life, but mortal
enemies seemed impossible to conceive. Master Jefferson, the absolute ruler of
Monticello, was so gentle, so serene. He was surrounded by love. Could he be
surrounded here by people and forces he could not control? People that could
thwart his will as easily as he could that of his servants? I thought of the
newspaper articles I had read in the past few days. Yes, there were people here
he could not rule, could not order, could not even fight or convince, who were
as intelligent, as rich, as powerful as he. There were friends whose support he
would need to seek. Mysterious enemies from whom he had to defend or protect
himself. And, above all, there was the "public": that dangerous and
volatile mass that one could call neither friend nor enemy, for it could change
from one day to the next. And this "public" had been given the name
"The People" by their government, thereby making it one body, one
will, the sole source of power that the great sought with such tenacity.
"The People" now stood milling around the blood-red courtyard;
"The People" brushed up against Jupiter, Burwell, and me as we stood
to one side of our carriage. "The People" could destroy my master.
And if my master was destroyed, what would become of me? It was then that I
understood that my master's enemies were mine as well. That, in this white
world, I had nothing but enemies.

"Jupiter, I'm going into the carriage. I feel
faint."

As Jupiter helped me into the carriage, he said, "I
expect that Thomas Jefferson don't want you out here minglin' with this mob,
being scrutinized. I don't think he'd like the idea of you being exposed to
this riffraff. He expected you to go home after the ceremony. You can see there
ain't no ladies here." With that he slammed the door of the carriage.

"... and, I told him, my inclination would never
permit me to cross the Atlantic again."

I stared at him. With one willful declaration, the spoken
and unspoken promises of the last eight years were broken. All my dreams of
ever returning to France had vanished. Even now, with James gone without me,
and with two children to raise, buried deep, I had always hoped to return to
Marly. Now that subject was closed forever.

Three days after the inauguration, my master, accompanied
by Jupiter, went to a dinner given by Master Washington. Despite hopes by
everybody of a reconciliation between him and the new president, Adams, it had
been evident at the dinner that their relations were so cold and so singular as
to foment gossip even among the servants in the kitchens. Servants
industriously discussed every aspect of the political situation. They sometimes
seemed to have more information than the actual participants in the feuds and
intrigues that evolved. Jupiter was not surprised, therefore, when his master
returned from the dinner in a rare rage that only he and I were ever permitted
to witness.

His face was flushed way beyond its usually high color, and
he tore at his cravat so brutally that he practically strangled himself. His
long legs paced the floor of the tiny room, shaking the floorboards, and his
voice trembled with anger.

"The first and only thing John Adams proposed to me
was that I return to France!"

He then let out a stream of imprecations against his old
friend Adams; against Hamilton, Knox, Pickering, Burr, and the others. They
were all against him. I memorized the names. So, I thought, these were my
master's "enemies." In great agitation, he called for Jupiter to get
a horse saddled, then changed his mind. He sat down long enough for me to pull
off his boots. He stood up in his stocking feet and let loose another string of
insults.

"If John Adams and his inherited Federalist cabinet
think they can shut me out of the government, they had best think again!"

His huge fist came down on a small table beside the bed,
smashing it to pieces.

My brief excursion into white America was over. When we
returned up the mountain, from Philadelphia, the mountain was in bloom.

He stayed home for almost the whole year.

At the end of the following summer, Maria Jefferson married
her cousin Eppes in a small ceremony, amidst the demolition work going on over
our very heads at Monticello. The couple would reside at Bermuda Hundred, more
than a hundred miles away. For her wedding, her father gave Maria twenty-six
slaves, seventy-eight horses, pigs, and cows, as well as eight hundred acres.
Our good-byes were tender, for Polly had always treated me as a friend. We had
managed to forge an unwritten truce that placed our love for her father as
security against our love for each other. There were no secrets between us.
When I showed her the room connected with that of her father's, her sigh of
relief was as great as mine.

"Oh, Sally, how very nice!"

"He changed his apartments last year to accommodate
it, and Joe and John are building the staircase."

"It means you no longer have to cross the public hall
to enter and leave."

We never mentioned why this new arrangement would be better
for all concerned. Nor would she ever mention this new arrangement to her
father or ever allude to it.

"Remember, in Paris," I said, "all the
secret stairways and rooms in the mansion? How we would imagine romantic
stories about them?"

"We were so young in Paris," Polly said.

"You still are, Mistress. Seventeen is a wonderful
age...."

I had a safe harbor at last. But a mother is never safe. My
master had been home for almost five months, Polly was still on her honeymoon,
when rumors of an epidemic spreading up from Charlottesville struck terror in
the heart of every mother, black or white. Both Tom and Harriet fell ill.
Martha's daughters were sick at Edgehill, as well as half a dozen slave
children. During the next weeks, we worked without sleep, nursing the children,
Martha traveling back and forth between Edgehill and Monticello. Dulled by
exhaustion, shedding bitter tears, Martha and I watched my little Harriet, only
two summers old, slowly suffocate to death.