Sally Heming (40 page)

James looked out. The sense of desolation he had carried
all these years enveloped him with the familiarity of an old friend.
Loneliness. Dislocation. Thomas Jefferson's pompous proclamation had no more
freed him than his own impotent declarations in Paris so long ago, he thought
to himself. No piece of paper ever would, he had finally realized. Happiness
had dissolved before him. The future no longer stretched before him full of
hope, but swerved back onto itself and his past. He was not free. Only if he
took Sally away ... freed
her,
would he feel truly emancipated. Why, James wondered to himself, did he
need the freedom of Sally Hemings? He looked at his sister. Suppose she never
left Thomas Jefferson? Never left Monticello? What would become of him, James,
who needed her freedom more than he needed his own?

James left Virginia for Spain on an English ship out of
Norfolk sailing for Gibraltar. At the end of December, his letters began to
arrive. Sometimes his "You coming, Sally Hemings?" would echo like a
heartbeat on the page after page of fine script full of adventures and
descriptions, plans, hopes, and dreams ... always dreams, and the culmination
of those dreams, always just one more letter away.

Many times that winter I thought of Richmond and Gabriel
Prosser. The state capital was guarded these days by armed and uniformed
sentinels and a permanent cordon of bayonets. This was the lasting memorial to
Gabriel's defeat. The insurrection hung over the valley and all that was in it
which was his.

I thought about what my master had said:

"An insurrection is easily quelled in its first
effects, but far from being local, it will become general and whenever it does,
it will rise more formidable after every defeat until one will be forced after
dreadful scenes and sufferings to release them in their own way...."

"And how?" I had asked.

"I don't know, but if something is not done, and done
soon, we shall be the murderers of our own children...."

Had he known what he was saying? I felt a numbness come
over me.

"You must be chilled, my dear," he had said with
a concerned voice. "Shall I ask Jupiter to come and light a fire for
you?"

He could speak of murder and his children, and then his
slave Jupiter ...

The summer of
1800
that had just passed so quietly at home was also the summer that was,
ballot by ballot, crowning my lover president of the United States. The scent
of power had seeped into the mansion. The house had been abuzz with messengers,
letters, newspapers, and visitors.

It seemed to me an omen that the duel for power between
Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr came to an end while Jupiter lay dying. The
faithful Jupiter was fifty-seven years old and he shared his birth year with
his master, whom he had served since the age of fourteen. The handsome black
face, gray now with illness and impending death, flooded with joy as I bent
over his still bulky and powerful form to whisper the news of his master's
presidency.

"I knowed from de beginnin' at Willam' an' Mary dat
Masta Jefferson was gon' be first in de lan'...."

The words in their soft slur escaped me at first, and I
bent closer to the pain-racked body in order to hear.

"Uncle Jupiter, I have greetings for you from Master
Jefferson. He says you get well and he bring you up to Washington City to the
president's house...." I slipped into the slave dialect: "He say you
younger than him by four months and you ain't got no business gettin' all sick
without his permission. And you shore ain't got no permission to lay out and
die on him.... He says ol' Davey Bowles, he can't drive his bays like you. Say
he tearin' up dem bays, dat young pip ..." My eyes filled with tears as I
soothed the old man, the soft Virginia drawl falling as easily from my lips as
the French I sometimes spoke with Polly. "Full-blooded bays, Masta Eppes
bought fo' Masta Jefferson's carriage in Washington. You'll be seated behin'
dem, Uncle Jupiter.... They's de mos' spirited, de mos' showy, de mos'
beautiful.... They cost de masta sixteen hundred dollars. Best horses in
Washington... first in de lan'..."

We had called the black doctor from Milton and the white
doctor from Charlottesville. My mother had strained her knowledge of herb
remedies to the limit, but nothing had helped.

"Uncle Jupiter," I said softly, "you wan'
som' milk bread? Try a little, Mama made it jus' fo' you...." But he could
not hear my words; my mother closed his eyes, and, on either side of him,
Martha and I knelt. I was going to have to write my master that his beloved
Jupiter was dead.

The news of Jupiter's death spread throughout the
household, and then out toward the slave quarters and outlying plantations. The
slaves began to gather for the wake, a low moan lapping up the mountain from
the underside of Monticello.

It was at the funeral of Jupiter that most of the slave
population learned that they were now the property of the president of the
United States.

CHAPTER 31

MONTICELLO,
1801

He came home
for the first
time as president. Except for Maria, who was too ill to come to Monticello,
everything on his mountain was safe and at peace.

He was proud. He was loved, not only in his own domains but
by the whole nation.

We watched a rainstorm break over Shadwell, far in the
distance. From the north terrace, we could see the gray mists resting on the
range that stretched for forty miles to the Chesapeake Bay. In the distance, we
could see the low-hanging clouds of a spring storm, which looked like a theater
set to the two of us standing in the weak April afternoon sun.

He had built not only power last summer but his mansion,
which had taken its final shape. I could feel its space, every foot of its
masonry, every inch of its brick and mortar, behind me like a fortress. He had
overlooked no detail, had underplayed no effort toward perfection. He had
goaded his master builders, John and Joe, into a sublimity of effort. His
long-accumulated books, paintings, sculptures, and instruments— some of them in
their cases since our return—had at last found their proper places. His
curtains and draperies, china, silver, Persian rugs, linens, clocks had also
been incorporated. His plants, his trees, his roses stretched in gigantic
patterns on the west and south sides of the mansion. The house stood, a
one-story brick building facing west, surmounted by an octagonal dome that
camouflaged its second story, while the terracing and sloping of the mountain
camouflaged the under-story. The beautiful and perfectly proportioned facade,
with its Doric columns and heavy cornice and balustrades, looked over the vast
lawns and gardens down onto the valley, and out onto the world. Behind that
facade, which had taken so long to build, his slave and white families lived
with his other possessions.

He looked down at me. "Look at the rain clouds,"
he said. "It rains, it storms, and yet we feel not one drop."

"It thunders, too," I said, as the first
rumblings of the spring storm's fury was carried over the distance of the
mountain.

"And it lightens as well," he laughed as the sky
beyond us burst white. "Yes, we are not lit by it."

"And thank God," I said.

We stood watching the shower. The servants would be
lighting the candles in a little while and setting the table for eight places,
even for his solitary dinner, in the rosewood-paneled dining room off the
center hall.

I knew what he was thinking.

His Eden was complete.

In another month, there would be a new addition to our
family. He wanted a girl, so I prayed for one, for him. A president's daughter.
"If it is a girl, name her Harriet, after our Harriet," he had said.
"And if it is a boy?"

"Then name him James."

I knew he was happy. I begged him to await the birth. He
had never been present at the birth of any of my children. Again, he left me to
the final weeks of waiting.

On the eighth of May, the very anniversary of the birth of
his last child by my half sister Martha, whose death had begun the journey to
my destiny, I gave birth to my fifth child.

I named her Harriet, as I had promised.

My mother was not pleased. "Martha Jefferson did the
same thing," she said, "and she lost both of them Lucy Elizabeths.
Don't name this daughter Harriet, Sally."

"Her father wants her named Harriet. He's lost one
Harriet, and he wants another. This one will survive."

"Not for you or him to say if she gonna live or die.
God has still got some rights, even in Virginia. Masta may be president, but he
aint' got that last power—life and death, and well he should know it!"

"You're just superstitious, Maman, it doesn't make any
difference what her name is. You sound like one of those Indian squaws who
dress their son up like a girl so that God won't know he's a male."

Yet, even as I argued with Elizabeth Hemings, the sense of
doom that had plagued me since Gabriel's insurrection took hold of me. I looked
down on the ivory-skinned, auburn-haired infant sleeping in my arms, another
Harriet, and pressed her to my breast. She would survive. And she would survive
to live free.

"My Martha named that second Lucy Elizabeth after the
dead one, when I told her—"

"I don't care what you told your precious Martha
Wayles. I don't care what Martha Jefferson did or didn't do. I'm not Martha
Wayles. I am me! Martha Wayles Jefferson is nothing to me, nor do I want her to
be."

"She's your sister, if you like it or not, and I told
her—"

"Mama! I don't care if she was my sister or not! She
has nothing,
nothing
to do with me or my children. This is my Harriet. Mine and Thomas
Jefferson's."

"This is the first time in my life, daughter, I ever
heard you call him by his name." There was amazement in her voice.
"Lord, child, what's the matter? I know who you are, I know you not your
half sister. I'm your mother, not hers, though it's true I loved her. But you
can't ever say I loved her more than I love you."

"You did, Mama. Admit it. You've said it a million
times. Your white daughters. Your sweethearts."

Anger now hung like a cloud between us. I had hurt her. But
I had not been able to stop myself.

"No, child," she said, "it's not like you
say. I guess I am like that Indian squaw. I pretend I love you less so that God
won't punish me by bringing hurt on you. I'm only afraid for you. You won't
fight for yourself. You won't protect yourself. I only want that. That you
fight for yourself and your children, that's all. I didn't mean no
offense."

We looked at each other. She didn't understand. I was
fighting. I was fighting him. I was fighting love, slavery, and Virginia.

"No, Mama, you never mean any offense," I said.

"But, daughter, you might suckle her yourself and not
give her over to a wet-nurse like you did the others."

I tightened my hold on Harriet. Martha Randolph was
pregnant and ready to bear. My mother always made it a point to remind me that
Martha nursed all her babies.

"Now don't go getting resentful about nursing,"
she said, as if she had read my mind. "You careful, it won't hurt your
bosom any. Martha Randolph done suckled all her children, and she still got a
beautiful bosom. Pretty enough for any man to lay his head on."

I don't know why, but I started to cry. Sobs of rage and
scalding resentment shook me. What did I want? He loved me. What did I want? He
listened to me. What was it then I wanted?

My mother took me in her arms. Her face next to mine was
dark and cloudy.

The summer meant the return to Monticello of my master's
white family. Thomas and Beverly were swept up in the ever-increasing swarm of
children, slave and white, that mingled in total freedom all the summer months.
My Thomas, red-headed and gray-eyed, romped on the west lawn with Thomas
Jefferson Randolph, red-headed and blue-eyed; and the Randolph girls, all dark
like their father with his Indian blood. Anne and Ellen found in blue-eyed
Beverly the perfect doll. Martha Randolph had proudly announced to my mother,
much to her vexation, that she was again "expecting." My mother had
wanted only me to give birth this year.