Sally Heming (42 page)

"If worse come to worse, I'll tell Masta Jefferson.
There ain't nothing else I can do to protect you from a white man. Best you
tell Peter first, then, if that don't work, I'll tell Masta."

"They'll fight," Critta said.

"Better they beat on each other than you! Let them
kill each other." Anger shook my mother's voice.

"But what old Masta going to say he find out Danby and
Peter fightin' over me?"

"There's going to be hell to pay," Elizabeth
Hemings said grimly.

I could see Critta hesitate.

"I'll tell him," Critta finally said. "I'll
tell him he come messing with me, I'll tell his brother."

"They'll all get thrown off here they make a
ruckus...."

Elizabeth Hemings looked at me after Critta had left. I
could tell what she was thinking. Bad blood. Bad blood between brothers. Bad
blood between Martha and me; all the pauper relatives feeding off the
larder.... She began to count up the supplies the household had gone through
this summer, then stopped. She started to laugh. She sat down hard and laughed
until the tears poured down her face.

"White workers running rampant like a herd of goats
through the slave quarters, relatives eating me out of house and home, and
everybody come to me ... the head slave in the harem! I hope ... I hope Peter
Carr beats the tar out of his brother!"

Elizabeth Hemings looked up at me. I didn't know if she was
laughing or crying.

The fight between Danby Carr and his brother over Critta
started in the ice cellar, where Critta had been cornered by Danby. Her son
Jamey, who had gone to fetch his father, witnessed the fight of his father and
his uncle over his mother. Critta was hurt in the fracas, having been pushed
against a wall. Her wrist was broken and she had begged Martin to take Jamey
off to Pantops after Jamey had tried to attack his father. Critta took shelter
with me, and Maria promised she could go back to Bermuda Hundred with her when
she returned. Critta went back to Peter Carr, and Danby left for his
plantation.

Maria's baby came at the end of September, and, as feared,
the birth was long and difficult and the child feeble. I didn't think there was
that much blood in a human body, as we fought to stem its flow with teas and
herbs. Finally, a doctor was called, and he recommended more bleeding to
"rid" Maria of poisons that might lead to infection. On this
murderous note, he left, after conferring with a distraught husband and father,
who declined to follow his advice.

Little by little Maria fought her way back, willed to live
by my mother and me, but the child continued to suffer convulsions. I took the
infant Francis to my own breast as well.

No sooner had we suffered through Maria's recovery, as if
God's own vengeance was sweeping down, a plague of the dreaded whooping cough
swept through the children on the hill. Once again all of the women on the
mountain were waging the fight against death to the children. All grudges were
forgotten then as we joined in the struggle to preserve the fragile lives.

This time no child perished.

Exhausted, we parted, Martha and Maria returning to their
plantations, Critta gratefully going along with Maria, leaving Elizabeth Hemings
and me alone on the hill to face the winter. Anything the winter would bring, I
thought, would be better than the summer just past. But I was wrong.

The preparations for Christmas were under way; my chests of
decorations had been taken down from the attic, the housecleaning and baking
already started. I was sitting, playing the new harpsichord, when I heard the
strangled cry of my mother and the heavy spurred boots of Davey Bowles, who had
ridden two days without stopping from Washington City to arrive before the
letter.

I had seen Davey Bowles lips moving, but it seemed to have
taken forever for the words to reach me.

It was the fourth day of December
1801
. Davey had come to bring the news of James's death.

He had been found dead under mysterious circumstances in
Philadelphia, shot, perhaps by his own hand, although the weapon was nowhere to
be found. He was already buried in unconsecrated ground up North. There had
been no belongings, no letter, no message. Only John Trumbull's silver-framed
portrait of me and a small silver dagger were found near his bedside. Davey
handed them to me in silence as I stood screaming James's name over and over
again.

James's death seemed to herald the final calamity that was
to befall us.

From this day on, I would live like a perfect slave, in
perfect love, and this slavery and this love would be my strength and my
fortress; never would he forgive himself or his world for it, and never would
he escape from it. It would be the master who would be branded and bonded to me
forever. I would turn love against the possessor and daze him into the
everlasting hell of guilt! I vowed Thomas Jefferson would see only what he
wanted to in the silver-and-gilt mirror of my love and, with that reflecting
force, I would strike him down, blind him, commit arson against him. And what
arm would he have against it? If I could not hate him, I would kill him with
love. And if I could not kill him, I would maim him forever, cripple and
paralyze him, so that he would have no possibility to walk away from me, no
voice to deny me. A ruthless joy took hold of me. I fled from the room and from
the mansion out of doors.

I would free his sons.

CHAPTER 32

NOVEMBER
1802

If there is any country on earth where the course of true
love may be expected to run smooth, it is America.

H
arriet martineau,
Society in America,
1837

THE RECORDER
Richmond
September
1st, 1802
It is well known
that the man,
whom it delighteth the people to
honor,
keeps, and for many years past has kept, as his concubine,
one of his slaves. Her name is
sally
. The name of her eldest son is Tom. His features are said to bear a
striking though sable resemblance to those of the President himself. The boy is
ten or twelve years of age. His mother went to France in the same vessel with
Mr. Jefferson and his two daughters. The delicacy of this arrangement must
strike every portion of common sensibility. What a sublime pattern for an
American ambassador to place before the eyes of two young ladies!

If the reader does not feel himself disposed to pause we
beg leave to proceed. Some years ago, the story had once or twice been hinted
at in
Rind's Federalist.
At that time, we
believed the surmise to be an absolute calumny. One reason for thinking so was
this: A vast body of people wished to debar Mr. Jefferson from the
presidency....

By this wench Sally, our president has had several
children. There is not an individual in the neighbourhood of Charlottesville
who does not believe the story; and not a few who know it....

'Tis supposed that, at the time when Mr. Jefferson wrote so
smartly concerning negroes, when he endeavoured so much to
belittle
the African race, he had no
expectation that the chief magistrate of the United States was to be the
ringleader in shewing that
his opinion was
erroneous; or, that he should choose an African stock whereupon he was to
engraft his own descendants....

Mute! Mute! Mute! Yes very Mute! will all those republican
printers of political biographical information be upon this point. Whether they
stir or not, they must feel themselves like a horse in a quick-sand. They will
plunge deeper and deeper, until no assistance can save them.

If the friends of Mr. Jefferson are convinced of his
innocence
they
will make an
appeal of the same sort. If they rest in silence, or if they content themselves
with resting upon a general denial, they cannot hope for credit. The allegation
is of a nature too
black
to be suffered to remain in suspense. We should be glad to hear of its
refutation. We give it to the world under the firmest belief that such a
refutation
never can be made.
The
A
frican venus
is said to officiate as housekeeper at Monticello. When Mr. Jefferson
has read this article, he will find leisure to estimate how much has been lost
or gained by so many unprovoked attacks upon.

J.
t. callender.

"James T. Callender." I repeated that familiar
name once again. "James T. Callender."

My mother burst into tears.

"Sweet Jesus! You mean that's printed in the newspaper
for everyone to see?"

"Not only
The Recorder,
Mama, everywhere in Virginia, by the
Examiner,
in the
Virginia Gazette
in Lynchburg, in
Fredericksburg, in Philadelphia, in Washington City, in New York." I had
left out the parts she couldn't understand.

"But what does it mean, daughter?" For once, my
mother didn't know what to say.

"It means, Mama, that they are attacking the master
through me, to hurt him. They accuse him of many more dreadful things than
miscegenation. They accuse him of being a coward, of trying to seduce another
man's wife, of being an infidel...."

My voice had broken. In truth, I knew so little, entombed
here at Monticello. Maria and Martha certainly knew more, but refused to speak.
Even Maria. So we remained in our cocoons of silence, not able to comfort one
another. For once, the slave intelligence had been silent. Yet the plantations
all knew. My shame was the common knowledge of every field hand in Virginia.
The intelligence passed from those who could read to the multitudes who could
not.

"And Thomas Jefferson, up in Washington City? What
does he say?" my mother wanted to know.

"He doesn't say anything, Mama. He doesn't even know
that I know about the newspaper articles."

"He ain't said
nothing
to you?"

"No."

"And to his friends? ..."

"He has kept his silence. He has said nothing to no
one."

"But it can't go on like this! He will sell you and
the children ... out of Virginia. O God, have mercy on us!"

"God," I said, "has nothing to do with
this." My mother looked up. "And Martha?"

"She knows as much as I, or perhaps more, but she is
as silent as her father."

"And Maria?"

"Maria, too, is silent."

"All are silent?" my mother asked. Her voice was
small in the empty, white-draped room where we sat facing each other, mother
and daughter, two generations of white men's concubines.

"Oh, no. His friends are rallying around him, denying
everything. Denying that I exist. Calling Callender the most foul and
blasphemous slanderer ever to be born. Meriwether Jones, the editor of the
Richmond Enquirer,
has wished
Callender in Hell by means of the James River. He's the one who wrote: 'Is it
strange, therefore, that a servant of Mr. Jefferson's at a house where so many
strangers resort, who is daily engaged in the ordinary vocations of the family
life, like
thousands
of others, should
have a mulatto child? Certainly not....' "

My mouth twitched.
Certainly not.
I thought of my sister Critta, my half sister Mary, my mother's
daughters, Nance and Betty. I thought of my mother, Elizabeth, and of her
mother, the African. I thought of all black bondswomen everywhere in the South
at God's and Fate's mercy. Thousands.

"But he, the masta, says nothing?"