The President's Daughter (41 page)

I said nothing. It was Eston's decision. But I wasn't all that sure about still being myself.

“Moreover, we've seen the last of Monticello. It is in ruins. Robert's ironwork is falling off its hinges; Joe Fossett's paint is peeling; the whole house has sunk to one side and leans; the dome is cracked; the rooms are empty, glass panes in the sash windows broken. The wind howls through the grand hall. And the rain. And the snow. If houses have souls, this one's dead and gone to hell and damnation. And now this wreck's been sold out of the family forever. It will never be a Jefferson's again.”

Eston paused and looked down at his prop, a copy of the King James version of the Bible. “I have built my mansion on sand—”

“Eugenia didn't recognize me!”

“And what if she did, Sister? You know there's an unspoken rule amongst black folks. She never would have given you away—especially in public.”

“But she really
didn't
know, Eston. There was no recognition in her eyes.”

“Harriet, she saw a powerful white lady who was going to protect her and her husband from slave catchers. How could she imagine you were the fugitive slave Harriet Hemings? Don't you see that? Once you cross the color line, you
are
an invention. How could you not be? The color line itself is an invention! You are not perceived as the same person—not because inside you aren't, but because people see you differently. You are their creation, not your own. I know that. And I know what I'm doing about it. I'm going to be rich one day, Harriet. Not like Thomas Jefferson, land-poor, hobbled with mortgages and credit, dependent on crops and weather, and prices set in London and New York. No. I'm going to be a man who sets prices, for a whole industry. The power industry—steamboats, steam engines, and steam locomotives. I'm not changing my race to be a farmer.

“I'm going to marry a girl as white as I am, but
colored.
Didn't know it at the time; she's a runaway out of Virginia. Fell in love with her on sight. Haven't a clue to where she is now. But I'm going to find her. I've got the rest of my life to look for her.”

In the past nine years, Eston had changed from a gawky eighteen-year-old boy to a powerfully built, finished man. His hands were huge. His feet, planted on the floorboards of my kitchen, seemed to be rooted like trees. The broad shoulders on the six-foot-three-inch frame seemed to take up all the
space. He was dressed in homespun and leather, farming clothes, and he was armed. He had on soft kid Indian boots and buckskin trousers, with a black-and-white-checkered shirt that reminded me of my father's red frock coat, and a red bandanna was tied around the thick column of his neck. The freckled face so resembled the miniature it was uncanny.

“How do you like seeing the portrait of yourself in the locket?” I asked him.

“What portrait?”

“Why, the one you just handed me. The portrait of Papa in Mother's locket.”

“I've never opened the locket.”

“Weren't you ever curious to know what was in it?”

“No. As far as I was concerned, it belonged to you.”

“There's a lock of Father's hair, and a miniature of him painted by John Trumbull in Paris in ‘eighty-nine.”

I handed him back the locket. Slowly he opened it and stared at his image. He whistled low and then shut it.

“Take it,” I said. “I already have one. There are three; Martha has the last.” Eston's huge hand closed around the gleaming object.

“Isn't Madison coming to see me?” I asked.

“He's still at sixes and sevens with you, Sister.”

“At least tell me if he's all right.”

“He's married—married to a freedwoman named Mary McCoy. They're in the wagon. They have a daughter, Sarah. Mama's first grandchild …”

He looked away, embarrassed, remembering my children.

“If Madison won't come, perhaps Mary and Sarah will.”

“I'll get the baby,” said Eston. “Mama loved that baby.”

When Eston returned, he was holding a fat, brown, beautiful three-year-old, my niece, Sarah, the only grandchild my mother had ever held in her arms. As I took Sarah in mine, all the weight and contradictions of my life swept down upon me. I began to sob, deep, hollow, helpless, wracking sobs. My hand shaded Sarah's skull so that my tears would not scald her.

My brothers left at dawn, with their overflowing wagons. Eston had left me the objects my mother had willed to me: the letters, the pendulum clock, the Louis XIV writing table, the bronze clock, the French flag, and the ruby earrings, which I gave to Sarah. I kept the box of letters, the pendulum clock, and the writing table. I put the bronze clock aside for Thenia, should she marry.

I knew the journey west was long, hard, and, once across the Missouri, dangerous. They would cross the Susquehanna and pass the Appalachians at Youngstown, where their route would take them to Zanesville and Columbus, Ohio, then to the frontier town of Terre Haute, Indiana. From there Madison would head north to Vandalia, Illinois, and Eston would ford the Ohio at Wheeling and continue south to Missouri. There he intended to change his name from Eston Hemings to Eston Jefferson.

As if the Missouri itself were the color line, my brothers parted there and lost track of each other for thirty years. From that moment, each of our lives, black or white, unfolded according to its own criteria, and our parents' graves were left untended for a quarter of a century.

While my brothers roamed the West, my brother-in-law roamed the southern tip of Africa. Almost as soon as Thance and I were married, Thor left on a scientific expedition. During the years that followed, he made expedition after expedition, restlessly collecting his specimens, verifying his work, cataloguing, and writing. He wrote back letters as handsome as he was.

Thor wrote letters from the ends of the world—Cape Town or Durban or as far north as St. Paul de Luanda—letters of such beauty and descriptive power that each was read aloud dozens of times. He described the flora and fauna, the landscape, the people, the weather, the animals, the expeditions, all the human comedy of life lived as if on a different planet, sequestered, enveloped, hermetic, yet open to vast vistas, momentous discoveries, and wild adventures.

Each time Thor returned to Africa, he took Abraham with him, and each successive journey resulted in a more and more pensive Thenia. That she was in love with Abraham was evident.

Abraham was everything that was admirable in a man. The work he and Thor accomplished under dangerous but exultant circumstances had attached them in a bond of friendship that was as strong as that between the twins. Abraham had finally been allowed to study at the new Jefferson University pharmacy school in Philadelphia, and though he would never receive a diploma as a pharmacist, it was a personal triumph for him and Thor and also Thenia, who loved the idea of Abraham attending the school named after her former master. Brilliant, determined, and tough, Abraham planned to return to his native land one day for good.

In Africa, Thor and Abraham had no contact with the slave piracy that went on much farther north, along the coasts of Guinea and Sierra Leone, but they had heard of Captain Denmore and his British patrols, the freeing of the
slave barracoons at Lumbata, and they rejoiced, as I did, when the warring kings who supplied the slave cargo signed a peace treaty in 1833.

IN CAMP NEAR THE VILLAGE OF KOKAULUOME

My dear Ones,

You have never seen a sunset until you have seen one here, with great rafts of fire smoldering among the dark loaves of clouds and into this circle of orange, the noble, stupendous gray elephant lifting his mammoth head and trumpeting his happiness. His mighty silhouette wades through the coarse grass, which reaches his belly but is over the head of the average man, beckoning his family (two females and their calves) to follow. … The world turns red in his wake and the sun disappears below the horizon as if a lantern had been blown out. Night descends like a curtain of lead. The Africans themselves bless sundown as they curse the sunrise, which brings the volcanic heat, so fierce it fries one's soul. But in the highlands the climate is almost temperate, tolerable at least for a white man, heaven for the Zulus, who immigrated to these parts from the southern desert plains a hundred years ago.

Abraham and I, Kelly, Tournewell, and the others have joined forces with Drs. Swin and Carrington, a Scottish botanist and a naturalist, to plan an excursion into the bush around Ladysmith. As one group, we are safer and more efficient. There is a Welsh anthropologist named Kenneth Summers who is studying the Hottentot tribe, looking for what he claims is the birthplace of humankind. He holds long conversations about it with Abraham, whose tribe also believes this land was the birthplace of man. When Abraham's work in Philadelphia is completed, he intends to return home for good. Strange, the bearers and assistants treat Abraham as a European rather than as an African. Strange, too, how quickly the transformation takes place. He still translates for us, of course, but his relations with the people of the various villages where we go to collect specimens and remedies are more deferential than when he was merely a “mission doctor.” The fact that he has been across the sea, they feel, has irrevocably changed him and his relations with his—I was going to say
former
tribe. They find him contaminated with western ideas. Strange to think of xenophobia here … but the fact that despite his riches and position, he will not buy nor accept as a gift a wife, is an inexplicable lapse of good manners. But now I know the reason for his chaste behavior.

There was an eclipse of the moon in the early hours of this morning, and I watched it with him. The shade entered its perimeter a little before 3:00
A.M
., and by 5:30 it was wholly darkened. Then it was lost in the haze of early morning. I had only seen the moon eclipsed once before, and never
in such a majestic landscape; this momentous, mystical experience we shared. Abraham told me the Bantus believe an eclipse is the Lord of the Sky walking past his harem, which is lit exclusively by the moon, to choose a bride whose face must not be seen by any man. So he darkens the sky to prevent voyeurs. It was so beautifully told that at that moment I knew that Abe loved Thenia, has loved her from the first time he set eyes on her —is not destiny strange! And he has been waiting for her to grow up to make his declaration, which he intends to do when we return. His exposition of this love he's carried so long was one of the most elegant and touching I have ever heard. And since we
all
know Thenia has been hopelessly in love with Abe ever since he walked down the gangplank of the
Galleon,
I do believe we are in for a wedding very soon. He says he thanks the gods that she is not an
African,
for he would have to pay a hell of a bride-price for her. …

Abe Boss is invaluable to me. I could never begin to gather and catalogue the specimens we've collected in the past months without him, nor the remedies and prescriptions he's gathered on his own from the priests and medicine men of his acquaintance. The Wellington Company profits from all of this, and since he has been refused his diploma in pharmacy, perhaps we could offer to set Abe up as an apothecary—in his own shop—a Wellington subsidiary. I might speak to Mother about it when we get back.

Since the dry season, we have built our camp out of sight of the sea, on the high ground between the Lummocks and the lagoons. It affords some defense against marauders. We have set up a real laboratory here, where I store and label my specimens. My distilleries are bubbling, my alcohol jars are full … I did make some banana brandy the other night. … It is almost cozy with our camp beds and chairs, our rush matting underfoot and dyed indigo cloths hanging on the walls.

I feel I have somehow earned the right not only to live and work in this place, but to love it.

Yours,

T. Wellington

There was dead silence; then the whole family stood up and cheered. That was how Thenia Hemings got engaged to Abraham Boss.

“Help!”

I heard the cry before I saw a young brown-skinned woman, her skirts hiked up, her feet flying, racing down Front Street, passing as she did in front of the Wellington apothecary just as Charlotte and I emerged. The
girl passed close enough to us for me to smell the faunlike scent of unadulterated terror. She was pursued by a warden, a policeman, and two men who looked like slave catchers. Charlotte and I flattened ourselves against the doorway of the warehouse. The men caught up with her and tried to place fetters on her wrists as she struggled to escape. The cornered girl made grunting noises like a trapped animal, and her eyes began to roll back in her head. Sykes, I thought. Sykes. Sykes. Sykes. The world turned red. Not blood red, but dark burgundy, like wine or the color of closed eyelids against the sun. Before I knew it, a patrician southern drawl likened to the absolute authority of my father, its timbre like the pure notes of a clarinet, ejaculated onto the spring air.

“What does this mean, Officer? Why are you arresting this woman?” The regal solidity of my voice made the men draw back as I approached.

“Fugitive, miss. Got a warrant and a reward out for her.”

“Impossible,” I heard myself say. “She works for me. She works in this warehouse here. Let her go!”

“No, ma'am. She's an escaped slave. She corresponds to this here description—right here!”

“But, Warden, you know this advertisement is
void
in Pennsylvania! We have a personal liberty bill here. Kidnapping a fugitive slave is a felony! You are helping a criminal, sir!”

“I'm just making
sure
she has her pass, ma'am, and is no more than ten blocks from her place of residence. I was arresting her under the black laws of Pennsylvania for vagrancy and street walking, when this gentleman claimed her too!”

The warden handed me a slave advertisement, which I read slowly, my mind racing.