Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

by Stephen O'Connor

  Patsy eagerly closes the book and puts it on top of the pamphlet by Abbé Sieyès. She hurries over to her father and kisses his cheek. “Greetings, Pa-pah!”

  Thomas Jefferson looks across the room at Sally Hemings with an expression that seems equally likely to become a smile or a contortion of grief.

  Sally Hemings can hardly bear to look at him, but she also can’t look away. She is standing, but her legs are suddenly so restless she has to fight to keep still.

  “What have you been doing?” he asks his daughter absently.

  “I’ve been teaching Sally to read. We’re starting with your book!”

  Thomas Jefferson laughs in surprise. His expression has become a broad, happy smile, but he is looking at Sally Hemings with such fierce longing that she has to sit back down.

  Patsy’s eyes move from the very strange expression on her father’s face to the dazed, almost frightened expression on Sally Hemings’s, then back again. She does this several times.

  “That’s wonderful,” says Thomas Jefferson. He puts his arm around his daughter’s shoulders, steers her out of the room and, over the top of her head, gives Sally Hemings one last, lingering glance.

  Patsy also casts one last glance over her shoulder, her expression rendering confusion on the verge of becoming a threat.

  Whether the black of the Negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan for the black women over those of his own species.

  —Thomas Jefferson

  Notes on the State of Virginia

  Written in 1781–82, published in 1787

  Afterward he looks at her and smiles. She smiles, too, though there is a dart of uncertainty over one eye. “This isn’t real,” he says. He looks sad for a moment. Then he kisses her.

  It is June 27, 1789, almost a month since Sally Hemings returned from Madame Gautier’s. She is kneeling on a towel in the garden, pulling Virginia carrots for Jimmy, when she notices Thomas Jefferson standing in the window of his study. The reflection of the sunlit building on the far side of the garden is across his face, so she does not see that he is looking at her until he pushes the window open and gestures for her to come.

  Her whole body flushes, and she looks around to see if anyone might be watching. Deciding she has picked enough carrots to make leaving the garden seem natural, she nods once at Thomas Jefferson, stands, shakes the earth off her towel and folds it atop the carrots in her basket. Her hand rises involuntarily to tuck a loose hank of hair under her bonnet, and she also glances at the skirt of her gown to be sure no mud clings to it. She could walk down the path between the cabbage and the ankle-high corn straight into Thomas Jefferson’s study—its windows being “French windows”—but she is worried that Clotilde or, worse, Jimmy might step out of the kitchen at exactly the wrong moment. So instead she walks toward the kitchen door. Just as she is about to enter, she sees Thomas Jefferson pull the windows to his study shut.

  The kitchen is empty, so Sally Hemings just leaves the basket on the table and hurries into the main part of the house, slapping the remaining particles of earth from her hands as she goes. Thomas Jefferson has not merely closed the windows to his study but drawn shut the heavy curtains. In the room’s brown dimness, Sally Hemings notices the rigidity of his shoulders and back. He steps away from her as she enters and turns toward the chair where she sat the last time she was in this cluttered, paper-strewn sanctuary of his.

  She does not want to sit. She stops in the middle of the room and faces Thomas Jefferson. He takes another half step back and looks around as if he has lost something. She wants to ask him what is wrong, but she can’t bring herself to speak. So she just stands there, waiting.

  “Thank you, Sally,” he says at last. “I want . . . I asked you to come in here because . . . I’ve been thinking, and I have come to some conclusions that I hope you will see the merits of.”

  She remains silent, but this time because she knows she won’t like what he is going to say, and she wants to make it hard for him.

  The fingers of his right hand reach unconsciously into his left coat sleeve and tug a couple of times at the cuff of his shirt. He clears his throat. “I hope you will not think there is any lack of ardor in my feelings for you. On the contrary, the conclusions I have reached are, very definitely, a response to the intensity of that ardor, as I hope will be obvious. You know, of course, what the world would think if our . . . current situation were to become public knowledge. Or, more to the point, if Patsy and Polly—” He stops talking, looking lost at first, but then his gaze turns severe. “We have been very fortunate, but the longer we allow things to continue, the more likely we are to be discovered. Discovery is an absolute certainty, in fact, unless we take action immediately. And since it is clear that neither of us has the power to restrain our unnatural impulses, I think we have no other recourse than that you should return to Virginia ahead of the rest of us—on the very next boat, if possible.”

  Sally Hemings experiences three incompatible feelings simultaneously: She feels as if she has pitched over a precipice and is falling helplessly. She feels relieved that this exhausting and terribly confusing episode of her life might be over. And she feels outraged. This “current situation” would not have happened if he hadn’t pushed himself upon her—yet now he feels justified in dismissing her without any regard for her feelings! She wants to leap on him and put her hands around his throat.

  She cannot move or speak. The blood has drained from her face.

  Thomas Jefferson has taken a step in her direction. His brow is puckered and his lips parted in grief. “Oh, sweet Sally! This is so hard. I don’t want you to think this is easy for me. But it’s only temporary. I’ll be back at Monticello by August. September at the latest.” He is lifting his arms to embrace her. She takes a step back.

  “What are you telling me?” Now hers is the severe voice.

  Thomas Jefferson’s arms drop. She looks down at the floor.

  “If you are telling me,” she says, “that we’re just going to start up all over again when you get home, then what’s the point?”

  “I just thought . . .” He shakes his head, his eyes heavy, his lips downturned. “Perhaps, after a little time and distance, we will be more self-possessed.”

  “I’m not going.” Sally Hemings turns away from him. She places her hands atop a German specimen cabinet that she can only just see over, and she rests her forehead against it. The room is swirling around her. “I’m not a slave in this country.”

  “Oh, Sally!”

  “You can’t force me to do anything.”

  “Oh, dear Sally!” Thomas Jefferson has come up behind her. She feels his encompassing form against the length of her back. He kisses the crown of her head. “Oh, God!” he says. “I don’t know what to do.” He puts his arms around her. He kisses her ear. Then he kisses her cheek and neck. “Nothing makes sense.” She feels his hardness pressing into her, first softly and then with force.

  She turns around in his arms.

  “Oh, Jesus!” she says. “What has happened to me?” She seeks out his mouth with her own and slips her tongue between his lips.

  Thoma
s Jefferson and Sally Hemings have retreated into a dark stairway off a foyer at the end of a deserted street, not far from the market where he spotted her contemplating a pushcart heaped with walnuts. His mouth is upon hers. Her apron, skirt and petticoats are in a heap upon her belly, and he has inserted one finger into her liquid warmth. “We must stop this,” he says. “This can’t go on. It is wrong. It is just wrong.”

  Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson have left Paris and are walking along a yellow dirt path beside the Seine in the direction of Saint-Cloud. They are holding hands—unworried, so far outside the city, about being seen. It is one of those late-June days when the world seems to be made of sunlight, gentle breezes and birdsong. Within the city the river is constrained by steep embankments, but here its waters make liquid clucks and clicks along a narrow, stone-strewn beach. Two swans drift like water lilies near the far shore. A fisherman in a frayed straw hat stands barefoot on a boulder, his line tugged downstream at a forty-five-degree angle. Just past him half a dozen ducks paddle sociably in the shallows and every now and then tip their tails into the air to nibble morsels from the river bottom.

  “I’ve missed walking in the country,” says Sally Hemings, giving Thomas Jefferson’s hand a swing. “At home I used to walk for hours all by myself.”

  “I did, too.” He smiles at her. “I am never so happy as when I am walking.”

  “Really?” She has always imagined him as happiest in his study and in discussions with friends.

  “As a boy especially. I never felt I belonged in my own family. It was easier when I was off on my own. I could just be myself. I could live in a world that was more in accord with my natural disposition.”

  Sally Hemings stops walking, her lips parted, as if around an unspoken word.

  “What?” says Thomas Jefferson.

  “Nothing.” She swings his hand, and they resume walking. “It’s just that I felt that way, too.”

  “I suppose everyone feels that way, at least to some extent.”

  A fenced-in barge loaded with cattle has just emerged around a bend. With no grass to chew, the cattle all hold their heads up and look oddly alert—like a crowd of delegates on their way to a meeting. Two men at the front of the barge push long poles against the river bottom. A third at the rear holds the rudder.

  “Why did you think you didn’t belong in your family?” asks Sally Hemings.

  “Oh . . .” Thomas Jefferson heaves a deep sigh. “We weren’t much of a family, really. More like a collection of prisoners forced to live in the same cell. All any of us could think about was escape.”

  “Why? What made you feel that way?”

  He lets go of her hand. They stop walking. “I don’t generally talk about that.”

  “I’m sorry.” She searches his face. He seems more thoughtful than upset.

  “That’s all right. I’m just not used to it.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “No. I’m glad you asked. It shows that you are attentive, that you want to understand. Those are excellent qualities.”

  Sally Hemings does not know what to say. She is embarrassed—mainly because his words have made her feel so proud.

  “It’s simple, really,” he says. “My mother was mad. She suffered delusions. And my father drank too much.” He makes a curt laugh. “That was his escape!”

  “You poor thing,” she says.

  “That’s all behind me now.” He lifts her hand and gives it a couple of meditative pats. “I never think about it.” They start walking again, holding hands. The barge with the cattle is out of sight around another bend. “What about you? Why didn’t you belong?”

  “Oh, I don’t really know. Maybe it was my fault. My family just thought everything I said was stupid.”

  “Why?”

  “They were just more practical than me, I suppose. I think I preferred the world inside my head to the one in which I actually lived.”

  “Why do you speak of that with shame?” He gives her a sideways glance, one half of his mouth smiling. “What is philosophy but the mind’s desire to see beyond the world of sense?”

  She makes a small laugh but doesn’t speak.

  “Where would you go in your explorations?” he asks.

  “Oh, everywhere! But along the Rivanna mostly. I loved to walk by the river.”

  “I did, too. There was so much to see. Deer would come down to drink. Once I saw a bear fishing.”

  “I’ve never seen that.”

  “It was most impressive,” he says. “I didn’t know what he was doing at first. He was completely still, staring at the water. Then he just splashed with one paw, and this silver thing went flying onto the rocks. He lumbered over, picked it up and made a meal of it while the poor thing was still wriggling.”

  “That’s disgusting!” Sally Hemings laughs. Thomas Jefferson’s eyes are avid, bright. She can see him reliving his memories. She can see him as the boy he used to be.

  “My favorite place was Castle Rock,” he says, “though I don’t think anybody else called it that. It was a big, squarish rock, about two stories high—like a tower, or really like a château fort.”

  “I know that rock! I’ve been there.” As she says this, she wonders if she is telling the truth. “It’s on the east side of the river?”

  “Yes.”

  “Near Shadwell?” This, however, is at least partly a guess. She knows that he grew up at Shadwell.

  “Not really. It’s about a half mile downriver.”

  “That’s what I meant.” And now she has a clear memory of the rock. She is standing at its base, looking up. “I’ve been there. I love it, too.”

  “Have you ever jumped off?”

  Sally Hemings searches her memory but can only come up with an image of the rock from that one point at the water’s edge—although maybe she was actually standing in the river. She thinks she can remember cold water swirling around her knees while she looks up at the rock, squinting against the sun. And now a new memory comes: She is clambering up a steep bluff beside the rock, clinging to scraggly dwarf oaks. “I’m not sure,” she says.

  “The water is very deep right there, so it’s not dangerous to jump. But it took me about a year to work up the courage.”

  “I think I was always too scared.” She is seeing Thomas Jefferson as a boy, maybe nine years old, naked and bone-pale, his eyes and mouth wide with terrified delight the instant before he hits the water.

  “I loved it!” he says. “I would jump off over and over again. And when I got tired, I’d climb out onto this slanted rock and lie there until the sun had dried me.”

  “I used to lie there, too. I remember lying flat on my back and looking up at Castle Rock.” In fact, what she remembers, or she thinks she remembers, is standing on that rock looking up. Perhaps that’s what she was actually remembering before. She was standing on that rock, not knee-deep in the river. But now she does see herself knee-deep in that river, or waist-deep, or perhaps she is even swimming, and she is looking at a pale, redheaded boy spread-eagled on the slanted rock. She is holding her breath so that he doesn’t notice her, but she knows that in the next second he will turn his head and see her.

  “How amazing,” she says, “that we both used to go to the same place when we were children. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if we had been able to meet each other there?”

  Thomas Jefferson stops walking and turns toward her, smiling. “That would have been lovely.” He kisses her on the forehead and then on the lips.

  A little later, when they are walking again and have mounted the crest of a rise, she watches the golden reeds below her bow down in rolling waves as a breeze crosses them and then shivers the glinting, brown-green surface of the Seine, and she feels suddenly happy, so extraordinarily happy. She doesn’t know why; she only wishes they could stay in this beautiful place forever an
d never have to return to Paris.

  There are times when Sally Hemings has to fight her revulsion at Thomas Jefferson’s naked body and at the things that happen when she is naked with him in her bed—and yet there are other times when those very same things feel as close as she will ever get to heavenly bliss—except that in heaven her bliss will not be followed by embarrassment to meet Thomas Jefferson’s eye, or even her own eye in the mirror. You are the woman who has done these things, she tells herself when she looks at her reflection in the morning. You are such a woman. Yet she cannot tell whether she makes these pronouncements with loathing or a grim pride.

  Thomas Jefferson always leaves her room in the middle of the night, and so, awoken at dawn by the shrill whistling of swallows, Sally Hemings is surprised to feel the tilt of her mattress and the warmth of another body against her back. At first she only licks her lips and watches the slow somersaulting of dust motes in the solitary sunbeam crossing her room from the small window above her bed. Then she rolls from her left side to her right.

  She has never seen Thomas Jefferson sleeping before, at least not in daylight. It was hot in the night, and a few strands of his red hair are stuck to his pale forehead. His eyelids are closed, but so delicately they make her think of furled flower petals. His long, thin lips are slightly parted, and a trickle of drool gleams at the corner of his mouth, where his cheek is pressed against the mattress.

  He is so peaceful and still that it is almost as if the real Thomas Jefferson has fled his body—the thinking, commanding, eternally busy Thomas Jefferson, the man looked up to by half the world. But at the same time, she wonders if this vulnerable, gently sleeping man isn’t, in fact, the real Thomas Jefferson, and if, during this tranquil, fleeting moment, she has been granted the opportunity to look not at the man but at his soul.