Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

by Stephen O'Connor

  While Evelina was outside washing the soiled clouts, Sally Hemings paced between the parlor and the dining room, rocking her little girl in her arms, singing to her, kissing her, stopping every now and then to see if she would eat from bowl or breast—but nothing helped. And then there came a moment when yet another image of her daughter being ripped from her arms flashed into Sally Hemings’s mind, but this time, instead of paralytic despair, the image filled her with such terrific rage at the relentless cruelty and injustice of this life that it seemed to her there was no purpose in living, that all the care and work she lavished on her daughter was a sham and that, in fact, the greatest service she could do the little girl would be to smash her skull against the stone fireplace—and as this notion came to seem not a mere supposition but an active impulse taking control of her arms and hands and heart, Sally Hemings burst sobbing out the door, her baby in her arms. She ran around the side of the house to where Evelina was hanging the newly washed clouts on a clothesline. “I am an awful mother!” she said, thrusting Harriet into the girl’s arms, saying, “I have to go. I’ll be back. But I have to go—now!”

  She strode away from the house along the wooded bank of the stream where Evelina had been doing her washing. She passed between several fields, in one of which she could just make out the bent backs and the rough, sad songs of the laborers. When, at last, the stream turned southward along the edge of a wooded bluff, she clambered to the top and entered an old-growth forest where, beneath stout and lofty maples, beeches and oaks, the passage was relatively easy.

  This is where she has been walking for half an hour. This is where she has heard the wind seething in the treetops and the cries of birds and where she has begun to feel that the worst of her fears about Thomas Jefferson are exactly as unsupported by fact as the most tender of her hopes. She knows nothing, neither good nor bad. Nothing at all. And so, for the time being at least, her inescapable ignorance seems to be her only problem, the one that she must struggle with and learn how to manage.

  Eventually she comes to a trail leading more or less in the direction she has already been going: west, she thinks, toward the unmapped wilderness beyond everything she has ever heard of. The trail is narrow but well trodden. She can feel how it has been worn into the forest floor by centuries of foot traffic, even in those places where it is beginning to be overgrown. This must be an Indian trail, she thinks, here since creation. If she follows it long enough, perhaps she will come to an Indian village, or to a whole country of Indians, where there are no white people at all and no colored. Maybe that would be a better place for her and her children. Maybe that would be a place where they might belong.

  She is just beginning to worry about having spent so much time away from Harriet—an hour at least—when there is a furious hissing in the uppermost leaves, the tall boughs around her begin to creak and groan and a current of dank air cools her cheeks and presses her gown against her body. It is still sunny straight overhead, but in the direction she is walking, a part of the sky has gone storm dark.

  She wheels around and hurries back down the path, hoping that the sky will be slow in turning, that maybe only clouds will come or that, at the very least, the rain will hold off until she has reached the house. But the sunbeams have already withdrawn from the trees. The winds grow ever more fierce. The light dims, grows dusk gray, then a strangely luminous green. All at once there is a fierce rattling at the tops of the trees, and then huge drops begin to strike her shoulders, cheeks and hands.

  The problem is that Sally Hemings did not take note of the place where she turned onto the trail and thus doesn’t know where she ought to leave it so that she might make her way to the crest of the bluff and then home along the stream. When, at last, she strikes out on impulse into the trackless forest, she realizes after less than a minute that nothing around her is familiar, that she has no idea where she is going.

  It is another two hours before, clothes frigid cold and hanging heavily off her body, she walks out of a field and onto the drive up to the house. For most of the last hour, she has been hoping that all of the cold, confusion and fear she has endured will be rewarded by the sight of Thomas Jefferson’s landau at the house and Peter standing at the doorway under an umbrella, watching for her.

  But of course there is no landau, no horses, no brother. The drive is a river through which she must splash up to her ankles to get into the house.

  Once inside, though, she sees that Evelina has lit the lamps and managed to get a good fire going—in front of which she has draped a row of Harriet’s clouts across a bench to dry. And the tiny girl herself is toddling toward her mother in nothing but a shirt, both arms upraised. “Mammy! Mammy! Mammy!”

  Wet as she is, Sally Hemings scoops her daughter into her arms and covers her with kisses, the little girl’s giggles escalating from throaty glugs to breathless clicks and cackles. As she carries Harriet toward the fire, the child tugs at the neck of her gown, and so Sally Hemings undoes her bodice and slips her cold, wet nipple into her daughter’s warm and hungry mouth.

  We pity her because she believes in the virtue of white people. Or because she wants to believe. Or because she is lying to herself and she doesn’t know she is lying. Or because she is lying to the world and she thinks that she is better than everyone in it. Or because she has become blind to insults and indignity and has learned to celebrate small kindnesses. Or because she worries that she is actually as incompetent and hideous and stupid as her master believes she is. Or because she, too, believes what her master believes. Or because she believes that she is white even though her master treats her as if she is black. Or because she believes that she is better than black even if she is not as good as white. Or because she has learned to feel cuffs as kisses and hear insults as sweet nothings. Or because she believes she is evil and so deserves her enslavement. Or her punishment. Or because she believes that, having turned her back on her people, she is undeserving of forgiveness. And we pity her even if she is right to believe she cannot be forgiven. We pity her because whatever she may think or feel or have done, she is one of us—a Negro and a human being. We pity her because she has become a stranger to herself, because she has lost her soul.

  Hours later Sally Hemings is awakened from a deep sleep by the sound of someone moving downstairs. She slides out of the bed where Harriet and Evelina are both filling the air with their rustling snores and picks up the broken table leg she placed in the corner days ago for use as a weapon.

  As she feels her way along the edge of the bed, through the darkness, toward the door, she can hear almost nothing above the urgent thudding of her own heart, and there is a moment during which she imagines that there is no one in the house, that she only dreamed those sounds or that they were only the product of old wood shrinking as it cools. But then she hears the curt rumble of a male grunt and the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, followed by the light tread of what is clearly a boot-shod foot.

  She pushes her door against its jamb, so that she might lift the latch silently, but as she pulls the door open, a hinge squeaks and silence falls at the bottom of the stairs. She freezes for a long moment. There is another thump, followed by footsteps moving rapidly across the parlor and into the dining room. As she crosses to the top of the stairs, she sees an ocher luminosity wavering on the wall in the entryway.

  Now her heart thuds with a different sort of urgency, because she has recognized the rhythm of the movements below and, more particularly, the man’s breathing. She is halfway down the stairs when the shadows of the balusters loom and then swing rapidly across the wall. Thomas Jefferson catches sight of her just as he puts his hand on the banister. He lifts his candle so that he might see her more clearly, then smiles and speaks in a voiced whisper, “I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”

  Sally Hemings shakes her head. She takes a step back upstairs, but he scoops the air rapidly with his hand, indicating that she should come down.

/>   As she descends, he sets his candle on a step, takes off his cape and holds it out to her. “What’s that?” he says, looking at her right hand.

  She lifts the broken table leg and smirks. “I thought you were Mr. Chambliss. I was going to hit you on the head with it.”

  “Sounds like you don’t much care for Mr. Chambliss,” says Thomas Jefferson.

  “I hate him!” The force of feeling in her own voice surprises her. “He’s a very bad man. You should dismiss him.”

  “Here.” He is still holding out his cape.

  She leans the table leg against the wall and takes the cape, which is warm from his body and redolent of his familiar smell. She drapes the cape over her shoulders and draws it tight across her breast. Her feet are freezing.

  “Come,” says Thomas Jefferson. “Peter has gone to get some wood.”

  She follows him over to the parlor fireplace, where the coals of their evening’s fire are still winking and making tiny clicks. She steps right onto the brick apron to warm her feet.

  Thomas Jefferson is crouching over one of his bags, and just as he stands and holds up a bottle of cognac, Peter comes into the room with an armful of firewood.

  “Sally!” he says, lowering the pile to the floor. He steps over to her, touches her hand and smiles in a way that promises his real greeting will come later.

  Sally Hemings finds herself moved almost to tears at seeing her brother again. She has to swallow before, speaking to Thomas Jefferson but looking at her brother, she asks, “Why were you so delayed? You were supposed to have been here on Monday.”

  Peter’s expression conveys both embarrassment and concern.

  “I’m sorry,” says Thomas Jefferson.

  She looks at him coldly. She does not want to hear his apologies.

  “To begin with,” he says, “we were delayed a day because I had some business to attend to with Mr. Madison in Belle Grove.”

  “You should have sent a message, then.”

  “Yes, I suppose I should have. But I thought we would make up the lost time on the road.”

  Peter, who has begun placing logs on the bed of coals, grunts ironically.

  “We’ve had something of an ordeal, Peter, haven’t we?”

  “Oh, yes indeed!” he says. “The gods were against us the whole way!” Peter gives her an entreating smile. Then he crouches and blows on the coals beneath the logs. Flames leap up almost instantly.

  “The worst thing was that we lost a wheel in Findlay’s Gap, and that cost us another day and a half. Then we got caught in a terrible downpour this afternoon, after which the roads were so muddy and flooded that we almost gave up and stopped at New London. But we both wanted to be here so badly that we decided to just keep on going by moonlight. We’ve been riding since sunup.” He puts the bottle of cognac down with a firm smack on a table beside the fireplace. “Which is why we are so in need of a glass of this!”

  “But you still should have told me you would be delayed, right at the beginning, when you knew you would have to stay longer with Mr. Madison.”

  Thomas Jefferson is at the sideboard, where he has gone to get glasses.

  “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I never expected that it would take this long.”

  Sally Hemings doesn’t respond. Peter, standing up and dusting off his hands, gives her a significant glance.

  Thomas Jefferson opens the bottle and pours three glasses.

  Peter finishes his in a gulp. “I need to go settle the horses.”

  Sally Hemings takes a sip from her glass. She is very tired. She should go back to bed. But instead she draws a chair closer to the fire and sits down with her feet tucked under her. She takes another sip from her glass and watches the flames leap and vanish against the black fieldstone.

  Thomas Jefferson also pulls a chair up to the fire and sits. Out of the corner of her eye, Sally Hemings can see him lift his glass, but she doesn’t look at him.

  “What’s the matter, Sally?” he says as he lowers his glass.

  “I told you, Mr. Chambliss is a cruel and evil man.”

  “He’s always struck me as an exceedingly stupid man.”

  “He’s much worse than that,” says Sally Hemings. “He should be dismissed. He should never have been hired.”

  “Let’s talk about that in the morning.”

  Thomas Jefferson finishes his glass and pours himself another. He holds out the bottle toward Sally Hemings. First she shakes her head, then extends her glass to let him top it up. She takes another sip.

  “You’re upset.” He gives her a sympathetic glance.

  She holds his gaze for a moment, then turns to the fire. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He leans toward her, resting his elbows on his knees, hands wrapped around his glass. “I am truly sorry. I know I should have written.”

  “You don’t know anything!” The words come out in a ripping whisper.

  Thomas Jefferson looks both hurt and confused.

  She takes a big sip from her glass, then takes another, emptying it. She puts it on the floor beside her chair.

  “I thought you weren’t going to come,” she says.

  “Why would you think that?” He shakes his head, incredulous. “Of course I was coming! Why wouldn’t I come?”

  “I thought you only sent me here to get rid of me!”

  “Oh, Sally!” He puts down his glass and comes over to her chair. He crouches on one knee and reaches for her hand, but she pulls it away. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Because of what people are saying in the papers. Because if you don’t get rid of me, they’ll force you out of office.”

  “Oh, no! Oh, no! You poor girl!” He reaches for her hand again, and this time she lets him take it. “It’s nothing like that! Not at all! I don’t have to be afraid of these people. They’re all fools, and everyone knows it—even their allies. You don’t have to worry.” He strokes the top of her hand. “Really, there is nothing to worry about.”

  With his back to the flickering firelight, she can hardly see his face.

  “And besides,” he says, “if you want to know the absolute truth, I am already sick of Washington, and I am sick of the presidency. I could walk away from it in a minute if I had to. I am willing to give my country my sweat and my time. I am willing to make every effort to do what I think needs doing. But I am not going to surrender my soul.”

  It is when he says these last words that Sally Hemings begins to cry. Thomas Jefferson pulls her into his arms, squeezes her hard. And kisses the top of her head.

  “Don’t worry, Sally Girl. Nothing bad is going to happen. You’ll see. Everything will be fine. We’ll enjoy ourselves here for a few days, and then we’ll go home.”

  Thomas Jefferson has no idea what Sally Hemings’s life is actually like. He thinks her tears are only feminine weakness, and so his consolations mean nothing at all. And yet she can’t stop crying.

  She lets him pull her close. She lets him lift her to her feet. She puts her arms around him and kisses his neck and cheek and mouth. She feels the strength in his arms across her back, and she feels the strength of his back beneath her hands. She knows that it would be easy for him to lift her into the air. She squeezes him hard and lifts both feet up behind her—and then it is happening: He is holding her in the air as if it were nothing at all.

  Dusk dissolves into midnight and midnight dissolves into dawn and Thomas Jefferson is still walking after having fled James Madison’s library in a state of delirious perplexity. In fact, he doesn’t feel as if he is walking. His progress along roads and even up very steep slopes has become a sort of drifting, as effortless as thought. From a hilltop, he looks out across a green and golden valley in which the improvements of man seem entirely harmonious with the rhythms and proportions of nature. The road along which he is walking,
for example, arcs down into the valley and crosses it in a perfect S, with the bottom, or near, part of the S seeming exactly double the size of the top, or far, part, although he is certain that, seen from above, both arcs are equal. And as the road undulates up the far side of the valley, the angles of its incline correspond so exactly to the angle of the hilltop against the sky that they seem the very image of the hilltop’s angle and of its inverse. And so, in this valley glinting with dew under a new sun, we have those relationships between the parts and the whole and between the real and the ideal that constitute the highest form of beauty: that beauty which allows us to feel at one with the mind of God.

  Who were the people who laid this road with such attention to its aesthetic and symbolic attributes? Why had he never heard of them? How could this beautiful valley exist so close to Belle Grove without Madison ever having showed it to him, or having mentioned one word about it? Could it be that Madison has never been here, that he knows nothing of this extraordinary place?

  At the bottom of the valley there is a river, the flood plain of which is quilted with wheat and cornfields, pastures of clover, vineyards and orchards and gardens. And atop rises all across the valley are houses, humble and august, but all constructed according to the classical symmetries of Palladio—clearly the dwellings of a well-educated populace, who have profited from hard work, cooperation and the discoveries of modern agronomy.

  As Thomas Jefferson descends into the valley, he is flattered to discover in a field by the side of the road his own invention—the mathematically perfect moldboard plow—hitched to a pair of fine ginger draft horses, their nostrils wide, their muscular haunches shivering with an eagerness to do their work, though the farmer is nowhere in sight. And in the houses he comes to, he sees more of his own inventions: twenty-four-hour clocks, conveyances for ferrying food and drink through rotating doorways or up from basement kitchens, and studies outfitted with his own revolving book rack, his swivel chair and his modified polygraph, as well as with drawing boards, telescopes, barometers, measuring instruments of all kinds and, of course, libraries (every home he enters has its own library)—confirmations all of his supposition that the owners of these houses are inquisitive, hardworking and ceaselessly looking to understand and improve their world.