Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

by Stephen O'Connor

  Q: Of course. That must have been awful for you! What did you do?

  ELIZABETH: Yeah. It was . . . in a way. But it’s not like Lonny was a saint among saints. In a lot of ways, selling Lonny was the answer to all my problems. I think Jack knew that. I think that was part of what it was about.

  Q: But Jack, Mr. Wayles—you said he was the “forcing kind.” What did you mean by that?

  ELIZABETH: Look at it this way: No woman ever has a choice. But the first thing she has to do is make it clear that she does have a choice. For herself, I mean. It’s a matter of dignity.

  Q: [Silence.]

  ELIZABETH: Dignity’s the most important thing.

  Q: So when Mr. Wayles said that he was going to sell Lonny, what did you do?

  ELIZABETH: I told him he couldn’t do that. I told him Lonny was the father of my children. You know. The whole song and dance. I told him he couldn’t force me.

  Q: What did he say?

  ELIZABETH: Oh, just what they always do: I was his property. I didn’t have any more say than a mule. He could do anything he wanted with me.

  Q: That’s horrible!

  ELIZABETH: [Shrugs.] Yeah.

  Q: What did you do?

  ELIZABETH: I kicked him. If I was a mule, that meant I was going to kick, so I did. And then I spat in his face.

  Q: [Laughs.] Weren’t you afraid?

  ELIZABETH: Not really. I knew what he was up to.

  Q: What did he do?

  ELIZABETH: He pushed me down on the floor and he had me right there.

  Q: [Silence.]

  ELIZABETH: [Silence.]

  Q: I’m sorry . . . uh . . . so sorry.

  ELIZABETH: It was nothing. I knew he was going to do that.

  Q: Nothing? Do you really mean nothing?

  ELIZABETH: Oh, course it wasn’t nothing. I just meant it didn’t bother me. I knew he was going to do it. He was just doing his song and his dance.

  Q: I . . . I don’t know . . .

  ELIZABETH: Look, the problem is that you keep thinking there was some sort of better way. That’s not how it was in those days. And the truth is, it’s not that different now. So, you know: You’ve got to keep that in perspective.

  Q: Of course—

  ELIZABETH: Just think about it from my side. First of all, I knew I was going to be his concubine, or whatever you want to call it, from the minute the last Mrs. Wayles got her fever. I could tell just by the way he was looking at me. Second of all, Lonny presumed all kinds of things. And one of those things was that he could knock me down anytime he got drunk. Which was almost all the time. I’d been trying for two years to figure out how I was going to get away from him, and I didn’t see how I could do it as long as he was at the Forest. Unless I was willing to kill him. Which I wasn’t. But I was thinking about it. I was even talking to one of the old mammies about poison berries, hexes—you know. But I wasn’t really going to do that. I just couldn’t do that. So when Jack did to me what he did, I knew he was just doing his song and dance. Just like I was doing my song and dance. We were just working out the rules of how we were going to be together. And after that we pretty much had it figured out. You have to remember that I had been the maid to all three of his wives. So I knew how he treated a woman. He was English. You know? He lived in England until he was almost a grown man. So he was kind of old-fashioned. He believed in rules. And as long as everybody behaved by the rules, everybody was happy. He wasn’t a cruel man. He wasn’t exactly tenderhearted—though he was that, too, sometimes. But he definitely wasn’t cruel. And, of course, I knew that as his . . . well, as his wife really, things would get pretty easy for me. And they did. Pretty much. After that, everything was much better than it had been before. Or mostly.

  Q: So is that why you encouraged Sally—

  ELIZABETH: Of course!

  Q: So what did you mean by Thomas not being the “forcing kind”? How was he different?

  ELIZABETH: Oh, he and Jack were exactly the opposite kind of people. Exactly the opposite. Jack didn’t apologize for everything. He just assumed he had a right to anything he wanted. Mr. Jefferson—it was like he assumed he didn’t have a right to anything. Sometimes I used to laugh at how afraid of him people were. Most of the people who came to see him, they were so nervous they could hardly talk when he was in the room. I mean, of course Mr. Jefferson was famous and everything, and, you know, once he got started talking, most people felt like they didn’t know anything at all. Like they were just idiots. But inside, he was always saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He kept trying so hard to be a good man because inside he thought he was so bad. That’s the honest truth. That’s how he really was.

  Q: But he did force himself on your daughter. So if he wasn’t the forcing kind . . .

  ELIZABETH: You mean in Paris?

  Q: [Nods.]

  ELIZABETH: I never figured out what happened in Paris. Sally would never be straight with me about that. Most of the time, she told me nothing happened in Paris. Well, not nothing, but not what you mean either. But then sometimes— The only way I could figure it was that maybe something did happen. I mean, you’ve got to think that any man who goes around saying “I’m sorry” all the time—especially a man like Mr. Jefferson who knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that there was no reason for him to apologize to anyone, that he could have had pretty much anything he wanted and people would have thought he deserved it. You know what I mean? I mean, not only was he smarter than just about anybody, and so famous everybody wanted to get a look at him, he was also this great big tall man and strong as a horse. So when a man like that is always saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and humiliating himself all the time, you got to figure he’s getting pretty angry inside. He’s building up this whole mountain of anger. So, of course, every now and then he’s got to let that anger out. And maybe that’s what happened in Paris. I don’t know. But all I can tell you is that that’s not who he was. He was definitely not the forcing kind.

  Thomas Jefferson is an ape. He lumbers apelike through the Great Ape House, mostly on his handlike feet but sometimes on the knuckles of his actual hands. His knuckles are particularly effective whenever he wants to pivot or to swing his feet through empty space. They turn his body into a projectile. They transform his tremendous weight into force.

  The air of the Great Ape House is dense with the penetrating sweetness of ape shit. The light in the Great Ape House is the color of watery milk. The hillside on which Thomas Jefferson and the other Great Apes spend their days is the color of mice, and the logs, which constitute the Great Apes’ only furniture and playthings, are the color of logs with the bark peeled off—a color you might call Sunset on Snow.

  Thomas Jefferson disdains his fellow apes but at the same time depends upon them: for nitpicking, for consolation during his ape-house jitters and for the delights of intimate union. He is the biggest of all the Great Apes, and so he is always first in line when the lesser apes come through the rectangle with the food bucket. And if he should miss the bucket because he is napping, he just takes the food of any ape he chooses. Ditto their mates.

  He sees nothing wrong with this state of affairs, and neither, apparently, do any of the other Great Apes. They don’t like giving up their food, of course, or their mates. And sometimes the mates seem to take less delight in intimate union than Thomas Jefferson does. But that is not the same as wrong. There is nothing any of the other Great Apes can do to stop Thomas Jefferson, and so there is nothing to be gained by thinking he is wrong. In general, Great Apes are much more interested in harmony than in wrong or right. When Thomas Jefferson is happy, everyone is happy. He will leave them the food he doesn’t want. Ditto the mates. He will even nitpick. And when it comes to ape-house jitters, there can be no greater consolation than Thomas Jefferson’s gigantic embrace. This is harmony. And as long as no one thinks Thomas Jefferson
is wrong, the harmony is total. Or as close to total as anyone can imagine.

  One day Thomas Jefferson happens upon a system by which he might cross the gulf from the hillside to that other hillside where duplicate apes perfectly copy every one of his gestures and those of the other Great Apes. They do it in absolute silence. No sound ever crosses the gulf from that other hillside. The duplicate apes seem to worship the Great Apes in the same way as the Great Apes are worshipped by their shadows. The system involves a log tipped off into space and slamming to rest against the end of the duplicate log that has been tipped off into space by the duplicate Thomas Jefferson. The two logs make a sort of bridge between the hillsides. And as Thomas Jefferson walks upon his log, he sees his duplicate walking toward him upon his own. Then something strange happens. The closer Thomas Jefferson gets to his duplicate, the darker his duplicate becomes, until finally the duplicate ceases to duplicate Thomas Jefferson and instead seems to be embarked upon a project of total erasure, which is to say the replacement of everything within the borders of his being with darkness.

  But that’s not the really strange thing.

  The really strange thing is that within the darkness of what once was his duplicate, Thomas Jefferson can see moving things. And when he gets to the end of his log and to that place where he ought to have been able to wrestle with his duplicate and throw him into the gulf, the air suddenly becomes hard—so hard he cannot even touch his duplicate or put one toe onto the duplicate log. But now he can see the moving things clearly. At first he thinks they are spots, like the spots that dent his vision when he rubs his eyes or when he stares at the milky lights too long. But then he sees that the spots are apes. Or they are apelike.

  In fact, they are lesser apes.

  And as he presses his face hard against the hard air, some of the lesser apes are leaping in fear. And some of them are baring their teeth. And pointing. They seem to be making noises. Maybe he can hear them. A muffled honking. A hooting. There are so many of them. Not just three. Many. Many. More than all of the Great Apes. A lot more.

  There is something about this that should not be. Something disharmonious—even, perhaps, wrong. Thomas Jefferson bellows. He pounds on the hard air. He is waiting for everything to go back to the way it was. To the way it should be.

  It is November 8, 1790, and not yet dawn when Sally Hemings is awakened by shouting. As she looks up into a charcoal dimness, she hears Jimmy’s voice: “Underneath the knives!” He shouts that exact phrase three times in a row, giving the last word a strange emphasis. Then someone farther away—a woman or a boy—calls out something indecipherable, which is immediately followed by Thomas Jefferson shouting more loudly than anyone else: “Time’s a wasting!” At the sound of his voice, a shiver passes through Sally Hemings’s entire body, and she has to roll onto her side and draw up her knees to quell the cold.

  This is the morning when Jimmy, Bobby and Thomas Jefferson go north again—to Philadelphia this time, because the capital has been moved there from New York. Jimmy told her last night that they might be gone for a whole year. She said good-bye to him then but intended to get up early so that she could give him one last hug. She woke up several times during the night, in fact, but always too soon. Now she contemplates throwing on her greatcoat and running out to give him, at the very least, a parting wave, but the idea of venturing into the frigid air is more than she can bear.

  She is awakened an hour or so later by her mother, who is shaking her shoulder and saying, “Let’s go, baby girl. Her Majesty’s waiting on her chocolate.”

  Sally Hemings is so deeply asleep that it is close to a minute before she has any idea what her mother is talking about. She doesn’t know how she will be able to get out of bed. Her head feels like a boulder; she can hardly turn it on her pillow. And as soon as she has thrown off her covers, she starts to shiver so violently her teeth clatter.

  Her mother is looking at her as if she has just done something shocking.

  “That you, baby girl?”

  Sally Hemings can’t answer. She pulls her blankets back up tight around her shoulders, but her teeth won’t stop clattering.

  Her mother is a darkness bending over her.

  Icy fingers touch her cheek.

  A low, quiet voice: “Oh, Lord! You burning up.”

  Her mother goes away and then is back. The odor of a tin cup coats the inside of Sally Hemings’s nose.

  “Drink this,” her mother says. “Water’s the best thing when you got a fever.”

  “No.” Sally Hemings squeezes her eyes shut and covers her face with the blanket.

  Her mother sighs and then is silent.

  The particulate whisper of a stool being dragged across a dirt floor. Clank of cup on wood.

  “I’m leaving this here for you,” her mother says. “I’ll go take care of Her Majesty. You drink this when you ready.”

  Sally Hemings expects to see her mother standing in front of her when she opens her eyes, but the cabin is entirely empty and it is full daylight—midmorning by the slant of the beams coming in the window.

  Now she truly is thirsty—desperately!—but her hands feel so ill-coordinated as she reaches for the cup that she is afraid she will drop it. The room is still so very, very cold. As she grabs the cup and presses it against her lips, every fluff of air seeping under the covers is like ice against her skin. And once she has put the cup back on the stool and has pulled the covers up to her neck, she is colder than ever before. Hard shivers rack her shoulders and grind down through her abdomen. Her feet feel cased in snow. She wants to get up and take the covers from her mother’s bed but can’t bear to cross the cold room. She is too weak. Her teeth are clattering again. She will wait until her mother returns.

  There follows a long period during which she is not really awake but not entirely unconscious. For much of that time, she feels she is lying naked on the hard floor of a dark and frigid cave, her shivers so violent they are painful. Sometimes the cave floor is like the deck of a ship in a heaving, blowing storm. Grunting beasts shamble past her from all directions, and she knows that one of them will step on her with its huge, clawed feet. That will be the end of me, she thinks. She is afraid but does nothing to stop those huge, shambling beasts—because, of course, there is nothing she can do.

  When next she wakes, it is because her mother is covering her with her own blankets, though Sally Hemings doesn’t remember asking her to do that.

  The blankets are not enough.

  “Cold,” she says. “So cold.”

  Her mother pulls the trunk out from under the bed and covers her with all the gowns, petticoats and shifts that she wore in France and tops the heap off with her greatcoat and cape. The weight of all that clothing is good. Sally Hemings feels comforted. But still she is shivering.

  Time has passed. She has awakened to the sound of her mother’s urgent murmuring and realizes that the poor woman is praying with her face to the wall.

  “Mammy,” Sally Hemings calls from the bed. “Mammy, it’s all right. You don’t have to worry. I’m getting better.”

  “I know you is,” says her mother turning around. “But it don’t hurt to ask the Lord for help.” She turns back to the wall, and her urgent murmuring continues.

  As Sally Hemings slips back into sleep, she thinks that she really is getting better. A while ago she felt so very terrible that she was sure she was about to die, and she didn’t actually care. But now things are different. Now she is not so cold. Now she is almost comfortable under all her covers and clothes.

  It is late in the night when she wakes. She is so hot she can hardly breathe. She flings off all her covers and lies on her back in her sweat-soaked shift, savoring the coolness of the night air.

  She feels as if she has been in the grip of a giant and now she has been released.

  The chilled air on her ankles, feet and arms feels good. So does the
layer of cold cloth clinging to her body. There is no light in the cabin. She looks toward the window and sees only black within black. So quiet. No birds. No human voices. Not even a breeze shifting the yellow leaves on the ground.

  Then, from somewhere down the hill, a weird and echoing cry that would be laughter if only it weren’t so very attenuated and sad. Then silence. Then exactly the same cry all over again.

  At some point, much deeper into the night, when she has pulled the covers back over herself and is lying there, content in her solitude and happy in the knowledge that she will not die (not yet), memories that she has not allowed herself for many months come back to her all in a rush.

  She remembers the time Thomas Jefferson said, “I don’t know how I have ever lived without you,” and a time when he looked into her eyes, put his hand softly against her cheek and told her, “You are so beautiful! I want to draw your face!” and the night he pressed his head against her belly and wrapped his arms tightly around her waist and said that he couldn’t bear to let her go, because if he did, the moment would end and he never wanted that moment to be over.

  For months such memories have been far too painful for her to allow into her thoughts, but now, in her solitude and quiet, they are a comfort, and she finds herself imagining that when, in the bluish morning, she steps on her unsteady legs out onto her porch, intending to make her way around to the outhouse, she will find Thomas Jefferson waiting in the road. His expression will be so terribly sad. And when he comes to her, his touch will be so very gentle.

  The prisoner is holding the bars of his cell door, looking at the guard. His mouth is open. His eyes are heavy with grief. The guard is sitting in her wooden chair, holding a fork with a yellow blob of scrambled egg on the end of it. She puts the blob into her mouth, chews, swallows, speaks.

  —Delicious! Man, was I hungry!

  The pink tip of the prisoner’s tongue moves along his lower lip. The guard mops up the buttery smears of her egg with a piece of toast and pops the toast into her mouth. She chews. She speaks.