“He put his office up in the little room next to hers at Monticello to wait it out. Started writing a new book on Virginia. Heard it said he didn’t care much for black folks mixing with white folks. Anyway, about that time Masta Jefferson sent Martin out after that slave boy Custer, who had run off to Williamsburg—never did catch him. In May of eighty-two, Martha gave birth to another girl child and named it after the one she had lost, Lucy Elizabeth. I didn’t say nothing, but I didn’t want that name for that child. It seemed to be a bad omen, and I was right. Lucy survived until the age of four, but Martha didn’t live to see her face but for another seventeen months. Martha knew she was dying, and I knew it, and Masta Jefferson, he knew it, but nobody said nothing until the end. Lord, when he see her die … And she not yet thirty-four.”
Elizabeth Hemings gazed from under the half-closed eyelids at the two women watching her die. Martha was stubborn about coming to sit with her. It was her duty as mistress of the house to attend to dying slaves.
Those two sat there like they were made of wood, Elizabeth Hemings thought. They had always had a talent for stillness. She had never been able to sit still. She was doing her best to die, before they murdered her, but she was dying hard. She always knew she would have a hard time dying. There they sat, and she lay, the three of them, waiting for death. They had all lived their lives according to the rules: the rules of master and slave, man and woman, husband and wife, lover and mistress. The one who had called the rules and who had made the game was gone riding, loath to associate himself with all this women business of dying and watching other people die. She knew these two would mourn him when his time came, more than they would ever mourn her, and could she blame them? They had been birth’d and trained for that. She herself had trained her own daughter, her favorite child, to the triple bondage of slave, woman, and concubine, as one trains a blooded horse to its rider, never questioning the rights of the rider. If she hadn’t done that, her daughter would never have come home from Paris.
Lordy, yes. She had procured for her master. She had made him a present of what she had loved most in the world. How could she have known that her vision of the perfect slave would coincide with his vision of the perfect woman. And Sally Hemings loved Thomas Jefferson. That was the tragedy. Love, not slavery. And God knew how much slavery there was in love …
Oh, the small degree of love she had felt for John Wayles had given her some measure of privilege, of barter, of freedom, of pride, of comfort. . . . No, her daughter’s was a love of which she had had only an inkling. Sally had no worldly pride, no independence, no idea of justice. She was still childish, rancorless, detached, except for that which concerned what she loved. Sally was not even conscious of injuries inflicted upon her, and of the self-possession it took to forgive, she had not one grain of that.
The old woman continued to examine the placid and unlined face of her favorite daughter. She wanted to scream at her to run away. But it was too late. Much too late. Nothing could change now. If only she had understood in the beginning that her daughter had been constituted for love the way some women are constituted for breeding. Her life had left no trace on her body or her spirit. She could absorb everything. Not like poor tormented Martha Randolph with her twelve children by her insane and drunken husband, and her passion for a father she could never quite please. Martha with her awkward body, and her plain looks, and her quick temper hidden under migraine headaches, like her father.
Elizabeth Hemings felt a sudden mixture of love and contempt for them both. She turned her head away from them and fell silent.
The pause seemed longer than necessary, and Sally Hemings automatically continued: “I was forty-seven and Sally was thirteen, Martha she was twelve,” and waited for the discourse to continue. But Elizabeth Hemings did not pick up the thread of her tale.
“Mama?”
“She’s dead, Sally.” Martha’s voice was like a rock under her.
Martha tried to rise, fell back, and then, with a moan, threw herself over Elizabeth Hemings’ still body.
Sally Hemings remained seated, staring at Martha as if she had gone mad. Her mother couldn’t be dead. Her mother had something eminently important to tell her. She had waited all these weeks to hear it. Like the keys to the mansion, it was information that had to be passed on from black woman to black woman, just as she would pass it on to her own children. Her mother couldn’t be dead because she didn’t know the secret. Her mother had taken it along with her slavehood to the grave.
She felt a chill. Her mother’s face was calm, smiling. She had murdered herself before they had done it for her.
“Mama!”
Sally Hemings tore Martha’s encompassing arms from around Elizabeth Hemings and began to shake the frail body of her mother.
Even Martha, who was strong, could not unlock the two women. It was Thomas Jefferson, who, with all his force, finally wrenched his mistress away from her mother and carried her in his arms from the cabin, as the other slave women began the ritual wail which echoes from cabin to cabin, following them along Mulberry Row, as he strode grimly back with her to the Big House.
Elizabeth Hemings had a fine funeral. All her children, grandchildren, and their children were summoned to Monticello from the neighboring plantations. One hundred and four descendants, all answering to the surname of Hemings, came to pay their last respects. Black. Brown. Yellow. White. All slaves.
HERE LIES THE BELOVED
ELIZABETH (BET) HEMINGS
OF
MONTICELLO
BORN 1735 DIED 1807
“Mama—” She paused as if she expected an answer. “I’m so lonely.”
The last sound came from her throat like the rasp of a night cricket. Sally Hemings stretched across the rectangle of earth and pressed her face into the cool young April grass.
CHAPTER 5
ALBEMARLE COUNTY, JUNE 1831
With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?
THOMAS JEFFERSON, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1790
IT HAD BEEN more than a year since the census taker’s first visit. Several months had passed before he appeared again, but thereafter Nathan Langdon’s visits to Sally Hemings had become almost regular. Madison and Eston had finally accepted the presence of this tall lanky Virginian. They had become friends of a sort. Langdon never arrived empty-handed. There was always the town news, a book, or a newspaper, or a pamphlet, or some exotic fruit off one of the West India boats, some New England sweets, or a tool catalogue for Eston. Today he brought her something special.
Nathan Langdon entered and sat in the battered armchair while his hostess placed herself opposite him. She had prepared something to drink, and the silver platter, with its silver pitcher, was no more incongruous than his “unofficial” visits to the recluse Sally Hemings. In the rounded curve of the silver pitcher lay reflections, mauve and green, of the room. There was also a pool of yellow light in the center of the tray, heavy and still. The woman before him had raised her arm to pour into the small goblet.
The South had anchored these two people into predetermined, unbridgeable positions. Yet all they both represented was suddenly shrouded in such ambiguity that it made them ill at ease. The light made this forbidden woman almost ethereal, and, for a moment, Langdon imagined their separate worlds coming together. He was filled with a sense of intimacy.
“What is it?” asked Sally, eyeing the package he was offering her.
“New poems by Lord Byron. Straight off the ship from London!”
“I have never read much poetry. . . . A little in French when I was i
n Paris. My teacher used to give us lines to memorize. . . .”
“Byron is the most famous English poet living.”
“Thank you, Nathan. How I envy those who can express themselves with words.”
“Most people express themselves with too many words … such as Southern lawyers. Verbosity is not lacking in any Virginian. And what they can’t talk about, they write in their journals. Even I have succumbed to it.”
“You keep a journal, Nathan?”
“Since I went North. I felt it was my duty to record the horrors of the North as seen by a true Virginian for my compatriots who didn’t dare cross the boundaries between Heaven and Hell. . . . I called it ‘Reflections of a Virginia Gentleman on the Manners and Morals of Boston Society.’ I fancied myself a Southern de Tocqueville. . . .
“During your stay in France, didn’t you keep a journal?”
“I?” Sally Hemings smiled. “I was fifteen and though I spent most of my time inside the ministry, I did see a great deal that I felt I wanted to record. I was also there during the storming of the Bastille in 1789. My brother James saw much more than I did. He ventured outside and mixed with the crowds. It was like being in the middle of a rapid, he said. I will never forget that day.”
“And you kept a record of it?”
“A childish record, but a record nevertheless.”
“It should be a precious document.”
“My diary, a precious document? For me, perhaps. Maria gave it to me on the boat sailing to France. I could hardly write at the time. . . . I have since copied those first attempts over. . . .”Sally Hemings stopped talking. She wanted to change the subject. Did he think she could be persuaded to share her most private possession?
She frowned. When she had decided to receive the census taker as a “caller” rather than as a representative of the class and power that governed her life, she had done so impulsively, responding to a strength and warmth she sensed in him. He had never asked to visit, nor had he been invited; yet week after week, he appeared at the cabin. Why she continued a relationship which she knew to be dangerous to her sons, she didn’t know. And now she felt trapped. What was it that made her look forward to his visits? Vanity? Yes, she enjoyed the attentions of a young man, his strivings to please her. Loneliness? Perhaps. Langdon seemed to infuse a confidence in her she had never known before.
In the long afternoons of recounting her past, she had discovered that she had indeed had a life: a life full of deep and complex feelings. When he had questioned her, she had answered him in the only manner she was capable of: truthfully. Searching for the right tone, the exact phrase evoking as accurately as she could what she remembered. A sort of conspiracy had developed between them. There were times she didn’t even feel like mentioning his visits to Eston and Madison. After all these years, she thought, how could she again be anticipating a man’s visit? She found herself careful of her clothes, of her hair.
The secretive nature of their relationship seemed almost fitting. Had it not always been thus with her? Always the forbidden? It would have been more fitting, she thought, if, instead of exchanging thoughts, they exchanged pleasures. This would have been much more acceptable than what they were doing; for thoughts, feelings, and memories were all a slave, or an ex-slave, had to call her own. Even Thomas Jefferson had bowed to that rule. He had loved her as a woman and owned her as a slave, but her thoughts had always remained beyond his or anyone’s control.
Nathan Langdon realized he had crossed the invisible barrier Sally Hemings had put between them and she smiled back at him.
“My writing upsets me. It reminds me that so many years have elapsed since anything has happened in my life.”
“Do you know of the famous poetess who lived in Boston, named Phillis Wheatley? She was an ex-slave and highly praised for her poetry.”
“No, I have never heard of her.”
“I hear the abolitionists publish her widely.”
“Even in the South?”
“Oh, publications slip in. Many people read and like her poetry and don’t know that she was black and an ex-slave.”
“You should say ‘freedwoman,’ not ex-slave, Nathan. You make it sound like a punishment instead of a liberty.”
Nathan Langdon stared at the small face gazing intently into his. He wondered how these conversations would sound to an eavesdropper of his own color. In the beginning, he had posed simple questions, staying away from the subject of slavery. Yet as this had been the central element of her life, it was impossible not to touch on it in a thousand ways. As Sally Hemings’ life story was unfolding, both the narrator and the listener had been overwhelmed by the weight and breadth of it. Langdon was awed at the intricacy of the information he was receiving. He was also well aware that it was compromising him both politically and emotionally. He had by now become hopelessly attached to this woman. More than that he had become involved with her.
He was spellbound by the fading echoes of her existence as bits and pieces came to him.
Sally Hemings regretted her confidences to Nathan, yet on the days that he didn’t come she was disappointed. She still prepared for his visits carefully, reaching in her memory for incidents or names that would impress or amuse him. Despite herself, she spoke more and more openly. She opened drawer after drawer of memories, which she rearranged, changed, aired, discussed, and counted, like linen. Her volatile performances, for that was what they were now, excited and fascinated Langdon.
“They were just men,” she would say with a smile when she spoke of those heroes already carved in marble (all except the dubious Aaron Burr). She and her sisters and her uncles and her mother and her mother before her had all been an unseen army, treated as if they could not see, hear, or feel.
Clinging to her words, Nathan followed the complicated plots and the many famous characters, slave and free, devotedly. Now, Langdon hardly asked a question. There was no need. Words followed in an unending stream. Sally Hemings spoke with a kind of desperation, willing him to understand. Sometimes she would take on the accent of the person she was describing. She was a talented mime. She didn’t realize that while she was merely recounting her past to Nathan Langdon, she was in fact uncovering a person she had never known from a life she had had no sense of. From these afternoons emerged a new Sally Hemings.
CHAPTER 6
ALBEMARLE COUNTY, 1831
Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by interference!
THOMAS JEFFERSON, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1790
NATHAN LANGDON had run into the close-mouthed, protective silence of Tidewater society concerning the Hemings affair, as well as the “official” family denial by the Randolphs. But everyone knew the reason the Hemingses were left in peace; the reason Sally Hemings would not budge from the frontier of Monticello. For Nathan Langdon, the Hemings affair was a parenthesis in the Institution; it neither condemned nor knighted it. He felt that there was something sinister in this blatant misuse of a master’s absolute power. But then, did one have absolute power when one was in love? That Sally Hemings was a victim was certain. Her submissiveness was what had made her the perfect slave, but, to his mind, the perfect woman as well. To misuse his moral or physical power over a woman, however, was abhorrent to him. A man’s power over a woman was like the master’s power over a slave. It came from an innate superiority.
“You would think my life depended on my telling you everything, Nathan.” She paused. Perhaps it did, she thought. She stared at the man she had just addressed. Langdon returned her quizzical glance with one of such tenderness that Sally Hemings was forced to lower her eyes, but not before returning the look in a way that told Langdon he was not the first to have fallen in love with Sally Hemings. He had the impression that this woman had never really used
her beauty to manipulate men. Was it because, as a slave, she had had no concept of power? Or was it because, as a slave, her beauty simply had held no threat and was thus neutral both to herself and others? Had she used this power in Paris? Over Jefferson? He flushed. He would soon be a married man, he thought ruefully, and instead of concentrating on Esmeralda, he was obsessed with a slave and her strange reclusive life and its secrets.
Langdon had been well aware for some time now of his physical attraction to this woman.
It was almost ritualistic by now to admire the slick black hair she never unwound, and to imagine it racing in one thick coil, like a black wave down her back. Now he was admiring the tender curve of her neck bending toward the pages of the book. The quiet folds of that indentation between her thighs, the sheen of old silk, filled him with a kind of fainting sickness. Would he ever dare to lay his head on those folds? Shocked as he was by his own thoughts, he tried to face them honestly. How many other Southern white men had dreamed similar dreams? He felt foolish and giddy. This pale, almost white woman was connected with darkness, with dark recesses, with dark flesh. Those first memories of comfort and warmth that all white Southerners share.
There had been a long pause in their conversation, and Langdon looked up to find Sally Hemings staring at him in a strange, intense way.
She seemed distracted as she rose and came toward him.
Sally Hemings, trained since birth in obedience, had heard the silent command of Nathan’s mind and body and had obeyed. In her loneliness and weariness she had failed to remember the first lesson of black womanhood: never touch a white man.
She knew that in Virginia, her color alone was a provocation to any white man. An invitation. Yet any gesture or familiarity on the part of the slave woman, no matter how maternal, how pure, was inviting disaster. She knew this, but she forgot. A mistake that was to cost her dearly.
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