Sally Hemings

by Barbara Chase-Riboud

  Later, Nathan learned that Nat Turner’s body had been skinned; grease made of the fat, and souvenir money pouches made of the skin.

  Eston Hemings knew his mother was in a near-hysterical state by now, and looked around wildly to find a way out of the crowd. They were jammed tight into this solid block of humanity. There was no escape. His mother was screaming that Turner was accusing her of something, but that she was not guilty. He could not make out what it was she was saying over the din of people. He bit his lip in exasperation. He was terrified. His bowels were gripped with spasms as if he were about to be seized and herded with the insurgents.

  He knew in his heart he was as guilty as Turner. They were all guilty. Every slave or ex-slave had as much murder in his heart. His terror broke loose and spread out over the crowd, mixing with the miasma of stagnant hate that rose from the packed bodies. Nausea overcame him. His mother—he must get her away from here. He must get himself away. Not only away from here, but out of Virginia, out of the slave states. Madison was right. As long as there were slaves, there would be murder, and as long as there was murder, retaliation could fall on anything and anyone who was exposed. That included all Hemingses.

  Eston turned his back on the courthouse and Nat Turner, placing himself in front of his mother to protect her. He put both his arms around her and leaned back using all the muscles at his command to secure a little breathing space around her head. Her pale face was transfixed; small beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead; she drew her cloak around her. Her mouth was slightly open, and her eyes glinted.

  Eston understood now why she had made the long and dangerous journey to Jerusalem. Her obsession with Turner’s rebellion, his trial, his execution—all that made sense to him. With the same intensity that had made her refuse to see Nathan Langdon, she had devoured every scrap of information she could obtain about Nat Turner. If Nathan Langdon had given a meaning to his mother’s life, then Nat Turner had taken it away. He doubted if Langdon would even recognize her now. He had seen his mother change from a young woman to an old one, the amber eyes turn a dull brown, the jet-black hair streak with gray, almost overnight, the slender body dehydrate and fold like parchment. The glow of continual fever gave her an iridescent glow like that of a religious fanatic. But to what or to whom?

  She sat for hours now staring into space. She would either talk to herself or fall silent for days. Sally Hemings had agreed to leave Monticello. But Eston worried that she would not survive the hardship of the journey West. He saw life running out of this proud, passionate, and secret woman.

  Eston continued to fight to give his mother breathing space, but she seemed transplanted to another space, another time.

  “O God,” she whispered, “now forgive me for ever loving him.” And Eston wondered which man she meant.

  CHAPTER 9

  ABOARD THE GREENHELM, JUNE 1787

  I am more and more convinced that Man is a dangerous creature, and that power whether vested in many or few is ever grasping, and like the grave cries give, give.

  ABIGAIL ADAMS

  I never hoped for mercy … for more than fifty years I have lived in an enemy country.

  JOHN ADAMS

  I BELIEVED myself to be happy. As a child I was happy. I was brought up around the Big House at Monticello, and I loved those around me: my mother and uncles, Martha, Maria, Master Jefferson. Like all slaves, I was told nothing of my origins, which little by little I pieced together. Once, when I was eight or nine, my brother James and Martha went off to play and left me behind. I don’t remember the reason, only that I felt abandoned and was crying.

  Master Jefferson came upon me and tried to comfort me. He said being sad was a waste of time and the best thing to do when you were sad was to write down everything you saw about yourself, even the tiniest detail, and then to think about them one by one. By the time you had got halfway through the list, he said, you wouldn’t remember the origin of your misery anymore. He left then and returned with a smooth pine board and some charcoal. He sat beside me and we made a list of all the plants, flowers, trees, and vegetables we could see in the kitchen garden and beyond; all the fish we could imagine in the little river by the northwest boundary; all the animals we could imagine living in the pines of the southwest boundary. It was my earliest recollection of him, and, that moment knowing neither past nor future, I felt only an immense calm and safety in his presence that rested on my shoulders like a warm cloak.

  When Martha and James came back and found us together, Martha flew into a rage of jealousy, took off her boot, and started to hit me with it. The heel of Martha’s boot came down above my temple and raked the skin and broke it. More blood than was warranted by the wound streamed down my cheek. It mingled with my tears of confusion and grief.

  Out of desolation, I ground my teeth to keep from crying and brought my petticoat up to my ear to stem the flow of blood. But he was there before me. He held my head and pressed his handkerchief to the wound. Then he picked up Martha in his arms to keep her from hitting me again.

  I remember her bright head meeting level with his great height in a blaze of red. He had flung her over his shoulder, but his eyes met mine in an attempt to console me, too. I despised Martha for being jealous of those few minutes I had had, when she had him as a father forever. . . . That day made me a list-maker. And a diary-keeper. I would continue all my life.

  The Greenhelm, June 17,1787

  It was June seventeenth. I remember that day we were five weeks out of Norfolk, and we were, as Captain Ramsay would have said, “becalmed.” There was not a sniff of wind; all the great square sails were furled and bound. The sun was hot on my head, and even now, if I close my eyes, I can still see the reflection of the sun on that smooth sea, like the field of white clover that runs down the back toward the river boundary of Monticello. I had found a wonderful hiding place, and intended to keep it for myself. It was high up on the forward mast, well, not so high up, but it was quite a dangerous climb. There was a little niche where I could watch what was going on below without anyone seeing me. I used to go up there and take off my bonnet. I can still hear little Polly screaming not to take her bonnet off, for if she got freckles in the sun, her father had written, he wouldn’t love her anymore. Well, I would take my bonnet off and let my hair down and feel it curl round my waist. At home I was made to wear it tied up. My charge, Maria Jefferson, known as Polly, had done nothing but cry and cuff me for the past ten days. We, that is, her cousin Jack Eppes, Mistress Eppes, and myself, had lured her on the ship by deceiving her, and she still wasn’t over it. She hadn’t wanted to leave her Aunt Eppes to go to her father. Now she found herself on a strange ship with me, on her way to a foreign country to see a father she didn’t remember, who said he wouldn’t love her if she got freckles! From the time she had awakened, hours out of the port, she never stopped screaming about being shanghaied. I was just fourteen and Polly was nine. On the ship she had been left with me, who was as scared as she, and who felt just as abandoned. We were on our way to Paris, France, and her father, Thomas Jefferson, the minister to that kingdom. But by then, the worst was over. She had liked the captain, Mr. Ramsay, who had taken charge of her. She clung to him.

  We were the only females on the ship and were made much of by the five other male passengers and the captain. For me, it was the beginning of my real history. From the moment I stepped onto that ship as nurse for Polly, everything that had happened to me before seemed to recede and grow smaller, until nothing remained except the sweep of the sea and the vastness of the sky and those unexpected days of peace and freedom.

  I was still quite childish at fourteen, although I looked older than my age. My childhood days at Monticello—the little school, run for the white children and the house servants, taught by Mrs. Carr; old Cook’s underground kitchens with all their intrigues and noise and heat—faded away in the bright sea-sun. I missed my mother. I thought for a while she was going to take Polly to Paris herself, but finally my
mother had decided on me. It had been a queer choice.

  It was Mammy Isabel who was supposed to have gone with Polly. When Mistress Eppes arrived to fetch her to Norfolk, it became known that Mammy Isabel was well gone with her eighth child and wasn’t fit to travel. Mistress Eppes, who was altogether distracted anyway about losing Polly and sending her so far away against her will, was beside herself. First, because Polly really didn’t want to go; and second, because there was no one to take her.

  My mother had suddenly turned and looked at me and said, “Sally will go. She’ll have James to look out for her.” And before Mrs. Eppes could get her breath to ask if I had had my smallpox, or how old I was, Mama swept me out of the parlor, down the hall, and out through the kitchens, leaving Cook with her mouth wide open, ready, but unable to get her two cents in. I was breathless and scared. I had never been a nurse or a lady’s maid or anything. Most I had been before then was a child! But Mama, she kept right on going, I can remember her skirts whistling, up the back stairs, into the linen room in the back, out with a straw trunk and three cases, then back to her own chests of linen to find chemises and petticoats and stockings and bolts of cloth for dresses. Nothing Isabel had for the voyage fit me, even the underwear, so, in less than a week, everything had to be made new.

  I was going and we couldn’t miss the ship that was waiting in Norfolk. Master Jefferson was not going to tolerate any more delays. I suppose my mother could have found someone to fit into Isabel’s things. After all, there were some three hundred and sixty-four slaves she could pick from, at least half were female and grown. But something pressed her to send me. To this day I don’t know why. If it was fate, then she had a hand in it.

  “It will be Sally, then. I can’t think anymore,” Mistress Eppes had said, finally and belatedly, for her voice was lost in the preparations of my departure.

  I was leaving Monticello, the only home I knew, for a strange country.

  Monticello, the most beautiful place in the world. The grass was greener, the scent of flowers keener, the blossoms bigger, the air clearer, the animals more healthy, the rigs more elegant, the cooking better, the slaves happier, the master—whom I had not seen since I was ten—better than any other place. Of course, I had never been outside the boundaries of Monticello. I was born at Bermuda Hundred, the plantation of my father, but he died three months after I was born, and the next year I came with my mother to live at Monticello, perched on its mountain, looking onto the Blue Ridge Mountains. My mother loved it more than I. It was always cool, with a breeze even in the hottest summer, and had a great hall that carried the freshness through the house. With horse and carriage, it took almost one hour to reach the main gate from the road.

  Master Jefferson spent much of his time away from the plantation, in Philadelphia or New York, but every time he came home he would tear something down or build something new or rebuild something. He always arrived with his plans, and he would summon my brothers James and Robert and the white workmen, and they would start to work.

  The slave cabins dotted the hillside in back of the Big House; they climbed up the hill like white morning glories gone wild with the smoke drifting out of the chimney fires. Along the back of the main house was a long covered walk, looking onto the kitchens, the meat house, smokehouse, icehouse, laundries, storehouses, and servants’ quarters. This was my mother’s domain. She oversaw twenty-five or more house servants.

  We never had the number of servants a big plantation had. Master Jefferson didn’t want it, and as Mistress Jefferson was frequently ill, she couldn’t have managed to run them. My mother could have, of course, but there didn’t seem to be much point in having a footman behind every chair and no mistress.

  And, of course, there were always everybody’s children, black and white, running everywhere. Once Master Eppes came rushing in to find Master Jefferson, tripped over a baby in the hallway, and slid seven feet on the parquet that had just been waxed for the fourth time that day. Fractured his rib, I remember. My mother usually kept everybody in the back and made do with Martin and Big George when the master was home.

  My mother was beautiful. She was not very tall, but well formed and light mahogany in color. Her skin changed colors on different days; sometimes there was a rose tint and sometimes a yellow tint. She had her “dark” days and her “light” days. She used to say that my father would always remark on her color every morning. Once I surprised her in the fields just standing perfectly still like a statue among the tall wheat; her skin had taken on the same color, her eyes were blazing, and there were two tears running down her cheeks, but there had been no sounds of weeping.

  A great calm had settled on our ship. Another day and still there was no wind, so we lingered, sitting on the tranquil sea, like a turtle in its shell. Sailors and passengers alike were lulled by the silence, the absence of movement. Games were organized and promenades. We made friends with the sailors who would make us gifts of little soft animals, creatures made out of rope and hemp. Polly and I used to “fish” over the side of the ship, which amused the sailors, who would ask us if we had caught any “catfish.” One fat, red little sailor with a blond beard and green eyes made me the figure of a little dog in the image of a certain race they had in France. He made it out of hemp, and around the neck, tail, and legs was a mass of curls shaped like shrubbery. I later learned this race of dog was called “caniche” and was in fashion with the Paris gentry. I tied a ribbon on mine and called him George Washington. I would climb up to my hiding place, my “Monticello,” with Washington, and there I would sit, making lists in my loneliness, to pass the time.

  Blue. Sky. Water without wind. No clouds. Sixteen sails. Three flags. Birds. Seven Masts. Sun. A long railing of polished brass. God. Silver on blue. 85 spokes in the railing. 48 sailors on the ship. 3 cooks. 1 surgeon. 2 mates. 1 adjunct. 4 officers. 1 Captain. Captain Ramsay. The cargo; sugar. tobacco. rice. barley. molasses. peanuts.

  Partial inventory of Polly’s trunks: 1 stiffened coat of silk; 2 silk dresses, 1 cloak, 8 petticoats; 8 pairs of kid mittens; 4 pairs of gloves; 4 pairs of calamanco shoes; 8 pairs leather pumps; 6 pairs fine thread stockings; 4 pairs fine worsted stockings; 2 fans; 2 masks; 4 pairs of ruffles; 7 girdles consisting of 2 white, 2 dark blue, 1 rose, 1 yellow, 1 black; 6 linen drawers; 6 silk drawers; 13 chemises; 1 silver mirror; 16 dolls; 1 flute. . . .

  Inventory of my trunk: 2 cotton petticoats; 1 quilted petticoat; 6 dresses, 1. pair worsted stockings; 4 linen aprons; 2 girdles; 12 chemises; 1 pair of shoes; 2 nightshirts; 1 wooden crucifix carved by John; 1 woolen shawl; 1 flute.

  We got under way again. It had been still the whole day, when suddenly a breeze whipped the ribbons of our bonnets as Polly and I strolled on deck. There were sailors everywhere, running and leaping in a noisy slippery dance. The sails swelled before our eyes and the ship shuddered, rolling under us like one of my master’s galloping bay horses. In about an hour we had begun to take on speed, and what a beautiful sight were the waves we made, frothing in the setting sun, the last streaks of light quarreling with the dark that finally came, dropping like a black cloth. From then on we made good time. I started looking forward to the future instead of being homesick for the past. That night we celebrated the trade winds.

  Everyone dressed for dinner, and Captain Ramsay put on his dress uniform and fairly took our breath away. It was of a bright- but deep-blue hue, a velvet jacket with golden tassels on the shoulders hung with golden cords. The lapels were red satin, with a matching waistcoat. His cravat and shirt were a snowy white, with lace at the cuffs, and his small cloths were also white with blue stockings. His hair was powdered and tied with a blue ribbon, and his shoes were black patent-leather, with silver buckles. His buttons were of silver and he had a silver watch and a great sword in a silver harness and a blue sapphire on his hand. I will never forget the splendor of Captain Ramsay. Little Polly had found her first love. Oh, he was a splendid man, Captain Ramsay, and Polly did adore him! I think it was because she mis
sed her father.

  I remembered her father well, but Polly had been only four when he had left, and she had no recollection of him at all. All that she had known, as love and family, she had left in Norfolk with her aunt’s family. I felt sorry for Polly. I loved her in a way I never loved her sister Martha. Martha was one year older than I, yet I was her aunt, just as I was Polly’s. We had grown up together at Monticello, fought, played, rode, and laughed together. I was with her when Mistress Jefferson, my half sister, died. A long, pale, hot afternoon, stinking and mosquito-filled. We had tried to keep the bugs off her, taking turns fanning her. The doctor came at the end, but Master Jefferson wouldn’t let him bleed her. My mother had dropped all her household duties to nurse her mistress. Master Jefferson had moved his study next to her bedroom and had not left her for the whole time it took her to die. Monticello, which had always been a house full of people, babies, guests, kin, and animals, seemed to empty out, and there was just my mother, Master Jefferson, Martha, Polly, and me, and the rest of the servants. At the end, my master had fainted dead away. He remained unconscious for so long his family thought he had died with her. The last thing she had made him promise was not to marry again.

  It was my mother who had bathed her and laid her out and wept over her. The mistress had been like a daughter to my mother, even though they had been, like Martha and me, almost contemporaries. Whatever accommodations they had had to make in their lives because of my mother’s concubinage, they seemed to have made long ago, because they genuinely loved each other. Mama combed her long hair out onto the pillow. Mama wept and wept and cleaned her and put on her jewels, draped the room and filled it with fresh flowers, and wept. She wouldn’t let anyone else touch the body. She had tended Master Jefferson as well, who seemed to have lost his senses and his will to live. She cooked his meals and practically fed them to him, nursed him until he was able to go out riding again. Then he had ridden like the wind for days and days until he was exhausted. Martha rode with him sometimes, but mostly he was alone. And mostly Martha was alone. She couldn’t reach her father in his terrible grief, so she turned to me. Or rather we turned to each other. We didn’t cry over Martha Jefferson’s death, but then Master Jefferson and Elizabeth Hemings wept enough for all of us. Martha and I seemed to enter into some kind of covenant; tearlessness. We were shocked by the conduct of the grown-ups. Somehow it didn’t seem dignified. One day Martha, who was called Patsy to differentiate her from her mother, held up a mirror to my face and said: “You look more like her than I do. I look like my father.”