I had never asked him for anything before. Even now, with a new life in my womb, pressing into the solid warmth of his back, his hands encompassing mine, my lips on his hair, I hesitated, but the closeness and his excitement at the new changes gave me courage. He shifted his good hand to hide his infirm hand, as he was wont to do.
“What is it?” he asked, as if he sensed my agitation.
“I should like you to design … to build a room for me.” I went on quickly, before he had time to respond. “A secret room adjoining yours where I may pass to and from without crossing the public hall where anyone who happens to be about may see me,” I said. There was not a servant or member of the household who did not know that only I had access to the apartments of the master. I was mistress of his bedchamber and his wardrobe. His premises were forbidden to all, including his daughter. Yet I felt naked every time I had to enter by the public hall, always full of people: visitors, workmen, servants, relatives. It would be so easy to find me a little space of my own somewhere. I longed for the shadowed recesses and the vast apartments of the Hôtel de Langeac with its endless attic rooms, secret corridors, unused apartments. Here, every space was occupied by slave or master. Twenty servants ran in and out of the main house, not counting all the other people, and even once a horse. . . . I recounted all this without stopping, as if I would run out of courage before I ran out of breath. Only the ticktock of the French clock broke the sound of my breathing. Outside a whippoorwill trilled.
“You shall have your room,” he said.
I waited for him to tell me where and how, but he said no more. There was a mischievous look on my master’s face, as if he had had in mind to build me a room all along. I raised him from his seat, put my arms about his waist, and kissed him.
That same spring Thomas Mann Randolph and Martha went to Warm Springs, leaving their children at Monticello. The servants of Edgehill were whispering that ever since the birth of Thomas Jefferson Randolph, their master was losing his mind, driven by the dark forces that seemed to overtake all the Randolphs in their prime. He and Martha had traveled as far away as New York seeking relief, and Martha had turned more and more to Monticello and her father for solace and comfort. Polly, who was now at home, my mother, and I would care for them. There had been many a time when Martha would take refuge in Monticello, having run away from her husband.
“What are you going to do about Martha coming here so often?” said Elizabeth Hemings.
“What can I do? She’s her father’s daughter, and Monticello will be hers and Polly’s one day. It is her right. Besides, she’s lonely, I think, and unhappy.”
“Poor man, he can’t help his sickness. First thing, she won’t have a husband.”
“I think that would suit her just fine,” I answered.
“Would it suit her father as well?”
A throb of jealousy sounded deep in me. Elizabeth Hemings always knew where to probe for her answers.
“I think it would. He needs her. He dotes on her and he loves her.” I didn’t add, “more than he loves me,” but I thought it. “He doesn’t like his son-in-law,” I added.
“Well,” my mother said, “he is not the first hard-riding, hard-drinking, evil-tempered bad Masta Randolph these parts have seen. Think on his cousin John Randolph of Roanoke. Rumor has it he don’t have no head for business. Thomas Jefferson be well to put this plantation in other hands than his. Seems he’s practically ruined.”
“It’s Martha’s dowry they are living on.”
“That’s so, now.”
I sighed. “As if you didn’t know, Maman!”
“Well,” chuckled my mother, “we got to keep our white folks informed and—”
“And spied upon twenty-four hours a day,” I said.
“Don’t we belong to them twenty-four hours a day?” replied Elizabeth Hemings. “When they give us a few hours’ freedom every day, we’ll give them a few hours’ peace.”
“You’ll never forgive me for coming back, will you? Or dragging James back here for all those wasted years. …”
“Daughter, all that’s history now. What’s left is between you and Thomas Jefferson. James is free. He’s over there in France, cooking for them nobles like he dreamed.”
“I forgot, Maman.”
Elizabeth Hemings looked at me without understanding.
“It’s harder, maman, to forget freedom than slavery. Over there, I had forgotten what it was like, if I ever knew. You raised me as free as any white child in the Big House. I came back to that, not to my real condition.”
“You came back because of that child.”
“No, Maman, I came back because I didn’t remember who I was.”
“You remember now, don’t you.”
“Yes.”
“And the masta didn’t do much reminding, did he?”
“I don’t think he truly remembered, either. We were like children. He with his illusions, and I with mine.”
“You were a child, then, true; but he had no excuse except his own selfishness.”
“It wasn’t true selfishness, Maman. White people are different from us.”
“They ain’t different, daughter, they simply expect to get what they want or what they need in life, that’s all. It never occurs to them—as it always occurs to us—that they won’t get what they need, nor what they want. You want to stroll away? Nothing stopping you.”
“Nothing?”
“He wouldn’t pursue you. There’s enough gossip already.”
“I think he would.”
“Never, daughter, no matter how much he wanted to. His pride would stop him.”
“His pride is great, Maman, but not as great as his passion for owning things. I belong to him. I’m his, and no other man’s. And he’ll keep me. He’s given up too many things he’s loved in life.”
“Got to let you go if the Lord claims you.”
I got up and walked toward the warmth of the smoldering kitchen chimney. I had come for company, as my master was out in his fields. I hadn’t wanted this conversation. For years, I had been avoiding this conversation. . . .
“Being free isn’t so important I’d die for it,” I said, and turned to face her.
“Don’t tell me freedom ain’t worth dying for! Black people dying left and right, in the fields and on the ships, being beaten to death for not yielding, being hunted like dogs for strollin’, being killed for standin’ up like men and women instead of grovelin’ like dogs! Don’t give me any of your lip about ‘not worth dying for’! They’s even white folks—abolitionists who’s risking their lives—their white lives for black people, helping them run. And you, you with your pride! Thinkin’ that slavehood would never touch your precious body, or your precious spirit, that it would not hurt you and damage you and change you. . . .” My mother’s face had darkened. It always changed colors when she was in a rage. “Pride has given you a worst burden than any field hand out there, because theirs can be lifted, but yours never will. Thomas Jefferson playing father to you, me spoiling you like I didn’t know your color. If you had stayed here, you would have learned. . . . Oh, Lord Almighty, how I wish I had never put you on that boat!”
My mother had grasped my wrist with her strong rough hands and had drawn me toward her. I looked at her without expression. I had long ago abandoned myself to that particular joy of not being responsible for oneself. I had struggled against everything that surrounded my master and was hostile to me. I had overcome the fearful disgust which his situation as master and mine as slave inspired in me.
“If you don’t want it for yourself, at least get it for your children!”
“I have, Maman. I have the promise.”
At that moment, I didn’t care about that. I still had not accepted the great ring of household keys, which was my badge of authority, from my mother. I let her cling to it. The warmth of the fire stole under my skirts and up the back of my legs and spine. He would be coming home soon. I looked at my mother with impatience,
as she continued to hold on to me.
“What if he grows tired of you?” my mother asked.
“Then,” I answered, “I just might think about dying for freedom.” I smiled, and my mother released me. I looked down at my wrist and saw the rosy mark left on my skin by her fingertips.
“Sally?”
I had been reading a letter from James. I turned toward him. He was almost shouting, the demolition of our walls making it virtually impossible to be heard.
“I want to transplant all the rhododendron along the south hedge. I was going to tell Giovanni to do it, but I wanted to ask you what you thought.”
“What does Petit think?” I asked.
“He said to ask you.”
“I liked them where they were,” I said. “And what will you do with all the babies in the nursery, then?”
“Find a new place for them. I thought to make an alley at the end of the formal garden.”
“Oh, no.” I hesitated, then called him by his name. He seemed pleased, and laughed out loud. I had pronounced his name as it was said in French, dropping the “s.” To-mah.
“Always call me thus,” he whispered.
He held out his arms. I looked up at him.
It was more than a year before I had the room I could call my own. But true to his word, he built it. A tiny winding stairway led from the foot of his bed to a narrow passageway over the top of his bed alcove which ran the length of it and was lit by three round windows giving onto his rooms. The shape of the windows had been inspired by the painting of Abraham and Hagar he liked so much, as well as those for my room. My room was octagonal, hidden under the eaves, and looked westward over the mountains. There I waited, accumulating my account of hours. My small treasures from Paris filled the room: the onyx-and-bronze clock, my Paris sofa and bedstead, the copper bathing tub that Joe Fosset had copied for me, my chests full of dresses I never wore, my linens, my bolts of fine silks and cambrics, my books, my guitar. There I was free, solitary, away from the multitude of the mansion. I savored entering his inner sanctum by my own stairway. Only in my official capacity as slave and mistress of his wardrobe did I enter by the public hall on the ground floor.
Only after he had built the miniature stairway to my room did he discover to his dismay that the two new wings of his mansion had no stairs at all! He quickly ordered my brother John to add a stairwell to each wing. It was barely wider than my own—a mere two feet across—and had to accommodate not only the bulk of his masculine company but the hoopskirts of his females. I thought of the great stairway at the Hotel de Langeac, that monument of rose marble I had fled down that March morning eight years ago. Only my secret room, with its passageway and tiny staircase, resembled the great houses of Paris, and it linked us to the past. Soon our private existence would give way once again to the demands of the public and of power but, for a while at least, I was safe, happy, hidden, and loved.
CHAPTER 28
PHILADELPHIA, MARCH 1797
“THERE IS NOTHING I so anxiously hope as that my name may come out either second or third—the last would leave me home the whole of the year, and the other two-thirds of it. . . .”
With these words, our happiness in retirement came to an end. On Christmas Day 1796.
My master was now the second vice-president of the United States. So loath was he to leave home that he considered having himself sworn in at home in Virginia. As for me, I was in mourning. My third child, Edy, had not survived her first months, and now came the blow that I would lose my master again to his old mistress, politics. Neither Martha nor Maria were to go with him to Philadelphia for the inauguration. To cheer me, he offered to take me with him for the ceremonies.
I looked forward to the eleven long days of journeying; anything to rouse me out of my deep depression. Perhaps I would have news of James, from whom I hadn’t heard in over a year.
We departed. Day after day, new landscapes sped by as we traveled farther north. We passed Ravensworth, and Montpelier, Dumfries, Elkridge, and Georgetown. We had taken the Paris phaeton, and Isaac and Israel as outriders were charged with the extra horses. We were drawn by the six beautiful bays of Monticello. On the second of March, after leaving Chester, my master tried to obtain a public carriage to carry us to Philadelphia, but none was to be had. We delayed until evening, with the intention of entering the city in secret, but the yellow-and-lilac carriage with the Monticello coachman had been recognized and our arrival had been reported by messenger. As we entered the city, we were greeted by a large, roaring crowd carrying a banner proclaiming: “Jefferson, Friend of the People,” and by a company of artillery that fired sixteen rounds of ammunition in salute. A cold dread seized me, and I clutched at my master’s sleeve and buried my face in his shoulder. It had been almost eight years since I had come down off the mountain that was Monticello. I was once again out into the world. That mountain on which I had spent almost all my existence had rolled away like a great stone covering a tomb and let in the light and air of the world, and this world was pounding on the sides of the carriage and screaming slogans and love as my master laughed and disengaged his arm from my clutches, the better to lean forward toward the window and show himself. Burwell, who was inside the carriage, stuck his head out the other side and watched Davey and Jupiter soothing the frightened horses, smiling, and waving at the crowd as if they had been born to do it. I peered out nervously behind the bulk of Burwell onto a sea of white faces cut into by the booted and spurred legs of our outriders. I had not seen so many white people at once since Paris. I remembered James’s description of the Bastille mob and the crowds, and I saw myself in the Paris streets. That memory became one as I glimpsed these friendly Americans come to acclaim their vice-president. Had I forgotten, on my mountain, that the world was made up of white people? This howling, laughing, unruly crowd was the white world. I uttered a small cry and clutched at Burwell as I had at my master, but he, like his master, was only interested in those faces swarming around us. He shrugged off my hand and ignored me.
The next day I roamed the streets of Philadelphia, a city that seemed to be made up of only one color and one material: red brick. The streets as well as the houses were made of it. The wetness made the bricks slippery underfoot and, several times, Burwell kept me from falling. We strolled down Market Street looking into the shop windows, at the street vendors and the newspaper sellers. I looked for my master’s little house at Seventh Street, noisy and filled with young boys, both black and white, selling broadsides and pamphlets and newspapers, all proclaiming to have the story on the first succession to the presidency of the United States. Burwell bought several of them for the plantation.
In the course of our walk, Burwell would point out the freed men as they crossed our path, and I couldn’t help but stare at them. They were all wearing neat clothes, and conveyed the feeling of self-confidence. I knew, of course, that in Charlottesville there were many freed people of color, but this was the first time that I had looked into the faces of Negroes who had never been slaves. Some seemed rich, the women with long elegant skirts trailing the sidewalks, accompanied by dignified men in dark broadcloth and snowy linen. I had put on my best dress, and although it was years out of fashion in Paris, it was not noticeable here. I was looking forward to seeing the elegant ladies tomorrow in their fine gowns, cloaks, hats, and gloves.
The day dawned clear and sunny. We followed our master, walking to the Senate building, where the swearing-in ceremony was to take place. I strained my hearing to the utmost, but was still unable to make out one word, either of the speech or of the prayer he offered for the country. It was the first time I had ever heard my master speak in public, and after the first few words his voice lost all its musical resonance, and became little more than a husky whisper. In order to learn what he had said in a public speech, one had to have recourse to the printed speech in the newspapers. After giving his prayers for the happiness, peace, and prosperity of our country, he led the senators and the crowd to
the House of Representatives, where Master Adams was sworn in. It had been almost ten years since I had last seen John Adams from the back window of the phaeton taking Polly and me to Paris. He had not grown slimmer with age, and where he had been square and stout, he was now round and fat. With his prim countenance, long, pinched nose, and tiny piercing blue eyes, he resembled nothing so much as a Virginia hare in his pearl-gray frockcoat, waistcoat, and breeches. I felt an old surge of affection for him, wondering what my life would have been if he had sent me back to Virginia that summer long ago. Abigail Adams was nowhere to be seen. Had she not come to honor her husband on this day?
As I looked around, I realized that there were practically no women at all. All the fine ladies I had hoped to see had stayed home and this gathering looked as if there were only men in this United States.
At the side of George Washington was his slave Samuel, as old and stony as his master. President Washington was dressed all in black: a tall old man with an old-fashioned powdered wig with rolled curls at the sides, and with cold, small blue eyes set in a face so white it seemed blue. The nose was large and his lips were so thin they were invisible until he drew them back in what was meant to be a smile showing his large, black false teeth, which were famous. Now and again he waved stiffly at the crowd, and as he did so, exhibiting his black smile in a pure white face, the slave at his side would also smile, exhibiting his pure-white smile in a black face. The crowd cheered the outgoing president and tears began to slide down the face of the president and that of his slave shadow Samuel. John Adams made a fine speech in his harsh Massachusetts accent. He too was greatly cheered. To this day, I wonder why Abigail Adams did not come to see her husband made president of the United States.
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