Sally Heming (31 page)

Five years had passed since the birth of the child I had
carried in my womb across the water from France. Five years that had brought me
another child. My mother returned my gaze. Had she already guessed it? If I had
not been bound to Monticello before, this child fathered on my last birthday
was the hostage to the fading memories of Paris and freedom.

"You trapped," she said. "Just like I was
before you. But I never had the chance you had. And that will haunt you,
daughter, haunt you. Remember, you put yourself in danger when you returned to
Virginia. Danger of life and limb, and, God forbid, of being sold. Did you
forget about that over there in France? That you returned to the same burden as
the blackest, most ignorant field hand? You forgot the first lesson of slavery,
your blackness. And you forget the second, loving somebody you ain't got no
business loving.... The man you got has no business loving, either. He's put
himself in danger as well—don't forget that when you start feeling sorry for
yourself. In danger from his own white folks, loving somebody, he, with all his
money and power, ain't got no right to love."

"Do you think he'll marry again?"

My mother jumped to her feet. "Lord Almighty! You
wishing for a white mistress? Your father didn't marry again, did he? I ain't
never wished for no white mistress, and thank God I never had one. When there
were white mistresses at Poplar Hill, I was in the fields. When I came into the
Big House, they were all dead. And you wishing for one? Martha Randolph ain't
enough trouble for you? Let me tell you, daughter, white Southern ladies don't
seem to mind who sleeps with they husbands, but they mighty touchy 'bout who
sleeps with they fathers! I remember my own trials with them Wayleses
daughters. Lord! You think a white mistress wouldn't sell you so quick your
head would turn? You and your children? Or kill you? Or maim you? Or ruin that
beautiful face? You think it's never happened before? You think they don't know
what they men doing with their female slaves? You think they believe their slaves
gettin' whiter by contamination? You think because we're black, they don't feel
jealousy? They love the same way. They birth the same way, and they lusts the
same way. Why you think they dress themselves up in all those fine, low-cut
gowns? They love their men, and they hate us. Don't forget that, daughter.
There ain't that much difference between a white and a black female. And,"
she added, "in case you wonderin', ain't no difference a'tall between
white mens and black mens. They all think what they got twixt they legs is
Heaven, and what we got twixt ourn is Hell."

My prison was vast and golden. There were his vegetable
gardens, his thousands of fruit trees, his forests full of Virginia pine,
birch, oak, and linden.

Monticello was five thousand acres in length and width, and
across the river were scattered six thousand more divided between his
plantations of Tuffton, Lego, Shadwell, Broadhurst, Pan tops, Beaver Creek, and
at Martha's Edgehill. The mountain was enveloped in deep forest, all the way to
the clearing at the top, on which the mansion stood, with its lawns and gardens
and shade trees. From that point, like the spokes of a wheel, radiated his
fields and valleys, his streams and rivers, his tobacco, his cotton, his wheat,
his cattle, and his slaves. The forest was threaded as if with silk cords with
the forty miles of bridle paths over which my master rode without fail every
afternoon. I could see bent backs scattered among the white and green of his
lands. He had raced up the mountain to me and now he raced over the hills of
Monticello each day always singing. His hands, capable of the most delicate
drawings, the most exquisite caresses, now gripped the reins of his
thoroughbred horse. He was strong. He was home. He enjoyed his life at
Monticello. He read and wrote in the morning, he rode and tended his
plantations in the afternoons. His lust for politics had slackened; even his
appetite for the newpapers and local gossip had waned.

The great six-foot body had remained the same in leanness
and strength through the years. So had his high color. I could now see the
beginning of gray in his thick red hair and the lines around his mouth were a
little deeper. The heavy-lidded eyes were the same intense sapphire blue I had
always known. I wanted to cut off his queue, but he still wore his hair long
and tied with a blue ribbon. It fell to his shoulders in loose curls over the
fine white cravat I wound every morning around his neck. The only impatience I
ever saw him manifest was with his horses. He would subdue them with a whip at
the slightest sign of restlessness. He chose his bays for speed and spirit but
he mistreated them, making them dangerous animals. I was often frightened. I
never really knew if he would come back to me whole or broken to pieces.

Apart from that, my master seemed peaceful and content with
his life here.

There were twenty-five house slaves on the mountain, not
including the blacksmiths, grooms, carpenters, nailery boys, weavers, and
shepherds. First there was my mother, Elizabeth Hemings, housekeeper. Of her
"dark" Hemingses, there were Martin the butler, and Bett, Nance, and
Mary, who were housemaids. Four more of her dark Hemingses had been inherited
by my half sister Tabitha Wayles Skipwell. And then there were her "light"
Hemingses, whose father had been John Wayles: Robert, James, Peter, Critta, and
myself. Of the white Hemingses, Thenia and her children fathered by Samuel
Carr, my master's nephew, were missing, sold to James Monroe. And last year,
Robert Hemings had bought his freedom in order to live with his wife in
Richmond. Finally there was John Hemings, my mother's last son and my half
brother, whose father was a white carpenter called Nelson. Some of us had
children so that there were third-generation Hemings on the mountain as well:
Critta's son Jamey Hemings, whose father was Samuel Carr's brother, Peter.

And in the hierarchy of slavehood I stood at the pinnacle,
even before Elizabeth Hemings, for I was the "favorite," the
untouchable. I was far above the station of the other slaves. Accountable to no
one except the master.

"I cornered the bastard!"

I smiled at the recollection of James returning
triumphantly from Philadelphia and reading to me the written promise:
"That if the said James shall go with me to Monticello in the course of
the ensuing winter when I shall go to reside there myself and shall there
continue until he shall have taught such person as I shall place under him for
the purpose to be a good cook, this previous condition being performed, he
shall thereupon be made free and I will thereupon execute all proper
instruments to make him free...."

Why was he so childishly proud of that piece of paper? Why
hadn't he simply stolen himself?

"He would have freed you anyway, James," I said.

"No, he wouldn't. I'm the best cook in these United
States. Even now, he would keep me if he could. He's kicking himself already
over this piece of paper!"

"What will you do, James?"

"The first thing I've got to do is cook my last meal
at Monticello and get out of here!"

"Who have you chosen?"

"Peter, of course."

"Good," I said. "A position as powerful as
that shouldn't go out of the family."

He looked at me. "You are your mother's daughter, all
right," he said.

"The master will miss you."

"I've already given him six extra years of my life.

"The master," he said. "You always call him
that even with me. With that French accent of yours. I call the bastard
Jefferson or TJ when we are alone or with other slaves, and half the time I
call him that to his face if no strangers are present. But I have never heard
you refer to him as anything else except 'the master,' except that you make it
sound like an endearment.... No wonder he loves you. If you can take the most
ruthless word in the English language and turn it into an expression of love
..."

I turned away. It hadn't been so long ago that he too had
called him "master." Did he really believe that that piece of paper
erased a word he had mouthed since he was a child? I knew my brother so well.
He was so vulnerable. Let him call my lover bastard if it made him feel better.
We were all bastards after all, weren't we? We stared at each other.

"He is not God, you know."

"Isn't he, James?"

"Only God deserves to be loved."

"That may be so, but once you have loved a man, it is
difficult to love God."

I caught his hand and studied him tenderly.

He was twenty-nine years old now. His beauty had matured.
The soft curly hair was denser and thicker. I could no longer remember it with
powder. The high-bridged Wayles nose and the perpetual sneer of his perfect
mouth gave him a foreign look. His face fascinated women, both black and white,
and it was just as well he was leaving this place, I thought. In the years
since our return to Monticello, he had made no connection, of this I was sure,
although I knew that many overtures had been made to him by women. I wondered,
as I already had in Paris, if he had ever loved a woman.

"Je t'aime,
Sally," he
said suddenly. "Ah, darling James.
Moi aussi."

He gave me a kiss, but I felt we were miles apart,
countries apart. He will never understand, I thought. "Help me," he
said. "Yes," I answered. "I need you."

"I know. If only he didn't need me more ..."

"Are you sure he does?" he asked.

"I think so," I whispered.

"God help you if you are wrong," he said.

"And God be with you if you are right, James."

We saw little of each other after that.

In my mind, he had already gone from this place.

Adrien Petit came back. He had been persuaded by my master
to leave his beloved Champagne country and his mother and make the dangerous
journey to America. He brought to Monticello a thread that connected Marly and
Virginia, a link to past happiness and a promise that more would come. We
slipped back into our old relationship, Petit and I. He was kind to me. Though
unshockable, he was nonetheless shocked by Virginia. He could not reconcile
himself with slavery and slaves.

Thomas Jefferson began to make drawings for a new house
which would rise on the foundations of the old mansion, and we were alive with
plans and planting. That year Thomas Jefferson even seeded, plowed, and laid
out ten thousand cuttings of weeping willow.

He continued to spend a great deal of time on his horse. He
even measured his fields for planting on horseback.

Moses worked in the nailery with Bedford John and Bedford
Davy, as did the two brothers James, Phill Hubbard, Bartlet, and Lewis. All
were young boys between the ages of ten and twelve. The nailery was on Mulberry
Row, not more than sixty feet east of the Southern Breezeway and within
shouting distance of the mansion; near there was an avenue of stables, slave
dwellings, workshops, forges, and storage houses.

The Hemingses who did not stay in the Big House all lived
and worked there, along with the white workmen who now thronged the grounds in
preparation for the renovations. Naked children mingled
among the blacksmiths and the horses. The clanging forges
and the nailery were working all day long next to the steady thump of the
weavers' looms where the young girls worked.

In June we began to cut wheat at Shadwell and in early July
we cut wheat on this side of the river.

Our reapers were Frank, Martin, Phill, and Tim. Ned, Toby,
James, Val, Bagwell, Caesar, and Lewis. The younger boys were George, Peter,
and the two Isaacs.

Our gatherers were Isabel, Ned's Jenny, Lewis, Jenny, Doll,
Rachel, Mary, Nancy, O, Betty, Molly, and Lucina and her sisters.

Our stakers were great George, Judy, Hix, Jamy, Barnaby,
Davy, and Ben, Iris, Thamer, and Lucinda.

Our cradlers were John, Kit, Patty, the two Lucys, Essex,
Tom, Squire, and Goliah.

We treaded at Monticello with seven horses, their flanks
turning silver with sweat. The spicy, inexpressible fragrance of bruised and
trampled chaff rose on the heavy air, impregnating hair and skin. The hoarse
cries of the reapers fluttered over the ocean of not yet harvested grain like
the mobs of crows which circled in formation as the stocks rose like sentinels
in the half-reaped fields. The earth seemed to roll over and sigh with each
slash of the scythe, its voice too, woven into the din of the reapers. All
seemed to be of one plan and one motion: the burning sun, the earth turning,
the wheat slumping under its own weight. Great George constantly mended the
cradles and grinded the scythes that were never still. Their steel glint was visible
for miles; flecks of silver paper against the high-noon gold. Each day, Nance,
Mary, and I distributed the supplies. For every family unit, we gave out four
gallons of whiskey, two quarts of molasses, one smoked and one fresh meat with
peas.