Sally Heming (39 page)

"Exile them," I whispered.

Relief broke over his face. "Thank you," he said,
and his eyes were filled with an ineffable tenderness. He, for the first time
in his life, had a glimpse of the terror of slavehood and loving me he had
acknowledged this terror. On this mountain, his eyes seemed to say, we can hold
everything at bay, even this.

Shyly he reached out and touched me. He still seemed afraid
of me. "Let me work now," he said.

I suffered his touch, but my mind was ablaze. There were so
many things I wanted to say.

I turned and left him to his letters. I climbed the
miniature stairs at the foot of his bed to my room. It was not until my master
had left for Philadelphia, the balloting for the presidency still in doubt,
that I heard that the last of Gabriel's condemned rebels had been reprieved and
banished from Virginia by James Monroe.

I had not pleaded in vain.

CHAPTER 30

OCTOBER
1800

James came home
. He had arrived
from France more than a year ago, and we dreamed to hold him at Monticello
until the summer. He had seen his ex-master in Philadelphia.

"Thomas Jefferson says my journeys will end up on the
moon! If only it could be so, for I am tired of this earth and its
inhabitants!"

"When did you see him? How is he?"

My brother looked at me in disgust.

"He is fine. Embroiled in politics, as usual, and
complaining about it, as usual. Burwell sends his love. Your master has no
stomach to govern men. He says, T leave to others the sublime delight of riding
the storm, better pleased with sound sleep and a warm berth below, with the
society of neighbors, friends, and fellow laborers of the earth, than of spies
and sycophants....' So, I guess he misses you, sister. He can't decide whether
he wants to be vice-president or not. Certainly, according to the newspapers
and the backstairs, they are giving him a hard time. He looked so worried and
despondent, I proposed that he join me on my next voyage to Spain to forget his
troubles."

"Spain!"

Both Elizabeth Hemings and I exclaimed at the same time. We
were sitting in one of the cellars next to the kitchens where it was cool. We
had stuffed James with everything good we could find to eat in the pantries. He
was wearing the latest French fashions and looked splendid. Men no longer wore
breeches, but long pants, slender, and tight, and tucked in tall boots. The
colors had changed as well—no more rose satin or pale-blue silk. Frock coats
were shorter, fuller, in dark colors with high collars and white linen swathed
the chest and neck up to the ears. James no longer wore his hair long; it was
cropped short in a mass of curls.

"But why Spain?" we asked.

"And why not Spain? As I told your master, it is the
only country not fighting, or getting ready to fight, with France! Don't think
that France is any party since the Revolution; we had only the beginnings of it
that October of eighty-nine, and the stories we've heard here are nothing
compared to the reality. When I arrived in France, I had hoped to find work
with one of the great houses I had known when we were there. Only I learned
that most of the great houses were closed, or gutted and burned, their owners
and occupants either in exile or gone to the guillotine, like the poor king and
his queen. And the 'citizens,' as they call everyone now, were looking askance
at the servant class as well. Many cooks' and valets' heads came off along with
their masters'. Petit knew what he was doing to leave when he did.

"Once Robespierre was dead, it was thought that the
bloodletting would be finished, but it goes on even now. There is civil and
foreign war. Everyone is attacking France or getting ready to attack her.
Because of the upheaval, there had no been no planting and therefore no
harvest. There is no bread and no money. People pray only for a deliverer. The
Estates General is paralyzed. Everything—everything is chaos, yet your
Jefferson still hopes for victory for the Revolution. Nothing but a miracle
will save France now. Never did I think the fine house of the old Comtesse de Noailles
on the Ile Saint-Louis would be gutted and burned to the ground; as well as the
Hermitage, and the Tuileries Palace. There was no trace of the Bastille, but
think on this: they destroyed Marly as well. Nothing is left."

Marly. So it too was gone.

"And all of Master Jefferson's friends?" I asked.

"How changed their fortunes are now! Lafayette is in a
prison at Magdeburg. Madame de Corny is a widow and has retired to Rouen with a
pittance she salvaged from her jewels. Mrs. Cosway has gone into a convent at
Genoa. Monsieur de Condorcet escaped from a hanging indictment, and is a
fugitive. The Duc de la Rochefoucauld was torn to pieces by a mob before the
eyes of his mother and wife. Those who have not been separated from their heads
are either in exile or in prison. The Directory could well use the Bastille we
tore down!" James licked his lips.

The recital of murder and trials went on long into the
night. We listened at first with horror and interest; then numbness set in as
the litany went on and on. James took delight in the demise of one great
aristocrat after another. His hard eyes glinted when he told the tales of the
Terror and Jacobins and finally Robespierre's death. Now there was the chaos
and civil war of the Directory.

"We Americans didn't have a revolution worth talking
about," James continued. "We're just as much slaves now as in
1776!
We're just as much slaves under a vice-president and a
president as we were under a British governor. They still import as many slaves
into this so-called Republic. If the French could make an insurrection with
stones and pitchforks, why can't we?"

"James, hush your mouth!" Elizabeth Hemings
cried.

But there was no master here to overhear what we said. I
was the mistress of Monticello.

"I'm trying to say, Mama, that there are thirty
thousand slaves in the state of Virginia alone. In South Carolina, we outnumber
the whites.... Thirty thousand Virginia slaves ... that's an army. You realize
that? An army!"

My mother rose as if to block the very words out of James's
mouth. But who was listening?

We moved outside and I watched the mountains turn gold, red
and silver as the sun dipped. James's eyes glowed, feverish as ever. The
low-hanging smoke from the slave fires dimmed the pink of the sky, and the buzz
of night creatures mingled with the droning of James's familiar voice.

What did I really feel? Horror, vengeance, delight, sorrow,
indifference ... yes, indifference was the closest to this tight stony feeling
that pushed itself up into my heart.

"Lord, you know that sounds like some slave
revolt!"

"That's what I mean, Mama, if you could see what the
Revolution— theirs, not ours—brought down as we saw it, then you would know
that anything is possible!"

"But them aristocrats," my mother said slowly,
"was weak."

"And our masters are strong? Those white people were
just like us; militia and passes, and lynchings ...Just like us, Mama! Can you
understand a little of what I'm trying to say to you?"

"I understand more than you think, James Hemings. I
understand when you talk about revolution and how many slaves there is in
Virginia and how our masters with all they privileges ain't no stronger than
that King Louis. I understand you just like anybody got two cents' worth of
brains understands you. But I know what we
ain't
got, and what we ain't got is a
leader to lead us. A Moses. We ain't got him. He ain't come and unless he do,
we ain't going nowhere. You talking about people who followed because they was
led.
I'm ready to follow, but who's going
to lead? All the white folks get together even if the poor trash can't stand
the rich white folks. They get together from all the plantations to put it
down. Make an example of the leaders, put the fear of the Lord into everybody.
France got some troubles on its hands, and I don't think what they be needing
is a pastry cook. What they need is somebody, one body to pull their coals out
of the fire, not their petit fours...."

"I don't intend to go anywhere near an aristocrat or a
citizen, for that matter," James said, "but where there's war,
there's money. That I learned from our politicians and bankers up in
Philadelphia. And I intend to make a fortune. I came back for just one
reason—to get my sister. You coming, Sally Hemings?" James's voice cracked
onto the still air like thunder in my ears and I sat up struck by it.

"Come with you?" I whispered.

"Nothing stopping you," he said.

"Nothing ... except two children."

"Leave them with Mama and come back and get them, or
take them with you. I don't care which."

"You don't know what you're saying, James. I
couldn't—"

Without warning, James's face contorted with rage.
"Mama, listen to her. You hear her! Mama!" It was a scream.
"Eight years and she hasn't learned anything! After all the promises in
Paris, it took him seven years to free me, and I got thirty dollars and a
horse. I traded freedom for promises, because I thought he loved me: a few
cooking lessons in Virginia, and I ended up giving him seven years of my life
for thirty dollars and a horse, and I even said
'Merci, Monsieur.'
He promised her
her children would be free at twenty-one, pokes out her stomach with his
bastards, says he loves her, and she says,
'Merci, Monsieur.' Fool!"

"Coward!" I screamed. "Afraid to steal
yourself! Why didn't you run? Why? What stopped you? And now, look at you! More
than five years of freedom and what do you have to show for it? Nothing!"

"And you do? I suppose. You could have made more in a
bordello!"

"What do men make of the world for women except a
bordello!"

"And you revel in it!"

"Men revel in it! Lovers and husbands, brothers and
uncles—you all revel in it! My whoredom is yours and you know it!"

"I know it," he cried, "and it never leaves
me, even in sleep. I want only to forget it! To leave you to it, if you want
it!"

"Then leave me to it. Leave me, leave me!" I
screamed.

"I'll never leave you to it as long as I have breath
in my body, as long as I dream at night."

"We all have dreams," I said deliberately.
"You think yours are special, but they are not. I've had enough of chasing
eleven-year-old dreams of Paris."

"You sound just like him. 'Enough of chasing rainbows
...' Stay where you are. Lay up money. Be a good ex-slave. Make something of
yourself. And I look at him. I look at those cold blue eyes and I say, 'You've
already made something of me ...' and the bastard doesn't even understand what
I'm talking about."

"James, you got to stop hating yourself." This
was Elizabeth Hemings speaking. Her voice trembled in a way I had never heard
before. My brother's violence had undone her. I realized she was afraid of her
son. She who was afraid of nothing.

"Mama, you ain't got no idea what hate is," James
said.

"I guess I ain't," replied my mother.

"Women! Somebody cover you with dung and you wipe it
off, wrap it up and start crooning a lullaby over it."

"You better go on back over there across the water,
son."

"I'm going, Mama. I just want to know, for the last
time, if she's coming with me." He turned to me and his eyes were dark
burning holes and the look in them was the same he had turned on my master that
Christmas Day five years ago.

"You coming, Sally Hemings?"

"No," I said.

"I'm never coming back here for you again. Save
yourself, sister."

"No, James."

This time I could not keep the pride out of my voice. Was I
not the legatee of my half sister? I had love. Did I not have a room of my own?
I had privacy. Did I have a white mistress? No, I did run this place. Had I not
saved ten black men from certain death? I had power. How could my brother speak
of saving myself. I had no need to.