Sally Heming (6 page)

"After John Wayles's death, all of us slaves were
divided up amongst the inheritance of the four living daughters, Martha and her
three half sisters. Martha took me and ten of my children. The other two went
with Tibby. I didn't come here to Monticello until after your birth, Patsy.
Came with Sally, who was two years old, and the baby Thenia.

"Thomas Jefferson was a rich man in those days. Yea,
rich. He inherited one hundred thirty-five slaves from John Wayles, including
us Hemingses, and eleven thousand acres. He had four plantations: Monticello,
which wasn't much to begin with, but with all his building, became the most
beautiful; Poplar Forest, where we all went after them British came 'round for
us; Elk Island; and Elkhill. Life was sweet for Martha up until all the trouble
about the independency came along. First thing, Thomas Jefferson out defending
a mulatto who claimed freedom because his great-grandmother was a white woman
who had him by a black slave father. Masta Jefferson saying the sins of the
father shouldn't be visited on the third generation, or generations without
end, and that that boy was free because he was the great-grandson of a free
white woman, and it is the mother who determines slavery in Virginia. He lost.
Didn't no Virginian wants to hear nothing about no white lady having no black
children. Used to sell any white woman and her child into slavery for it: five
or ten years for the mother, and thirty for the child. They used to believe,
back in those days, a white lady have one black baby, all her babies coming
black. Now, if that were so, why didn't it apply just as well to us? Then came
this Stamp Act. I heard all about that. This ruckus up in Boston with white men
disguised as black folks and Indians throwing tea into the water, and first
thing, Thomas Jefferson finds this thrilling and writes a 'revolutionary
document,' as Martha called it. Telling the English where they could go and
what they could do, which made him a traitor to the Crown and liable to get
himself hung and quartered. Poor Martha was fit to be tied. She told me all the
terrible dangerous things her husband was doing, running risks of losing his
fortune, his name, and his head.

"But Masta Jefferson was right happy. He racing around
feeling good, smiling, writing, speechifying. Then he got one of them headaches
like he got after his mama died. Headaches and dysentery were his two ailments.
All coming from his nerves and that hot temper. Then he left home with my son
Robert for Philadelphia. He went to the Continental Congress with all them
famous men of those revolutionary times. His little girl died at eighteen
months, and Masta came racing home, but it was too late then. Martha grieved
something terrible and Masta Jefferson begged her to come back with him to
Philadelphia, but she wouldn't go. Masta Jefferson went on back to Philadelphia
and wrote his Declaration of Independency which made him the most famous man in
Virginia, maybe in all the colonies. Martha didn't care. She didn't want no
revolution, but she didn't say nothing to her husband but once.

"Only that Christmas in
'75
she pleaded with him to give up politics. There was the death of little
Jane still grieving her, and she pleaded with him to give up politics, to give
up making war on England. Of course by this time it was too late; I could have
told her that. Masta Jefferson was not going to give up his politicking for no
mortal. She mostly couldn't stand the separations. She said she wasn't like
Abigail Adams, who loved politics and who pushed her husband. Yet she wouldn't
go to Philadelphia with him even when she was well. She fought and pleaded, but
he struggled. It was a hard thing to ask an ambitious man like him to give up
his life's work. Well, England was getting riled up and sending troops and
commanders and generals, and landed them mostly where they liked. It got around
amongst the slaves that the English was taking slaves into their army and
offering them their freedom and giving them uniforms. It seems they had three
hundred in the army in Maryland with 'Liberty to Slaves' on their breasts. I
sure would have liked to have seen that. Black men in uniform with rifles, and
before you known it, we was at war.

"The second year of the war, Martha finally bore a son
for her husband. He lived only until June fourteenth, and we buried him without
a name. Only Patsy lived now, and I thought Martha was going to lose her mind.
She had lost three children, counting her son by her first marriage. I had seen
women lose five, seven, ten children before they was two years old. There's
nothing in this life harder than burying your own children. I thank God it
never happened to me. Oh, I've buried two now, but they were full-grown men.

"Martha got with child again as soon as she could, and
the next year she had Polly, who was blessed to live. At least she lived long
enough to marry. But Martha was slow coming back this time. She was scared of
dying, scared of losing Polly, scared of losing another child, and scared of
having another.

"Masta Jefferson started in rebuilding again
Monticello. Things weren't going too well for him. It seems we were losing this
war he started. He was governor of Virginia now, with his seat of government in
Williamsburg, but he weren't made to be no war general. The generals and
officers that did come to Monticello during those times was mostly German and
English, prisoners of war, at least that's what they was called. But, they was
treated like guests. Many a musical evening and dinner took place for foreign
gentlemen fighting against us. One German lady, wife of a general, followed her
husband clean to our shores and was lodged at Monticello along with him.
Twenty-two slaves run away from Monticello to join the English army, eleven of
them women. Lord, then come the day British dragoons come looking for Governor
Jefferson, saying they wanted to put a pair of silver handcuffs on him.
Searched the house they did from top to bottom and took off poor Isaac to the
army, with his mother there screaming and crying. I guess this decided Martha
to move to Williamsburg with the masta and then to Richmond, where she again
got pregnant. This left the plantation for me and my son Martin to run alone.
Never knowing when the soldiers would show up or nothing. Coping with slaves
running to join the English right and left, and taking everything they could
eat and anything that weren't nailed down. In November eighty, Martha come home
and Lucy Elizabeth, the first, was born."

"Lord, here come the British again. They showed up
again in June eighty-one. Jack Jouett rode all night to reach Monticello with the
news that the British general, Tarlton as I recall, was coming to capture
Thomas Jefferson. Jouett was all cut up from the thickets. He carried them
scars on him to his grave. He was in a
state
that morning. I cleaned him up and got something to eat in him and then
off he rode. Masta Jefferson sent off Martha and Patsy and Polly and all the
white people to Poplar Forest. You remember that, Patsy? Sally, you stayed with
me. You was scared and trembling something terrible. Thomas Jefferson sat and
had his breakfast at his leisure and then when he saw through his telescope
that the English was coming up the mountain, he got his horse saddled and rode
off toward Carter's mountain. I was the one who met the English at the door.
But I made Martin open it for me. But before that we was running around getting
the silver together for Caesar, who was hiding it under the floorboards. The
English was banging on the door and Martin, he let the plank drop on poor
Caesar, leaving him under the house, trapped underneath the floorboards. He
told me later that he could hear them boards groaning and creaking under them
dragoons' feet. One of the soldiers put a gun to Martin's chest and said he'd
fire if Martin didn't tell him in what direction Masta Jefferson had rode out.
Martin said 'Fire away then!' And poor little Sally thought she was about to
see her half brother shot dead, and she started screaming, but they didn't
shoot anybody. They rode out the next day just as nice as you please, not
taking anything and leaving me and Martin in charge. If I had thought, we could
have hid Thomas Jefferson in Caesar's place! I've often laughed with the masta
about that.

"Masta Jefferson, he didn't have no more heart for
governing after that. Them militia weren't fighting properly, breaking and
running and deserting, and half of them couldn't shoot straight no-how.
Wouldn't let the slaves fight, those Virginians, although slaves was fighting
on both sides in Maryland and Pennsylvania and Carolina. But those militia
boys, they was just farmers and yeomen and backwoodsmen. They didn't know
anything about fighting a real army with real uniforms and all. It was just a
mess. Then to top it all off, Masta Jefferson fell off Caractacus and was laid
up for six weeks. He's had six horses in his life.

He loves them bay horses, especially that tall horse with
white hind feet. Well, anyway, he was a changed man after the British raided
the capital. Martha, she was in heaven and hell—that is she was with child
again, even after all the troubles we had after Lucy Elizabeth. This here was
her seventh pregnancy. I didn't leave her for the whole nine, and Masta
Jefferson neither.

"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.