Sally Heming (8 page)

"You would think my life depended on my telling you
everything, Nathan." She paused. Perhaps it did, she thought. She stared
at the man she had just addressed. Langdon returned her quizzical glance with
one of such tenderness that Sally Hemings was forced to lower her eyes, but not
before returning the look in a way that told Langdon he was not the first to
have fallen in love with Sally Hemings. He had the impression that this woman
had never really used her beauty to manipulate men. Was it because, as a slave,
she had had no concept of power? Or was it because, as a slave, her beauty
simply had held no threat and was thus neutral both to herself and others? Had
she used this power in Paris? Over Jefferson? He flushed. He would soon be a
married man, he thought ruefully, and instead of concentrating on Esmeralda, he
was obsessed with a slave and her strange reclusive life and its secrets.

Langdon had been well aware for some time now of his
physical attraction to this woman.

It was almost ritualistic by now to admire the slick black
hair she never unwound, and to imagine it racing in one thick coil, like a
black wave down her back. Now he was admiring the tender curve of her neck
bending toward the pages of the book. The quiet folds of that indentation
between her thighs, the sheen of old silk, filled him with a kind of fainting
sickness. Would he ever dare to lay his head on those folds? Shocked as he was
by his own thoughts, he tried to face them honestly. How many other Southern
white men had dreamed similar dreams? He felt foolish and giddy. This pale,
almost white woman was connected with darkness, with dark recesses, with dark
flesh. Those first memories of comfort and warmth that all white Southerners
share.

There had been a long pause in their conversation, and
Langdon looked up to find Sally Hemings staring at him in a strange, intense
way.

She seemed distracted as she rose and came toward him.

Sally Hemings, trained since birth in obedience, had heard
the silent command of Nathan's mind and body and had obeyed. In her loneliness
and weariness she had failed to remember the first lesson of black womanhood:
never touch a white man.

She knew that in Virginia, her color alone was a
provocation to any white man. An invitation. Yet any gesture or familiarity on
the part of the slave woman, no matter how maternal, how pure, was inviting
disaster. She knew this, but she forgot. A mistake that was to cost her dearly.

She took one of his hands in hers, and with the other she
pressed his face into the folds of her dress. It was the first and last time
Nathan Langdon would experience such a feeling of pure happiness. Sally
Hemings' blunder, as offhand and unconscious as it was, awoke in Langdon an
unbearable jealousy of a dead man.

"I begin to be jealous."

"Of a dead man?"

"Jefferson lives. Didn't you know that? That is the
chorus of a new patriotic song."

"He lives for me."

"How do you think Langdon got so well into the good
graces of Mama, knowing how particular she is?"

"I don't know how he did it, Mad, but he's here and it
don't look like he's going to budge any time soon."

Eston hoped Madison was not going to make a scene. His
mother was happy.

"What I don't understand, Eston, is why the hell he
comes up here all the time. What does he stand to gain? We ain't got nothing
worth stealing! Or do we?"

"Our mama!" Eston laughed.

"Eston!" Madison was shocked.

"Oh Mad, I didn't mean he would try anything! And I
don't think he's out
to get
anything. I just mean she's fond of him. I think she's kind of taken
him under her wing, like ... like a son...."

Eston wished that last word had not come out of his mouth.

"A son!" exploded Madison. "She's GOT two
white sons who haven't even seen fit to let us know if they're living or dead!
That's not two white sons too many?"

"I think Mama knows where they are, and how they are.
She just doesn't want to talk about it."

"Well, Nathan Langdon is hardly some poor ex-darky,
passing for white, that Mama has to protect, you know. He's Tidewater, and even
if his family ain't rich anymore, they still got their place in society....
What's he doing up here? He's got a fiancée; he's passed his law examinations;
and he has started out on his own. And you saying he needs our mama for a friend?
That he can't do without Sally Hemings? He's picked up some strange ideas up
North!"

"I know it's strange, Mad, but I really think he can't
do without her."

"Eston, sometimes you haven't got the common sense of
a jackrabbit. He's using Mama. Nathan Langdon is eaten up with curiosity about
Thomas Jefferson, that's all. It's fascination with our
father,
not with Sally Hemings!"

"He also has political ambitions, Mad. He wouldn't
risk any kind of compromise over Mama."

"Wouldn't he now? You know his visits up here don't go
unremarked."

"Nobody's crying scandal."

"Not yet. Because nobody knows, Eston, how damn often
he comes up here!"

Madison held the pale eyes of his brother. "You know
it ain't right, Eston."

Madison was right, thought Eston. Besides, there was
something of the master that he resented in Langdon, despite his genuine
affection for him. They had had many long conversations together, but he
despised Langdon's proprietary air with his mother. His presumed intimacy.

"All I know, Mad, is that she is happier seeing him
than not. There's probably no harm in it."

"That still don't make it right. Don't make it
correct. If Mama was white, Eston, there'd be a lot of tongues wagging about a
widow and a young engaged gentleman!"

"But she ain't white, Madison. And neither are we. We
can't stop him."

Eston stared at Madison. Twenty-one years later, at the age
of forty-four, Eston would indeed be what he was not. He, and his family
consisting of a wife and three children, would cross the color line from black
to white and take the name of his natural father, becoming Eston H. Jefferson.

The two men eyed each other. They would give anything never
to see Nathan Langdon again, but they didn't dare say such a thing in front of
their mother. Whatever she chose to do was correct in their eyes. Neither would
acknowledge that there was a double standard for black women and white men.
Madison turned to look out the window and saw the small resolute figure of his
mother approaching the house through the peach orchard. A flash of tenderness
and pity made Madison shift his gaze back to his brother.

"Nathan Langdon, you are not as cynical and
complicated as you like to appear."

"Do I like to appear complicated? Am I complicated?"

"No, but this ... situation is complicated, and
unhealthy. You should be spending your time with young people, not—"

"A historical monument?"

"Whose?"

"His!"

"What?"

"No, yours. Your monument to yourself. We must erect
it with your life as you have lived it... and write about it. He has enough
monuments. It's yours I'm concerned with."

"I need no monument."

"Let me decide that."

It was the seriousness in his voice, not the arrogance,
that turned Sally Hemings' eyes on him. His tone had been sharp, as if she had
caused him pain.

"I would allow you to decide everything, Nathan, if it
were possible. If I could," she said softly.

"I could, if I knew you. If I didn't come knocking at
your door each time and find a stranger. A new stranger, not even the old one.
You change like a chameleon."

"It's not I who change, but you. You come each time
expecting an answer. And there isn't one."

"I expect to find the answer to Sally Hemings."

"My answer to that is that you have the answer to me.
You know me better than anyone ever has, Nathan. It's just that you expect too
much. You expect explanations I can't give. The only thing I can give is that
knowledge of myself you already possess. It is my gift to you for all the
happiness you've brought me."

"Happiness?..."

"I have as much affection for you as for my own sons."

"Yet you've never told your sons your—their—history?"

"I've never told them for a reason—that reason is that
they are safer without it, Nathan."

"And I'm in danger?"

"You are white, Nathan. That puts you mostly out of
danger. But you would be, if you try to use the knowledge I've given you. You
are in danger if it has changed you."

"Of course it has changed me. You have changed
me."

"I know. That's what makes me sad."

"The change is for the better."

"Change is hardly ever for the better, I've learned. I
want you to be happy."

"Not at your expense."

"Love is always at another's expense."

"Love is doing something for that person. Changing
things."

"But there is nothing you can do for me. You can't
change the past."

"I can change myself."

"But don't you see; that's the danger. You change
yourself, and first thing you want is to change me, then those around you—your
family, your life, the South, everything. There is danger when you contradict
your roots, what is considered 'right,' what is accepted."

"I said you were a dangerous lady, and you
laughed," Langdon said.

"I just don't want to see you hurt. Not by others and
not by me. All these months, there have been remarks about us."

"I know that."

"And there are Eston and Madison to consider."

Langdon suddenly sensed Sally Hemings slipping out of his
grasp. Several times in the past he had had this sensation of panic.

"Damn Eston and Madison!" he said. "What
about you? What do you want?"

"I've never had what I wanted, Nathan. Never."

"Why?" he asked, like a stubborn child.
"Because..."

Sally Hemings did not continue, and she smiled at this
childish exchange. There was something naive and touching about Nathan. Some
basic innocence white men seemed to take in, she would have said, "With
their mother's milk," had it not been for the fact that that
"milk" had been black. There were times she believed that white skin
was just a protective covering—nothing ever really seemed to penetrate it.

"This time you will," Nathan said.

The violent temper Sally Hemings had striven all her life
to conceal flashed to the surface; she suddenly wanted to slap his face hard,
to bury herself in his chest, and scream curses at him.

"No, I won't," she answered vehemently. She
wanted to hurt him. "It will end, Nathan ... and I shall miss you."

"There is no reason on earth why it should end."

There was every reason on earth, she thought.

"Let's not talk about it," she said.

They both looked away at this. To put the possibility of an
ending in words was tempting fate with their fragile happiness. The same fate
that had brought the lonely woman and the lonely young man together in the
first place. Langdon knew he must break the tension.

"Besides," he said lightly, "if I stopped
coming to see you, where would you get your weekly gossip and slander? Madison
has no imagination, and Eston has no malice."

They both smiled at this. Eston's good nature and Madison's
bad temper had become a private joke between them. Nathan Langdon felt a rush
of affection: everything was all right again.

He smiled and rose.

"You're leaving?"

"I must. I only stopped for a minute." He looked
at his watch. "I am going to miss the post."