CHAPTER 24

SPRING 1795

I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self-evident that the earth belongs to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.

thomas jefferson to James Madison, September 6,1789

Lord Thomas was a nice young gentleman He rode a many a town He courted a girl they called Fair Ellender And one called Sally Brown.

Is this your wife, Lord Thomas, she cries! She is most wonderous brown. When you could have married as fair a young girl As ever the sun shone on.

They buried the Brown Girl in his arms, Fair Ellender at his feet. They laid the Brown Girl in his arms And let her go to sleep.

Traditional Ballads of Virginia, Compiled by Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr.

It was a long time before my mother answered that first call from the carriage that brought me back to Virginia and slavery. And when she did, her words had been: "You got a son, Sally Hemings. A wee darling perfect thing." As she had taken Thomas Jefferson Hemings from my body she had forgiven me at the same time. She focused all her love and hopes on him. "Get that freedom for your children," she repeated like a litany. "And get it for yourself while you're at it," she added. "Don't nothing in life count more than that." She had looked at me with a mixture of pity and exasperation. "Not even love."

That had been five years ago and now it was the spring of 1795, one year since my master had returned from Philadelphia to retirement, since he had come home to me. It had been the happiest year for us both. So happy, it had made up for everything. The return to Virginia and slavery had been a shock to me. I felt isolated at Monticello, and slights and injuries were my daily lot. Even my master seemed helpless against these hurts. His acceptance of the post of secretary of state had been a tragedy for me. We were to have stayed only a short time here, then return to our beloved Paris. In Paris, we had both forgotten what it meant to be white or black, master or slave.

I no longer knew whether to believe him now when he vowed never to engage in politics again. This retirement might not last. The temptations of power were too great. But the hurts and humiliations of the past three years were also deeply etched in his soul. He had "retired" in a sulk from Philadelphia. He was in bad grace with President Washington, who no longer spoke to him; defeated by Hamilton; publicly attacked by the Federalists. Everything had passed: the excise, the Bank, the treaty with Britain. He was back home to lick his wounds.

Our letters these three years had been numerous, and often in French. He had bid me to burn his, but I had not done so. He burned mine, I suspected, yet I took much care in writing them, especially those in French. And the magic of the written word still awed me. Yet for all his letters of love, I was uneasy without his presence. Not just lonely, but unsure of myself. I seemed nothing without him and everything in his eyes. My tutoring and, more than anything else, my music, had continued after my return to Monticello, and so the creature he had begun to create and shape in Paris had finally been ready to receive him when he rode home from his political wars. I rested easier now that he was home, but I still needed to ask.

"Daughter, you ought to know if he loves you or not. If you don't know, then he don't. I know he thinks he loves you, and maybe that's all a woman can expect from a man—that he believes it.... A woman knows. A woman knows when a man loves her ... even a slave woman. It's been six years.... A white man don't keep a black concubine for six years without loving her. He loved your sister and he lost her, and now he loves you."

My mother had changed little in the past thirteen years. She had kept her low, compact figure, her slimness, her unlined and perfect skin, her iron constitution. She was now fifty-nine years old and she still ran Monticello, despite my position. Her beautiful, vigorous body still demanded and got the services of lovers of both colors. I knew that I would never take another lover. I loved only my master. A dangerous and stupid thing for a slave.... God knows, I knew that.

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.

We worked. My kin, my fellow slaves and I. We worked from sunup to sundown. We worked so that all, according to my master, would move in exact equilibrium. No part of the force could be lessened without it having an effect on the whole, he said. No hand could be stilled without retarding the scheme of things. And nothing could jeopardize his main design or delay it. This was his law: the vast rolling motion of this human machine moved according to the blueprint he had laid down for it. And if a bent back had straightened and a head shaken sweat like a wet dog, and an eye had stared into the sun, and a mind or a heart wondered if this was the way God meant things to be; my master would have said yes. For wasn't he God at Monticello? And if one loved the man, one could still hate the God.

We stood there on the mountain, silently savoring our last month of solitude before the August company arrived and Martha and Maria came home. The deep clay gave gently underfoot, tender and softened by the constant spring rain. It would be a wet summer, with twice as many wet days as in other years. A burst of fragrance, from a flowering bush, enveloped us with its sweetness.

My lover came around and stood near me.

"Sally," he said, putting his hands on my shoulders, "however far you can see, it is all Monticello. I solemnly promise you there will never be a white mistress here."

I pressed myself into the broad chest behind me. My master might own Monticello and my mother might run it, but Monticello was mine. There had been only one white mistress of Monticello, the first Martha, and she was buried at the foot of the mountain under a pale white stone etched in Latin.

There will never be a white mistress here.

The echo of his voice followed me through the gardens, along Mulberry Row, into the workshops of my brothers. I kept hearing that magic promise over and over in my mind through the noise of construction.

There would be no white mistress at Monticello. He had promised.