CHAPTER 27

SPRING 1796

I bent over the fine-lined drawings on the blue-squared French architectural paper of my master's new plans for Monticello. I leaned over his shoulder as he explained to me how he was to change my house. Now was my chance to ask for what I wanted. The demolition had already begun, with his workmen prying loose three to four thousand bricks a day; the noise, the confusion, and even the danger at times resulted in achieving what war and revolution had never been able to produce in my mother. She would cry every day. Most of the household was camping out. Only his bedroom and study had any semblance of order, and it was here, before his drawing table, that he was seated while I stood behind him, my arms about his neck on a fine spring day. He had made great plans for his house. He had in mind to remove the second-story attic and spread all the rooms on a single floor. In place of the attic, he wanted an octagonal dome, like the one on the Hotel de Salem in Paris that we had visited so many times. Around the interior of this dome would be a mezzanine balcony, thus providing privacy for the bedrooms intended for his white family. In his own apartments on the ground floor, he envisioned a double-height ceiling with a skylight and a bed alcove between the bedchamber and the study accessible to both, and with a passage between them. To do this, he must demolish the fireplaces that stood where his bed would stand.

I had never asked him for anything before. Even now, with a new life in my womb, pressing into the solid warmth of his back, his hands encompassing mine, my lips on his hair, I hesitated, but the closeness and his excitement at the new changes gave me courage. He shifted his good hand to hide his infirm hand, as he was wont to do.

"What is it?" he asked, as if he sensed my agitation.

"I should like you to design ... to build a room for me." I went on quickly, before he had time to respond. "A secret room adjoining yours where I may pass to and from without crossing the public hall where anyone who happens to be about may see me," I said. There was not a servant or member of the household who did not know that only I had access to the apartments of the master. I was mistress of his bedchamber and his wardrobe. His premises were forbidden to all, including his daughter. Yet I felt naked every time I had to enter by the public hall, always full of people: visitors, workmen, servants, relatives. It would be so easy to find me a little space of my own somewhere. I longed for the shadowed recesses and the vast apartments of the Hotel de Langeac with its endless attic rooms, secret corridors, unused apartments. Here, every space was occupied by slave or master. Twenty servants ran in and out of the main house, not counting all the other people, and even once a horse.... I recounted all this without stopping, as if I would run out of courage before I ran out of breath. Only the ticktock of the French clock broke the sound of my breathing. Outside a whippoorwill trilled.

"You shall have your room," he said.

I waited for him to tell me where and how, but he said no more. There was a mischievous look on my master's face, as if he had had in mind to build me a room all along. I raised him from his seat, put my arms about his waist, and kissed him.

That same spring Thomas Mann Randolph and Martha went to Warm Springs, leaving their children at Monticello. The servants of Edgehill were whispering that ever since the birth of Thomas Jefferson Randolph, their master was losing his mind, driven by the dark forces that seemed to overtake all the Randolphs in their prime. He and Martha had traveled as far away as New York seeking relief, and Martha had turned more and more to Monticello and her father for solace and comfort. Polly, who was now at home, my mother, and I would care for them. There had been many a time when Martha would take refuge in Monticello, having run away from her husband.

"What are you going to do about Martha coming here so often?" said Elizabeth Hemings.

"What can I do? She's her father's daughter, and Monticello will be hers and Polly's one day. It is her right. Besides, she's lonely, I think, and unhappy."

"Poor man, he can't help his sickness. First thing, she won't have a husband."

"I think that would suit her just fine," I answered. "Would it suit her father as well?"

A throb of jealousy sounded deep in me. Elizabeth Hemings always knew where to probe for her answers.

"I think it would. He needs her. He dotes on her and he loves her." I didn't add, "more than he loves me," but I thought it. "He doesn't like his son-in-law," I added.

"Well," my mother said, "he is not the first hard-riding, hard-drinking, evil-tempered bad Masta Randolph these parts have seen. Think on his cousin John Randolph of Roanoke. Rumor has it he don't have no head for business. Thomas Jefferson be well to put this plantation in other hands than his. Seems he's practically ruined."

"It's Martha's dowry they are living on."

"That's so, now."

I sighed. "As if you didn't know, Maman!"

"Well," chuckled my mother, "we got to keep our white folks informed and—"

"And spied upon twenty-four hours a day," I said.

"Don't we belong to them twenty-four hours a day?" replied Elizabeth Hemings. "When they give us a few hours' freedom every day, we'll give them a few hours' peace."

"You'll never forgive me for coming back, will you? Or dragging James back here for all those wasted years...."

"Daughter, all that's history now. What's left is between you and Thomas Jefferson. James is free. He's over there in France, cooking for them nobles like he dreamed."

"I forgot, Maman."

Elizabeth Hemings looked at me without understanding.

"It's harder, maman, to forget freedom than slavery. Over there, I had forgotten what it was like, if I ever knew. You raised me as free as any white child in the Big House. I came back to that, not to my real condition."

"You came back because of that child."

"No, Maman, I came back because I didn't remember who I was."

"You remember now, don't you."

"Yes."

"And the masta didn't do much reminding, did he?"

"I don't think he truly remembered, either. We were like children. He with his illusions, and I with mine."

"You were a child, then, true; but he had no excuse except his own selfishness."

"It wasn't true selfishness, Maman. White people are different from us."

"They ain't different, daughter, they simply expect to get what they want or what they need in life, that's all. It never occurs to them—as it always occurs to us—that they won't get what they need, nor what they want. You want to stroll away? Nothing stopping you."

"Nothing?"

"He wouldn't pursue you. There's enough gossip already."

"I think he would."

"Never, daughter, no matter how much he wanted to. His pride would stop him."

"His pride is great, Maman, but not as great as his passion for owning things. I belong to him. I'm his, and no other man's. And he'll keep me. He's given up too many things he's loved in life."

"Got to let you go if the Lord claims you."

I got up and walked toward the warmth of the smoldering kitchen chimney. I had come for company, as my master was out in his fields. I hadn't wanted this conversation. For years, I had been avoiding this conversation....

"Being free isn't so important I'd die for it," I said, and turned to face her.

"Don't tell me freedom ain't worth dying for! Black people dying left and right, in the fields and on the ships, being beaten to death for not yielding, being hunted like dogs for strollin', being killed for standin' up like men and women instead of grovelin' like dogs! Don't give me any of your lip about 'not worth dying for'! They's even white folks— abolitionists who's risking their lives—their white lives for black people, helping them run. And you, you with your pride! Thinkin' that slavehood would never touch your precious body, or your precious spirit, that it would not hurt you and damage you and change you...." My mother's face had darkened. It always changed colors when she was in a rage. "Pride has given you a worst burden than any field hand out there, because theirs can be lifted, but yours never will. Thomas Jefferson playing father to you, me spoiling you like I didn't know your color. If you had stayed here, you would have learned.... Oh, Lord Almighty, how I wish I had never put you on that boat!"

My mother had grasped my wrist with her strong rough hands and had drawn me toward her. I looked at her without expression. I had long ago abandoned myself to that particular joy of not being responsible for oneself. I had struggled against everything that surrounded my master and was hostile to me. I had overcome the fearful disgust which his situation as master and mine as slave inspired in me.

"If you don't want it for yourself, at least get it for your children!"

"I have, Maman. I have the promise."

At that moment, I didn't care about that. I still had not accepted the great ring of household keys, which was my badge of authority, from my mother. I let her cling to it. The warmth of the fire stole under my skirts and up the back of my legs and spine. He would be coming home soon. I looked at my mother with impatience, as she continued to hold on to me.

"What if he grows tired of you?" my mother asked.

"Then," I answered, "I just might think about dying for freedom." I smiled, and my mother released me. I looked down at my wrist and saw the rosy mark left on my skin by her fingertips.

"Sally?"

I had been reading a letter from James. I turned toward him. He was almost shouting, the demolition of our walls making it virtually impossible to be heard.

"I want to transplant all the rhododendron along the south hedge. I was going to tell Giovanni to do it, but I wanted to ask you what you thought."

"What does Petit think?" I asked.

"He said to ask you."

"I liked them where they were," I said. "And what will you do with all the babies in the nursery, then?"

"Find a new place for them. I thought to make an alley at the end of the formal garden."

"Oh, no." I hesitated, then called him by his name. He seemed pleased, and laughed out loud. I had pronounced his name as it was said in French, dropping the "s." To-mah.

"Always call me thus," he whispered.

He held out his arms. I looked up at him.

It was more than a year before I had the room I could call my own. But true to his word, he built it. A tiny winding stairway led from the foot of his bed to a narrow passageway over the top of his bed alcove which ran the length of it and was lit by three round windows giving onto his rooms. The shape of the windows had been inspired by the painting of Abraham and Hagar he liked so much, as well as those for my room. My room was octagonal, hidden under the eaves, and looked westward over the mountains. There I waited, accumulating my account of hours. My small treasures from Paris filled the room: the onyx-and-bronze clock, my Paris sofa and bedstead, the copper bathing tub that Joe Fosset had copied for me, my chests full of dresses I never wore, my linens, my bolts of fine silks and cambrics, my books, my guitar. There I was free, solitary, away from the multitude of the mansion. I savored entering his inner sanctum by my own stairway. Only in my official capacity as slave and mistress of his wardrobe did I enter by the public hall on the ground floor.

Only after he had built the miniature stairway to my room did he discover to his dismay that the two new wings of his mansion had no stairs at all! He quickly ordered my brother John to add a stairwell to each wing. It was barely wider than my own—a mere two feet across— and had to accommodate not only the bulk of his masculine company but the hoopskirts of his females. I thought of the great stairway at the Hotel de Langeac, that monument of rose marble I had fled down that March morning eight years ago. Only my secret room, with its passageway and tiny staircase, resembled the great houses of Paris, and it linked us to the past. Soon our private existence would give way once again to the demands of the public and of power but, for a while at least, I was safe, happy, hidden, and loved.