Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings (31 page)

“W
ell, all right,” Betty says to her daughter. “You do what you got to do. I just hope you don't make things worse, that's all. Mr. Jefferson's not a bad man. There's lots of worse men out there, colored or white.”

“Stop it!” shouts Sally Hemings. “You don't know anything about Mr. Jefferson! You don't know one single thing! Everybody around here talks about him like he's some kind of saint or god or Jesus Christ himself! But I won't do that! Thomas Jefferson can roast in hell for all I care!”

“Hush, child! Somebody'll hear you, talking so loud.”

“I don't care who hears me! I hope he hears me himself! I hope he roasts in hell! And when he dies, I'm going to dance on his grave! I promise you that! And I hope he just heard every word I said!”

. . . I could insult Mr. Jefferson, I could hate him, I could reject his overtures and acts of kindness, I could cast him cold stares for weeks on end, but in the back of my mind I always knew that these were mere pretense and nothing that would actually satisfy my rage or quell my pain. The only way that I could be truly rid of Mr. Jefferson would have been to flee Monticello, but that would have meant leaving all the people I loved most and abandoning myself to a future that at the very best would have been decidedly uncertain.

It is possible that I could have convinced Mr. Jefferson to sell me, as had my sisters Mary and Thenia when they wanted to be with their husbands and children. But I had no husband to go to, and I had buried my only child under shards of frozen earth. And from a purely practical point of view, it was almost impossible to imagine that I might find a more comfortable situation with another owner and very
easy to imagine that I might end up subjected to the sort of barbarities that every southern Negro dreads and that for too many are simple facts of life.

I did often think about running away, however. Between my appearance, my Parisian clothing and my accent—to say nothing of the fact that I was almost fluent in French—I could easily have passed for white, at least once I had put sufficient distance between myself and this place so that no one could recognize me. But I had no illusions about how a penniless woman might fare, even if all the world saw her as white and even in so enlightened a city as Philadelphia. I had heard the tales of deception, sorrow, shame and lonely death told by Reverend Hodder. I had even seen such women standing on the streets of Paris with their rouged cheeks, their all-but-naked bosoms and their bitter, alcohol-dimmed gazes. When, many years after this time, we sent off our Harriet, it was with fifty dollars, a coach ticket and a letter of introduction to Mr. Jefferson's dear friends the Wentworths. Even had I known when I was seventeen that he could do such a thing, I would never have dared hope that he would want to so facilitate my northern migration.

Many times during the months after I lost La Petite, I had raged at the
injustice of my life and endured many a moment of strangled panic, as if I had been sealed up inside a wall. Such feelings certainly contributed to my rage at Mr. Jefferson, the arbiter of my confinement, but at the same time, the human heart being impervious to reason, the pain and anger I suffered after our departure from France were also evidence of how desperately I still needed Mr. Jefferson, though less perhaps for his physical consolations than for his mind. In our conversations I had felt as if I were in a vast palace and he was constantly opening up doors onto strange and beautiful rooms, corridors, gardens and garrets through which I could wander in endless fascination. . . .

 

E
LIZABETH
: Why do you say Sarah?

Q: [Silence.]

E
LIZABETH
: Nobody ever called her Sarah. I didn't name her Sarah. Jack— Well, it's true that Jack wanted to name her Sarah, after his daughter who died. But I wouldn't hear of that. I thought that was bad luck. So the closest I would come was Sally. So that's what her name was, and nobody ever called her different.

Q: Sorry.

E
LIZABETH
: That's all right. I was just wondering.

Q: I just thought—

E
LIZABETH
: That's okay. I was just . . . you know . . .

Q: Still . . . can we go on?

Elizabeth: Sure.

Q: So . . . one thing I've been . . . uh . . . that I think people will be curious about is . . . uh . . . why you encouraged your daughter to continue her affair—

E
LIZABETH
: Did she tell you that?

Q: Yes. I'd have to take a look at my notes, but . . . well, yes.

E
LIZABETH
: That's not how it was. No. I don't remember that.

Q: What do you remember?

E
LIZABETH
: Maybe I just didn't want her to feel bad. It wasn't like she had a whole lot of choice.

Q: Do you mean that Mr. Jefferson . . .
Thomas
forced himself on her?

E
LIZABETH
: No. Well . . . at first I guess he did. But it wasn't really like that.

Q: What do you mean?

E
LIZ
ABETH
: Things were just different in those days. Men just presumed.

Q: Presumed?

E
LIZABETH
: Right. If you were a woman—
especially
if you were colored—you didn't have a choice. Men just presumed you were there for whatever they wanted.

Q: That can't always have been true. What about courtship? I mean, at least for the upper classes . . . for white—

E
L
IZABETH
: Oh, yeah. Men had to do their song and dance. There was always a little bit of song and dance. But basically they just presumed. And the women presumed they presumed. So that made it easier for everybody.

Q: For the women?

E
LIZABETH
: Absolutely. Take, for example, Martha Jefferson. Martha
Wayles
, I mean. Sally's sister. She used to talk like she wished she had absolutely nothing between her legs. Just blank there, like a field on a snowy day. But, of course, she didn't really want anything like that at all. So it made her happy that Mr. Jefferson presumed. That way she could just lie back and enjoy it and feel like it was all his doing.

Q: So what you mean is that Sarah,
Sally
felt that way, too?

E
LIZABETH
: No. Not really. Well, maybe a little bit, but not really.

Q: I don't understand.

E
LIZABETH
: Well, it was easier for all women, sometimes, to just put it on the man. But Sally wasn't really like that.

Q: [Silence.]

E
LIZABETH
: She wasn't really like Mrs. Martha.

Q: I guess what I still want to know is if Thomas forced himself upon Sally.

E
LIZABETH
: Of course. But not really. He wasn't really the forcing kind.

Q: I'm still confused.

E
LIZABETH
: Well . . . look at it this way: Jack—now he was the kind of man who forced a woman. I had been married for eight years when his third wife died. And one day he called me in and he told me he was going to sell Lonny. (Lonny was my husband.) He was going to sell Lonny to Bath Skelton. (That was his ex-brother-in-law. And later on he married Mrs. Martha, before Mr. Jefferson.)

Q: That's terrible!

E
LIZABETH
: You mean Lonny?

Q: Of course. That must have been awful for you! What did you do?

E
LIZABETH
: Yeah. It was . . . in a way. But it's not like Lonny was a saint among saints. In a lot of ways, selling Lonny was the answer to all my problems. I think Jack knew that. I think that was part of what it was about.

Q: But Jack, Mr. Wayles—you said he was the “forcing kind.” What did you mean by that?

E
L
IZABETH
: Look at it this way: No woman ever has a choice. But the first thing she has to do is make it clear that she
does
have a choice. For herself, I mean. It's a matter of dignity.

Q: [Silence.]

E
LIZABETH
: Dignity's the most important thing.

Q: So when Mr. Wayles said that he was going to sell Lonny, what did you do?

E
LIZABETH
: I told him he couldn't do that. I told him Lonny was the father of my children. You know. The whole song and dance. I told him he couldn't force me.

Q: What did he say?

E
LIZABETH
: Oh, just what they always do: I was his property. I didn't have any more say than a mule. He could do anything he wanted with me.

Q: That's horrible!

E
LIZABETH
: [Shrugs.] Yeah.

Q: What did you do?

E
LIZABETH
: I kicked him. If I was a mule, that meant I was going to kick, so I did. And then I spat in his face.

Q: [Laughs.] Weren't you afraid?

E
LIZABETH
: Not really. I knew what he was up to.

Q: What did he do?

E
LIZABETH
: He pushed me down on the floor and he had me right there.

Q: [Silence.]

E
LIZABETH
: [Silence.]

Q: I'm sorry . . . uh . . . so sorry.

E
LIZABETH
: It was nothing. I knew he was going to do that.

Q: Nothing? Do you really mean nothing?

E
LIZABETH
: Oh, course it wasn't nothing. I just meant it didn't bother me. I knew he was going to do it. He was just doing his song and his dance.

Q: I . . . I don't know . . .

E
LIZABETH
: Look, the problem is that you keep thinking there was some sort of better way. That's not how it was in those days. And the truth is, it's not that different now. So, you know: You've got to keep that in perspective.

Q: Of course—

E
LIZABETH
: Just think about it from my side. First of all, I knew I was going to be his concubine, or whatever you want to call it, from the
minute the last Mrs. Wayles got her fever. I could tell just by the way he was looking at me. Second of all, Lonny presumed all kinds of things. And one of those things was that he could knock me down anytime he got drunk. Which was almost all the time. I'd been trying for two years to figure out how I was going to get away from him, and I didn't see how I could do it as long as he was at the Forest. Unless I was willing to kill him. Which I wasn't. But I
was
thinking about it. I was even talking to one of the old mammies about poison berries, hexes—you know. But I wasn't really going to do that. I just couldn't do that. So when Jack did to me what he did, I knew he was just doing his song and dance. Just like I was doing my song and dance. We were just working out the rules of how we were going to be together. And after that we pretty much had it figured out. You have to remember that I had been the maid to all three of his wives. So I knew how he treated a woman. He was English. You know? He lived in England until he was almost a grown man. So he was kind of old-fashioned. He believed in rules. And as long as everybody behaved by the rules, everybody was happy. He wasn't a cruel man. He wasn't exactly tenderhearted—though he was that, too, sometimes. But he definitely wasn't cruel. And, of course, I knew that as his . . . well, as his
wife
really, things would get pretty easy for me. And they did. Pretty much. After that, everything was much better than it had been before. Or mostly.

Q: So is that why you encouraged Sally—

E
LIZABETH
: Of course!

Q: So what did you mean by Thomas not being the “forcing kind”? How was he different?

E
LIZABETH
: Oh, he and Jack were exactly the opposite kind of people. Exactly the opposite. Jack didn't apologize for everything. He just assumed he had a right to anything he wanted. Mr. Jefferson—it was like he assumed he didn't have a right to anything. Sometimes I used to laugh at how afraid of him people were. Most of the people who came to see him, they were so nervous they could hardly talk when he was in the room. I mean, of course Mr. Jefferson was famous and everything, and, you know, once he got started talking, most people felt like they didn't know anything at all. Like they were just idiots. But inside, he was always saying, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” He kept trying so hard to be a good man because inside he thought he was so bad. That's the honest truth. That's how he really was.

Q: But he
did
force himself on your daughter. So if he wasn't the forcing kind . . .

E
LIZABETH
: You mean in Paris?

Q: [Nods.]

E
LIZABETH
: I never figured out what happened in Paris. Sally would never be straight with me about that. Most of the time, she told me nothing happened in Paris. Well, not nothing, but not what you mean either. But then sometimes— The only way I could figure it was that maybe something
did
happen. I mean, you've got to think that any man who goes around saying “I'm sorry” all the time—especially a man like Mr. Jefferson who knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that there was no reason for him to apologize to anyone, that he could have had pretty much anything he wanted and people would have thought he deserved it. You know what I mean? I mean, not only was he smarter than just about anybody, and so famous everybody wanted to get a look at him, he was also this great big tall man and strong as a horse. So when a man like that is always saying “I'm sorry, I'm sorry” and humiliating himself all the time, you got to figure he's getting pretty angry inside. He's building up this whole mountain of anger. So, of course, every now and then he's got to let that anger out. And maybe that's what happened in Paris. I don't know. But all I can tell you is that that's not who he was. He was definitely not the forcing kind.