It is another two hours before, clothes frigid cold and hanging heavily off her body, she walks out of a field and onto the drive up to the house. For most of the last hour, she has been hoping that all of the cold, confusion and fear she has endured will be rewarded by the sight of Thomas Jefferson’s landau at the house and Peter standing at the doorway under an umbrella, watching for her.
But of course there is no landau, no horses, no brother. The drive is a river through which she must splash up to her ankles to get into the house.
Once inside, though, she sees that Evelina has lit the lamps and managed to get a good fire going — in front of which she has draped a row of Harriet’s clouts across a bench to dry. And the tiny girl herself is toddling toward her mother in nothing but a shirt, both arms upraised. “Mammy! Mammy! Mammy!”
Wet as she is, Sally Hemings scoops her daughter into her arms and covers her with kisses, the little girl’s giggles escalating from throaty glugs to breathless clicks and cackles. As she carries Harriet toward the fire, the child tugs at the neck of her gown, and so Sally Hemings undoes her bodice and slips her cold, wet nipple into her daughter’s warm and hungry mouth.
~ ~ ~
We pity her because she believes in the virtue of white people. Or because she wants to believe. Or because she is lying to herself and she doesn’t know she is lying. Or because she is lying to the world and she thinks that she is better than everyone in it. Or because she has become blind to insults and indignity and has learned to celebrate small kindnesses. Or because she worries that she is actually as incompetent and hideous and stupid as her master believes she is. Or because she, too, believes what her master believes. Or because she believes that she is white even though her master treats her as if she is black. Or because she believes that she is better than black even if she is not as good as white. Or because she has learned to feel cuffs as kisses and hear insults as sweet nothings. Or because she believes she is evil and so deserves her enslavement. Or her punishment. Or because she believes that, having turned her back on her people, she is undeserving of forgiveness. And we pity her even if she is right to believe she cannot be forgiven. We pity her because whatever she may think or feel or have done, she is one of us — a Negro and a human being. We pity her because she has become a stranger to herself, because she has lost her soul.
~ ~ ~
Hours later Sally Hemings is awakened from a deep sleep by the sound of someone moving downstairs. She slides out of the bed where Harriet and Evelina are both filling the air with their rustling snores and picks up the broken table leg she placed in the corner days ago for use as a weapon.
As she feels her way along the edge of the bed, through the darkness, toward the door, she can hear almost nothing above the urgent thudding of her own heart, and there is a moment during which she imagines that there is no one in the house, that she only dreamed those sounds or that they were only the product of old wood shrinking as it cools. But then she hears the curt rumble of a male grunt and the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, followed by the light tread of what is clearly a boot-shod foot.
She pushes her door against its jamb, so that she might lift the latch silently, but as she pulls the door open, a hinge squeaks and silence falls at the bottom of the stairs. She freezes for a long moment. There is another thump, followed by footsteps moving rapidly across the parlor and into the dining room. As she crosses to the top of the stairs, she sees an ocher luminosity wavering on the wall in the entryway.
Now her heart thuds with a different sort of urgency, because she has recognized the rhythm of the movements below and, more particularly, the man’s breathing. She is halfway down the stairs when the shadows of the balusters loom and then swing rapidly across the wall. Thomas Jefferson catches sight of her just as he puts his hand on the banister. He lifts his candle so that he might see her more clearly, then smiles and speaks in a voiced whisper, “I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”
Sally Hemings shakes her head. She takes a step back upstairs, but he scoops the air rapidly with his hand, indicating that she should come down.
As she descends, he sets his candle on a step, takes off his cape and holds it out to her. “What’s that?” he says, looking at her right hand.
She lifts the broken table leg and smirks. “I thought you were Mr. Chambliss. I was going to hit you on the head with it.”
“Sounds like you don’t much care for Mr. Chambliss,” says Thomas Jefferson.
“I hate him!” The force of feeling in her own voice surprises her. “He’s a very bad man. You should dismiss him.”
“Here.” He is still holding out his cape.
She leans the table leg against the wall and takes the cape, which is warm from his body and redolent of his familiar smell. She drapes the cape over her shoulders and draws it tight across her breast. Her feet are freezing.
“Come,” says Thomas Jefferson. “Peter has gone to get some wood.”
She follows him over to the parlor fireplace, where the coals of their evening’s fire are still winking and making tiny clicks. She steps right onto the brick apron to warm her feet.
Thomas Jefferson is crouching over one of his bags, and just as he stands and holds up a bottle of cognac, Peter comes into the room with an armful of firewood.
“Sally!” he says, lowering the pile to the floor. He steps over to her, touches her hand and smiles in a way that promises his real greeting will come later.
Sally Hemings finds herself moved almost to tears at seeing her brother again. She has to swallow before, speaking to Thomas Jefferson but looking at her brother, she asks, “Why were you so delayed? You were supposed to have been here on Monday.”
Peter’s expression conveys both embarrassment and concern.
“I’m sorry,” says Thomas Jefferson.
She looks at him coldly. She does not want to hear his apologies.
“To begin with,” he says, “we were delayed a day because I had some business to attend to with Mr. Madison in Belle Grove.”
“You should have sent a message, then.”
“Yes, I suppose I should have. But I thought we would make up the lost time on the road.”
Peter, who has begun placing logs on the bed of coals, grunts ironically.
“We’ve had something of an ordeal, Peter, haven’t we?”
“Oh, yes indeed!” he says. “The gods were against us the whole way!” Peter gives her an entreating smile. Then he crouches and blows on the coals beneath the logs. Flames leap up almost instantly.
“The worst thing was that we lost a wheel in Findlay’s Gap, and that cost us another day and a half. Then we got caught in a terrible downpour this afternoon, after which the roads were so muddy and flooded that we almost gave up and stopped at New London. But we both wanted to be here so badly that we decided to just keep on going by moonlight. We’ve been riding since sunup.” He puts the bottle of cognac down with a firm smack on a table beside the fireplace. “Which is why we are so in need of a glass of this!”
“But you still should have told me you would be delayed, right at the beginning, when you knew you would have to stay longer with Mr. Madison.”
Thomas Jefferson is at the sideboard, where he has gone to get glasses.