When I didn’t respond, she continued, “Do you know what a companion is?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I want you to spend the day with her and do whatever it is that she would like to do. If she would like to play a game with you, play a game. If she would like to go for a ride, you should accompany her in the carriage. And, of course, I would like you to tidy up her room and look after her clothing, as your mother does for me.” She gave my hand another squeeze. “So is that something you think you could do?”
I knew that what I was being asked to do was only what I was already doing at the nursery, but for some reason it filled me with dread. I hardly knew Polly and didn’t understand why she should be lonely when she had another sister — Patsy — who was almost exactly my age.
There was, however, only one answer I could give, and so I gave it.
“I’m very happy,” Mrs. Jefferson said, although she looked anything but happy. “I think that you will be the perfect companion for little Poll. I am sure that one day you will be as dear to her as your mother is to me.”
I thanked Mrs. Jefferson again, collected my boys and continued my journey to the cow pond, wondering if there was some way my mother could talk Mrs. Jefferson out of using me in this fashion.
Poor Mrs. Jefferson. She was never anything but kind to me. Even when she could no longer speak, she would still cast me lingering glances and smiles.
In less than a month, she was dead….
~ ~ ~
It is 1784. In the months after Martha died, Thomas Jefferson lost three stone, and now, more than a year later, he is still so thin that the contours of his teeth are visible through his cheeks, and multiple deep creases fan vertically on either side of his mouth. He arrives late for every session of Congress and leaves early whenever he can manage it. For several weeks he throws himself into preparing a bill that will determine how the Northwest Territory is to be managed, but when his provision banning slavery within the territory after 1800 is deleted under pressure from southern delegates, his exhaustion is total, and more spiritual than physical. He is through with politics. He will return to farming. If he never sets foot in a congressional meeting again, he will count himself a lucky man.
He is sitting at the table of the Virginia delegation, dull-eyed, staring into space, tearing strips from a newspaper, crumpling them into balls, then unfolding them. James Madison is seated beside him. They are alone. Night has fallen so recently that they are unaware of it. The panes on the windows all around them wobble and swirl, like a full stream in April frozen midflow. The light from their solitary oil lamp and their illuminated faces is broken into yellow twists on the glass, like the topmost flames in a fireplace, just before they vanish into black.
“I don’t want to,” says Thomas Jefferson.
“You will be working with Adams,” says Madison. “And Dr. Franklin loves Paris.”
“Then why is he leaving?”
“He’s not,” says Madison. “Not yet. At least not officially. He’s old, though. Eighty if he’s a day. And if he waits much longer, he won’t be strong enough for the return voyage.”
“I get seasick in a canoe.”
Thomas Jefferson places a ball of paper on the table, then flicks it away with his middle finger.
Madison speaks in the low voice of reproach. “Tom.” And then his eyes widen and he slaps his hand on the table. “It’s Paris, Tom! Paris! There’s no more beautiful city in the world! And when Adams goes to London and Dr. Franklin returns home, you are certain to be minister.”
Thomas Jefferson gives Madison a leaden glance. “And spend my days negotiating tobacco duties with fat aristocrats and singing the praises of our blubber oil to quartermaster generals across the Continent?”
Madison leans close, his voice thrumming in Thomas Jefferson’s ear. “The French women, you know, are very fond of Americans and very free with their affections. Dr. Franklin is an old man, but by all reports, he has no shortage of female company.”
Thomas Jefferson places another crumpled ball of paper on the tabletop.
“And the wine!” says Madison. “The French wine!”
Flick. The crumpled ball arcs off the edge of the table and hits the shadowy floor just in front of the vacant speaker’s desk.
“Please stop,” says Thomas Jefferson.
“But our minister to France must be a cultivated man. A philosopher. Dr. Franklin has set a precedent. No one can better take his place than you.”
“I said stop.”
Madison flings himself back in his chair and sinks into brooding.
“I’m tired of political life,” says Thomas Jefferson. “And in any event, I don’t have the mettle for it. I disgraced myself as governor—”
“Tom!”
“Don’t!” Thomas Jefferson smacks the flat of his hand down onto the table. “You of all people should allow me to speak plainly.”
“You’re too hard on yourself.”
“I’m not hard enough.” Thomas Jefferson screws shut the top of his inkwell and wipes the tips of his quills. “But the main point is that I despise myself when I engage in politics. I entirely lack the stomach for bullying and bribery. Compromise so enrages me that I have not had a moment these last weeks free of headache.” He places into his satchel the remainder of the newspaper from which he has been tearing strips. “I serve my country best with my pen. And I am happiest at home, among my books. There is no point pretending otherwise.” He wraps the inkwell and the quills in a chamois bag that he also places into his satchel.
All at once Madison leans forward and touches his friend on the shoulder. “You’re too much alone,” he says. “I fear for you this winter, alone on your mountaintop.”
“Then you must come visit me.” Thomas Jefferson’s half smile fades into something like irritation.
“Stop it, Tom!”
“Stop what?”
“You’re being a fool.”
“I hate politics! I loathe politicians! I just want to return to the life I was born for. How can you forbid me that?”
Madison sinks back into his chair. Thomas Jefferson inserts a strap into the buckle of his satchel.
“Lafayette specifically asked that you be sent to Paris,” says Madison.
Thomas Jefferson stops, his fingers resting on the buckle. He does not look around. He is staring but not seeing anything. He has grown perfectly still.
~ ~ ~
The subway lights flicker and come back on, but the ragged metallic screeching continues. Thomas Jefferson knows that if he doesn’t stand up now, if he doesn’t cross the car and find a way of speaking to Sally Hemings, he will never have another chance. He knows this, but he cannot move.
II
~ ~ ~
In Sally Hemings’s dream, she is walking down a street of very tall buildings with jagged, glinting roofs, and she is lost. She is walking with Thomas Jefferson, but he is a shadow, and he disappears when they pass through the shadows of buildings. He is holding her hand — or she thinks he is holding her hand. “Hurry!” he says. They are going someplace very important, and only he knows the way. At first she doesn’t know where they are going, and then she realizes that she is a baby and that he is taking her to the place where she will be born. “Hurry!” he says. “You have to hurry!”
She wants to be born. If she isn’t born, she will have to be a shadow in a world of shadows. She is not a shadow now. She is a baby. Except most of the time she doesn’t look like a baby; she looks like herself: long-legged and long-armed, and with a face that is almost a woman’s face. And sometimes Thomas Jefferson is not a shadow. She can see him, or parts of him. And she can feel his hand, which is very, very strong — so strong that she worries her hand will be crushed.