Patsy lowers the pamphlet to her lap. “Abbé Sieyès,” she says.
“Is it good?”
“It’s supposed to be.” Patsy sighs. “But I think every one of his ideas was stolen from Papa.”
“Why did he do that?” says Sally.
“Because Papa is a brilliant man. His ideas have changed the world. And Abbé Sieyès wants to be the Thomas Jefferson of France.”
Sally Hemings becomes thoughtful for a moment. Then she says, “I wish I could read.”
“You should learn.”
“But there is no one to teach me.”
There is an odd expression on Patsy’s face: irritation competing with some gentler emotion. Finally she says, “I can teach you.” She pats the upholstered bench beside her. “Come here.”
As Sally Hemings puts her embroidery into a silk-lined basket, Patsy squints at the pamphlet in her hands. She closes it and places it on the seat beside her. “It is better if you learn to read English,” she says. “Bring me that book over there.” She points to a row of some dozen books atop the mantelpiece.
“Which one?” says Sally Hemings.
“That one,” says Patsy. “On the end.”
Sally Hemings pulls the indicated book off the mantelpiece and goes to sit next to Patsy. The two girls’ eyes are exactly the same shape, though Patsy’s are chestnut brown. The girls also have the same high cheekbones and long jaw, though Patsy’s jaw is fuller—“more feminine,” is how she describes it; she thinks of Sally Hemings’s face as “pointy.”
“This book is by Papa.” Patsy opens the book and points to two words in squarish lettering on the first printed page. “Thomas,” she says, and, “Jefferson.” Sally Hemings thinks she probably could have figured out what those two words were, but she is not sure whether that would have qualified as reading. Then Polly runs her finger slowly under the six large words on the top half of the page, saying, “Notes… on… the… State… of… Virginia.” She takes Sally Hemings’s hand, grasps her index finger and puts it under the first word. Once Sally Hemings has successfully copied the motion of Patsy’s hand and repeated the words she has just heard, Patsy says, “Very good. You can read!”
Sally Hemings smiles in a way that she hopes hides her irritation. “Tell me the sounds of the letters,” she says.
Patsy complies but has only gotten through “Notes” when Thomas Jefferson appears in the doorway and says, “Dinner, my dear!”
Patsy eagerly closes the book and puts it on top of the pamphlet by Abbé Sieyès. She hurries over to her father and kisses his cheek. “Greetings, Pa-pah!”
Thomas Jefferson looks across the room at Sally Hemings with an expression that seems equally likely to become a smile or a contortion of grief.
Sally Hemings can hardly bear to look at him, but she also can’t look away. She is standing, but her legs are suddenly so restless she has to fight to keep still.
“What have you been doing?” he asks his daughter absently.
“I’ve been teaching Sally to read. We’re starting with your book!”
Thomas Jefferson laughs in surprise. His expression has become a broad, happy smile, but he is looking at Sally Hemings with such fierce longing that she has to sit back down.
Patsy’s eyes move from the very strange expression on her father’s face to the dazed, almost frightened expression on Sally Hemings’s, then back again. She does this several times.
“That’s wonderful,” says Thomas Jefferson. He puts his arm around his daughter’s shoulders, steers her out of the room and, over the top of her head, gives Sally Hemings one last, lingering glance.
Patsy also casts one last glance over her shoulder, her expression rendering confusion on the verge of becoming a threat.
~ ~ ~
Whether the black of the Negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan for the black women over those of his own species.
— Thomas Jefferson
Notes on the State of Virginia
Written in 1781–82, published in 1787
~ ~ ~
Afterward he looks at her and smiles. She smiles, too, though there is a dart of uncertainty over one eye. “This isn’t real,” he says. He looks sad for a moment. Then he kisses her.
~ ~ ~
It is June 27, 1789, almost a month since Sally Hemings returned from Madame Gautier’s. She is kneeling on a towel in the garden, pulling Virginia carrots for Jimmy, when she notices Thomas Jefferson standing in the window of his study. The reflection of the sunlit building on the far side of the garden is across his face, so she does not see that he is looking at her until he pushes the window open and gestures for her to come.
Her whole body flushes, and she looks around to see if anyone might be watching. Deciding she has picked enough carrots to make leaving the garden seem natural, she nods once at Thomas Jefferson, stands, shakes the earth off her towel and folds it atop the carrots in her basket. Her hand rises involuntarily to tuck a loose hank of hair under her bonnet, and she also glances at the skirt of her gown to be sure no mud clings to it. She could walk down the path between the cabbage and the ankle-high corn straight into Thomas Jefferson’s study — its windows being “French windows”—but she is worried that Clotilde or, worse, Jimmy might step out of the kitchen at exactly the wrong moment. So instead she walks toward the kitchen door. Just as she is about to enter, she sees Thomas Jefferson pull the windows to his study shut.
The kitchen is empty, so Sally Hemings just leaves the basket on the table and hurries into the main part of the house, slapping the remaining particles of earth from her hands as she goes. Thomas Jefferson has not merely closed the windows to his study but drawn shut the heavy curtains. In the room’s brown dimness, Sally Hemings notices the rigidity of his shoulders and back. He steps away from her as she enters and turns toward the chair where she sat the last time she was in this cluttered, paper-strewn sanctuary of his.
She does not want to sit. She stops in the middle of the room and faces Thomas Jefferson. He takes another half step back and looks around as if he has lost something. She wants to ask him what is wrong, but she can’t bring herself to speak. So she just stands there, waiting.
“Thank you, Sally,” he says at last. “I want… I asked you to come in here because… I’ve been thinking, and I have come to some conclusions that I hope you will see the merits of.”
She remains silent, but this time because she knows she won’t like what he is going to say, and she wants to make it hard for him.
The fingers of his right hand reach unconsciously into his left coat sleeve and tug a couple of times at the cuff of his shirt. He clears his throat. “I hope you will not think there is any lack of ardor in my feelings for you. On the contrary, the conclusions I have reached are, very definitely, a response to the intensity of that ardor, as I hope will be obvious. You know, of course, what the world would think if our… current situation were to become public knowledge. Or, more to the point, if Patsy and Polly—” He stops talking, looking lost at first, but then his gaze turns severe. “We have been very fortunate, but the longer we allow things to continue, the more likely we are to be discovered. Discovery is an absolute certainty, in fact, unless we take action immediately. And since it is clear that neither of us has the power to restrain our unnatural impulses, I think we have no other recourse than that you should return to Virginia ahead of the rest of us — on the very next boat, if possible.”