“Anyhow,” she says, “that’s wonderful that the Republican side is finally publishing lies about Colonel Hamilton.”
“They’re not lies.”
“Articles, I mean.”
Thomas Jefferson refills her glass, then his own.
“It’s good that you are fighting back,” she says. “That’s what I mean.”
“What’s especially good is exactly that they are not lies. There is no question whatsoever that Colonel Hamilton was behaving improperly with his Mrs. Reynolds. He’s admitted it. And it is certain that he has used secrets that have come to him as treasury secretary to make his friends and himself rich, and that he has thereby not merely cheated the American public but stolen from it as well.”
“Can’t you throw him in jail for that?”
Thomas Jefferson laughs. “That will never happen.”
“But it should! He’s broken the law.” Sally Hemings also laughs. “He’s broken all kinds of laws — human and divine.”
“Hamilton has far too much influence to ever end up in prison.” Thomas Jefferson smiles wryly and looks directly into her eyes. “And, of course, one of his transgressions is perhaps just a bit too common for people to get up in arms about.”
Sally Hemings sips from her glass, and Thomas Jefferson sinks down in his chair. He slides one foot a few inches across the floor.
“In any event,” he says, “I think this may put an end to his chances of ever becoming president.”
“Is this man going to write some more articles about Colonel Hamilton?”
“Callender?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps. I don’t know. I’ve had very little communication with him.”
“You should get him to,” she says. “Maybe he could sink Hamilton with one more article. Or President Adams. You should get him and other journalists to expose all the lies and corruption of the Federalists. If the journalists do the dirty work, the public will finally understand the evil that has been done in their name, and you will only look better for having stayed above the mud fight.”
“We shall see,” says Thomas Jefferson. He is smiling broadly as under the table he presses the inside of his right knee against the outside of Sally Hemings’s left. Now she is smiling, too. They fall silent and only look at each other. In the lamplight her eyes seem twin disks of steel.
~ ~ ~
… Of course, I could not entirely avoid discussing such matters with him. But when I did, my arguments — so potent in my mind — would come out as a series of peevish complaints or feeble suppositions. Only as I lay sleepless in a dead, dark hour of the night would my arguments come back to me in all their clarity and force — but too late, and so they would only fill me with self-loathing and a sense of helplessness.
I hated myself when I spoke, and I hated myself when I was silent — so I labored to lose myself in the pleasures of Mr. Jefferson’s company. Throughout my twenties and thirties, he was almost childishly attentive to me whenever he was home, or at least whenever we could evade the alert and judging eyes of his daughters and much of Albemarle society. And his attentions were not only physical — though he could be both energetic and tender in that regard. We talked more than anything else, and as time went by, he increasingly sought out my advice on matters of government. I was more practical than he and was better able to reduce some of the complex dilemmas he faced to their most essential elements. He often joked that I was the natural-born politician while he was a natural-born parson — or he would be, were it not for his congenitally equivocal faith….
~ ~ ~
Thomas Jefferson says, “We must be patient, Sally.”
He says, “Our enemies are determined, united and strong, and the immoral practice is so well established in the southern states that it would not end in a generation, even were it outlawed today.”
He is standing on the porch, where the rain, atomized by fierce wind, coats his cheeks in trembling droplets. He is shouting, “All right, you are free! I will give you your papers as soon as we get back to the house. Then go off into this world ruled by vicious and bigoted whites and see how precious your freedom is!” But I am white! Look at me! Who would not think that I am white! “You are not so white as you would like to believe.” I hate you! You are a monster! “I am sorry. I am sorry. Forgive me. I am sorry.”
He refills her glass. “You are right. I can’t disagree. You are absolutely right.”
~ ~ ~
For a while Sally Hemings thinks her secret life is not only her best life but her real life. Then things change.
At first she thinks it is her fault. Thomas Jefferson is the vice president and so must continue to be away at least half the year, especially as President Adams, despite having been a dear friend, now seems to want to ascribe many of the powers of a monarch to himself — in particular the power to jail his political enemies — an ambition Thomas Jefferson is combatting with every tool he can muster. She is lonely when he is away, and she worries from time to time that he might have another woman in Philadelphia or New York. But on the other hand, the fact that he is such an important man has always loomed so large in her sense of him that she cannot object when he is doing the very work that has made him important. And there are still days when it thrills her to remember that this man known all over the world has held her in his arms and that he is the father of her little Harriet and of the new baby inside her.
Often she thinks that Thomas Jefferson loves her, but this thought is not reliably comforting, because while he sometimes confesses his love when they are alone, his pretense in the company of others that she is a mere servant can be so convincing that she will feel as if he has spit at her. He is never cruel, only indifferent. “That will be all,” he will tell her. Or, “My riding boots need polishing.” Or, “The hamper in my chamber is full.” She believes — or sometimes only wants to believe — that this pretense is merely another part of their secret life, that his false indifference is his way of ensuring that he might love her freely when they are alone. She consoles herself by remembering how he calls her “sweet girl” and “Senator Sally,” and the tenderness of his fingertips on her cheeks or breasts, and all those times when he cannot bear to leave her bed, or simply those times when he is reading on the porch of the lodge or writing at his desk and his casual glance in her direction is lit with all the world’s kindness.
The change comes, she thinks, because of her pregnancy. She is not vomiting, but she is nauseated almost all the time and is always tired, even when she first rises from bed. Also, Thomas Jefferson does not want to be with her once she starts to get a belly. He says that it is bad for the baby and that he and Mrs. Jefferson lost their only son because he couldn’t exercise proper restraint, and he will never forgive himself for that. Sally Hemings takes his desire to protect their baby as a particularly important indication of his love, but still, she is lonely now in a way that she hasn’t been for years.
~ ~ ~
Harriet is two, and the sweetest of babies — laughing constantly, giving her mother tender, glossy-lipped kisses on the cheek, taking delight in every little thing: sparrows hopping in the dust, sneezing horses, flowers. All summer long, every time she sees a flower, she runs up to it and gives it a noisy sniff, after which she always says, “Pur-ty!”