Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

Three people in addition to Mr. Eppes seemed determined to purchase Critta, and Mr. Broomfield let the bidding go for several rounds — long enough for me to become very worried — but then Mr. Eppes made another bid, and Mr. Broomfield cried “Sold!” without allowing the other interested parties time to raise their bids — with the result that those parties shouted outraged objections and the whole crowd murmured its disapproval. Looking alarmed at the crowd’s reaction to his stratagem, Mr. Broomfield silenced further protest by beginning the bidding on George’s Ginny before she had even climbed up onto the cart.

And thus the last member of my immediate family had found a hospitable situation in which she might live out the rest of her days as if free. No other of the dozens of families who had abided at Monticello for five decades and more had been so lucky. I was well aware of the injustice of our good fortune, even as I was exceedingly grateful for it.

Despite the cold, Joey’s broad forehead was glossy with the sweat of his anxiety for Edy and the children. When I touched his forearm, he grabbed my hand, drew his face so close to mine that I thought at first he would kiss me, and in a breathy, emphatic voice he declared, “Danny and Mr. Eppes kept their word. Mr. Jeff, too. That’s a blessing. Lord be praised! I don’t even care about Mr. Jones anymore. As long as my family stays right here in Albemarle where I can see them, that’s all I care about.”

I squeezed his hand with my own. But when I tried to speak, my words came out in a strangled croak. “Yes, that is good. But let us hope for more.”

His hand closed so hard upon my fingers I thought he might snap them off. “I feel like I’m going mad. I’m trying to get a hold on myself, but I don’t know how much of this I can stand.”

“Oh, Joey.” I kissed his forehead and tasted salt on my lips. “Oh, Joey. Oh, Joey.” I was so possessed by foreboding that I couldn’t say anything else.

The reason I had touched his forearm was to see if I might excuse myself for a minute. My hands were trembling. I was nauseated. I thought a quick walk might fortify me and restore some of my composure. There were twelve people on the list before Edy and the children, and of those twelve, only the last four, Evelina and her children, were people to whom I had been close. It seemed to me that I had easily enough time to make it out to Carter’s Bluff and back. I felt it was wrong of me to abandon Joey, though I didn’t see how I could possibly stay. I, too, felt as if I were on the verge of losing my mind. So when I asked if I might walk for ten minutes, I added that he should come with me if he wanted.

“Oh, no!” he said. “I can’t do that. I’ve got to stay right here so I can see what’s happening.” He released my hand with a gentle pat. “You go, though. I’ll keep your spot warm.”

I don’t know whether the walk did me any good at all. I strode along Mulberry Row away from the crowd, my head down, my arms gripping my cloak tight against my body. I was shivering, though not, I think, from the cold. I had hoped that my head might clear when I had some space around me and could feel the enlivening stirring of the open air, but my mind was roiling with sentiments and ideas, not one of which I could bear to consider — a state not unlike, I imagine, that of someone plummeting off a precipice toward a heap of jagged rocks. I strode to Carter’s Bluff and back in almost complete unconsciousness of my surroundings. Just as I was approaching the fringe of the crowd once again, I heard a voice call out my name. I looked up to see broad-faced and heavy-shouldered Burwell Colbert, who, as Mr. Jefferson’s body servant, had been at my side most days and many of the nights during our master’s last weeks. He had been a great relief to me then, for he seemed possessed of nothing but congenial spirits and could always find something to appreciate, even in the bleakest circumstances. He was also a calming presence for Mrs. Martha, who couldn’t deny me my place at her father’s bedside, although she never wanted me there.

I remember late one night, three or four days before Mr. Jefferson died, Martha had gone to bed and Burwell and I were alone. Something had gone wrong with Mr. Jefferson’s breathing, and instead of snoring his every breath came as a long, trumpeting groan, over and over and over, relentlessly, the whole night through. The sound was a torture to listen to, not merely because it put one in mind of how unsatisfying those breaths must have been (the sound could only be caused by a constriction of the throat) but because it was almost impossible to resist breathing at the same unnatural rhythm.

There was a full moon out that night, and as Burwell and I sat side by side in the darkness, in a room lit by a solitary taper resting on the mantelpiece at our backs, Burwell made a soft, happy laugh. “I sure do hope, Mr. Jefferson’s listening to that! Ain’t nothing he like better in the world than a mockingbird song, and I ain’t never heard a mockingbird sing as fine as this one here tonight!” I didn’t know what he was talking about at first, but as soon as he mentioned the mockingbird, my mind left Mr. Jefferson’s agony, and it was as if I were out in the moonlight myself, hearing nothing but the free and happy inventions of that perky gray bird.

I was profoundly grateful to Burwell that night and on many others, during which he alone seemed to remember that the world contained joys, even as it surrounded us with sorrow and pain. And, indeed, he was smiling as he called out to me and as he lumbered the five steps from the great house lawn onto Mulberry Row. “Hey there, Miss Sally!” he said as he drew up beside me. “Look what I got here!” He held out two framed etchings, attached by a hinge, of Mr. Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette that had been standing on a marble-topped table in a corner of the parlor for as long as I could remember. “Ain’t they wonderful! Don’t they just bring you back to your Paris days? Mrs. Martha let me have them for cheap. She saw me looking at them, and she came over. ‘How much you asking for these?’ I said, and she said, ‘How much you got in your pocket?’ ‘Not but four cents,’ I told her, and she said, ‘That’s just what I’m asking!’ Ain’t that so nice of her? Ain’t these just the perfect likeness?”

This was one time when Burwell’s smiles brought me no cheer at all. He, too, had been freed by Mr. Jefferson. His wife was dead, but his eight children were to be sold that very afternoon. I was so aghast that I did nothing to censor my thoughts. “How can you waste your money on things like that,” I said, “when you could be buying your family out of slavery?”

He smiled and shook his head slowly, as if amused by my stupidity. “Oh, Miss Sally, I don’t have near enough to do that now. Mrs. Martha says she can’t pay me my $300 from Mr. Jefferson until after everything’s been sold.”

I heard a woman screaming frantically from the area of the stable. I hurried away from Burwell, loathing him for his inability to grasp the injustice that was being done to him, vowing that I would cut him out of my life, that I would never again address a single word to him.

I had to push my way through the huge crowd that had now gathered around the stable, and when at last I reached Joey’s side, I found him clutching the top rail of the paddock fence and leaning forward so far he would have fallen if he had let go. His entire attention was directed at the stable, in the depths of which the woman was still screaming and being cursed by white male voices. Only when he felt me draw up beside him did he turn and look at me with the open, slot-shaped mouth and the wide, wavery eyes of someone on the verge of vomiting.