Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

“What’s happening?” I said.

“Evelina,” was all he answered.

“What? What are they doing to her?”

“Her children have gone to farmers in Amherst and Petersburg, and she’s just been sold to McFlynn.”

Only now could I understand what she was screaming: “I won’t go! You can’t take a mother from her children! You can’t take my babies away!”

As I listened to her, I remembered a time when she was taking care of my Harriet and I had run off into the woods in such a state of confusion and despair that I wasn’t sure if I was going for a walk or to end my life. When at last, hours later, I was driven back to the house by a rainstorm, Harriet ran to greet me as she did every time we were separated, but I saw real fear in Evelina’s eyes. She was hardly more than a baby herself, but old enough to know what had driven me from the house and to worry that she had been abandoned in a world of cruel strangers.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

Joey only met my gaze with that same slot-mouthed, wide-eyed expression, then turned to look at Mr. Broomfield’s cart, onto which Edy and their two youngest children had just climbed. Evelina was still screaming.

“All right, everybody,” said Mr. Broomfield, “while Mr. McFlynn’s talking sense to that girl, we’ll just go on with our business.”

There was scattered, subdued laughter, and the bidding began. At first everything went as Joey had arranged. Edy and their two youngest children were bought and would be freed by Jesse Scott, a half-white, half-Indian man who had married Joey’s youngest sister. Maria and Isabella were bought by a friend of Mr. Scott, who lived not far from Shadwell. Mr. Jones bought Peter. And then, at last, it was Patsy’s turn on the block.

The first person to bid was the man in the yellowed periwig who had ripped her shift. Mr. Scott’s friend, who had agreed to take all the older girls, bid next and was instantly topped by the man in the periwig. Other people bid, but the contest was clearly between Mr. Scott’s friend and that yellow-wigged man. And so, one after another, the other bidders dropped away. All this time Joey clutched my hands tightly in his own, crushing them every time the man in the periwig made another bid. I kept assuring Joey that Mr. Scott’s friend would not let him down, but I am not sure he heard a word I uttered.

When at last only Mr. Scott’s friend and the man in the periwig were bidding, a terrible pattern ensued. With growing hesitancy Mr. Scott’s friend would raise his bid in increments of ten dollars, which the man in the periwig would instantly top by twenty-five. At first I thought that the man in the periwig was bidding so rapidly in order to stop Mr. Broomfield from calling out “Sold!” after Mr. Scott’s friend’s bid, but then I realized that Mr. Broomfield had not done so with any of the other Fossett children and that he must have been dissuaded from that strategy by the outcry that had followed his cutting off Critta’s bidder. After that I uttered no further encouragement.

When the bidding reached $645, Mr. Scott’s friend took so long upping the bid that Mr. Broomfield called out, “Going once! Going twice!” before the friend finally bid $655, his face contorted and pale. He had pulled his hat off his head and was twisting the brim in his fists. When the man in the periwig bid $700, Mr. Scott’s friend flung his hat to the ground. He was done. But then Mr. Scott called out, “Eight hundred!” and with gestures indicated to the friend that they would split the price.

“Thank the Lord!” Joey cried, but in the next instant the man in the periwig raised his bid to $1,000.

The scant seconds while we waited for Mr. Scott or his friend to raise the bid seemed an eternity in hell. During the whole time, I heard a woman screaming and was in such a state of distraction that I thought it was Patsy, even though she was standing motionless, her eyes uplifted, as she had been in the barn. When at last Mr. Broomfield lowered his hammer, confirming the sale to the man in the periwig, Joey cried out to God, fell to his knees and began to bang his head against the frozen earth. “Stop! Stop!” I cried. “Don’t, Joey! Don’t!” I grabbed at his shoulders and tried to pull him up from the ground but could think of nothing that might give him hope — especially because it seemed to me that the outcry following the hasty conclusions of Critta’s sale had deprived Mr. Broomfield of the only means by which Patsy might have been saved from the clutches of that repulsive man.

This thought entirely deprived me of strength. I looked around the yard in front of the stable, where hundreds of white people were taking absolutely no notice of Joey’s suffering or of Patsy’s plight.

It was then I heard the screaming again, and for the first time since I had returned from my walk, I actually caught sight of Evelina. McFlynn and another white man were shoving her from around the far side of the stable toward the lawn where all the carts and carriages were waiting, their horses attended by servants or merely tied to a fence or tree. Evelina had her head and shoulders hunched, and she was taking very small steps. At first I thought that this was merely her way of protecting herself from the blows of her captors, but then I saw the swinging chains and realized that not merely was she shackled wrist to wrist, ankle to ankle but that an iron collar had been put around her neck, and it was fastened to the chain between her ankles by another chain too short to allow her to fully stand.

I felt a sort of crack inside my head, as if something had broken, and in an instant I was shoving through the crowd of white people, desperate to get to Evelina, having no clear intention of what I would do when I had reached her, only feeling that if I could speak to her or touch her hand, I could somehow undo everything, not just what had happened to her but the grim and unjust fates meted out to virtually every one of the men, women and children who had been confined like animals in that stable.

The white people amid whom I was attempting to pass soon made it abundantly clear, through their own shoves and curses, that I would never make it to Evelina if I did not master my rage, that my only hope was to take advantage of my own white skin and flowing hair, and so, instead of cursing, pushing and pummeling, I kept my arms at my sides and said, over and over, “I’m sorry. Excuse me. I have to get through. Please. I’m terribly sorry.” Despite all my efforts, I must still have been a bizarre spectacle, because it is impossible for me to imagine that I could have concealed the utter contempt that propelled each one of these niceties from my lips. Nevertheless, my strategy worked; the curses ceased, shoulders parted to allow my passage, and there were places in the crowd where I had plainly been recognized, and scores of people stood aside to let me pass as if I were royalty.

I was not tall enough to see over the heads surrounding me, and so I did not once glimpse Evelina during the whole of my progress to the crowd’s far edge. And then all I saw was a chaotic assemblage of horses, wheels and Negro men, some dressed in full livery, others in straw hats and sackcloth coats. I began running from one of these servants to the other, asking — shouting, really — if anyone knew where I might be able to find McFlynn’s carriage, and most of them — no doubt thinking me an insane white woman — merely looked over my head, down at their feet or otherwise pretended not to hear me.

In the end it was only one servant’s involuntary glance across the road that enabled me to spot Evelina, hunched and silent, seated in a fenced enclosure on the back of a hay wagon that was already rocking and rumbling off a brown field and onto the road. McFlynn and his driver were seated at the front with their backs to me.