Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

… My mother didn’t like to talk about my father. That was another topic that would make her face go still and drab. When I asked about him, she would say, “He was just a man. But he’s gone now.” Maybe it was the flat hush in her voice, but from the very beginning I understood “he’s gone now” to mean he had died. I remember thinking that knowing my father was dead was my secret, as if it were something I had stolen from my mother without her noticing. But then, when I finally worked up the courage to ask her about it, she said, “That’s right. Your pappy’s dead and gone. You were just an apple pip when he died. He hardly got to hold you in his arms.”

I never actually grieved for my father, but I did miss him. I’d watch other children riding on their fathers’ shoulders, and I would wish I had somebody who would do that for me. Or I’d see some big, strong man get down on his knee and tickle his little girl, then hug and kiss her while she laughed and laughed, and I would feel pierced through by loneliness. Of course, Bobby and Jimmy were eleven and eight years older than me and most of the way to being men — in my eyes, at least — by the time I started paying attention to these things. But they didn’t love me the way a father would. Every now and then, they’d give me a little squeeze, but the main way they showed their love was by teasing. Jimmy’s nickname for me when I was little was “Cider Jug.” He was always saying things like, “How come your belly’s so big and round, Cider Jug?” or, “You best stay away from the men after sunset, or they’ll pop your head like a cork and drink you down.”

Often when I was wandering in the woods, I’d imagine my father walking beside me, maybe holding my hand. Sometimes he’d be the one telling me the stories I told myself. I would even talk to him. I would ask him questions, then answer them aloud for him. Other times he would come to me in the middle of the night, especially when I had had a bad dream. He would sit beside my bed, stroke my hair and tell me in a low, kindly voice, “Don’t you worry. Your pappy’s here. Everything’s going to be just fine.” And that really would help me feel better — most of the time, at least.

My father was never just some vague masculine presence; I saw him clearly in my mind’s eye. He was very tall and very smart and had the mahogany skin and baritone voice of Reverend Hodder, a free man who came to Monticello to hold prayer meetings. And partly because I had such a clear and vivid image of my father, when a girl named Buttercup told me, “Your pappy is a white man,” I just couldn’t believe her. “Yes he is,” she insisted. “My mammy told me. That’s how come you’re so high-toned and have white-girl hair.”

At first the main thing that troubled me about what Buttercup said was that she used the word “is,” which meant that my father was still alive. I went straight to my mother, who told me, “Of course he’s dead! Why would I lie about a thing like that? He died when you were five months old.” And when I asked if he was white, she said, “Don’t you listen to that fool talk! Your pappy was just a man. Just a plain old man.” I tried to take my mother at her word, but even at age six, it was clear to me that if my father had been a Negro, she would have said so straight out.

Once the idea that my father was white became lodged in my brain, I began to conceive of myself differently. Up until that point, I had hardly given a thought to my skin and hair — maybe because I knew many Negroes with pale skin and many “white” people whose skin had a decidedly dusky cast, especially in summer. For me, “white” primarily signified people other than “us,” those difficult, sometimes cruel, never reliable people with whom our life was inextricably and mysteriously intertwined. I didn’t even know what the term “race” meant at the time and never imagined that I could be anything other than Negro. But almost as soon as I identified “white” with the color of my own skin, I began to tell myself a story that I actually was white, that my mother wasn’t my real mother and that I was only being raised as a Negro by mistake. At the end of this story, the mistake would always be uncovered and I would be radiant with the sort of glory that surrounded Mr. Jefferson. I imagined everyone at Monticello, colored and white, being extravagantly happy on my behalf and staging a sort of celebration for me, after which Mr. Jefferson would adopt me, and I would live in the great house with him and his family, and I would bring my mother and siblings along as my servants, and we would all dress in silks and lace and wear the shiniest of shoes.

This story felt like another secret I had stolen from my mother, but one so complexly shameful that I could never mention it to her and, indeed, have kept it to myself my entire life. One August night, however, when it was too hot to sleep, Critta and I took our ticks outside and spread them on the grass behind our cabin, where the faintest breeze blowing across the field cooled our sweaty limbs and faces. I had in mind a question that I had wanted to ask Critta for days but had never actually dared to speak. Now that the two of us were lying side by side, all alone under the night sky, and our privacy further ensured by the din of crickets and peepers, I drew my lips to her ear and whispered, “Buttercup said my pappy was white.”

“So?”

Critta’s complacent response surprised me, and it was a long moment before I could ask, “Was he?”

“Of course!” she said. “Everybody knows that!”

“Who told you?”

“Jimmy. He was Jimmy’s pappy, too, and mine. He was all of our pappy.”

This news was such a shock that I couldn’t speak. Finally I asked, “Does Peter know?”

“Of course. Everybody knows except you, because you’re the baby!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You know that Mammy doesn’t like us talking about things like that.”

And that was where our conversation ended.

Years later, when I was fourteen and packing to bring Miss Maria to live with her sister and father in France, my mother was seated at the table behind me. She didn’t talk while I packed, only sighed heavily and kept rubbing the palm of her left hand with the thumb of her right. I thought she was angry at me, so I did my best to fold my belongings quietly and not disturb her with questions. When I finished, I turned around and saw that she was looking straight at me, her brow all wrinkled and her eyes two sharp points, as if I’d done something horrifying.

“Come here,” she said firmly, nodding at the chair beside her. When I hesitated, she said, “I’ve got something important to tell you.”

I sat beside her at the table, and she cupped both of my hands in hers and squeezed them. “I never told you this,” she said, “because I didn’t want you getting into trouble. Bobby, Jimmy and Thenia know, because they were old enough to remember him. But I thought it’d be easier—”

“Remember who?”

“Your pappy.”

“I already know he was white.”

She smiled, almost as if she were proud of me. “Well, that’s not all he was.” Her smile got thin and crooked. She looked away. When she looked back, she wasn’t smiling. “Your pappy…” She took a deep breath and licked her lips. “Your pappy… was Mrs. Jefferson’s pappy. You and Mrs. Jefferson were sisters. Miss Patsy and Miss Polly are your nieces.”

My mother told me that she’d kept the identity of my father secret because she thought that if I knew I was a servant to my own family, I might say or do something wrong or I would get ideas that would only make me sad. There wasn’t anything she could do about Bobby, Jimmy and Thenia, but she had told them that if they ever breathed a word to Critta, Peter and me about Mrs. Jefferson being our sister, she would “whip their backsides till they caught fire!”