Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

Sally Hemings makes a small grunt and then thinks for a moment. “The only thing is that I don’t see God as good — or good enough. That’s my problem.”

Thomas Jefferson smiles weakly, but then disconcertion crosses his face. He looks down. He pushes the primer an inch or two away with the tips of his fingers. “I’m sorry, Sally, but I think we had better stop this.”

Her forehead darkens, and her mouth falls open. He sees that he has hurt her.

“You must think I’m an idiot,” she says.

“No! Not in the least. You have nothing to apologize for — on the contrary.”

She closes the primer. “I’m sorry I have been such a bad learner. It’s just that there are so many letters and sounds.”

“That’s not it,” he says, still looking away. “I have enjoyed our time tonight.”

He casts her a furtive glance, and all at once she becomes aware that their calves are not more than an inch apart. She thinks that she should move her leg away from his, but she doesn’t. Instead, in a soft voice, she asks, “Then why?”

“I just think it would be better if Jimmy taught you after all. I will speak to him myself. It’s his duty as your older brother.”

“He won’t do it. Jimmy’s not like that. He just won’t.”

Thomas Jefferson throws himself back in his chair. Half in despair, half in entreaty, he says, “Oh, Sally.”

“What?”

“I shouldn’t say this.”

She remains silent.

“You are so beautiful,” he says. “You are utterly beautiful, you have an excellent mind, you are so kind and full of life — but this is impossible. I had thought that I would be able to keep my feelings within the bounds of decency, but I was—” He cuts himself off, looks at her with sad and yearning eyes. “Oh, you dear girl!”

After a moment he sits up and tugs once again at the bottom of his waistcoat.

“So I think you had better leave, Sally. For your own good. I’m terribly, terribly sorry. I will talk to Jimmy. Or maybe Patsy. Perhaps she could be your teacher. But if neither is willing, I will hire you a tutor. I am determined that you shall read.”

Sally Hemings feels as if something is spinning inside her head. She stands and speaks breathlessly, almost whispering. “Thank you, Mr. Jefferson.”

Thomas Jefferson squeezes his lips together. His face is red, but the skin about his lips is yellow. His eyes look enormous. As Sally Hemings puts her hand on the latch of the door, he calls out her name. Then he says, “Please understand that this has nothing to do with you. You are a darling, darling girl and entirely innocent of blame. I am the one who is enslaved by feelings he ought never to have conceived.”

Sally Hemings lifts the latch and leaves.

… I knew I could say no — and yet I didn’t. My reasons were shameful and obvious. I was vain. I was weak. I had been the baby of my family and, of course, nothing more than a poor colored serving girl — a slave. No one had ever listened to what I had to say. As a child, whenever I had ventured to speak some idea I might have had while wandering in the woods, my mother would laugh and tell me my head was “stuffed with foolishness.” My brothers and sisters just told me I was stupid — and I really was stupid around children my own age. My jokes always seemed obvious; my insults seemed to have been translated from another language. I would rehearse them inside my mind, but the words never came out in the right order.

But there was something about the quality of Mr. Jefferson’s attention that made me eloquent. Even when I was swooning in disbelief that such an important man was listening to me, I was still able to speak what I actually thought. And, of course, the fact that he didn’t laugh, that he took seriously what I had to say, that he constantly drew out more of my thoughts, proffered his own and wanted to know what I made of them — all of this filled me with such exhilaration that I would have to work to calm myself, sometimes for hours afterward. And this was true, even in those instants when I suspected that he was condescending to me. (At sixteen I hardly dared expect more than condescension from a man of Mr. Jefferson’s stature.) I was always a little afraid in conversation with him, but it was the best sort of fear, the kind that inspired me to make the most of my abilities. The truth is that I don’t think I had ever felt so completely myself — the self I most wished to be — as when he and I were talking.

I was much less easy regarding that other aspect of Mr. Jefferson’s attention, but I cannot say that it, too, did not also work a sort of glamour upon me. I had always seen myself as gawky and ratlike and thought I could never compare with the beauty of my two older sisters — Thenia especially, who was tall, graceful and possessed of all the female attributes most attractive to the male eye and who had always seemed entirely delighted by the attentions of boys and young men. Not only had I never received such attention, but in Paris, where the fact that I was a slave made me an objet de scandale, I had been the target of disparaging remarks about my supposedly African features, and once an extremely handsome young man had subjected me to a torrent of barbarous and filthy adjectives, most of them appended to the nouns “ négresse ” and “ noir. ” And so it was hard for me not to feel flattered by Mr. Jefferson’s adoration, even as I was also frightened and disgusted.

Thus I didn’t say no. I would smile and nod at Mr. Jefferson’s greetings; I would blushingly accept his offers of chocolate or apricot preserves; I would talk to him for as long as he would seem interested in talking to me and feel grateful for every instant; and when he told me that he wanted to teach me to read, I came at the appointed time, even though I knew in advance that I would be sitting so close to him that I would have to concentrate to avoid brushing his arm with my own or letting my knee fall against his….

Sally Hemings is sleeping. She has been turning over and over in her bed. Her shift is twisted around her waist, and her ankles are twisted in her sheets. A minute ago — maybe two — she tugged one of the top corners of her sheet up to her throat, but now her hand lies limply on her breast and the corner of the sheet curls like a stilled wave beneath her fingertips. Odd noises are coming out of her throat, toneless bird squeaks. She is dreaming of Thomas Jefferson. She is dreaming that he has taken hold of her hand and is licking her palm, again and again. She can feel the slick wetness of his tongue and its warmth. His tongue is exceedingly large, so large she cannot imagine how he will ever be able to get it back into his mouth. When his tongue has finished licking her palm and every one of her fingers, it moves to her wrist and then forearm. When it touches that soft, blue-veined hollow on the inside of her elbow, she awakes with a start. She is gasping in the night. Her eyes are wide open, but she sees nothing at all.

The servants’ stairway lets out onto the hallway just outside the upstairs parlor, and every night on her way to her bedchamber on the third floor, Sally Hemings has to walk past the parlor door. One night Thomas Jefferson looks up from his reading and sees her standing in the doorway, candle in hand. As soon as their eyes meet, she makes a tiny noise and is gone.

On another night he looks up and she is standing in the doorway again. He looks at her for what seems a very long time, but she doesn’t move.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Jefferson.”

“Is something wrong, Sally?”