Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

Some minutes later he is the one to break the embrace, all but pushing her away. “And now you really must go, Sally, because in another instant I won’t be able to control myself.”

She backs to the door, touching her lips with the fingertips of her left hand.

And then she is gone.

That night Thomas Jefferson waits in his chair before the fire in the upstairs parlor with a book in his lap that he only intermittently comprehends. The silver- and gold-faced clock on the mantelpiece wheezes and clangs out nine o’clock, which is when Sally Hemings usually appears. But then it is ten o’clock, and he is certain that she went up to her third-floor bedchamber by way of the front rather than the servants’ stairs — yet still he waits….

It is nearly eleven. He closes his book, hammers the cork back into a nearly empty bottle of Ledanon with the side of his fist and separates the charred and glowing logs with a poker.

There is a light knock behind him. Sally Hemings is standing in the doorway, a pained vacancy on her face, one hand wringing the other in front of her skirt.

“Yes, Sally,” says Thomas Jefferson, smiling and leaning the poker against the brick edge of the fireplace.

“I’m sorry,” she says — mere speech seeming to cost her immense effort. “I think that I lost something. Left it, I mean. My bonnet. I think I left it here. Yesterday. This afternoon.”

“I haven’t seen it.” Thomas Jefferson glances around the room. “But please come in. I’ll help you look for it if you wish.”

… I told myself that I was only yielding to the inevitable, that I merely wanted to get it over with. But even so, I was making a choice….

As Martha had already been married and given birth to two children by the time Thomas Jefferson met her, he had assumed that there would be few impediments to her succumbing to desire in advance of their wedding. And, indeed, whenever he went to see her at the Forest, after his first visit there with John Fairfield, she seemed as eager as he to steal a moment of privacy amid the boxwood hedges, in the closet under the stairs or in a deserted horse stall. Her kisses matched his for passion, and she was happy to let his hands stray anyplace they wanted — insofar as her stays allowed — but only on the outside of her clothing. Whenever he tried to lift up her skirts, or even just slide his hand beneath them, she would grab him by the wrist and say, “Wait.” Then she would answer his surprised disappointment with a lascivious smile, saying, “I want you to have something to look forward to.”

One day he arrived for a visit, and Martha, laughing, told him that her family was spending the afternoon with some neighbors and that he and she were alone. Her darting and mischievous glances told him clearly that she had made a decision. No sooner did Betty Hemings go off to fetch him some tea than Martha took him by the lapels and kissed him. When Betty returned, Martha told her that she could have the afternoon off.

But once they were alone, she grew restless and pale. When he finished his tea and gave her a smile she could not help but understand, she held out the pot and asked if he’d like some more. He answered by getting up from his chair, kissing her and then leading her up the stairs. But once they were in her bedchamber, Martha broke from his embrace and went over to the window, saying, “Why don’t we talk first?” When he asked what was the matter, she replied, “I don’t know. I’m just suddenly so nervous.” So they sat in two chairs by the window and talked. Then he stood behind her and massaged her neck and shoulders. Eventually he led her to the bed and helped her to remove her clothing one item at a time. But even once they were both naked and under the covers, she wouldn’t let him do more than kiss her neck and cheek. In the hope of further relaxing her and evoking her desire, he began to run his fingertips lightly over her body, from her breasts down to her thighs, over and over, constantly approaching but always, in the end, avoiding that one area he wanted most to touch, because every time his fingers drew near, he could feel her whole body tense.

“Ooh, this is lovely!” she said after a while. “Don’t you think this is lovely, just lying here like this?”

He did and he didn’t, but all he said was, “I love you.”

And so it became a habit, throughout the eleven years of their courtship and marriage, for Thomas Jefferson to commence making love to Martha with a massage and a menu of caresses. Although most of the time this prelude did nothing to diminish the ultimate satisfaction of their lovemaking, it is also true that sometimes the prelude was as far as things would go.

Thus, when, some half hour after Sally Hemings arrives late at the upstairs parlor, and Thomas Jefferson confesses breathlessly that he would very much like to lie with her as a man lies with his wife, and she whispers that she would like that, too, he is prepared for the possibility that this first time might consist of nothing more than a massage and patient caresses. He is determined to prove to her that he is not the selfish brute he all too recently seemed, but he also wants (as he did even that first terrible night) to make her initiation into the pleasures of womanhood as gentle and beautiful as it can possibly be.

Thomas Jefferson has never had sex with a virgin. His first erotic encounters, when he was a law student, were with prostitutes, and all three of the women he has loved had already been married when he first slept with them — indeed, Maria Cosway and his first real love, Betsy Walker, were married during the whole of his affairs with them. And so he is not entirely sure what sex might be like for a virgin. How afraid will she be? How much will it hurt? Is there anything special he should do?

Although he has never seen anything more beautiful than Sally Hemings’s long-waisted and luxuriantly hipped body, he decides to err on the side of caution and spends much of an hour stroking, caressing and kissing her, breathing in the sweet and musky odors that hover like an atmosphere just above her skin — which itself is so marvelously soft that he feels as if he is running his fingers and lips across a warm and continuous rose petal.

He waits for a sign that she is ready to go further, but the gasps, soft moans and gentle writhing that first accompany his attentions gradually dissipate, and he begins, reluctantly, to contemplate scenarios in which he tells her that he doesn’t mind, that he can wait until she is ready, that he has loved what they have been doing, that she is beautiful, oh, so beautiful….

But then her hand closes around his penis. “Aren’t you going to put this in me?” she says.

Smiling, he pulls his head back. “Is that what you would like?”

“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?”

He laughs. She is still holding his penis, and it is feeling very good. “Well, that is the usual procedure under these circumstances.”

“All right,” she says, and rolls from her side onto her back.

He kisses her on her breast, neck and lips. “Are you sure? We can wait if you would rather.”

“No. Go ahead. I want to find out what it is like.”

It is hard to get into her, in part because she doesn’t have a clear idea where the opening to her vagina actually is and so can’t help him. But finally, after a fair bit of groping and prodding, he slips into her warm wetness and is surprised that nothing he feels would indicate she is a virgin.

She makes a short, loud cry, however, and grips his arm and back to keep him from moving. She is holding her breath.

“Are you all right?” he asks.