Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

The primary personal implication of these new arguments was that he could relax. There was no longer any moral urgency regarding the emancipation of his own slaves, and while he may have been obliged to treat them in such a way that they might regain their virtues of industriousness and independence of spirit, it was possible for him to argue to himself that he was already doing just that — as, for example, with the top-flight culinary education that he had provided James Hemings, whom he also allowed to travel great distances in France on his own, often carrying a considerable amount of money.

In the years after his return to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson trained many of his slaves to be carpenters, furniture makers, blacksmiths, chandlers, cooks and pastry chefs — with the primary beneficiaries of this policy being members of the extended Hemings clan. It should not be forgotten, however, that by having so many skilled craftsmen working for him Thomas Jefferson was able to build one of the most beautiful houses in the United States, and to fill it with excellently made furniture (often of his own devising), and to enjoy coq au vin, bouillabaisse, ratatouille, crêpes and bûche de Noël.

Those slaves who needed to be literate for their work were also taught to read and write. Unlike at other plantations, no one at Monticello was forbidden to acquire these skills. Indeed, in 1796 Thomas Jefferson even advocated for the establishment of public schools for enslaved and free black children. And in later years he encouraged his grandchildren to give reading lessons to any house slave who showed an interest, though it is also true that he worried that literate slaves could forge manumission papers for themselves and others (his writings on slavery are filled with such contradictions).

Some slaves were paid for their work (though only a fraction of what white workers received), some received a share of the profits their work helped generate, and a few were made overseers, most notably at a small nail-manufacturing plant, which for roughly a decade beginning in 1794 was by far the plantation’s most profitable venture — though, in general, Thomas Jefferson was not a skilled farmer and made very little, if any, profit most years from his vast plantation. Slaves were also allowed to have their own small gardens and to raise chickens, and could sell whatever they grew or raised to neighbors, including the Jeffersons.

It is hard to know how many people benefited even marginally from these comparatively liberal practices, but most likely no more than a hundred, which is to say only a small proportion of the more than six hundred human beings whom Thomas Jefferson owned over the course of his lifetime and whom he famously referred to as both his “family” and “those who labor for my happiness.”

Small as her fist. Its own fists like the pistils of daylilies, curling in front of the blue bulges where its eyes would have been. Not it— her. Her eyes. Her fists. Mere wrinkle between her legs, which are smaller than the front legs of tree frogs. Gigantic head that reminds Sally Hemings of nothing so much as the tip of a man’s thing — though she is ashamed to even think that.

Her mother says, “That head’s why the Lord let her go. The Lord always has his reasons.”

Sally Hemings hopes so. But to her it seems that most things don’t happen for any reason at all. She washes the little one herself. La Petite. Puts her into the jam jar herself. The one he got her that time in Paris. Apricot preserves. The time he wanted her to think better of him. She seals the jar with grease paper and twine. She wraps the jar in burlap and ties the burlap in twine, too.

She told him when she was going to do it. He nodded and looked as if he were made of sorrow, but he did not say he would come.

He is not here.

She holds the jam jar against her belly. Her mother is with her. And Thenia and Critta. And Jimmy. Jimmy is carrying the pickax. Peter has the shovel.

The sky is filled with snow, but the snow is not falling. The earth is pink and hard. Tow-colored grass. The bare trees are the many colors of bruises. She looks back toward the house, but he is not there.

She walks first; the others follow. When they get there, he is not waiting.

Jimmy thinks what they are doing is sacrilege. Witchcraft. Only those who have lived should have funerals. But he has come anyway. And when they arrive, he holds the pick with both hands and asks where she wants him to dig.

“No,” she says.

She gives the jam jar to her mother and takes the pickax. The first time she strikes the frozen earth, the vibration snaps like a cowskin lash up her arms to the center of her spine. She has made only a knuckle-shaped dent in the earth amid splayed grass blades. But she hits again and again and again, feeling it is right that she should suffer for this poor creature to whom she could not give life.

He still has not come when, at last, she lays the jam jar at the bottom of the knee-deep hole and covers it over with the chips of frozen earth and tangled bits of the tow-colored grass. On top of it all, she puts a squarish flag of stone that Peter removed from the wall along Mulberry Row.

“ Au revoir, ma petite ,” she says. She also wants to say, “ Je t’aime ,” but she can’t. The steam of her breath dissipates in the frigid air.

When she starts to walk away, her mother grabs her arm.

“No!” Sally Hemings says. “Let me go!”

Jimmy says, “She’ll be all right.”

Her mother just stands there, ash-faced, looking.

Down the hill. Down. Down. Not along the road but through the woods. Hands skin-stripped and blistered, crammed into the pockets of her greatcoat. Lifting her skirts over fallen trees. Shoving aside or ducking under face-level branches. Feet making a constant shush, shush, shush in the pale-copper leaves.

It is good to get away. She feels nothing but good. Her burning hands throb in her pockets, but the cold air is sweet in her lungs.

Down past the lake, which is sealed beneath a dull-glinting sheet of ice: black and mottled gray, shifting yellow reeds along its shore. She crosses the path where he takes his daily rides. She wills herself not to look for him. She wills herself not to hope she will see him hurrying home, distraught because some accident kept him from her side. Or hurrying from home, filled with sorrow and anxiety, wanting only to find her, to get down on his knees and beg her forgiveness. She has resolved to hate him. She will be as cold and hard to him as the earth beneath her pickax.

First she hears a gentle ticking on the fallen leaves, and then she sees the snowflakes, millions of them, drifting between the upreaching branches of the hickories and oaks. Then she is standing by the black river, dank mustiness filling her sinuses, the hissing roar of water over stones filling her ears. The snow is heavier now, obscuring the far shore in its diagonal sweeps and swirls. The world is whitening. Her shoulders are shrouded with snow, and the upper surfaces of her sleeves.

When she felt the warmth trickling down her legs, then saw the blood, she entered into a sort of fog and a numbness that was less grief than a terrific confusion, a profound lostness. But that’s all over now. Her mind is utterly clear. Here in the cold beside this loud river, she feels more alert and alive than she ever felt in Paris. Here in this wild land where she was born — the only place where she can feel that she is truly herself and in the living world.

Some hour later, almost back to Monticello, she stops on the edge of a sloping field, now entirely white with snow. The wind has stilled, and the flakes are bigger now, the size of feathers. Rocking. Drifting left, then right. Endless numbers of them, falling all around her in perfect silence. And as she watches, she feels that what she is watching is the settling of grief upon grief upon grief that has been occurring, without relent, for all the centuries since creation.