Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

Thomas Jefferson’s voice is gentle. “Sally, please.” She can feel him looking at her. She knows, even, that his expression is tender, in that way she once thought she loved. “I only want to inquire as to how you are doing,” he says. “I know these last weeks have been… especially with Martha’s wedding—”

“Fine,” she says.

“I’m sorry?” He is not apologizing.

In a soft but trembling voice she says, “I said I’m fine.”

“Oh, Sally.” He speaks her name so tenderly. “You’re not being fair.”

“I’m fine , I said!” Her voice is sharper now, though still trembling. “I know exactly what I am to you, and I don’t care! Not that I have any say in the matter.”

She won’t lift her eyes above Thomas Jefferson’s shoulder, but she can tell by his silence and by the way his hands clench the reins that she has shocked him.

“Sally,” he says, but it is a moment before he can speak. “You are being entirely unfair — to me and, worst of all, to yourself.”

She, too, is silent a moment, then says firmly, “I don’t think so.” Now she looks into his mud-and-gold eyes and sees that his tenderness has given way to anger. “I don’t believe in telling lies, Mr. Jefferson, especially to myself.”

He says nothing, but she is no longer looking at him, so has no idea what expression he may have on his face.

“Excuse me,” she says. “I am on an errand for Polly.” She cuts a wide arc behind his horse and makes for the stable entrance.

He calls her once, but she doesn’t reply or look around. Only after she has entered the stable does she hear him make a double suck-click in his cheek, and horse’s hooves begin to drum out of the yard.

Jupiter is standing toward the rear of the stable, buckling Lulabelle into the cart harness. His skin is dark enough that his features are hard to make out in the dimness, but she can tell from the weary set of his eyes that he has heard every word of her exchange with Thomas Jefferson and that he doesn’t know what to say.

“Polly asked me to give you this.” She hands him the list. “ Maria , I mean.” And then she starts to cry.

Sally Hemings is down in the kitchen early the following morning with her mother and Ursula when the bell, attached by wire to a brass ring beside Thomas Jefferson’s bed, jingles. Betty casts her daughter a worried glance. She saw Sally Hemings’s red eyes at supper yesterday. And she heard her sighing all night long and filling the cabin with the hisses and whispers of dried corn husks as she turned again and again on her tick. Betty is pretty sure she knows what’s wrong, even though her daughter has been protesting that it is only her monthly.

Betty climbs the steep staircase to the hall outside Thomas Jefferson’s chambers, and when she returns, there is worry on her face and in her voice. “He wants his molasses tea. And he says you the one got to bring it to him. He says you and no one else.”

Betty gives her eyes a weighty roll and goes over to the fire, where a bucket-size copper kettle is always on a low boil.

Minutes later Sally Hemings is standing in the dark hallway knocking on Thomas Jefferson’s door. Her first knock is too soft, so she knocks again.

“Come in,” she hears from the other side of the door.

Balancing the tray bearing the teapot, cup and bowl of molasses in her left hand, she lifts the latch with her right. Thomas Jefferson, who always rises with the sun, is seated at his desk in shirtsleeves and waistcoat. Pen in hand, he seems preoccupied. “Thank you, Sally.” He clears a space amid his papers so she can put down the tray. When she has done so, she notices that he is looking right at her.

“I’m wondering,” he says, “if we might have a word.”

She neither moves nor speaks.

He gestures at a chair. “Please sit down, Sally.”

She feels as if she is falling as she sits — falling through the chair, through the floor, falling and falling.

Thomas Jefferson’s brow is wrinkled. He meets her gaze, then turns away. As he speaks, his eyes are on the pen that he has placed beside the letter he was writing. “You told me yesterday that you do not lie. So I am not going to lie to you. I think it best, given that we will continue to occupy the same house whenever I am not called away by my duties, that I am completely honest with you regarding my thoughts about what has passed between us.”

His eyes lift. He holds her gaze. Her mind is reeling, and she is hardly aware of her own words. “I think that is good.”

He looks down again. “You understand, of course, that what has happened between us is wrong. I accept full responsibility for it. I took advantage of you… of your innocence… to an extent that I had never thought myself capable of.” He sighs. “And everything that happened afterward was, in a sense, my attempt to convince you, and myself, that my feelings that first time had been more honorable than they seemed.” He looks at her again, smiles sadly, then makes a small laugh. “But I’m lying again! You are a good and caring girl, Sally. And one day you will make some man a fine wife. Soon, I hope. I have never been insensible to your virtues, and nothing would have happened between us had I not had such a high opinion of you. But that is no excuse. In fact, your many virtues only compound my transgression. Especially since my attempts to make good the first wrong I did you only caused you further injury. The fact that my own actions nearly resulted in the issue of a child so troubled me that I was incapable of… well, of behaving toward you as I ought.”

He looks straight at her again, and she has to fight to hold back her tears.

He pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, then gives his head a shake. “I took the coward’s way out. I know that. I pretended that what had happened was no concern of mine. I somehow believed that if I acted like a man who had done no wrong I would actually be such a man. That was cruel. A grave wrong in itself. And I am deeply, deeply sorry.”

He looks at her under a folded brow, waiting.

She is filled with rage.

He continues, “But my multiplying transgressions only make more clear how wrong our association is and thus why that association must end, especially now that we are home. In France, distance and the custom of that place gave us a certain freedom. But here in our United States, especially as I am about to participate in the first administration of this new country…” He frowns. His hand twitches, as if he is about to reach across his desk for hers. Instead his words spill out all in a rush. “Please understand, Sally, that I like you very much — too much. I think you are an utterly wonderful girl. And I have had to struggle mightily with my own feelings to reach this resolve. What we have been doing is wrong, and so it simply must stop. That is our only choice. I hope you understand.”

She doesn’t reply, and she hardly hears anything he proceeds to tell her — that he has informed Mr. Lewis that from now on she will have no other duties than to attend to Maria’s personal needs. He seems to feel that these arrangements are adequate compensation for all that she has lost — or that he has taken from her. He jokes about her having lots of free time, in which she might teach herself to read or find a husband.

At last he falls silent.

As she, also silent, gets to her feet, he reaches across his desk and grabs her hand. “Dear Sally,” he says. He kisses the back of her hand, then, looking ill and old, tells her she’d better go.

She stands for a long time in the dim hallway, then straightens her apron, and, willing herself to manifest none of the feeling in her breast, she grips the railing of the steep stairs and descends to the kitchen.