Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

Q: But he did force himself on your daughter. So if he wasn’t the forcing kind…

ELIZABETH: You mean in Paris?

Q: [Nods.]

ELIZABETH: I never figured out what happened in Paris. Sally would never be straight with me about that. Most of the time, she told me nothing happened in Paris. Well, not nothing, but not what you mean either. But then sometimes— The only way I could figure it was that maybe something did happen. I mean, you’ve got to think that any man who goes around saying “I’m sorry” all the time — especially a man like Mr. Jefferson who knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that there was no reason for him to apologize to anyone, that he could have had pretty much anything he wanted and people would have thought he deserved it. You know what I mean? I mean, not only was he smarter than just about anybody, and so famous everybody wanted to get a look at him, he was also this great big tall man and strong as a horse. So when a man like that is always saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and humiliating himself all the time, you got to figure he’s getting pretty angry inside. He’s building up this whole mountain of anger. So, of course, every now and then he’s got to let that anger out. And maybe that’s what happened in Paris. I don’t know. But all I can tell you is that that’s not who he was. He was definitely not the forcing kind.

Thomas Jefferson is an ape. He lumbers apelike through the Great Ape House, mostly on his handlike feet but sometimes on the knuckles of his actual hands. His knuckles are particularly effective whenever he wants to pivot or to swing his feet through empty space. They turn his body into a projectile. They transform his tremendous weight into force.

The air of the Great Ape House is dense with the penetrating sweetness of ape shit. The light in the Great Ape House is the color of watery milk. The hillside on which Thomas Jefferson and the other Great Apes spend their days is the color of mice, and the logs, which constitute the Great Apes’ only furniture and playthings, are the color of logs with the bark peeled off — a color you might call Sunset on Snow.

Thomas Jefferson disdains his fellow apes but at the same time depends upon them: for nitpicking, for consolation during his ape-house jitters and for the delights of intimate union. He is the biggest of all the Great Apes, and so he is always first in line when the lesser apes come through the rectangle with the food bucket. And if he should miss the bucket because he is napping, he just takes the food of any ape he chooses. Ditto their mates.

He sees nothing wrong with this state of affairs, and neither, apparently, do any of the other Great Apes. They don’t like giving up their food, of course, or their mates. And sometimes the mates seem to take less delight in intimate union than Thomas Jefferson does. But that is not the same as wrong. There is nothing any of the other Great Apes can do to stop Thomas Jefferson, and so there is nothing to be gained by thinking he is wrong. In general, Great Apes are much more interested in harmony than in wrong or right. When Thomas Jefferson is happy, everyone is happy. He will leave them the food he doesn’t want. Ditto the mates. He will even nitpick. And when it comes to ape-house jitters, there can be no greater consolation than Thomas Jefferson’s gigantic embrace. This is harmony. And as long as no one thinks Thomas Jefferson is wrong, the harmony is total. Or as close to total as anyone can imagine.

One day Thomas Jefferson happens upon a system by which he might cross the gulf from the hillside to that other hillside where duplicate apes perfectly copy every one of his gestures and those of the other Great Apes. They do it in absolute silence. No sound ever crosses the gulf from that other hillside. The duplicate apes seem to worship the Great Apes in the same way as the Great Apes are worshipped by their shadows. The system involves a log tipped off into space and slamming to rest against the end of the duplicate log that has been tipped off into space by the duplicate Thomas Jefferson. The two logs make a sort of bridge between the hillsides. And as Thomas Jefferson walks upon his log, he sees his duplicate walking toward him upon his own. Then something strange happens. The closer Thomas Jefferson gets to his duplicate, the darker his duplicate becomes, until finally the duplicate ceases to duplicate Thomas Jefferson and instead seems to be embarked upon a project of total erasure, which is to say the replacement of everything within the borders of his being with darkness.

But that’s not the really strange thing.

The really strange thing is that within the darkness of what once was his duplicate, Thomas Jefferson can see moving things. And when he gets to the end of his log and to that place where he ought to have been able to wrestle with his duplicate and throw him into the gulf, the air suddenly becomes hard — so hard he cannot even touch his duplicate or put one toe onto the duplicate log. But now he can see the moving things clearly. At first he thinks they are spots, like the spots that dent his vision when he rubs his eyes or when he stares at the milky lights too long. But then he sees that the spots are apes. Or they are apelike.

In fact, they are lesser apes.

And as he presses his face hard against the hard air, some of the lesser apes are leaping in fear. And some of them are baring their teeth. And pointing. They seem to be making noises. Maybe he can hear them. A muffled honking. A hooting. There are so many of them. Not just three. Many. Many. More than all of the Great Apes. A lot more.

There is something about this that should not be. Something disharmonious — even, perhaps, wrong. Thomas Jefferson bellows. He pounds on the hard air. He is waiting for everything to go back to the way it was. To the way it should be.

It is November 8, 1790, and not yet dawn when Sally Hemings is awakened by shouting. As she looks up into a charcoal dimness, she hears Jimmy’s voice: “Underneath the knives!” He shouts that exact phrase three times in a row, giving the last word a strange emphasis. Then someone farther away — a woman or a boy — calls out something indecipherable, which is immediately followed by Thomas Jefferson shouting more loudly than anyone else: “Time’s a wasting!” At the sound of his voice, a shiver passes through Sally Hemings’s entire body, and she has to roll onto her side and draw up her knees to quell the cold.

This is the morning when Jimmy, Bobby and Thomas Jefferson go north again — to Philadelphia this time, because the capital has been moved there from New York. Jimmy told her last night that they might be gone for a whole year. She said good-bye to him then but intended to get up early so that she could give him one last hug. She woke up several times during the night, in fact, but always too soon. Now she contemplates throwing on her greatcoat and running out to give him, at the very least, a parting wave, but the idea of venturing into the frigid air is more than she can bear.

She is awakened an hour or so later by her mother, who is shaking her shoulder and saying, “Let’s go, baby girl. Her Majesty’s waiting on her chocolate.”

Sally Hemings is so deeply asleep that it is close to a minute before she has any idea what her mother is talking about. She doesn’t know how she will be able to get out of bed. Her head feels like a boulder; she can hardly turn it on her pillow. And as soon as she has thrown off her covers, she starts to shiver so violently her teeth clatter.

Her mother is looking at her as if she has just done something shocking.

“That you, baby girl?”

Sally Hemings can’t answer. She pulls her blankets back up tight around her shoulders, but her teeth won’t stop clattering.