Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

Her mother is a darkness bending over her.

Icy fingers touch her cheek.

A low, quiet voice: “Oh, Lord! You burning up.”

Her mother goes away and then is back. The odor of a tin cup coats the inside of Sally Hemings’s nose.

“Drink this,” her mother says. “Water’s the best thing when you got a fever.”

“No.” Sally Hemings squeezes her eyes shut and covers her face with the blanket.

Her mother sighs and then is silent.

The particulate whisper of a stool being dragged across a dirt floor. Clank of cup on wood.

“I’m leaving this here for you,” her mother says. “I’ll go take care of Her Majesty. You drink this when you ready.”

Sally Hemings expects to see her mother standing in front of her when she opens her eyes, but the cabin is entirely empty and it is full daylight — midmorning by the slant of the beams coming in the window.

Now she truly is thirsty — desperately! — but her hands feel so ill-coordinated as she reaches for the cup that she is afraid she will drop it. The room is still so very, very cold. As she grabs the cup and presses it against her lips, every fluff of air seeping under the covers is like ice against her skin. And once she has put the cup back on the stool and has pulled the covers up to her neck, she is colder than ever before. Hard shivers rack her shoulders and grind down through her abdomen. Her feet feel cased in snow. She wants to get up and take the covers from her mother’s bed but can’t bear to cross the cold room. She is too weak. Her teeth are clattering again. She will wait until her mother returns.

There follows a long period during which she is not really awake but not entirely unconscious. For much of that time, she feels she is lying naked on the hard floor of a dark and frigid cave, her shivers so violent they are painful. Sometimes the cave floor is like the deck of a ship in a heaving, blowing storm. Grunting beasts shamble past her from all directions, and she knows that one of them will step on her with its huge, clawed feet. That will be the end of me , she thinks. She is afraid but does nothing to stop those huge, shambling beasts — because, of course, there is nothing she can do.

When next she wakes, it is because her mother is covering her with her own blankets, though Sally Hemings doesn’t remember asking her to do that.

The blankets are not enough.

“Cold,” she says. “So cold.”

Her mother pulls the trunk out from under the bed and covers her with all the gowns, petticoats and shifts that she wore in France and tops the heap off with her greatcoat and cape. The weight of all that clothing is good. Sally Hemings feels comforted. But still she is shivering.

Time has passed. She has awakened to the sound of her mother’s urgent murmuring and realizes that the poor woman is praying with her face to the wall.

“Mammy,” Sally Hemings calls from the bed. “Mammy, it’s all right. You don’t have to worry. I’m getting better.”

“I know you is,” says her mother turning around. “But it don’t hurt to ask the Lord for help.” She turns back to the wall, and her urgent murmuring continues.

As Sally Hemings slips back into sleep, she thinks that she really is getting better. A while ago she felt so very terrible that she was sure she was about to die, and she didn’t actually care. But now things are different. Now she is not so cold. Now she is almost comfortable under all her covers and clothes.

It is late in the night when she wakes. She is so hot she can hardly breathe. She flings off all her covers and lies on her back in her sweat-soaked shift, savoring the coolness of the night air.

She feels as if she has been in the grip of a giant and now she has been released.

The chilled air on her ankles, feet and arms feels good. So does the layer of cold cloth clinging to her body. There is no light in the cabin. She looks toward the window and sees only black within black. So quiet. No birds. No human voices. Not even a breeze shifting the yellow leaves on the ground.

Then, from somewhere down the hill, a weird and echoing cry that would be laughter if only it weren’t so very attenuated and sad. Then silence. Then exactly the same cry all over again.

At some point, much deeper into the night, when she has pulled the covers back over herself and is lying there, content in her solitude and happy in the knowledge that she will not die (not yet), memories that she has not allowed herself for many months come back to her all in a rush.

She remembers the time Thomas Jefferson said, “I don’t know how I have ever lived without you,” and a time when he looked into her eyes, put his hand softly against her cheek and told her, “You are so beautiful! I want to draw your face!” and the night he pressed his head against her belly and wrapped his arms tightly around her waist and said that he couldn’t bear to let her go, because if he did, the moment would end and he never wanted that moment to be over.

For months such memories have been far too painful for her to allow into her thoughts, but now, in her solitude and quiet, they are a comfort, and she finds herself imagining that when, in the bluish morning, she steps on her unsteady legs out onto her porch, intending to make her way around to the outhouse, she will find Thomas Jefferson waiting in the road. His expression will be so terribly sad. And when he comes to her, his touch will be so very gentle.

The prisoner is holding the bars of his cell door, looking at the guard. His mouth is open. His eyes are heavy with grief. The guard is sitting in her wooden chair, holding a fork with a yellow blob of scrambled egg on the end of it. She puts the blob into her mouth, chews, swallows, speaks.

— Delicious! Man, was I hungry!

The pink tip of the prisoner’s tongue moves along his lower lip. The guard mops up the buttery smears of her egg with a piece of toast and pops the toast into her mouth. She chews. She speaks.

— Oh, God!

She puts the plate down on the floor and picks up the paper coffee cup that has been waiting on the opposite side of her chair. She wraps the cup in both hands, warming her fingers, leans back in her chair and rests the cup on her belly. She speaks.

— That was fabulous. I was starved.

The prisoner is looking at the tray. He can see a shred of egg that she didn’t mop up. She pulled the crusts off her toast before she ate it, and they lie like a heap of tiny timbers on the tray beside the plate. The prisoner doesn’t speak; the guard does.

— Did you ever think about whose nightmare this is?

— …

— I mean, who’s dreaming this: you or me?

— I’m not dreaming anything.

— That’s what I was afraid of.

— …

— I guess what I’m really asking is, which of us is the illusion here?

— …

— Because if only one of us is real, the other one must be an illusion. That’s simple logic, right?

— What the fuck are you talking about?

— Are you deaf? Or are you just being an asshole? Jesus!

— …

— You’re my nightmare! That’s what I’m talking about!

— …

— It’s simple logic, right? I mean, if I wasn’t here with you, I could be lying on a beach somewhere. Or maybe I’d be studying impressionist painting in Paris. Or I could be a pediatrician with a tiny plastic monkey climbing up my stethoscope. You know?

— …

— But because of you, I don’t have any choice. I am morally compelled to spend my life underground and behave like a barbarian, just because you’re such an evil piece of shit. You see what I’m saying? It’s like the nightmare you created never ended, and now I’m stuck in it.