Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

It is midnight on Christmas, and Thomas Jefferson has arrived at Sally Hemings’s cabin (drunk), having just had a fight with Martha because he thinks her husband, Colonel Randolph (also drunk), is showing signs of insanity. “Oh, you must detest me, Sally. I am a fool and a bully, and I believe almost nothing that I write or say.”

She waits to put it to him until she is naked and he, too, is naked. They are sitting face-to-face, and his thing is sticking up between them like a gooseneck. A fire is blazing in the hearth.

It has been two months since their first visit to the lodge, and she has been thinking about this for days. She rehearsed her words all last night.

“I want you to promise me,” she says, “that if we have any children, they will be free.”

Thomas Jefferson’s eyes narrow. His sultry smile is gone. His thing begins to droop.

“I’m not asking for anything for myself,” she says. “I will stay with you as I am. But I want my children— our children, your children — to be free. That’s all I ask.”

Thomas Jefferson’s mouth seals tight. His expression says he is being taken advantage of.

“You have to promise me,” she says.

He pulls away from her. “I need to think. That’s a complicated—”

“No,” she says. “There’s nothing complicated about it. Our children must be free. Why do you have to give that even one second of thought?”

“I’m just thinking about what Martha and Maria—”

She, too, pulls away, then shifts onto her knees. In a moment she might be standing.

“Don’t.” He puts his hands on her thighs. “You are right. Of course, you are right.”

“Good,” she says. But then she does get to her feet. She walks over to the dust-hazed windows and looks out at the many grays of the leafless trees.

He has come up behind her. He is kissing the nape of her neck. He runs his hands up her belly to her breasts. After a while she lets herself be led back to the bed.

The falling is so sudden and swift that it takes Thomas Jefferson a moment to realize what he is seeing: the earth careening away beneath the clouds, which themselves seem to be spiraling into an abyss. Clinging to the arms of his chair so that he might not also tumble down through the empty air, he feels something warm and smooth sweep along his clutching fingers and then settle atop his hand. It is the hand of Dolley Madison, whose eyes partake equally of the brilliance and blackness of this strange theater and whose mouth is stretched wide with delight. She is speaking to him, but her words are lost in the roaring throb of a thousand cellos, violas and violins.

The earth and sky have stopped falling, and now Thomas Jefferson has the impression that he is coasting between clouds the size of mountains. The roaring strings have resolved into a dithery waltz but are still so loud that their vibration in his hair and against his cheeks seems something like a breeze. Gradually his coasting accelerates into a gently arcing dive toward a particular cloud that darkens and looms as he approaches. For an instant all he can see is fog gray and the knoblike heads of the people seated in front of him, but in the next instant he has zoomed past the silver-feathered edge of the cloud and can now see an orange-and-red balloon, emblazoned with a huge yellow sun face, drifting from behind a different cloud.

At the bottom of the balloon is a sort of balcony on which three people stand, looking out at the landscape beneath them. As he dives (or feels he is diving) like a hawk straight toward them, they grow ever larger and ever more recognizable. The nearest of the three is a man in an enormous hat with an even more enormous panache that bends like a fountain of fluff over the hat’s brim. His facial hair consists of three black spikes arrayed about his mouth, and he is looking straight at Thomas Jefferson, smiling with what would appear to be immense self-satisfaction. Directly behind the man is the actress with the golden skin and the gold-frosted, tightly curled hair, who is not looking at Thomas Jefferson but at the actor in the copper-colored wig, who is also looking at her, his face a beacon of adoration.

All at once Thomas Jefferson seems to be on the balloon’s balcony himself, but behind the three passengers. He sees that the couple are squeezing each other’s hands in the very narrow space between their thighs and that the man in the enormous hat has leaned back far enough to see exactly what they are doing. He looks again at Thomas Jefferson and winks.

And now Thomas Jefferson is flying in a long, ascending arc around behind a cloud and then back, right over the top of the sideways-drifting balloon. As the violins, violas and cellos accelerate into another roaring throb, he feels as if he is shooting right toward the blue edge of the sky, and he so wishes that he had actually been able to take Sally Hemings up in a balloon or that somehow he had been able to fly as he is flying now, with her at his side.

It is August 5, 1792. Sally Hemings has just returned to bed after drawing back the curtain on one of the lodge windows to let in some daylight. She is nineteen, and Thomas Jefferson is forty-nine.

“What?” she says as she lifts the sheet, their only cover this hot afternoon.

Thomas Jefferson doesn’t answer.

She slides into the bed, and, supporting herself on one straight arm, she rests her other hand on the center of his chest. Her head is tilted sympathetically. “What’s the matter?” she says.

Thomas Jefferson blinks, as if rousing himself from a dream. He gives her a wan smile. “Nothing.”

She grunts dubiously and lowers her head to the pillow but keeps her hand on his chest. “Really?” she says.

“Nothing.” He lifts his eyebrows toward the window. “It’s a beautiful day.”

“Then why do you look so miserable?”

He smiles, but also seems to wince. “I don’t know. I’m just feeling a little sad.”

She rolls onto her back and lets her hand slide off his chest and onto her belly. But then, with her other hand, she takes hold of his under the sheet. “Are you missing Mrs. Bolling?”

He sighs heavily. “I suppose.”

“I missed my sisters terribly when I first arrived in France. Critta especially. I was so lonely those first few months.”

He squeezes her hand but doesn’t say anything.

“Although I did have Jimmy, of course.”

Thomas Jefferson gives her hand a second, more urgent squeeze. “What did you think of Mary — Mrs. Bolling?”

Sally Hemings sighs. “I could tell that she loves you.”

“Yes. But what else?”

Sally Hemings sighs again, heavily. She lets go of Thomas Jefferson’s hand. “I didn’t like her husband.”

“Why not?”

“I think he’s stupid, and he doesn’t love her.”

“Well…” Thomas Jefferson smirks thoughtfully. “You’re probably right. On both accounts.”

“I also think he only married her because of you.”

“That, alas, may be equally true.” The branches outside the window sway in a gentle breeze. Dollops of sunlight rise and fall on the leaves. A hermit thrush makes its lonely, crystalline cry. “But I don’t think it is bad that she is married.”

Sally Hemings rolls onto her side and faces him, her head pressed into the pillow. “The main thing is that it is hard for me to believe that she’s your sister.”

“She has more of my mother in her, I suppose.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Sally Hemings squashes more of the pillow under her cheek, so that her head is higher. “It’s the same with your brother. Neither of them seem anything like you. It’s hard to believe you come from the same family. But Mrs. Bolling especially.”