Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

Often she thinks that Thomas Jefferson loves her, but this thought is not reliably comforting, because while he sometimes confesses his love when they are alone, his pretense in the company of others that she is a mere servant can be so convincing that she will feel as if he has spit at her. He is never cruel, only indifferent. “That will be all,” he will tell her. Or, “My riding boots need polishing.” Or, “The hamper in my chamber is full.” She believes — or sometimes only wants to believe — that this pretense is merely another part of their secret life, that his false indifference is his way of ensuring that he might love her freely when they are alone. She consoles herself by remembering how he calls her “sweet girl” and “Senator Sally,” and the tenderness of his fingertips on her cheeks or breasts, and all those times when he cannot bear to leave her bed, or simply those times when he is reading on the porch of the lodge or writing at his desk and his casual glance in her direction is lit with all the world’s kindness.

The change comes, she thinks, because of her pregnancy. She is not vomiting, but she is nauseated almost all the time and is always tired, even when she first rises from bed. Also, Thomas Jefferson does not want to be with her once she starts to get a belly. He says that it is bad for the baby and that he and Mrs. Jefferson lost their only son because he couldn’t exercise proper restraint, and he will never forgive himself for that. Sally Hemings takes his desire to protect their baby as a particularly important indication of his love, but still, she is lonely now in a way that she hasn’t been for years.

Harriet is two, and the sweetest of babies — laughing constantly, giving her mother tender, glossy-lipped kisses on the cheek, taking delight in every little thing: sparrows hopping in the dust, sneezing horses, flowers. All summer long, every time she sees a flower, she runs up to it and gives it a noisy sniff, after which she always says, “Pur-ty!”

But once the cold weather arrives, the little girl seems to become perversely willful and heedless of peril. Sally Hemings need only forbid her to do something and she will run straight off to do it, no matter how dangerous. One time she picks up a knife and runs her finger on the blade until the blood starts to flow. Another time she tries to climb into the pigsty, even though just the day before she saw the puddle of blood and the bits of bone and hoof left after the sow ate her own baby. And then there are her fits. Sometimes she starts to scream and thrash and kick for no reason, and all of Sally Hemings’s hugs, kisses and consoling coos only make her scream louder and thrash more ferociously, with such a wildness in her eyes that she doesn’t seem to know her own mother.

Sally Hemings can’t help but think of Jimmy, and she worries that her beautiful child might have a lifetime of pain and rage ahead of her. But her mother says, “When a baby’s two, that’s when the Devil tries to wrestle her soul from God. You got to seal up your heart to her and be so hard on her it makes you sick. ’Cause you let her get away with one little thing, the Devil going to get her, and then he’ll have her for the rest of her life.”

In between Harriet’s struggles with the Devil, she is exactly the sweet, happy girl she has always been. She sings constantly, just like her father. And she loves to play a game she calls “Booteefoo Mammy,” during which she runs a comb through Sally Hemings’s hair over and over and then washes her nose and cheeks and forehead with a kitchen rag. So most of the time it is easy for Sally Hemings to love her little girl and yet be both strict and fair when she starts at some devilry.

But the weather only gets colder, and after three months, instead of her pregnancy nausea going away, it gets worse. Also, at the start of December, Thomas Jefferson must go to Philadelphia again to resume his duties as vice president, and most likely he will be there until after her baby is born. Sally Hemings is terrified that something will go wrong while he is away. She worries that she has been too lucky with Harriet and that God will not allow her so much good fortune.

And then one rainy day, the wood is wet and Aggy is useless at keeping the fire going. Sally Hemings has to rekindle it herself while also making Harriet her porridge and feeding it to her, because the little girl says she doesn’t like Aggy; she only likes Mammy. But then she says that she also doesn’t like the porridge, and when her mother pointedly pays her no mind, she sweeps the bowl off the table, and it shatters on the floor into a dozen pieces and splatters gray muck up the wall. There is a moment of roaring silence, and then Sally Hemings slaps her daughter across the face and starts to scream as if she is the one whose soul the Devil has snatched. Only the sight of a droplet of blood running down from the little girl’s nostril brings Sally Hemings back to her right mind. She crushes Harriet against her chest and weeps onto the top of her sweet-smelling little head. All the while Aggy is crying in the corner.

The very next day, a bright red pimple comes up on the side of Harriet’s nose that the blood ran from. And the day after, the pimple is bigger and enflamed. Sally Hemings treats it with a mix of mud and birdlime. But the following morning it has grown shiny and purple and so swollen it encompasses Harriet’s nostril and the end of her nose. The little girl is fretful and asks her mother to make her nose stop hurting, but when Sally Hemings tries to salve it with another layer of mud and birdlime, Harriet howls with pain.

Later that day her eyes have gone glassy, and although she doesn’t feel hot, Sally Hemings still worries that she has a fever. Then, at bedtime, her cheek is sticky with sweat and her neck is so hot it could burn Sally Hemings’s fingers.

She puts the little girl into her own bed and sends Aggy to fetch Betty Hemings, who has been given her time and lives in a small, white clapboard house of her own, in the neighborhood reserved for the white mechanics and their families. Betty arrives with a bottle of feverfew wine that, miraculously, Harriet drinks as if it were honey milk. But it doesn’t do any good. Aggy curls up on Harriet’s empty bed and is the only one who gets any sleep that night. Sally Hemings and her mother sleep on the floor, taking turns attending to Harriet, whenever she whimpers or wails.

The following morning, when Thomas Jefferson comes to say good-bye, Sally Hemings begs him not to go and tells him that she is terrified something awful is going to happen. “Harriet’s a good, strong girl,” he says. “A little fever is nothing to fret over, as long as she doesn’t have a cough.” He looks her long in the eyes, as if to convince her that she has no need to worry, but what she sees is his own worry, doing battle with his obligation to his office. He bends and kisses Harriet on her burning forehead, and then he kisses Sally Hemings on her cheek. “It will be fine,” he says, squeezing her hand. “I will tell Martha that if the fever should get worse, Dr. Cranley should be called.”

It is raining when Thomas Jefferson leaves. Sally Hemings does not go up to the house to wave good-bye from the veranda, even though her own mother is there, and Critta, Ursula, Jupiter and Tom Shackelford, along with Martha, Mr. Randolph and little Anne, but she does see the landau pass by her doorstep, with Jimmy driving, shoulders hunched under an oilcloth hat and cape and Thomas Jefferson snug and dry under the leather roof. From the shape of his silhouette, she thinks he is looking at her cabin as he passes, but she is sitting in the dark, Harriet cradled against her breast, so there is no way he can see her.