Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

— …

The guard exhales blue smoke through her nostrils. The guard speaks.

— You know where I’m going with this, right?

— …

— That’s why no one ever thinks they belong here.

— …

— Except the murderers, sometimes.

— …

Sally Hemings’s invention grows and grows, until it stretches to the horizon in all directions. Tendrils ascend from its glittering fields, smokelike, vinelike, at once vegetal and mathematical in their proliferation; intertwining, interlocking, growing ever higher, ever denser, ever more rectangular and gray. And as they rise, the sky contracts, now to a rhomboid of blue, rose and gold, now to a wedge, now to a crevice and now a glimmering crack.

And the people!

There are so many people!

As Sally Hemings’s invention grows ever more vast, ever more unruly, dirty and loud, more and more people crowd its streets; they filter out of alleyways and doors; they stream down boulevards, assemble on plazas and in parks; they arrive in roaring steel boxes and boil up stairways out of the earth. Teeming. Roiling. Millions upon millions. Sand-colored, peat-colored, the color of Virginia’s iron-rich dust; moseying, marching, strolling, striding; so intent, so lost in life’s prolixity, so redolent of human odor — of perfume and sweat, of tooth rot, worry and sex.

While the colors of light are pure — which is to say that, spectrographically measured, each designated color is itself and only itself — each reflected color, the colors we see when we look at a painting, a wall, a flower, contains all the other colors — which is to say that that cool red is also yellow, magenta and green; that gold is also indigo, brown and carmine; and that bluebird blue is also orange, verdigris green and burgundy; which is to say that we can never see what is actually before our eyes. Not ever.

Thomas Jefferson’s first sign that he is becoming unbelievable is a certain hesitancy among even those people to whom he is closest. Something he has said or done will be met by a shift in attention, an instant of silence, a glance toward, or away from, him — some indication that whomever he is with will have noticed something wrong but not feel it significant enough to remark upon. The effect is very subtle. If Thomas Jefferson perceives it at all, it is mainly as a slight strain entering the conversation or a coolness — sometimes even as a literal drop in temperature.

After a while, though, people start making noises and gestures of disbelief: tsk s, gasps, shakes of the head or disparaging grunts or guffaws. He has difficulty grasping the true significance of these responses, however, partly because they are first made by his political rivals — Alexander Hamilton, John Adams and their Federalist henchmen — and so are not surprising and partly because they so often follow his expression of those feelings or ideas he holds dearest and thus that seem least susceptible to ridicule.

His barely conscious disconcertion begins to verge on alarm when the people closest to him start manifesting signs that they no longer take him seriously. One time, for example, he is talking to James Monroe about public education as the foundation of democracy, when he notices that Monroe is shifting restlessly in his chair and looking impatiently out the window. When Thomas Jefferson asks if something is wrong, Monroe rolls his eyes and throws his hands in the air. Assuming his good friend must be distracted by some personal matter, Thomas Jefferson suggests that perhaps it would be better to continue their discussion the following day.

“Finally!” Monroe exclaims as he gets up from his seat and leaves the room.

Another time Thomas Jefferson is exhorting Maria to practice her French by reading French books.

“Oh, Papa!” she says with a mocking smile.

“What?” Thomas Jefferson is utterly perplexed by his daughter’s response. When Maria only begins to laugh, he says, “What! What is so funny?”

“Oh, come on, Papa! Stop pretending!”

“Pretending what? French is the language of Voltaire—”

He stops talking, because Maria is laughing — so hard she bends over halfway to the floor. During a momentary lull, she regains enough self-possession to tell him, “I can’t believe you are actually saying that!” And then she is lost once again to laughter.

Thomas Jefferson wonders if his daughter has gone mad.

He doesn’t begin to recognize the pattern in what is happening until a couple of days later, when he and Sally Hemings are returning to Monticello from the lodge. They are riding side by side along a wooded path, and he reaches over to give her hand a squeeze. “I so wish that we could marry,” he says.

She gives him an arch glance and pulls her hand away.

“I do,” he says. “I’m so sick of all this surreptitious—”

“Stop!” she says.

He just stares at her, not understanding what she could possibly be objecting to.

“Do you think that you have the right to mock me?” she shouts. “Do you think I have no feelings? I don’t know what’s come over you lately. You never mean a single thing you say anymore. You’re just an imitation of yourself!”

“But I do mean what I say. I do wish we could—”

“I’m sick of you!” she shouts, then gallops ahead.

Thomas Jefferson brings his horse to a stop and, in a state of profound bewilderment, watches Sally Hemings grow smaller and smaller, then disappear around a bend in the path.

By the time he has ridden back into the stable, he has figured out that people no longer seem to believe in his sincerity, no matter how clearly and passionately he expresses himself.

As he dismounts, Jupiter, who has been loading a wheelbarrow with dung-matted hay from a vacant horse stall, leans his pitchfork against a post and comes to take the reins. “Thank you, Jupiter,” Thomas Jefferson says distractedly, and straightens his hat, which was knocked askew during his descent along the horse’s flank. He takes a step toward the door — then stops and turns around. “Jupiter?”

“Yes, Mr. Tom?”

“You’re not having any trouble understanding me now, are you?”

Jupiter seems momentarily taken aback by the question, but then he smiles and shakes his head. “No, Mr. Tom, no trouble at all.”

“And if I tell you that I have always valued your service, you understand that I am being entirely sincere?”

Jupiter’s mouth hangs open a long moment. And when he says, “Oh, yes, sir. Of course, sir,” he sounds as if he himself does not mean what he is saying.

“And I seem to you to be the same person I have ever been?”

Once again Jupiter is silent. Sweat begins to glisten on his dark brow and nose. “If you mean, do I think you look like yourself, then yes I do.” He makes a laughlike noise in his throat.

Thomas Jefferson chooses to be comforted by this response. He bids Jupiter good day and walks slowly back to the great house.

As he crosses the lawn to his own chambers, he sees Lucy, Bet and Nance standing by the laundry and hears one of them hiss, “Here he is!” They begin to shift restlessly from foot to foot and touch their head scarves and the hems of their aprons, as if in preparation for going somewhere, but none of them budges.

“Excuse me,” says Thomas Jefferson.

The three women only stare at him silently with faintly aghast expressions on their faces.

“How are you today?”

Again there is no response, and Thomas Jefferson is so puzzled by their behavior that it is a while before he himself can say anything.