Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

This is what Sally Hemings thinks: As a child Thomas Jefferson learned that living is synonymous with pain, and so, for all of his life, he has sought not to live. He has sought to exist in a child’s drawing, where each thing is only one color and each color is only a variety of happiness. He has sought to divide the world into that which might be celebrated and that which must be forbidden, and he has worked tirelessly to believe that what he wants forbidden has never actually existed in the first place. For Thomas Jefferson belief is a form of blindness, or paralysis. He is like an infant rabbit, separated from its mother, so demented by fear that it can only tremble in the grass as a hawk circles high overhead or as a dog comes out the back door of the house and sniffs the breeze.

While Thomas Jefferson reads from the pages that tremble in his hands, Sally Hemings notices a plump brown mouse sit up on its haunches and put its front paws to its cheeks. Then, in an instant, it has dropped to the floor and disappeared behind the night table. She says nothing.

Thomas Jefferson says, “‘. . to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased—’”

“Louder!” says Sally Hemings. “I’m sitting right here in the room with you, and I can hardly hear a word.”

They are in the lodge. It is a late afternoon at the end of February. The western rims of the trunks and bare branches outside the window seem furred with gold. Sally Hemings is sitting in a plain wooden chair beside the crackling fireplace. Her legs are slightly spread to accommodate the modest bulge of her belly, and her hands are folded on top of it. She will have another baby in less than three months.

Thomas Jefferson reads, “‘. . grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments—’”

“I still can’t hear you.”

“I can’t! This is impossible!” His hand falls, and the pages snap against his thigh. There is a wild sorrow in his eyes. His mouth is open and downturned at the corners, as if he can’t breathe.

“Of course you can. You are the president of the United States! Reading a speech is nothing—”

“No. I can’t.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! You can talk for hours—”

“With friends. I have no problem with friends. But formal addresses—”

“And dinner parties. I’ve seen you myself lecture a whole table.”

“But that’s different. In my own home, it’s different.” He smiles nervously. “And, of course, the wine always makes it easier.”

“Then have a couple of glasses before—”

“I can’t do that.” He drops onto the bed and flings his speech across the counterpane. The pages scatter. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“You’re going to go to Washington, you will be sworn in as president and then you will give this beautiful address.”

As she speaks, Sally Hemings sees that the plump mouse has ventured out from behind the night table. It veers suddenly in the direction of Thomas Jefferson’s left boot, and then, when it is not six inches from his heel, it darts back toward the wall and disappears from sight.

Sally Hemings says, “How can you possibly worry about it, given all you have accomplished? Remember how afraid Mr. Madison was that there would be open rebellion in the streets?”

“Yes, but—”

“Stop it! Your election is a tremendous accomplishment. Not just because you won but because the government you helped to found is succeeding. You have changed history. You , Thomas Jefferson—”

“Please! That’s making it worse.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I’m filled with uneasiness. It’s as if my arms and legs are crammed with insects.” He heaves a sigh and shakes his head. “It’s because I’m not that man. The Thomas Jefferson whom everyone in that room will be looking at is a fabrication. It’s as if someone has been out in the world doing an impersonation of me, and now I have to live up to his reputation.” He laughs and looks sheepishly at Sally Hemings. “It’s true,” he says.

Sally Hemings gets up from her chair and gathers together the scattered pages of his address. “Here.” She puts them onto his lap, and he grabs hold of them before they slip to the floor. “You’re behaving like a child,” she says.

Thomas Jefferson looks up at her with a child’s expression. He takes hold of her left hand by the tips of her index and middle fingers, lifts them to his lips and kisses them.

“It’s easy,” she says. “The words are here on the page. All you have to do is read them one after the other. And read them in a voice loud enough for people to hear.” She pulls her hand away. “The problem is that I’ve been sitting too close. I’m going to go out on the porch, and you’ll have to read loudly enough for me to hear you there.”

“It’s freezing!”

“No it isn’t.” She smiles and caresses her belly with both hands. “And besides, I have my little stewpot to keep me warm.”

Thomas Jefferson smiles and stands up.

Sally Hemings crosses the room, opens the door and steps out onto the porch, leaving the door open behind her.

In fact, it is freezing outside. A sharp breeze blowing across the porch immediately chills her shoulders and neck, even though she is wrapped in a shawl. She won’t be able to stand the cold for terribly long.

“Start where you left off,” she says. “Read it loud enough that I can hear it out here.”

Grim worry comes onto Thomas Jefferson’s brow and lips. He lifts the sheets of foolscap covered with his own handwriting, and after clearing his throat a couple of times, he begins to read, “‘. . I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire….’”

Sally Hemings can hardly make out his words, but she is only half listening. She hears the clattery rush of the river at her back and the thrumming of wind high in the bare branches of the trees. Her baby is stirring inside her. A jay squawks a few feet over her head. A chickadee is balanced atop the porch railing on its toothpick legs, its head shifting in spurts: now left, now right, now up, now down. Then, with another spurt, it reverses its position on the railing. A chipmunk or a squirrel rustles in the winter-grayed leaves on the forest floor just behind her.

How vital and alert she feels — her body filled with life: her own and that of this yet-to-be-known person inside her. From the soles of her feet to her nose and her fingertips — she is made of life, and life is all around her: the birds, the trees, the animals, near and far; even the breeze and the endlessly noisy river — the whole world is alive, and the life of the world is indistinguishable from the life that has always been her own and from the life that is inside that life. She feels this with such purity and simplicity that it is as if her spirit is filtering out into the world and there is no difference between her and every moving, striving, perceiving thing.

“‘. . During the contest of opinion through which we have passed,’” says Thomas Jefferson, but his voice has grown so soft now that she wouldn’t know what he was saying had she not read his speech herself.

Thomas Jefferson cannot speak. He is in a gigantic room within the half-built Capitol Building, where barn swallows dart to and from their muddy nests on cornices and gables, copper sunbeams angle through the interstices of labyrinthine wooden scaffolds and pigeons turn in circles on dusty floorboards making their fretful whurr s. Thomas Jefferson is the newly elected president. His mouth is moving, but he cannot speak. His eyes pass from word to word—“‘the task is above my talents’”—and those same words vibrate in his throat and between his palate and tongue, but they become nothing in the open air. He knows this from the sympathetic entreaty in James Madison’s eyes, Alexander Hamilton’s happy sneer and John Marshall’s buckled brow and open mouth. He knows this from the coughs that echo in a room where his words do not, and from the rainlike rustle of scores of shifting feet, and from the creaking of at least as many chairs. “‘A rising nation spread over a wide and fruitful land…’” The words echo within Thomas Jefferson’s whirling skull, but they cannot pass his lips. His sweating fingers slick the wooden podium and warp the paper when he turns a page. He tries to raise his voice, but his throat only constricts. His voice is a duck’s voice, and he can hardly breathe. He knows that the most important words are coming soon: We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. He knows that for the first time in history, the rule of a nation has passed from enemy to enemy without bloodshed and that this is a cause both for celebration and for grave concern, because there is no guarantee that the peace will prevail. And he knows that his primary challenge will be to act according to his own principles without offending too many of those who find his principles abhorrent. The most important words are coming closer and closer. They loom and they loom. Now, here they are: “‘We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.’” But the words do not pass his lips. He knows because the rainlike rumble has grown thunderous, and the coughs are hard to distinguish from guffaws. “‘Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?’” With every word the veracity of his opening remarks — which he had thought merely ceremonial humility — only becomes more clear: Yes, it is true; his talents really are entirely inadequate to the task with which he has been charged. “‘Equal and exact justice to all men,’” he reads, and “‘freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus…’” These are all mere murmurs in a room resounding with disappointment and happy mockery. He is not even halfway through his address, and he doesn’t know how he will ever make it to the end.