Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings Read Free Page B

the ground she walked on.” They are in the kitchen now and can speak more freely.
    â€œShe was pretty enough, I guess,” says Betty Hemings, “but I never saw the reason in it.”
    â€œI’m sorry to speak badly of the dead,” says Ursula, putting the tureen down on the table, “but that woman didn’t know nothing but how to complain.”
    â€œShe was always a sickly thing,” says Betty Hemings. “I was there the minute she came out between her mammy’s legs. Seemed like forever before she figured out she got to breathe if she wants to live. And that’s how it always was. That girl was never sure if she wanted to live or die.”
    â€œAnd she made sure everybody knew it,” says Ursula.
    Jupiter says, “But he loved her.”
    â€œHe did,” says Betty. “No denying that. Of course, he’s a sad man, too.”
    â€œOh, yes,” says Jupiter. “But Mr. Tom got good reasons to be sad. I know that for a fact.”
    This is where the conversation ends. Jupiter is always letting on that he knows all kinds of things about Thomas Jefferson, but he’ll never say what they are, so there is no point in asking.
    Betty Hemings calls out to her daughter, “What you doing?”
    Sally Hemings is still standing on the top step of the staircase. She was the last to descend, and so the only one who heard Thomas Jefferson start up again: long, off-key moans that fall in pitch, again and again and again, sounding more like they come from a ghost than a living person. Sally Hemings’s fingers are cold and filmed with sweat. Her heart is rattling in her chest.
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    Â . . . I am calmer now. I have even had some sleep—on that bed so lately Mr. Jefferson’s but now no one’s at all. I have arisen feeling that I must solve the mystery of how I came to live this life I have no choice but to acknowledge as my own. Mr. Jefferson often said that he only knew what was true when he was writing. I am sitting at his desk, using his pen and wearing his spectacles. I can only hope they serve me better than they did him. . . .
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    T he story of my own life is like a fairy tale, and you would not believe me if I told to you the scenes enacted during my life of slavery. It passes through my mind like a dream. Born and reared as free, not knowing that I was a slave, then suddenly, at the death of Jefferson . . .
    â€”The Reverend Peter Fossett
    â€œOnce the Slave of Thomas Jefferson”
    New York Sunday World
    January 30, 1898

A fter an unimaginable length of time, Thomas Jefferson has enrolled in art school. His goal his first year is to do a taxonomy of color, which amounts to an inventory of things—for what is the reality of that red but a sunset in October beyond the steel mills? And of that pale brown—or is it gold—but a muddy road in Thailand? And of that blue but a flash on a raven’s back?
    He has just taken his seat on the subway, when he spots Sally Hemings standing by the door a bit down and across from him. There is no mistaking that tapering jaw, that long arc between shoulder and pelvis, those narrow eyes, so deeply gray—the summer-storm gray of newborns, which also contains the potential for brown. Her head is bent over a book, but she doesn’t seem fully absorbed by what she is reading. Has she, perhaps, noticed him and decided to act as if she hasn’t? Should he get up and walk over and pretend that running into her on the subway is only happy coincidence? Would she walk away? Would she join in his pretense? What if he can’t speak?
    All the while Thomas Jefferson is watching Sally Hemings, their train is rounding a bend, the steel of its wheels grinding against the steel of the tracks and setting off a ragged shriek that mounts and mounts inside the tunnel to such a degree that Sally Hemings tucks her book into her armpit and puts her fingers into her ears. At