Jefferson's Sons (12 page)

 

Beverly longed to see Master Jefferson, but a surprisingly steady stream of visitors kept Master Jefferson fully occupied. Beverly knew not to expect a smile or a word from him when white strangers filled the dining room and parlor and slept in all the rooms upstairs. No matter, Beverly thought. It would calm down soon.

Meanwhile, one day, when he was helping with the stew stove, Miss Edith and Miss Fanny left the kitchen, and Beverly found himself alone with Monsieur Julien.

Monsieur Julien was mincing roast chicken for a dish for the great house. He smiled at Beverly and handed him a drumstick.

“Thank you,” Beverly said, surprised. It wasn't often he ate chicken, let alone a whole leg of it. He took a bite. Before he lost his nerve he said, through his mouthful, “My mama's been to France.”

Monsieur Julien nodded. “I thought you looked like one of Miss Sally's children.”

“Yes, sir. I've got a sister, and two brothers.”

“I spoke with your mother yesterday,” Monsieur Julien said. “In French. She still speaks French well despite all the years.”

Beverly said, “She and Miss Martha use it when they don't want us to understand them.” He studied Monsieur Julien, wondering how much he could trust him. “If my mama went back to France—” Beverly stopped. He wasn't sure exactly what he wanted to say.

Monsieur Julien chopped thoughtfully. “The revolution seems to be over,” he said after a while. “I think it would be safe now. Why? Do you want to go? Is that what you're thinking? I asked your mother whether she had considered it.”

Beverly shook his head. Not without Papa, he thought.

“She said she believes you children will have better lives in this country,” Monsieur Julien said. “I can't say I disagree. This is an astonishing place. A person can become anything.”

“White,” Beverly said, without thinking.

Monsieur Julien inclined his head. “Certainly,” he said. “To have any social standing here, you must appear white. Fortunately, for you and your sister, I think it will not be hard. The baby, perhaps. And the other little boy—his skin may lighten over time.”

Beverly blinked. He wondered how Monsieur Julien knew about Eston and Maddy. He wondered what he meant by saying that Maddy's skin might lighten. But Miss Edith swept into the room. Beverly hurried back to his bricks, palming the chicken leg so Miss Edith wouldn't see it. She didn't.
“Ça va?”
she asked Monsieur Julien.

“Ça va bien,”
he replied.

It must be French, thought Beverly. He felt a wave of sadness, for Mama and Miss Edith, for what they might have had if they were free.

He waited and waited for the fuss to die down. The kitchen was finished. Monsieur Julien went away. Mama moved them into their new room, just one door down from the room beside the kitchen that belonged to Miss Edith and Joe. The workmen who had built the dependencies began to tear the old cabins down.

But at the great house the stream of visitors continued unabated. It was temporary, Beverly felt sure. People wanted to welcome Master Jefferson home. As soon as they had done that, they'd go away, and leave the mountaintop in peace.

Miss Martha's absence felt like sunshine, something Beverly could soak in and enjoy. Without the excuse of Christmas or of being hostess for the president, she'd returned to her husband Mr. Randolph's farm, three miles away. Beverly loved knowing he could walk into the great house anytime without seeing her tight-mouthed glare, or hearing her snap, “You! Boy!”

He and John resumed their finishing work in the great house. Beverly listened for Master Jefferson's voice in the hall, for his step and laugh. Every morning one of the stable boys brought Master Jefferson's horse to the back porch. Master Jefferson would smile at Beverly as he crossed through the parlor on his way out to ride. Beverly tried to always be ready to return that smile.

The horse was waiting, the boy holding it, one day not even a month after Master Jefferson's return. From the front of the house came horses' hoof beats, the rattle of a wagon, and a bustle of noise. Angry steps thumped up the porch stairs, followed by shouts and a pattering of lighter footsteps. Someone knocked once against the doorframe, hard. Burwell hurried into the hall, but before he could reach the door it swept open, and in came Miss Martha, her face flushed, her breath coming in spurts.

“I can't stand it!” she cried. “I won't be treated like—and besides, I know my duty! I know where I'm needed!”

Burwell stared, then carefully made his face look bland. Master Jefferson came out to the hall. He wore the bemused look that usually meant he'd been concentrating on something he was writing. He smiled vaguely at Miss Martha.

The front door had swung shut, but it opened again, and Mister Jeff, the eldest grandson, came through it. He looked at Master Jefferson and bowed uncertainly, his cheeks flushed like his mother's. Behind him trooped his brothers and sisters, baby Ben in Beverly's aunt Priscilla's arms.

“Father,” Miss Martha said dramatically, “I've come home!”

Beverly gaped. Surely she didn't mean it? Surely she had to stay with her husband? Behind him, Uncle John made a soft warning noise, and nudged him.

Beverly shut his mouth. He dropped his eyes to the hammer in his hands. He bent forward, as though concentrating on his work. But he kept his ears open, as wide open as ever he could.

“You need me, Father!” Miss Martha said. “I can't bear to think of you rattling in this enormous house alone! We will be your comfort. I'll manage everything. You can leave the household to me.” She took a deep breath. “Mr. Randolph may fend for himself!”

They'd managed just fine without her, Beverly thought. Dinner got served, the house cleaned, everything ran fine without her. Please say no, he begged Master Jefferson in his head. Please tell her she can visit, but she can't stay.

Please don't let her ruin everything.

Beverly didn't dare look up. His emotions would show too plainly on his face. If Miss Martha noticed, she would resent him forever, more than she already did.

Please don't let her stay
.

“My dear,” Master Jefferson said, and from the first soft syllable Beverly's hopes fell to ashes, “this is always your home. You and the children are most welcome. You may stay here forever if you prefer.”

Beverly laid his head against his hands. He was too old, he knew, to cry.

Beverly had always known that Miss Martha disliked him. When she moved back to Monticello her dislike seemed to harden. Her eyes glittered whenever she saw Beverly. She told Uncle John she didn't want Beverly working in the great house. She wanted Beverly to stay in the shop.

“It's because you look like him,” Mama said. It was a month after Miss Martha had moved back in. “She worries one of these visitors will guess the truth. She thinks her father's reputation will be ruined.”

“He's my father too,” Beverly said.

Mama sighed. “You can't keep saying that,” she said. “Especially now.”

“Why especially now?” Beverly felt furious. “Are
you
worried about his reputation? About what strangers will think?”

“I'm worried about
your
reputation,” Mama said. “Your future. The last thing on this earth I want is for the world to know that you are his son. That you, Harriet, Maddy, and Eston belong to him as well as to me.”

Beverly scowled. So now Mama was ashamed? He kicked the hearth stool over.

Mama grabbed his arm. “Stop that. Listen. It's already been in newspapers once, years ago, about me and your father, but he lived it down and it's mostly been forgotten. Somebody decides to publish the truth about you and your siblings, and guess what? You'd be famous. Thomas Jefferson's half-white son.” Mama's eyes blazed. “A famous
slave,
Beverly. You'd never get away from it. You'd never really be free.”

“If he freed me, I'd be free,” Beverly said. “He hands me free papers, no newspaper could change it.”

“You'd be a freed former slave,” Mama said. “A black person. You'd never be able to live as a white person. Your children would grow up black, not white. They'd be in danger their whole lives. Free black people can
disappear
in this country. They get kidnapped, Beverly, they end up down South, enslaved, working in the cotton fields and dying in the heat. That will not happen to my children, nor my grandchildren, nor their children after that.”

Beverly waved his hands. “But I don't want to be a white person,” he said. “I don't like white people! Mama. You're black. I want to be like you.”

Mama said, “You are like me. We're both mixes, black and white. I'm not ashamed of either side, and I hope I'm raising you not to be either. But if you pass for white you'll be safer, and if you're known to be my son by Thomas Jefferson you will never be allowed to pass.”

Beverly said, “I don't want to pass. I want my family.” Mama didn't say anything. Beverly said, “It's not just Miss Martha. He's acting different too, now that she's here. He used to act like he cared about me.”

Mama put her arms around him. She held him tight even when he tried to pull away. “He still cares about you. I promise. He loves you, and me, and Harriet, and Maddy, and Eston. He can't show it, but he does.

“Listen,” she said. “People are never all good or all bad. I wish your father would find a way to be closer to you, but he won't, especially not if things keep going the way they are now. He wants you to have a good life, and he'll help you on your way, but he will never treat you like his son. Don't expect it.”

She seemed to be waiting for Beverly to reply. “Yes, Mama,” he finally said.

“It really is better this way,” Mama said. “It doesn't seem like it now, but it is.”

Beverly didn't believe it. “At least none of those grandchildren play the violin,” he said. If Master Jefferson ever gave Mister Jeff lessons on the Italian violin, Beverly thought, he would chuck his kit violin into the river.

 

His music was the one thing Master Jefferson sometimes did notice. Beverly still took weekly lessons from Jesse Scott. As the year passed Master Jefferson dropped by Jesse's house every month or two, always while Beverly was there. Master Jefferson always pretended to be surprised to see Beverly, but he always stayed until the lesson was done. Once he even put his hand on Beverly's shoulder.

Meanwhile he spent hours gardening with Miss Anne. He commissioned a portrait of Mister Jeff. He taught Miss Virginia to ride. He timed the younger children every night when they ran races on the lawn. He hugged them and kissed them and carried them in his arms.

Beverly quit looking to find Master Jefferson alone. He quit expecting what he couldn't have. He tried to quit hoping, even though that was difficult.

It wasn't any easier for Harriet. One day she came back from the great house with an especially bitter look in her eyes. She scowled at Beverly. “At least you have that violin.”

Beverly felt a twist to his stomach. “What happened?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Harriet said. “Nothing, nothing. Same as always. There is
nothing
in that house for me.”

Beverly heard a knock on the front door. He looked up, across the parlor he was standing in through the big entrance hall and the glass panes of the door. Yet another stranger was waiting on the porch.

Beverly had his hands full of the broken pieces of glass he was prying out of a window frame. James Madison—Miss Martha's boy, the one that stole Maddy's name—had thrown a ball through the window the night before. Beverly could hear Miss Martha reading to some of her children in the room to the left of the front hall that she used as a classroom. He waited for her to answer the door.

The man knocked again, harder. Beverly sighed. Where was Burwell, anyhow?

It was three years since Master Jefferson had left Washington for good. There had never once been a period of tranquility. White people, complete strangers most of them, had turned the road up the mountain into a kind of highway. No matter what, Master Jefferson asked them to dinner and to stay.

Miss Martha complained that some of them didn't even care about meeting the former president. They just wanted a free meal and a place to sleep on the road. Beverly thought she was right, though he hated to agree with Miss Martha on anything.

Another knock. Beverly sighed. He set the pieces of glass on the floor.