Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings (32 page)

T
homas Jefferson is an ape. He lumbers apelike through the Great Ape House, mostly on his handlike feet but sometimes on the knuckles of his actual hands. His knuckles are particularly effective whenever he wants to pivot or to swing his feet through empty space. They turn his body into a projectile. They transform his tremendous weight into force.

The air of the Great Ape House is dense with the penetrating sweetness of ape shit. The light in the Great Ape House is the color of watery milk. The hillside on which Thomas Jefferson and the other Great Apes spend their days is the color of mice, and the logs, which constitute the Great Apes' only furniture and playthings, are the color of logs with the bark peeled off—a color you might call Sunset on Snow.

Thomas Jefferson disdains his fellow apes but at the same time depends upon them: for nitpicking, for consolation during his ape-house jitters and for the delights of intimate union. He is the biggest of all the Great Apes, and so he is always first in line when the lesser apes come through the rectangle with the food bucket. And if he should miss the bucket because he is napping, he just takes the food of any ape he chooses. Ditto their mates.

He sees nothing wrong with this state of affairs, and neither, apparently, do any of the other Great Apes. They don't like giving up their food, of course, or their mates. And sometimes the mates seem to take less delight in intimate union than Thomas Jefferson does. But that is not the same as wrong. There is nothing any of the other Great Apes can do to stop Thomas Jefferson, and so there is nothing to be gained by thinking he is wrong. In general, Great Apes are much more interested in harmony than in wrong or right. When Thomas Jefferson is happy, everyone is happy. He will leave them the food he doesn't want. Ditto the mates. He will even nitpick. And when it comes to ape-house jitters, there can be no greater consolation than Thomas Jefferson's gigantic embrace. This is harmony. And as long as no one thinks Thomas Jefferson is wrong, the harmony is total. Or as close to total as anyone can imagine.

One day Thomas Jefferson happens upon a system by which he might cross the gulf from the hillside to that other hillside where duplicate apes
perfectly copy every one of his gestures and those of the other Great Apes. They do it in absolute silence. No sound ever crosses the gulf from that other hillside. The duplicate apes seem to worship the Great Apes in the same way as the Great Apes are worshipped by their shadows. The system involves a log tipped off into space and slamming to rest against the end of the duplicate log that has been tipped off into space by the duplicate Thomas Jefferson. The two logs make a sort of bridge between the hillsides. And as Thomas Jefferson walks upon his log, he sees his duplicate walking toward him upon his own. Then something strange happens. The closer Thomas Jefferson gets to his duplicate, the darker his duplicate becomes, until finally the duplicate ceases to duplicate Thomas Jefferson and instead seems to be embarked upon a project of total erasure, which is to say the replacement of everything within the borders of his being with darkness.

But that's not the really strange thing.

The really strange thing is that within the darkness of what once was his duplicate, Thomas Jefferson can see moving things. And when he gets to the end of his log and to that place where he ought to have been able to wrestle with his duplicate and throw him into the gulf, the air suddenly becomes hard—so hard he cannot even touch his duplicate or put one toe onto the duplicate log. But now he can see the moving things clearly. At first he thinks they are spots, like the spots that dent his vision when he rubs his eyes or when he stares at the milky lights too long. But then he sees that the spots are apes. Or they are apelike.

In fact, they are lesser apes.

And as he presses his face hard against the hard air, some of the lesser apes are leaping in fear. And some of them are baring their teeth. And pointing. They seem to be making noises. Maybe he can hear them. A muffled honking. A hooting. There are so many of them. Not just three. Many.
Many.
More than all of the Great Apes. A lot more.

There is something about this that should not be. Something disharmonious—even, perhaps, wrong. Thomas Jefferson bellows. He pounds on the hard air. He is waiting for everything to go back to the way it was. To the way it should be.

I
t is November 8, 1790, and not yet dawn when Sally Hemings is awakened by shouting. As she looks up into a charcoal dimness, she hears Jimmy's voice: “Underneath the knives!” He shouts that exact phrase three times in a row, giving the last word a strange emphasis. Then someone farther away—a woman or a boy—calls out something indecipherable, which is immediately followed by Thomas Jefferson shouting more loudly than anyone else: “Time's a wasting!” At the sound of his voice, a shiver passes through Sally Hemings's entire body, and she has to roll onto her side and draw up her knees to quell the cold.

This is the morning when Jimmy, Bobby and Thomas Jefferson go north again—to Philadelphia this time, because the capital has been moved there from New York. Jimmy told her last night that they might be gone for a whole year. She said good-bye to him then but intended to get up early so that she could give him one last hug. She woke up several times during the night, in fact, but always too soon. Now she contemplates throwing on her greatcoat and running out to give him, at the very least, a parting wave, but the idea of venturing into the frigid air is more than she can bear.

She is awakened an hour or so later by her mother, who is shaking her shoulder and saying, “Let's go, baby girl. Her Majesty's waiting on her chocolate.”

Sally Hemings is so deeply asleep that it is close to a minute before she has any idea what her mother is talking about. She doesn't know how she will be able to get out of bed. Her head feels like a boulder; she can hardly turn it on her pillow. And as soon as she has thrown off her covers, she starts to shiver so violently her teeth clatter.

Her mother is looking at her as if she has just done something shocking.

“That you, baby girl?”

Sally Hemings can't answer. She pulls her blankets back up tight around her shoulders, but her teeth won't stop clattering.

Her mother is a darkness bending over her.

Icy fingers touch her cheek.

A low, quiet voice: “Oh, Lord! You burning up.”

Her mother goes away and then is back. The odor of a tin cup coats the inside of Sally Hemings's nose.

“Drink this,” her mother says. “Water's the best thing when you got a fever.”

“No.” Sally Hemings squeezes her eyes shut and covers her face with the blanket.

Her mother sighs and then is silent.

The particulate whisper of a stool being dragged across a dirt floor. Clank of cup on wood.

“I'm leaving this here for you,” her mother says. “I'll go take care of Her Majesty. You drink this when you ready.”

Sally Hemings expects to see her mother standing in front of her when she opens her eyes, but the cabin is entirely empty and it is full daylight—midmorning by the slant of the beams coming in the window.

Now she truly is thirsty—desperately!—but her hands feel so ill-coordinated as she reaches for the cup that she is afraid she will drop it. The room is still so very, very cold. As she grabs the cup and presses it against her lips, every fluff of air seeping under the covers is like ice against her skin. And once she has put the cup back on the stool and has pulled the covers up to her neck, she is colder than ever before. Hard shivers rack her shoulders and grind down through her abdomen. Her feet feel cased in snow. She wants to get up and take the covers from her mother's bed but can't bear to cross the cold room. She is too weak. Her teeth are clattering again. She will wait until her mother returns.

There follows a long period during which she is not really awake but not entirely unconscious. For much of that time, she feels she is lying naked on the hard floor of a dark and frigid cave, her shivers so violent they are painful. Sometimes the cave floor is like the deck of a ship in a heaving, blowing storm. Grunting beasts shamble past her from all directions, and she knows that one of them will step on her with its huge, clawed feet.
That will be the end of me
, she thinks. She is afraid but does nothing to stop those huge, shambling beasts—because, of course, there is nothing she can do.

When next she wakes, it is because her mother is covering her with her own blankets, though Sally Hemings doesn't remember asking her to do that.

The blankets are not enough.

“Cold,” she says. “So cold.”

Her mother pulls the trunk out from under the bed and covers her with all the gowns, petticoats and shifts that she wore in France and tops the heap off with her greatcoat and cape. The weight of all that clothing is good. Sally Hemings feels comforted. But still she is shivering.

Time has passed. She has awakened to the sound of her mother's urgent murmuring and realizes that the poor woman is praying with her face to the wall.

“Mammy,” Sally Hemings calls from the bed. “Mammy, it's all right. You don't have to worry. I'm getting better.”

“I know you is,” says her mother turning around. “But it don't hurt to ask the Lord for help.” She turns back to the wall, and her urgent murmuring continues.

As Sally Hemings slips back into sleep, she thinks that she really is getting better. A while ago she felt so very terrible that she was sure she was about to die, and she didn't actually care. But now things are different. Now she is not so cold. Now she is almost comfortable under all her covers and clothes.

It is late in the night when she wakes. She is so hot she can hardly breathe. She flings off all her covers and lies on her back in her sweat-soaked shift, savoring the coolness of the night air.

She feels as if she has been in the grip of a giant and now she has been released.

The chilled air on her ankles, feet and arms feels good. So does the layer of cold cloth clinging to her body. There is no light in the cabin. She looks toward the window and sees only black within black. So quiet. No birds. No human voices. Not even a breeze shifting the yellow leaves on the ground.

Then, from somewhere down the hill, a weird and echoing cry that would be laughter if only it weren't so very attenuated and sad. Then silence. Then exactly the same cry all over again.

At some point, much deeper into the night, when she has pulled the covers back over herself and is lying there, content in her solitude and happy in the knowledge that she will not die (not yet), memories that she has not allowed herself for many months come back to her all in a rush.

She remembers the time Thomas Jefferson said, “I don't know how I have ever lived without you,” and a time when he looked into her eyes, put his hand softly against her cheek and told her, “You are so beautiful!
I want to draw your face!” and the night he pressed his head against her belly and wrapped his arms tightly around her waist and said that he couldn't bear to let her go, because if he did, the moment would end and he never wanted that moment to be over.

For months such memories have been far too painful for her to allow into her thoughts, but now, in her solitude and quiet, they are a comfort, and she finds herself imagining that when, in the bluish morning, she steps on her unsteady legs out onto her porch, intending to make her way around to the outhouse, she will find Thomas Jefferson waiting in the road. His expression will be so terribly sad. And when he comes to her, his touch will be so very gentle.

T
he prisoner is holding the bars of his cell door, looking at the guard. His mouth is open. His eyes are heavy with grief. The guard is sitting in her wooden chair, holding a fork with a yellow blob of scrambled egg on the end of it. She puts the blob into her mouth, chews, swallows, speaks.

—Delicious! Man, was I hungry!

The pink tip of the prisoner's tongue moves along his lower lip. The guard mops up the buttery smears of her egg with a piece of toast and pops the toast into her mouth. She chews. She speaks.

—Oh, God!

She puts the plate down on the floor and picks up the paper coffee cup that has been waiting on the opposite side of her chair. She wraps the cup in both hands, warming her fingers, leans back in her chair and rests the cup on her belly. She speaks.

—That was fabulous. I was starved.

The prisoner is looking at the tray. He can see a shred of egg that she didn't mop up. She pulled the crusts off her toast before she ate it, and they lie like a heap of tiny timbers on the tray beside the plate. The prisoner doesn't speak; the guard does.

—Did you ever think about whose nightmare this is?

— . . .

—I mean, who's dreaming this: you or me?

—I'm not dreaming anything.

—That's what I was afraid of.

— . . .

—I guess what I'm really asking is, which of us is the illusion here?

— . . .

—Because if only one of us is real, the other one must be an illusion. That's simple logic, right?

—What the fuck are you talking about?

—Are you deaf? Or are you just being an asshole? Jesus!

— . . .

—You're
my
nightmare! That's what I'm talking about!

— . . .

—It's simple logic, right? I mean, if I wasn't here with you, I could be lying on a beach somewhere. Or maybe I'd be studying impressionist painting in Paris. Or I could be a pediatrician with a tiny plastic monkey climbing up my stethoscope. You know?

— . . .

—But because of you, I don't have any choice. I am morally compelled to spend my life underground and behave like a barbarian, just because you're such an evil piece of shit. You see what I'm saying? It's like the nightmare you created never ended, and now I'm stuck in it.

— . . .

—I should hate you all the more for that.

— . . .

—What the fuck. Today's the day I'm supposed to make you stand on a carton of dog food and hook your dick up to a car battery. You're going to love
that.