Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings by Stephen O'Connor

Author:Stephen O'Connor
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-03-04T14:03:40+00:00

“Ah, Sally—come in!” Thomas Jefferson is seated at his desk, in that strange chair of his own devising in which she once spun until she became nauseated. (She has kept well away from it ever since.) As he watches her cross the room from the door, he sways slightly from side to side, his chair making mouse squeaks.

“Please sit down.” He gestures at an ordinary chair in front of his desk.

“I’m all right standing,” she says.

Thomas Jefferson makes a laughlike noise, but his expression is serious. “Well,” he says. He looks down at his hands. “Yes.” He stares into the middle distance for a long moment, as if he has forgotten what he means to say. At last he looks at Sally Hemings. “I’m wondering if we might have a frank discussion about Maria.”

He pauses, as if waiting for a confirmation.

Sally Hemings neither moves nor speaks. She blinks to disengage her gaze from his.

“I understand entirely that, as her maid, you must have certain . . . I don’t know . . . confidences with her, young though she may be—things that you should feel under no obligation to mention. It is not right, after all, that a father know everything about his daughter’s affairs.”

Thomas Jefferson attempts something like a smile, which Sally Hemings does not return.

“I do hope, however, that in our shared affection for Poll we might be able to help her in what I feel may be a difficult period for her.”

Again he looks to Sally Hemings for confirmation. She gives her head a slight nod and says, very softly, “Yes.”

“So you agree that she’s not happy?”

“I didn’t say that.”

He leans back in his chair, puts his hands together as if praying and rests his fingertips momentarily against his upper lip. Then he leans forward again.

“What do you think, Sally? I have no idea what to make of Maria. Sometimes I tell myself that I am ridiculously oversensitive, other times—” He flings his hands, palms up, signifying helplessness. “You’re with her every single day. Do you know if there is anything wrong?”

Sally Hemings shrugs.

“What?” he asks, his voice and brow expressing frustration. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing, just . . . you know: Sometimes people get sad.”

“So you agree that she is sad?”

“Sometimes.”

The fingertips of Thomas Jefferson’s pressed-together hands are touching his lips again. He lowers them.

“Listen, Sally, let me tell you why I’m worried. The entire time I was in New York, Maria hardly wrote to me. And when she did, her letters were models of filial decorum, but they were so brief—none even a page long—and they contained not one single word expressing anything like true feeling. All I could gather from them was that she was trying to conceal from me how seriously remiss she was being in her studies. And since I’ve been home, I’ve found that the situation was even worse than I had intuited. I don’t think that in six long months she’s read more than two chapters in Don Quixote, and she is unable to utter a single grammatical sentence in Spanish.

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