Sally Heming by Barbara Chase-Riboud Read Free Book Online Page A

dying, and I knew it, and Masta Jefferson, he knew it, but nobody
said nothing until the end. Lord, when he see her die ... And she not yet
thirty-four."
     
     
    Elizabeth Hemings gazed from under the half-closed eyelids
at the two women watching her die. Martha was stubborn about coming to sit with
her. It was her duty as mistress of the house to attend to dying slaves.
    Those two sat there like they were made of wood, Elizabeth
Hemings thought. They had always had a talent for stillness. She had never been
able to sit still. She was doing her best to die, before they murdered her, but
she was dying hard. She always knew she would have a hard time dying. There
they sat, and she lay, the three of them, waiting for death. They had all lived
their lives according to the rules: the rules of master and slave, man and
woman, husband and wife, lover and mistress. The one who had called the rules
and who had made the game was gone riding, loath to associate himself with all
this women business of dying and watching other people die. She knew these two
would mourn him when his time came, more than they would ever mourn her, and
could she blame them? They had been birth'd and trained for that. She herself
had trained her own daughter, her favorite child, to the triple bondage of
slave, woman, and concubine, as one trains a blooded horse to its rider, never
questioning the rights of the rider. If she hadn't done that, her daughter
would never have come home from Paris.
    Lordy, yes. She had procured for her master. She had made
him a present of what she had loved most in the world. How could she have known
that her vision of the perfect slave would coincide with his vision of the
perfect woman. And Sally Hemings loved Thomas Jefferson. That was the tragedy.
Love, not slavery. And God knew how much slavery there was in love ...
    Oh, the small degree of love she had felt for John Wayles
had given her some measure of privilege, of barter, of freedom, of pride, of
comfort.... No, her daughter's was a love of which she had had only an inkling.
Sally had no worldly pride, no independence, no idea of justice. She was still
childish, rancorless, detached, except for that which concerned what she loved.
Sally was not even conscious of injuries inflicted upon her, and of the
self-possession it took to forgive, she had not one grain of that.
    The old woman continued to examine the placid and unlined
face of her favorite daughter. She wanted to scream at her to run away. But it
was too late. Much too late. Nothing could change now. If only she had
understood in the beginning that her daughter had been constituted for love the
way some women are constituted for breeding. Her life had left no trace on her
body or her spirit. She could absorb everything. Not like poor tormented Martha
Randolph with her twelve children by her insane and drunken husband, and her
passion for a father she could never quite please. Martha with her awkward
body, and her plain looks, and her quick temper hidden under migraine
headaches, like her father.
    Elizabeth Hemings felt a sudden mixture of love and
contempt for them both. She turned her head away from them and fell silent.
    The pause seemed longer than necessary, and Sally Hemings
automatically continued: "I was forty-seven and Sally was thirteen, Martha
she was twelve," and waited for the discourse to continue. But Elizabeth
Hemings did not pick up the thread of her tale.
    "Mama?"
    "She's dead, Sally." Martha's voice was like a
rock under her.
    Martha tried to rise, fell back, and then, with a moan,
threw herself over Elizabeth Hemings' still body.
    Sally Hemings remained seated, staring at Martha as if she
had gone mad. Her mother couldn't be dead. Her mother had something eminently
important to tell her. She had waited all these weeks to hear it.
    Like the keys to the mansion, it was information that had
to be passed on from black woman to black woman, just as she would pass it on
to her own children. Her mother