Sally Heming by Barbara Chase-Riboud Page A

family. I
felt sorry for Polly. I loved her in a way I never loved her sister Martha.
Martha was one year older than I, yet I was her aunt, just as I was Polly's. We
had grown up together at Monticello, fought, played, rode, and laughed
together. I was with her when Mistress Jefferson, my half sister, died. A long,
pale, hot afternoon, stinking and mosquito-filled. We had tried to keep the
bugs off her, taking turns fanning her. The doctor came at the end, but Master
Jefferson wouldn't let him bleed her. My mother had dropped all her household
duties to nurse her mistress. Master Jefferson had moved his study next to her
bedroom and had not left her for the whole time it took her to die. Monticello,
which had always been a house full of people, babies, guests, kin, and animals,
seemed to empty out, and there was just my mother, Master Jefferson, Martha,
Polly, and me, and the rest of the servants. At the end, my master had fainted
dead away. He remained unconscious for so long his family thought he had died
with her. The last thing she had made him promise was not to marry again.
    It was my mother who had bathed her and laid her out and
wept over her. The mistress had been like a daughter to my mother, even though
they had been, like Martha and me, almost contemporaries. Whatever
accommodations they had had to make in their lives because of my mother's
concubinage, they seemed to have made long ago, because they genuinely loved
each other. Mama combed her long hair out onto the pillow. Mama wept and wept
and cleaned her and put on her jewels, draped the room and filled it with fresh
flowers, and wept. She wouldn't let anyone else touch the body. She had tended
Master Jefferson as well, who seemed to have lost his senses and his will to
live. She cooked his meals and practically fed them to him, nursed him until he
was able to go out riding again. Then he had ridden like the wind for days and
days until he was exhausted. Martha rode with him sometimes, but mostly he was
alone. And mostly Martha was alone. She couldn't reach her father in his
terrible grief, so she turned to me. Or rather we turned to each other. We
didn't cry over Martha Jefferson's death, but then Master Jefferson and
Elizabeth Hemings wept enough for all of us. Martha and I seemed to enter into
some kind of covenant; tearlessness. We were shocked by the conduct of the
grown-ups. Somehow it didn't seem dignified. One day Martha, who was called
Patsy to differentiate her from her mother, held up a mirror to my face and
said: "You look more like her than I do. I look like my father."
     
     
    In seven more days we were to reach England. I was happier
with every passing day. Everything in my former life grew smaller as we put
more and more ocean between our ship and Virginia. Monticello became farther
and farther away.
    I felt myself breaking a barrier, leaving childhood for
adulthood. I already knew that I looked much older than my age, and something
happened on board which brought home to me the fact that I was no longer a child.
    It was June nineteenth, and Polly was busy playing cards
and learning curse words from Captain Ramsay. The sea was navy blue, with lacy
frills of soft waves made by a gentle easterly wind. The sky was bright blue
without a cloud. We had had nothing but good weather. When I told the captain
that I too would have loved just one storm at sea, he had laughed and said
beautiful girls shouldn't make wishes that beautiful girls might regret, as
beautiful girls usually got what they wanted in life. Considering my place in
life, I thought he was making fun of me, and my eyes filled with tears. I
started to speak, but he had already turned away, occupied with his affairs.
    Later that day, one of the five gentlemen passengers,
Monsieur LaFaurie, a Frenchman, spoke to me for the first time. I was
delighted, for on my own I could not have addressed him. I was anxious to ask
him about Paris, the French people. We had often had French visitors