Sally Heming (54 page)

The best dancer amongst them all

Was Gabriel Prosser who was just set free!

Harriet Hemings carried a razor-sharp stiletto deep in her
petticoat pocket. It had been her Uncle James's. She would kill the man, black
or white, who tried to force her. As her Uncle John had explained how difficult
it was to kill, she had decided if she could not kill, then she would maim. She
would die, but there would be one slave, or one master, who would never rape
again.

She was going to be free. She was going to choose her
husband. She was going to be married in a church. And she was going to her
husband a virgin. She picked up her skirts and whirled in familiar black arms.

Everything was ready, and soon she would leave. It was
November, already six months past her birthday. It was as good a time as any.
Her mother had been working on her trunks for over a year. She had sweated and
sewn until her hands were raw and swollen. Not only her mother, but her Aunt
Critta, Aunt Bett, Cousin Betsy, Aunt Nance, Mammy Dolly, Cousin Ursula. Her
Uncle John had made her three wooden trunks of the finest rosewood, with
leather and copper fittings, lined in scarlet linen. Little by little, the
trunks had been filled with dresses, linens of all sorts, petticoats,
underwear, sheets.

Her mother had cut up everything she owned, either for the
material or the trimmings. Even her yellow cloak had been torn apart, cleaned
and recut into the most elegant yellow-and-black-velvet redingote she had ever
seen. Her mother didn't dare let any of the white women of the house see it,
for fear it would be confiscated. It was her strolling trousseau.

Her mother.

A slave inherited the condition of the mother. Was it her
mother's fault that she was a slave? But why was her mother a slave? Wasn't
that her father's fault?

More than any of her brothers, she had endured her
temporary evil spell, her temporary slavehood, if not happily, then without
rancor, and without suffering, grooming herself for the moment she would shed
it, as her father had promised.

What no one had told her, and what she had had to fathom
for herself, was that there was no freedom without whiteness; that to shed her
slavehood was also to shed her color. If she were to escape the dangerous,
persecuted, and harassed life of a freed slave, she would have to pass from one
race to the other, from black to white.

Her mother.

Her mother still lived on memories of France while sitting
in her secret room at the top of the mansion at Monticello, year after year,
unable even to call her body her own!

Harriet Hemings had seen that room. It was filled with
private treasure: silk dresses and petticoats, satin and kid shoes, and gloves,
muslin and lawn dressing gowns, books, sheet music, a beautiful onyx pendulum
clock, a green morocco leather chest, tooled in intricate designs and filled
with linens, silk, and lace. There was also a delicate French writing table, a
coiffeuse,
bolts of velvet,
and, most extraordinary of all, a hammered copper bathing tub called a
baignoire.
Her father had
made a drawing of the
baignoire
her mother had used in France and Joe Fosset had built her one. All
jammed into this one room: a whole secret life, full of beautiful treasures.

Most of it would be hers, her mother had told her. It was,
she had reminded her daughter, her only dowry. She didn't need to indulge in
her passion for beautiful clothes and beautiful things any longer.

Harriet Hemings was young and she was selfish. She would
not throw away the gift of freedom as had her mother. She would grab it and
run. Harriet's heart was heavy as she thought about the stagecoach that would
take her away from everything she loved. But unlike her brothers, she would say
good-bye to her father.

Adrien Petit had already arrived from Washington City to
escort his former master's daughter to Philadelphia. He had left Monticello
long before she was born, but Harriet had heard all about the indomitable Petit
in Paris, in Philadelphia, at Monticello. Now her father had asked him to come
and get her, and as a last service to his former master, he had arrived: a prosperous
gentleman farmer and caterer, and, if the truth be known, richer than his
former employer by many thousands of dollars.

Petit had prospered and bought land cheap around Washington
and watched it double, then quadruple in value as the city thrived. He had
tried, in the beginning, to persuade James Hemings to join him as a partner and
chef, but James had had other ideas and had finally left for Spain, saying he
would never live in a slave country again. Petit had wondered why James ever
returned. But when he learned of James's death, he forbade himself to ever
wonder again.

Petit sat now with his former master, receiving
instructions about his daughter's settling in Philadelphia.

"You 'strolling,' Harriet?"

Madison Hemings was seventeen years old, tall and rangy
with the bitter, suppressed violence of his uncle. He was trembling with rage.
"Yes, Madison. I'm leaving at nightfall."

"You going to pass for white?"

"Yes, Mad, I'm going to pass."

"Father knows you strolling?"

"Yes, Mad. He's arranged everything. He sent for
Monsieur Petit to come and fetch me to Philadelphia."

"Who's that? A friend of Papa's? You got any money?"

"Papa, he gave me fifty dollars, and Petit, he's
seeing to the rest."

"You know how much you worth on the slave block,
Harriet?"

"Oh, Madison, don't. Mad. Mad."

"You worth a pile of money, sweetheart. I tell you.
You a
fancy!"

"
Madison ..."

"I tell you Father could get five thousand dollars for
you on the block! Five thousand dollars in New Orleans ... at one of those
Quadroon Balls ..."

"Oh, Madison. Don't cry. I love you so. I'll always
love you. Do you think it's easy to leave you? If I don't take this chance,
what other chance do I have? What future if I don't?"

"You'll be alone with no family, Harriet... the end of
Mama. You're deserting her."

"I know, Madison, but I'll always be a part of you. I'
m you; you.
I'm your sister.
I'm your flesh and blood, and I'll always be, no matter what happens. No matter
how far away I go. I'll never forget you."

"Yes, you will."

"Madison, please. Don't be so hard. Don't be so hard
on me ... I'm a girl... a woman. You don't know what it means to be a slave
woman. Wait until your turn to stroll comes! Perhaps you'll understand
better."

"Never. I'll never pass. It's worse than being
sold.
Selling yourself for
whiteness."

"Perhaps when your turn comes, Madison, you can have
your freedom without stealing it!"

"Perhaps when my turn comes, I can even kill for it."

"I have no choice, Madison."

"Five thousand dollars you worth to some white man
..."

Madison's voice followed Harriet as she turned and walked
away from him down Mulberry Row. When she was out of sight, Harriet leaned
against the nearest cabin and was violently ill. But she refused to weep.

Harriet found her mother in a wheat field, far from the
house, beyond the orchards. She was standing facing east toward the Chesapeake
Bay and the sea two hundred miles away, as if she could see the tall clipper
ships in the harbor. She did not turn as Harriet approached.

"Mama?"

"Laisse-moi."
Sally Hemings spoke the French she had taught her daughter.

"Mama, the carriage is waiting."

"I know.
Laisse-moi,
leave me."

"
Au revoir,
Maman."

Sally Hemings remained staring toward the sea. Her daughter
walked around her as if she were a monument of stone, until she faced her.

"Je t'ecrirai, Maman...."

"Oui. Ecris-moi."

"Tu ne viens pas?"

Sally Hemings looked at her daughter as if she were mad.
The yellow light of her eyes struck Harriet like a lighthouse beam.

"Non, je ne viens pas.
I'm not coming ..." her mother said.

She knew Harriet's father would sit down at his writing
table this night. He would light his candle and meticulously inscribe in his
Account Book, "Run" after Harriet's name, just as he had written "Run"
after Beverly's. As with Beverly, he would put the date, she decided, since the
age of flight had been written long ago in their heart.

Harriet's father was waiting for her when she arrived at
the carriage. It was almost dark. She had changed into her traveling clothes,
the yellow-and-black redingote. Although she was almost as tall as Martha
Randolph, she had to stand on tiptoe to embrace her father. She felt the
frailty under the still imposing height and breadth. He was old, her father.
Almost eighty, and she would never see him again. He trembled, and she held him
fast, much longer than she had intended. She caught his scent: old wool,
lavender, ink, and horse. When she saw him crying, she averted her eyes, but
they met those of Petit, so she bowed her head and waited for her father to
gain control of himself.

Harriet was young, and her young heart hardened with
childlike logic. Why was he crying now? Now, when it was too late? What did he
expect? Why hadn't he cried twenty-one years ago when he could have saved them
all? She would never understand him. Had he thought that because he was Thomas
Jefferson he would not have to pay someday?

She would start her new life without home, without family,
without friends. She would be white. White. For the rest of her life she would
live this lie. She would live in dread, on guard against slips, against chance
encounters, against a keen eye. She was, after all, a runaway slave. A
fugitive. Madison was right. It was worse than being sold away, she thought.
She could meet her kin over the grave of her mother and still she could not
recognize them. She would not even be able to stand over her father's grave and
grieve. And what of her white family? She could no more recognize the whites
than the blacks. This was the price.

Harriet's green eyes turned hard. So be it. Don't cry.
Don't cry over it. Crying was done with forever. She was white now. She had
nothing to cry about.

Adrien Petit looked on the scene with much the same horror
as he had looked on the Christmas emancipation of James Hemings twenty-eight
years ago. But, perfect servant to the last, he showed nothing. He was stunned
by the beauty of this daughter: a wilder, more violent beauty than that of her
mother. She had inherited the looks of her mother, and the flamboyance of the
Jeffersons and the Randolphs; their height, their big bones, their presence.
The combination was so remarkable it was difficult not to stare at her. She had
her father's incredible hair and his creamy complexion, unvexed by Thomas
Jefferson's freckles. Her eyes were a perfect combination of the yellow of her
mother and the blue of her father. She had his pride, his stubbornness, and his
vanity. This one was hard. And she was superb. She would never cry, and she
would never bend. She would die first. How could his former master bear to lose
her?

He understood that she would now pass for white. She would
have to change her name, he supposed. What would she call herself? Harriet
Petit, perhaps.... He flushed as if he had said it out loud.

He was leaving America for good—rich, old, and still a
bachelor. He would return to the Champagne region and live out the few years
remaining to him. He would not mind at all leaving his name behind.

Harriet Hemings lifted her head and looked at her father
for the last time. She wanted to tell him that she was his. His daughter. She
would always be his daughter. But she said nothing. Then she turned her gaze,
hard and candid and green, on Petit, imploring him to take her away from this
place forever.