Jefferson's Sons

Cold weather came. The garden froze and died. Beverly and the other mountaintop boys covered its beds with deep layers of horse manure from the stables. The great house seemed asleep, except for the faint sound of Uncle John’s hammering, hard to hear behind the sounds of the nail boys at their anvils.

Dawn to dusk was the master’s time; dusk to dawn belonged to the slaves. In winter, days were short enough that folks had time to relax together in the evenings, before they fell asleep, and with Master Jefferson in Washington, Mama stayed with them every night. Usually, after she rocked Maddy to sleep, she told Beverly and Harriet stories.

“Tell about Great-grandma and the sea captain,” Harriet said. Beverly stretched out on the floor in front of the hearth, close to the dancing flames. Mama’s chair creaked as she rocked in time to her knitting. Harriet drew Mama’s shawl over her head until only her nose peeped out.

“Once upon a time,” Mama began, “your great-grandma lived free with her family in a place called Africa, over the ocean and far, far away.”

“Farther away than France,” Mama said. “Warmer too. She wasn’t a slave, your great-grandma. She was a free woman, with beautiful ebony skin and beautiful black kinky hair. She didn’t need to carry papers. Everybody in her village, her mother and father and brothers and sisters, her uncles and aunts and her friends, all of them were free.

“Then evil men came to her village. They kidnapped your great-grandma. She was strong, and she fought them, but they had guns and no one in her village did.”

Mama paused. “I don’t know,” she said. “Might have been either, or both. Evil comes in all colors. They kidnapped hundreds of people, from all up and down the coast of Africa. They chained them into the belly of a horrible ship, and sailed them all the way to the city of Williamsburg, right here in Virginia.”

Mama paused before she went on. “And they sold all those people into slavery. Your great-grandma, she was bought by a man named Mr. Francis Eppes.”

“She didn’t have something wrong with her turned her into a slave. She didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t deserve to be captured. You remember that.” Mama paused again, then went on with the story.

“No,” Mama said. “Parthenia was what Mr. Eppes called her. Her real name was the one her parents gave her, in Africa. We don’t know what it was.”

“Some time later, your great-grandma formed an attachment with a sea captain—”

“A different sea captain,” Harriet cut in. “Not the captain of the slave ship.”

“A different one,” Mama agreed. “A white man named Captain Hemings, who was captain of a merchant ship from England. He was a fine man, and Parthenia was a woman of uncommon beauty, and together they had a beautiful little girl named Elizabeth Hemings, and that was your grandma.”

Grandma lived down the hill, in a cabin by herself. She was old, old. It was hard for Beverly to imagine her as a little girl.

“The captain was at sea when Elizabeth was born,” Mama continued. “He didn’t come back for years. But when he did, he tried to claim his daughter. He wanted to take care of her. But the law said Elizabeth belonged to Mr. Eppes, and Mr. Eppes wouldn’t sell her to the sea captain. She was pretty and smart, and Mr. Eppes wanted to keep her.”

“Tell us about France,” Beverly said. He was sick of hearing about Great-grandma and the sea captain. Why couldn’t Grandma Elizabeth belong to her daddy, the way Beverly belonged to his? “Tell us about the French soldiers,” Beverly said.

So Mama told them about the French soldiers, who wore feathers on their helmets and guarded the city gate near where she lived in Paris. She told them about the fancy people who lived in France, lords and ladies and even a king, and how she used to watch them when she was lady’s maid to Miss Martha.

“You saw a king?” Beverly asked. He knew kings were like presidents, only with crowns.

“No,” Mama said. “Master Jefferson met the king, but Miss Martha never did, so I never did, either. I went to parties with Miss Martha, as her chaperone. That’s how I got to see things. The maids had to stay off to the side, but we used to sit together and laugh at all the fancy goings-on.”

“Not at first,” Mama said. “At first she was away at school. But when she grew up and had her come-out, our last year there, she went to parties two or three times a week.”

“Fancier than you can imagine,” Mama said. “Fancier than anything that’s ever happened in Charlottesville. Silk dresses and silk ribbons, and everyone with powdered hair.” She tweaked Beverly’s hair. “Wouldn’t you look fine with your hair dusted white? Should we ask Uncle Peter for some flour?”

Mama laughed. “That was the fashion. Even the soldiers powdered their hair. The skirts of the ladies’ dresses stuck out sideways on wooden hoops, so wide they could barely get past the door.”

“No,” Mama said with a smile. “Maids’ dresses weren’t that fancy. But I did have beautiful silk dresses. Maids had to dress fine, to be a credit to their employers.”

“A person that’s paying you to work for them,” Mama said. She bit her lip. “Servants are paid in France. There are no slaves there.”

“Here,” Mama said, getting up from the rocker. She opened the trunk Beverly and Harriet weren’t allowed to touch. “I kept one of my old dresses. I’ll show you.” From the bottom of the trunk she pulled out a real dress, like Miss Martha wore, made of shiny, bright-colored cloth. Harriet rubbed it between her fingers. Beverly just stared. He tried to imagine Mama wearing such a dress.

“Did you buy that?” he asked. “With your pay-money?” Mama shook her head. “I could never have afforded silk,” she said. “Master Jefferson bought it for me, once I needed clothes to be a proper chaperone. He took me shopping. He had wonderful taste. Still does.” She smiled.

Beverly stiffened. “He never takes you shopping here.” Mama got cloth for their clothes at the give-out time, same as everybody else on the mountain.

“Of course not!” Mama said sharply. “It’s different here, you know that.”

Beverly didn’t know it. He knew what it was like here, but he didn’t know what it had been like in France. Sounded pretty fine.

“Master Jefferson had to come back,” Mama said. “His term there was over.

“I could have stayed,” she continued softly, almost as though speaking to herself. “I knew it too. I spoke French, and I knew how to find a good job. But my family was here, my mama and my brothers and sisters, and I was expecting a baby—your brother, the first one, that died.” Mama sighed. “I was only sixteen.”

She smiled at Beverly. “It’s a good thing I came back. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been born. Nor Harriet, nor Maddy.”

“She loved it,” Mama said. “She wanted to stay forever. She told Master Jefferson she felt a vocation to become a Catholic nun. He didn’t like that!” Mama shook her head. “Miss Martha was happier there. She was happier then.”

“Of course not,” Mama said. She reached down and scooped him into her lap, and rocked him like he was the baby, not Maddy. “Look at my beautiful children. I’m happier now.”