Mama’s auburn hair curled in fevered sweat against her pale cheek, her hazel eyes shadowed beneath a frilly morning cap. And from the confines of her sickbed, she whispered, “When I escape the unhappy pains of this world, Patsy, you must watch over your father.”
She had to whisper it, because Papa would hear no one speak of her dying. Every day he asked if she was recovered enough to walk with him in the gardens. When she couldn’t, he sent slaves to fetch flowers for her bedside. In May, it was yellow jonquil, purple hyacinth, orange lilies, and then red hollyhock. But by early autumn the perfume of crimson dwarf roses couldn’t disguise the fetid scent of sickness in the room.
Since the birth of the baby Mama had borne after we’d returned from the wilderness, Mama had lingered in bed saying she’d never rise up again. Like Papa, I refused to believe her, but in this moment, she reached for my hand to convince me. My hand had always felt tiny in her palm, but now her hand seemed smaller, fragile.
I turned my head, so she wouldn’t see my fear, and glimpsed the small room that opened at the head of her bed where my father spoke with Dr. Gilmer, who treated Mama and asked no more than to borrow some salt and sugar for his pains. Through all the months of my mother’s illness, Papa was never farther from her than this.
The men’s conversation was hushed and somber until some question forced my father to answer with bitter indignation. “No, I will not leave her. I’ve retired. My election to the Virginia legislature was without my consent, so let them arrest me and drag me to Richmond if they dare.”
Dr. Gilmer took a step back at Papa’s quiet ferocity. “I pray it doesn’t come to that, Mr. Jefferson.”
Still, my father seethed. “Offices of every kind, and given by every power, have been daily and hourly declined from the Declaration of Independence to this moment. No state has the perpetual right to the services of its members.”
While my father lectured, my mother pulled me close, sighing, as if the scent of my hair were sweeter than her garden flowers. “Patsy, your father will need you all the days of his life. Promise you’ll care for him.”
I shook my head, blinded by a sudden flood of tears. When one of Papa’s musical little mockingbirds died, Polly thought he’d come back again someday. But now, at ten years old, I knew that when my mother died, I wouldn’t see her again until we met in heaven.
“Promise me,” Mama insisted, eyelids sagging.
I swallowed painfully, once, twice, until finally a whisper ushered forth. “I promise, Mama. I’ll care for him always.”
The words seemed impossible and carried the weight of the world. And of course, now I know just how essential this promise—this duty—has been to my life.
At the sight of tears spilling over my lashes, Mama’s soft hazel eyes went softer. “Don’t grieve, Patsy. Don’t live with an open wound on your spirit as a motherless child, not as I did. Be happy. That’s what I want for you. You’re my strong strapping girl, so like your father. You’ll care for our little doll Polly, and our baby Lucy, too. Won’t you?”
I wondered how I could. Polly was a willful child who never listened and Lucy was just a baby, crying for milk. Still, I couldn’t deny my mother. “I’ll try, Mama.”
“That’s my strong girl.” She sank deeper into the feather bed, alarming me with the labored rasp of her breath. “Help your father through his sorrow.”
I nodded because my throat hurt too much to speak. Mama motioned with a trembling finger toward a book on her night table. The volume was Tristram Shandy, one of my father’s favorites. It was her habit to copy from the text, words that echoed the sentiments of her heart. With difficulty, she lifted herself against the pillows and insisted that I lay the tray with the book and feathered quill over her knees. When I did, she took the pen and dipped it in the inkwell before copying words in a spidery hand:
Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen. The days and hours of it are flying over our heads like clouds of windy day never to return—more everything presses on—
She stopped there, too weary to go on. I took the quill from her shaking hand just as my father came in. His blue eyes were red-rimmed with exhaustion but he injected a false note of cheer into his voice. “What have we here, my dearest?” One glance at what she’d written and he blanched. “None of this, Martha. You only need rest, my love. You only need rest.”