Then, I understood none of this. I was too afraid for myself and my sisters, wondering what would become of us if we were left orphaned. Long after my aunt ushered us into bed and snuffed out the lanterns, my delicate little Polly cleaved to me and sobbed herself to sleep.
I couldn’t sleep, however, until I heard my father rage.
Mama always praised him for his reserved manner and thoughtful nature. But, like me, Papa hid a tempest inside. That’s why the violent orchestra of his grief from below the stairs was more soothing to me than the bone-deep drumbeat of my sad ness. Papa vented what I couldn’t unleash without incurring the ire of my proper aunt, and so I fell asleep to the sound of shattering glass and splintering wood.
It wasn’t the noise in the night that eventually awakened me, but the silence. Silence that stole into my room and pressed down cold on my chest, filling me with dread.
It was silent the way Monticello was never silent.
As if the whole plantation was afraid to breathe.
Dread skittered down my spine and brushed away the last tendrils of sleep. Pushing back the bed linens, I disentangled myself from Polly. Then I put my bare feet on the wooden floorboards and felt the early autumn chill on my legs. I glided soundlessly down the stairs, drawn inexorably to Papa’s chamber, the only room where the candles still burned bright.
I didn’t see him at first. My eyes searched him out amongst the clutter of his spyglass and surveyor’s theodolite and the other curiosities we children weren’t allowed to touch. Eventually I found him sitting on the floor, amidst the debris of his rage. He was as still as a marble bust. In profile, his strong, sharply curved jaw was clenched tight, and his eyes were fixed downward beneath a sweaty tangle of ginger hair.
I watched him for several heartbeats, and he didn’t move. He was a statue in the spell of that terrible silence. A spell I was determined to break. “Papa?”
He didn’t stir. He didn’t look up. He didn’t even twitch.
I tried again, this time louder. “Papa!”
He didn’t blink. He didn’t hear me. He didn’t see me. It was as if I was a spirit and the two of us stood on either side of an invisible divide. This wasn’t like the times my mother would tease him for letting his books swallow his attention until he forgot that he was hungry or thirsty. He wasn’t lost in a book, and the bleak look in his eyes was nothing I’d ever witnessed before—or since.
I crept closer, thinking to tug at his linen shirtsleeve.
Then I saw the pistol on the table next to him and froze.
It shouldn’t have disturbed me. I’d seen the pistol there before; I’d watched him polish it many times. But that night, in the candlelight, the notches on the shiny barrel looked like the knuckles of an accusing skeletal finger pointing at my papa. And he stared back at that pistol. He stared and stared at it, as if the pistol had, in the terrible silence, become a wicked thing.
A deadly, avenging thing.
I wanted to shout a warning but the silence had bewitched us both and the cry died dry in my throat. I could say nothing. Yet, some internal force sent me gliding toward him, my feet barely touching the floor. Almost as if I floated to his side. My hand reached out and covered the pistol before he could take it.
The smooth walnut grip felt cold and hard beneath my hand. Almost as cold and hard as my father’s bleak stare, suddenly fixed on me. I looked into Papa’s eyes and what I saw, I dare not trust myself to describe.
All at once, my father shuddered. He took a gulp of air as if he’d been drowning and pulled up suddenly from the water. “Is that my Martha?” he murmured, the spell broken. “My angel?”
“Yes,” I said, for Martha was my given name, too. But I think it was my mother he saw in me. Perhaps that was only right, for I knew it was my mother who sent me to him, who made sure I kept my promise to watch over him. Still clutching the pistol, I knelt beside him. “Yes, Papa, I’m here.”
Those were the last words we spoke that night, but we sat together for many hours, the pistol like ice in my hands, until the deathly oblivion passed. And I learned that night that the silence was not terrible. The silence was my mother’s gift to us. Ours to share. Ours alone.
FROM THAT DAY FORWARD, I stayed at my father’s side. Huddled beside the iron-fitted oak chest containing bottles of spirits, I watched Papa walk the rough-hewn wood floors, his buckled shoes clicking with each step. He was on his feet, night and day, pacing incessantly, as if some solution would present itself to undo the tragedy of my mother’s death.
He wouldn’t touch the trays of food brought to his room, for he had no appetite. My aunts tried to put baby Lucy in his arms, but he wouldn’t hold her, for she was the squalling infant that had hastened my mother’s death. And when Polly came to the door, my father became unsteady on his feet, as if he might swoon away, for my little sister so closely resembled my mother. It was the same reason, I think, he could not even bear the sight of Sally Hemings; the set of her mouth and shape of her eyes appeared familiar even then and greatly disturbed him.