I’m not certain how he could’ve surprised or appalled me more. When Tom proposed marriage, he said he was against slavery. Since then, of course, we’d quietly reconciled ourselves to the evil, convinced that the poor slaves needed us, as children need parents. But selling slaves . . . how could we ever reconcile ourselves to that? “Tell me you’d never do such a thing.”
“I’m only selling one sullen girl,” Tom answered. “She’s difficult to manage, but she could go for more than five hundred dollars. It’ll be an investment in the happiness of our daughters, and maybe the slave will be happier with a new master, too.”
I rolled off him. Turning to the wall, a scream echoed in my mind. I’d held back my news as long as I could, but upon hearing the evil thing my husband planned, I was too upset to dissemble. “We’re having another baby, Tom.”
I heard nothing but silence behind me. It’d been four years since our last child, and we’d assumed my child-bearing days were over. I’d been grateful for it. But now, at nearly forty-five years of age, I was pregnant again and near tears to think it.
I already had ten children—far more than I had the strength to care for. Much as I loved them, I was wrung out with little ones climbing on me night and day. Giving birth to my last had weakened my health. God forgive me, I didn’t want another baby. But children were a source of manly pride. So, given a moment or so, maybe Tom would find his composure and tell me how happy he was. Then I’d force a smile and tell him what a joy it’d be.
Except it would all be a lie—all of it.
So I turned and said, “I don’t know what to do about it.”
At these words, Tom eyed me with a mixture of curiosity and horror. Perhaps he was remembering my testimony in which I claimed to have given his sister an abortifacient. I was remembering it, too. It seemed, at the moment, like an answer. We’d never stand trial for it. My father, if he knew, might not even object, for he’d commented almost admiringly on the practice amongst Indians. I’d hate myself, but I already hated myself for bringing another child into the world when we couldn’t provide for the ones we already had.
And yet, I should never have implied such a solution to Tom. Not even as a desperate consideration that I’d talk myself out of. Not even to get my husband’s reassurances. Tom’s lips thinned into a mean line. “There isn’t anything to be done about it, Martha.”
Chastened, I lowered my eyes and murmured what I believed to be the truth. “It’s likely to kill me, this time.”
Then I turned back to the wall, where I lay trapped.
DURING THAT PREGNANCY, I was so sick and swollen and sad all the time that I couldn’t stand myself. The birth left me so insensible that I had to be told I’d given birth to a living babe—a fragile little boy, tiny and blue, for whom my father would eventually choose the name George Wythe Randolph.
I was too weak to hold the baby or feed him, consumed with excruciating, debilitating pain and delirium. And though I was grateful to have lived through the ordeal, every time it seemed as if I might recover, I succumbed to a new cough or ailment.
Scarcely able to sit up, I was confined to bed and bedpan, and Ellen moved into the room across from mine so that she could nurse me. In the months that followed, my daughters were forced to take turns at housekeeping in my stead. But the entire estate would have fallen to pieces if not for Sally Hemings watching over my girls and instructing them where I couldn’t. And I simply couldn’t. Neither smallpox nor typhus had rendered me so ill. Not even fears for my father’s reputation could get me out of bed. Not even to converse or dine with our guests.
Papa’s brilliant courtship with the public went on below stairs—but my world was suddenly and sharply confined to the warren of attic rooms at the top of the house. Oh, I saw and heard most everything, for Monticello was a noisy place, with creaky hinges and floorboards, and more than twenty family members in residence at any given time. My window overlooked the same expansive vista as my father’s did—but my room was at a higher elevation. I saw more. I saw the reality. I saw, every day, Mulberry Row and all the little nail-shop boys who worked from sunup to sundown for our happiness—which only fueled my sickness and melancholy.
One night, when Cornelia brought my supper up, she burst into tears. “Oh, Mother, you’re so very pale, and I’m such an unworthy daughter!”
“Why would you say such a thing?” I offered my arms, and when she came to me, I removed her cap and stroked her dark hair.
Cornelia cried, “How do you remember the numberless variety of orders and directions for the servants? I’m so tired of putting away the books and other things that seem to get everywhere all the time.”
“It becomes routine,” I assured her, knowing she longed to trade the keys and the cookbooks for her drawing paper and pencils. “You’ll get better at it.”
“Father doesn’t think so,” she said, wiping her eyes and reaching into her apron for a scrap of paper written in Tom’s hand. I worried that he’d written a stern reprimand, but instead, it was a poem about her housekeeping.
While frugal Miss Mary kept the stores of the House,
Not a rat could be seen, never heard was a mouse,
Not a crumb was let fall,