That’s when I first knew my mother had heard enough of revolution and the sacrifice of patriots. Indeed, it seemed to be her singular mission to draw Papa into the delights of simple domestic life. Though the overseer’s cabin was no proper home for a gentleman’s family, Mama set up housekeeping. She had me down on my knees with her, scrubbing at the floorboards with a stiff brush. We hung quilts and beat dust out of them. And when Papa had to leave to make his forays into the woods, Mama and I saw to it that there was a candle burning in the one window of the cottage to guide him back to us.
A few weeks later, harvest time for the wheat arrived, and Mama sent me with Papa to oversee the slaves toiling in our fields with sharp sickles. The women cut the stalks, beads of sweat running down their bare brown arms. Meanwhile, the shirtless dark-skinned men gathered the cut wheat into bundles, hauling the golden sheaves into the sun to dry.
I loved nothing more than riding atop majestic Caractacus with Papa, and though we were far away from our mountaintop home, it almost made me feel everything was just the way it should be.
But I knew it wasn’t.
“Will the British find us, Papa?” I asked, peering up at him over my shoulder.
His strong arms tightened around me. “This farmstead came to me through your Grandfather Wayles. The British won’t think to look here. . . .” he said, trailing off when he heard Mama singing from across the field where she scrubbed linens in a bucket.
Her voice carried sweetly, unaccompanied, until Papa joined in her song. At hearing his tenor, she smiled, and I felt his breath catch, as if she’d never smiled at him before. He loved her, maybe more than ever. And with her eyes on us, Papa used his heels to command his stallion to a proud canter. “Let’s show your mother what Caractacus can do.”
He urged the stallion into a gallop. The fence was no obstacle for the stallion, who flew up, up, and over with an ease that delighted me. I was still laughing with the thrill of it when we landed on the other side.
Then we heard a rattle. . . .
A coiled snake near its hooves made the stallion snort in fear, rearing up wildly. I held fast to the horse’s black mane and my father used his body to keep me from falling. But in protecting me, Papa lost his balance, toppling from the horse. He threw his arm out to break his fall but came down hard upon his hand and howled in pain.
Caractacus trampled a circle and I tried desperately to calm him by digging my knees into his sides. Meanwhile, the overseer of the farm came running to help, several slaves at his back.
“Rattlesnake,” Papa gritted out as the serpent slithered away.
The overseer grabbed the horse’s reins and called to the closest slave. “Kill it, boy.”
The sweat-soaked slave shook his head in fear and refusal as the serpent escaped into the woods.
Outraged, the overseer lifted his lash.
“Stay your whip!” Papa barked, cradling his injured hand against his chest as he slowly rose. “Everyone back to work.”
As the slaves dispersed, I could scarcely feel my fingers, so tightly were they wound in the horse’s mane. My heart still pounded with fear and thrill. The overseer, by contrast, was overcome with anger. Cheeks and jowls red, he said, “It does no good to be gentle with them, Mr. Jefferson. A firm hand is all the Negro understands.”
Papa’s voice pulled tight with pain and . . . something else. “What I understand is this: we’re two white men, one gentlewoman, and two little girls on a secluded farmstead, hiding from an army promising freedom to the Negro.”
My father’s gaze darted to the men in our fields with sharp instruments in their hands, and a strange and sickly feeling stole over me. Is my papa afraid of them? Afraid of his own slaves? It was the first time I ever wondered such a thing.
Papa’s wrist was bent at an ungainly angle. The overseer rode out to fetch a trustworthy doctor while Mama fretted that there might not be one so far from Charlottesville. It was nearly night when the doctor arrived to do his grisly business of resetting Papa’s bones. After, Mama wrapped my father’s wrist and gave him the last of our brandy for the pain. Upon orders from the physician, Papa was forbidden to ride or go out from our cabin for two weeks. Unless, of course, the British chased us from here.
I remember that in those weeks, Mama and Papa were tender with one another every moment of every day. Our meals were simple. Our days were long. I was forever keeping Polly from mischief. At night, in spite of his painful injury, Papa led us in cheerful song while Polly and I bundled together atop a little nest of quilts.
Kissing us good night, my father gave a sly smile. “Do you girls know how it was that I wooed and won your mother?”
Mama looked up from tucking the blankets around us with a sly smile of her own. “Mr. Jefferson, you’re not going to keep our daughters awake with an immodest boast, are you?”
“Indeed, I am. You see, girls, I wooed your mother by making music with her in the parlor—me with my violin and tenor, she with her harpsichord and soprano. And when two other waiting suitors heard the beauty of our song, they left, vanquished, without another word, knowing they had heard the sound of true love.”