With a flail of my hand that nearly upset the tea service, I cried, “What gossip?”
Judith put a hand to her hip. “You were scarcely betrothed to my brother a month. It’s only natural for everyone to speculate.”
“Judy,” Nancy said, in harsh reprimand.
“Oh, I’m not judging.” Judy lowered onto a seat beside me. “I confess I’m nothing short of pleased at the outcome. I always feared Tom would marry one of those pretty, empty-headed girls who titter behind their fans at the mere sight of him. I never thought he’d take a sensible bride. Why, Patsy, I don’t care how you landed my brother, only that you did! Never mind if people start counting back the months from when your first child is born.”
My first child. The thought of it nearly stunned me into silence. I knew, of course, it was the duty of a wife to give her husband children. But the reality that I might have a baby growing inside me hadn’t struck me until that very moment. Of course, if I was with child, there was nothing scandalous about it, and the gossips could count backward all they liked.
SALLY’S BABY DIED AT TUCKAHOE.
One spring morning, Sally came to me in a panic, holding her infant against her breast. “He won’t suckle and he’s coughing something terrible.”
We went to Colonel Randolph for help, but he didn’t care one whit about a slave girl’s baby. He didn’t want to send for a doctor, and though there was a cupboard full of dried herbs and medicines, Nancy didn’t know what any of them were for.
Only my husband offered any real help. A student of science who had learned medicine at the University of Edinburgh, he put his ear to the little baby’s chest. By the fire in the front parlor, cramming his long body into a small rocking chair, he cradled the infant boy, trying to get him to suck at milk from a cloth. But whatever ailed Sally’s baby, the poor little boy wasted away fast. And when he stopped breathing, Sally gave a howl that echoed through that big plantation house like wind in a dead winter forest.
I’d never heard her make a sound like that. Never before or since. And in spite of the coolness between us since Paris, I found myself holding her tight in my arms, as if I could keep her from flying apart.
“Poor little baby,” Polly sobbed.
Poor little baby, indeed. My poor little cousin, brother, and neither. I was to look after him. Both him and Sally. Papa had entrusted them to me. Now my father’s son was gone without ever having become a man, and there was nothing we could ever say to comfort his mother.
Sally Hemings had returned to Virginia, to slavery, to this life—all for the sake of my father and this baby. Now my father was off serving the president and their baby was gone. She’d made choices she could never take back. Choices none of us ever could. And I had to fight off my own tears to stay strong for her and my sister both.
“What’s all this carrying on?” Colonel Randolph shouted when he heard our lamentations echoing throughout the halls. When Tom told him, his father snorted with a dismissive flick of his hand. “Put a buck on that girl in a few weeks and she’ll breed another.”
At those words, my chin snapped up. I gave Colonel Randolph a look that could’ve set his whole house on fire, hoping to make him ashamed of himself. It didn’t mean anything to him to see Sally in pain, but it meant something to us. It meant something to me.
Sensing a brewing rebellion in his parlor, Colonel Randolph snapped, “Do something about your womenfolk, Tom.” Then he stalked away.
Choked with tears, Sally asked, “Where will we bury my baby? Can’t leave him with strangers.”
Trying to take the tiny body from Sally, Nancy Randolph said, “He won’t know any different. Why, a little baby like this was only in this world for a few breaths. He won’t remember anything in heaven. It’ll be as if he was never here at all.”
My sister-in-law meant to comfort, but Sally recoiled from Nancy as if she were the devil. It was Tom who had to reason with her. “Sally, your boy won’t be buried amongst strangers. When my father passes on, I’ll be master of Tuckahoe and Patsy will be mistress here. We’ll be buried here and our children, too. With your baby nearby.”
That’s what it took to make Sally surrender her baby for burial. And I felt a flare of pride in my husband. He wasn’t good at laughter and levity—what he did best, he did in the dark—but there was a decency about him.
He said those words to ease the heart of a grieving mother. But when those words got back to Colonel Randolph, they did more damage than I could’ve imagined.
Maybe it was Nancy who ran telling tales, but it could’ve been any of the miserable souls in that big old house. Whoever reported the conversation must’ve made Tom’s words sound ugly and entitled, like we were wishing for Colonel Randolph’s demise.