Comme d'habitude, first one servant boy, then another, they follow me when Master Tom leaves. The grand dukes and duchesses, they say "elle est charmante et fine." On our morning walk, when the men bow, his possessiveness keeps me safe. Was this something I was not expected to know? Le Professeur: Mademoiselle, your French? Where did you learn that? Then I stop, pick up the book, copy the words carefully.Įxcusez-moi, est-ce que j'ai trouvée la bonne place?Įst-ce que vous pouvez me montrer oú est la porte? Those words we learned back home, a girl's French, they don't work here. He brings music to the sitting room, a fine harpsichord to soothe his head. IIIįrom the first moment of the day, Master Jefferson wants things just so. If in the House of Hades, men forget their dead, yet will I remember my dear companion. Men refer to my considerable beauty, une vigne sauvage. White waves in the blue-black sea till we land in port. Kidnapped before the roast meat was cold, snatched away to America she was a stranger to the sea. She stands with old friends in new finery, her buba and iro an odd-colored blue, hair in beads, piled to the sky, tapping the palm wine from the palm tree. The gods must have a hand in this! A young goat sacrificed, okra, oranges, a basket of yams laid at her feet. Each dawn she climbs the palm tree and touches wine with her hands. Her family brings a farmer, a boy not yet a man, to marry with the business of the home. White waves-a bitter dream-my mother's mother in the lower deck-wet and cold in the blue-black night.ĭahomey child, betrothed when she was young, before she knew of white men or the sea.Ī thin veil of fog. If I break another dish, I won't have to wash the Sèvres again! II Stuff your gown with these old rags, take best dolly in your arms. Sally the sweet child or the little terror. Most days I sit with Maria and Martha, her quill resting in my palm, a spy in another country. Martha and Maria, hands clasped together, in the shade of his poplar tree, we skipped and stopped, spied his words on her grave: If in the House of Hades, men forget their dead, yet will I remember my dear companion. The master, tall, straight-backed, bent in grief, swore he'd never wed again. Heard Mother's voice: Sally, keep this bell, pray for your dear sister. I stood by Mother, under the canopy bed, saw Mistress Jefferson raise four fingers. "That's one of the great things in my life, is getting to know the rest of my family … it's made my life and the life of my children so much richer," Truscott said.They say I was born old, so so old before my time. That they were able to tell their story," Lanier said. He feels that the legacy Sally left her children was allowing them to know who they are. "And they're now putting context to the content and telling that full story of what happened here. "And it's so true, because, you know, 50 years ago when you come to Monticello, they act like Jefferson built this place by himself and there were no slaves here," added Lanier. Jefferson, it's time to get up and write the Declaration of Independence.' Slaves did," Truscott said. Who made his breakfast? Who came in and shook his shoulder and said, 'Mr. I like to think about Thomas Jefferson getting up on the day that he wrote the Declaration of Independence back in 1776. "That was never talked about … you were never taught when you were a kid … that slaves built Monticello, the Capitol, the White House … this country would not exist without slaves and Sally Hemings was one of the founding mothers of this country.
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