My Monticello(34)
On the second floor, we moved in and out of more bedrooms, each space dominated by some particular color or pattern, containing some version of a high bed, occasionally canopied in cloth. We found several bedrolls and a pile of sheets stacked in a mocking arrangement of domesticity, which we later divvied up and used in earnest. We stumbled into a low-ceilinged nursery that held a trundle bed, a crib, a set of porcelain-faced dolls—the children would soon sleep there, with Mama and Papa Yahya claiming the room beside it. These rooms had been carefully decorated with everyday objects—a teacup, a hairbrush, a long blue robe, a pair of woolen slippers—like set pieces for a play.
Back on the ground level, we explored the parlor, the dining room, another bedroom with a hearth. Finally we made our way through Jefferson’s own rambling suite: his personal library and cabinet room, crowded with dusty books and shiny gadgets. The floor space in the cabinet was so broken up by desks and seating, it was hard to move freely. The walls were partitioned by large windows, which Jefferson must’ve looked out of, at all he thought he owned. Knox and I brought MaViolet through those rooms.
We came in here that other time, she said.
When they brought you for that reunion, MaVi?
MaViolet touched the high edge of a red chair. They took us on a tour.
After her formal visit to Monticello, they’d asked MaViolet if she might be willing to attend an event or two in town, part of an upcoming series. I escorted her once, back in the fall, to a talk at the public library. I’d watched from the front row as she sat in church clothes at the edge of a panel of other descendants of Monticello’s slaves. That particular event was centered around an auction the Jefferson family had held in 1827 at Thomas Jefferson’s behest, to try to preserve the estate after his passing. Among other things, more than one hundred Black people were sold to pay off the debt Jefferson had incurred during his long and comfortable life, and to preserve the land for his white offspring. One Black descendant on the panel, who wore cufflinks and a vest, had spent many years researching his family history. He counseled us: When contacting a white person to whom you might be related by blood and or bondage, don’t tell them you’re Black, not until the very end of the phone call. When you tell them you’re Black, he cautioned, nine times out of ten, their earlier curiosity about family will dry up. More often than not, they’ll hang up on you, he said. Sometimes, right before they hang up, they’ll ask, What do you want from me?
This man talked about one of his ancestors, a freed former slave who’d attended Jefferson’s auction to try to emancipate family members. Except there was no way to afford them all. So whom to purchase, wife or son, and whom to watch be sold off to cotton and oblivion and worse? Listening, I’d tried not to imagine how it might have felt to choose between buying Momma or MaViolet. To be on the auction block myself, facing the loss of everything I knew and everyone I loved.
It was springtime when I came before, MaViolet said. There were tulips.
We escorted MaViolet into Thomas Jefferson’s own bedchamber, with Mr. Byrd walking close behind us. Tall blue walls and a nightstand and a high alcove bed. The bed sat between the bedroom proper and the cabinet room. Boxed in at head and toe, that singular bed spilled open into both rooms, with curtains and a stand that could be used to partition either side. Mr. Byrd told us it had been redesigned for Thomas Jefferson after his wife Martha’s death. Mr. Byrd drew the curtain all the way back.
Knox and I shuffled MaViolet toward that bed, already made up with stiff white sheets. A quartet of pillows occupied the head, balanced by a comforter folded at the foot.
Lie down, MaVi, I said. It came out like a question, like I was asking somebody’s permission.
MaViolet turned her body, eyeing that room—the brass-framed mirrors and the small painting of a naked white woman and a cherub. The skylight high above her that looked like an ordinary window, except for its odd placement in the ceiling. The pristine bedpan at her feet. She touched the bedsheet, hastening to bring up a knee, to give that bed her weight. We helped her to arrange herself, using the pillows to prop her up, her back against one wall, so that she might breathe more easily. On the wall at her feet, an obelisk clock hung, framed by two ancient-looking pistols and a sword.
I could sleep for days, she said.
After MaViolet was resting comfortably, we resumed our exploration. Soon we were calling out to everybody, following each other down to the final floor below. The stairwell was so steep and tight, a sign midway warned tourists: WATCH YOUR HEAD. Downstairs the air felt cooler and dank. It was dim enough that we had to go slowly to let our eyes adjust.
In the basement, there was an all-weather pass, which had granted slaves hidden access to the house, Mr. Byrd explained. There were cellars and a large cylinder of an icehouse. Off to one far end there were modern restrooms for tourists, and an old-time privy—where we would soon set up a mirror, squares of cloth, and a bucket of water, for our use.
We milled through the central basement exhibit populated by life-size cutouts of some of the known slaves of Monticello—the named cooks and butlers and nannies who’d served the Jefferson family indoors and intimately. Near there, Mr. Byrd handed out a couple of flashlights and led us into a back-of-the-house space, an informal second library full of reference books. This room sat out of time, ringed in mismatched seating as if furnished from thrift-store finds. It felt more like the rooms we’d left behind in town. We funneled in, most of us finding seats.