My Monticello(36)

I’m fine, I said, but I might’ve said, I’m breathing. I’m still alive and trying.

I was thinking, Knox said, we could sleep in this room. He reached out as if to touch my elbow but then withdrew his hand and proceeded with his voice instead. There’s plenty of light, and it’s near your grandmother, but private—

I felt unsteady, like I needed to lie down, but there was no bed, so I held myself upright. I tugged at the ragged hem of my shorts, all those loose fat threads. I feel like something bad is gonna happen. Because of me. Because I brought us here, I said.

Knox surveyed the small room. It’s fine to be here. We had to go someplace, he said. I guess he saw this was not helping me, because he tried again, coming in from a different angle. My father says our family is related to Arthur Armstrong Denny—part of that group of settlers who founded Washington State—we all have ancestors, I mean.

It’s not the same, I said.

I know, he said, then more softly, I know, like he got it. But you are, like, related to him, right?

I’m related to her, I told him. When I said this, I wondered, had she ever felt safe here? I’m named after her.

Knox lowered himself to the floor by the open window, folding his lanky body so that he looked much smaller. They had children together, he said. Do you think he cared about her? Do you think it’s possible she loved him at all?

I wanted him to stop talking. I wanted to walk deep out into the muddy yard. How are you supposed to love somebody, I said, who has that much power over you?

I know, Knox said. The whole situation is so … wrong, so … outrageous. All I’m trying to say is, even in small ways, doesn’t one person always have more power than another? Knox said this like he was asking me something personal, like he was asking, Is it possible for you to love me?

I felt so shaky then, but I kept standing. I was thinking, what did it mean if I loved Knox: Did it mean I hated something in myself? Or was the dark feeling in my gut something older, something outside of me and him?

I shouldn’t have brought us here, I said. Maybe we should try to go somewhere else.

The Jaunt, Knox said. I wouldn’t trust it to get us far. Also, your grandmother …

Still, I said.

Everything about that room, the whole house, felt like it was swaying. I sat down on the slate floor across the door from Knox, holding my knees, trying to steady myself. Knox seemed to have abandoned that intimate line of questions and turned his attention to more practical ones. Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out, he said, reaching for me, his hand bright against my skin. He tugged me toward him, and I crawled the short rest of the way, my knees scraping stone. We sat in the window, his larger body wrapped around mine, rocking a little. The acrid smell of sweat and rain, his chin resting easily on my head. I’m just saying, Knox went on, it’s crazy, it’s … incredible: This house is like partway yours.



* * *



That night and the next morning, our group met in the red-chaired parlor and the west porch that spilled from it. We met to fill our stomachs with warm things: a porridge mix Ms. Edith found in the upper gift shop, blended with boiling water. We sprinkled it with sea salt and peas for supper, Ezra and KJ wrinkling their noses. We laced it with maple syrup for breakfast—Jobari and Imani cheered. We met to work out a rotating schedule of who would cook or clean or tend the garden. We came together to sing and to check in on one another, signaled by Mr. Byrd or Ms. Edith ringing a bell.

Before our first supper, we gathered fallen wood; we pulled it out of the weather and stacked it beneath the reliable dryness of the all-weather pass. We inspected our wavery reflections in the rain-rippled surface of water pumped up from one of Jefferson’s cisterns. We tested the water on our tongues, and when it tasted flat, Mama Yahya showed us how to pour it back and forth between two vessels, to infuse it with air again.

Each person claimed a space to sleep that first day. Ms. Edith laid her book of psalms on a chair in an octagonal room on the first floor. She shared out the display of sheets, saving one set to shroud her own high alcove bed. Mr. Byrd quietly housed his tools in the square bedroom between Ms. Edith’s and the entrance hall. Even though it was cooler on the ground level, other folks went up, opening windows in this house that kept reminding us it was designed for a time before air-conditioning or electric light. LaToya disappeared into a second-floor room patterned in blue and white, hardly emerging except sometimes for food. Ezra claimed a bedroom on the third floor, with protruding skylight windows and two beds along one wall. Carol and Ira carried furnishings out to the white textile workshop, a freestanding building on Mulberry Row, so that they could more comfortably stay there. Mr. Byrd helped them cordon off an outdoor space near that building, to house and shelter their precious hens.

After our first supper, I petitioned that MaViolet should remain in Thomas Jefferson’s own bedchamber. Is that right, Papa Yahya said, but then his attention orbited back to the children who were fighting over a wooden horse they’d found. Ira made a face as if to protest, but then swallowed his complaint along with his last lumpy spoonful. Ms. Edith said, I don’t see why not. So with the clang of silverware, it was decided: MaViolet would stay perched in Jefferson’s boxed-in bed. Folks dropped in to see her, with Ms. Edith getting Knox to bring in a comfortable chair for her longer visitations. Most people came in pairs, because of MaViolet’s new reserve. She’d greet them, of course, offer a trembling smile. But after an exchange of pleasantries, her thoughts seemed to drift off, or else she’d close her eyes. Her guests would be left to talk among themselves, saying they knew she’d be up again soon before slipping out. Fleeing the men, the hike up the hill—all of it had cost her something. Even so, when I went and sat beside her, MaViolet ate a little. She sipped at the water I brought. Her eyes lit up, and she surrounded me with questions: You doing your best, Grandbaby, she’d say. You find something joyful yet this day?