America's First Daughter: A Novel(153)

My father gave an indulgent chuckle. “Oh, it’s a very monastic sort of existence at Poplar Forest. Ellen and Cornelia are the severest students. In daytime they never leave their room but to come to meals. About twilight of the evening, we go out with the owls and bats, and take our evening exercise. You wouldn’t enjoy it.”

Jeff added, “There’ll be better bachelors at the governor’s mansion than amongst owls and bats at Poplar Forest. I’ve asked Governor Nicholas to host a party for you girls to come out into society in Richmond next winter, when the legislature is in session.”

There were advantages, it seemed, in his having married the governor’s daughter. But I worried that Jeff arranged this for his sisters without asking Tom. Hoping to stave off an argument, that night as I got ready for bed, brushing my hair out in front of the mirror over my marbled dresser, I gently broached the subject with my husband.

He surprised me by saying, “The girls would like that.”

I nodded, abandoning my brush to climb over Tom to get to my side of the alcove bed—a ritual that had once been flirtatious but had now turned to annoyance.

He stopped me, hands on my hips. “What ails you, Martha?”

“What makes you think something ails me?” I was resolved to say nothing about my worries for the expense. My husband would tell me it wasn’t my place, even though his generosity—the dresses, the ribbons, the fripperies—would come out of pockets that were already empty. It wasn’t my place to question him; my meddling is what had brought us to this unhappiness, so I bit my tongue.

But Tom’s eyes bored into mine in the candlelight. “I suppose Jeff told you I intend to sell slaves to bolster the family finances, running off to his mother like he always does. He’s still tied up in your apron strings.”

I’m not certain how he could’ve surprised or appalled me more. When Tom proposed marriage, he said he was against slavery. Since then, of course, we’d quietly reconciled ourselves to the evil, convinced that the poor slaves needed us, as children need parents. But selling slaves . . . how could we ever reconcile ourselves to that? “Tell me you’d never do such a thing.”

“I’m only selling one sullen girl,” Tom answered. “She’s difficult to manage, but she could go for more than five hundred dollars. It’ll be an investment in the happiness of our daughters, and maybe the slave will be happier with a new master, too.”

I rolled off him. Turning to the wall, a scream echoed in my mind. I’d held back my news as long as I could, but upon hearing the evil thing my husband planned, I was too upset to dissemble. “We’re having another baby, Tom.”

I heard nothing but silence behind me. It’d been four years since our last child, and we’d assumed my child-bearing days were over. I’d been grateful for it. But now, at nearly forty-five years of age, I was pregnant again and near tears to think it.

I already had ten children—far more than I had the strength to care for. Much as I loved them, I was wrung out with little ones climbing on me night and day. Giving birth to my last had weakened my health. God forgive me, I didn’t want another baby. But children were a source of manly pride. So, given a moment or so, maybe Tom would find his composure and tell me how happy he was. Then I’d force a smile and tell him what a joy it’d be.

Except it would all be a lie—all of it.

So I turned and said, “I don’t know what to do about it.”

At these words, Tom eyed me with a mixture of curiosity and horror. Perhaps he was remembering my testimony in which I claimed to have given his sister an abortifacient. I was remembering it, too. It seemed, at the moment, like an answer. We’d never stand trial for it. My father, if he knew, might not even object, for he’d commented almost admiringly on the practice amongst Indians. I’d hate myself, but I already hated myself for bringing another child into the world when we couldn’t provide for the ones we already had.

And yet, I should never have implied such a solution to Tom. Not even as a desperate consideration that I’d talk myself out of. Not even to get my husband’s reassurances. Tom’s lips thinned into a mean line. “There isn’t anything to be done about it, Martha.”

Chastened, I lowered my eyes and murmured what I believed to be the truth. “It’s likely to kill me, this time.”

Then I turned back to the wall, where I lay trapped.





DURING THAT PREGNANCY, I was so sick and swollen and sad all the time that I couldn’t stand myself. The birth left me so insensible that I had to be told I’d given birth to a living babe—a fragile little boy, tiny and blue, for whom my father would eventually choose the name George Wythe Randolph.

I was too weak to hold the baby or feed him, consumed with excruciating, debilitating pain and delirium. And though I was grateful to have lived through the ordeal, every time it seemed as if I might recover, I succumbed to a new cough or ailment.

Scarcely able to sit up, I was confined to bed and bedpan, and Ellen moved into the room across from mine so that she could nurse me. In the months that followed, my daughters were forced to take turns at housekeeping in my stead. But the entire estate would have fallen to pieces if not for Sally Hemings watching over my girls and instructing them where I couldn’t. And I simply couldn’t. Neither smallpox nor typhus had rendered me so ill. Not even fears for my father’s reputation could get me out of bed. Not even to converse or dine with our guests.