My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
“My Monticello” by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson is first a collection of short stories united by hope and unforgettable characters. The first story “Control Negro” is about a black college professor who fathers a son with a married woman. She agrees to send photos of her son while keeping his paternity a secret and to tell of his progress in academics and sports. Father wants to compare him to American males, this is his mission and it almost works, until the police shoot him, saying he looks dangerous.
The next story “Virginia Is Not Your Home” is about a sixteen-year-old freshman at an all-girls college far away from home. She goes to Europe, sleeps with men and marries one of them, and brings him home to show him the place. He’s a photographer and works all day and night. While her husband is in Rome she has morning sickness and has a son, and then a daughter. The husband’s work hangs in galleries around the world and she raises the children. There are letters in an old trunk from her father and she thinks she can start again. Can she? Several more stories “Something Sweet on Your Tongue” and “The King of Xandria” are here. Although each story is different each combines with the others to show a theme of brotherhood, family ties, and togetherness. Each is sad and joyous too.
In the main story, “My
Monticello”, white men burn the houses of black families on First Street. The protagonist sees a bus and with her MaViolet runs onto it, Ma Violet collapsing on an empty front seat. The girl sees the keys in the ignition and starts the bus, the engine coming to life. The college campus is barricaded and she moves in with Knox her white college boyfriend. She drives on past taverns, and orchards, and up and up to the welcome pavilion is if for an evening tour. There are sixteen people on the bus, black and brown, from age three months to over seventy (MaViolet) the protagonist’s grandmother. Ira and Carol carry two white hens and Devin carries his anger, with a duffel bag of handguns and Ezra, his twin carries one handgun belonging to his father. The narrator is a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and MaViolet had attended a gathering at that house of several other Jefferson’s relatives.
The heroine doesn’t admit to Jefferson’s paternity, she says she’s been born in the town. They get to Monticello and she doesn’t know it the baby she carries is Knox’s or Devin’s. When they wake in the morning they all think of the things they’ve left behind. Some of them want to go back and make those white men pay, but maybe their houses are already burned. Some walk up a high hill from where they can see the town. She and Knox stay to look after MaViolet. They can’t go back yet,, says Devin, and Knox makes a sign that reads, “We are here”.
When Ma Violet and Mrs. Edith sing an old hymn everyone joins in. They offer suggestions of how to behave and Knox writes them down as if it’s a constitution. They recall when they all lived on First Street and how they’d worked together. The children go into the museum and the gift shop and each chooses a different thing: a coin, a plush animal, a compass, or a watch. They wail “Take us home,” but know it’s not time yet. The white men might still be there burning houses. They agree to share everything, eggs, and bottled water. They were friends from First Street again. They take books about Thomas Jefferson and T-shirts that might fit. They go up to the house so they’ll be safe from the storm, and she gets the boys from the van and tells them the plan. The house is over two hundred years old and built by slaves. Mr. Byrd comes with his cane made of a tree branch, and Mrs. Edith carries bags of food, seeds, and tea. Carol and Ira each carry a hen and Ezra bottles of water. As they walk to the grand house, MaViolet’s breathing rages but then she breathes easily.
In the past, they’d reenacted auctions to raise money for the mansion. One former slave wanted to free his family members but there was no way to buy them all, wife or son? How would it have felt? In Mr. Jefferson’s bedroom MaViolet lies on the bed. On the wall are pictures of slaves who are Jefferson’s descendants, more than six hundred slaves in his lifetime. Everyone looks at MaViolet and her granddaughter. “I belong to Sally Hemmings,” she says proudly. She keeps her grandma’s head up. Does Knox ask if she thinks Hemmings ever loved Jefferson?
Author Johnson gives the history of all the squatters at the grand house. When Naisha says she’ll go back to town to get MaViolet’s medicine Knox says he’ll go instead. Carol says she wants to go, to do something good. Naisha thinks about the sick world she’s bringing this baby into. Devin wants to go to town too and he climbs into the trunk of Mr. Byrd’s town car with Naisha. Naisha is the protagonist telling this story.
She says they must all stay together in Jefferson’s library because they are like her and yet different because they are part of one another. She feels great love for everyone.
Men are gathering below coming to attack. Ezra brings up a load of tshirts and Georgie cleans the first floor of the house. Ira and KJ play chess and Mama has braided the children’s hair. Mrs. Edith cooks a good supper of eggs, potatoes, wild greens, and cherries and Mr. Byrd serves wine that he found in a room.
How long do they stay at the mansion and how does this change who they are? Find out in this ironic story how black people built Jefferson’s house and how it saved them. It’s on the new fiction shelf of your local library.