Read Online Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong - Free Book Online
Authors: Monique Truong
Ads: Link
stronger resolve than they. When it came time for the roll call for volunteers for the journey, the three who didn’t say “aye” were Ananias, Eleanor, and Eleanor’s father, John White. A small bundle of pink flesh had made these three foolish and defiant and brave. John White, though, was destined to leave his grandchild behind. He was the governor of the colony, and without his presence on the returning ship there would have been the strong suspicion of desertion or mutiny. On August 27, he looked back at Roanoke Island and saw his daughter, Eleanor, standing on the sandy shore with Dare in her arms. Where was Ananias, John White wanted to know. The question grew in importance in John White’s mind as the ship crossed the Atlantic. He knew that he would have to wait many months before he could learn the answer, and that made him angry with his son-in-law for prompting the question in the first place.
The Atlantic was too cooperative, John White also found himself thinking during the journey away from his new home. The ocean he knew was always brutal but in different ways. John White was right. The Atlantic safely returned him and his crew to a country at war. England’s ships, sailors, supplies, and every available maritime resource for the next three years were devoted to the sinking of the Spanish fleet. John White, during those years, developed a hatred for his son-in-law that bordered on a kind of obsession. The vein in John White’s temple throbbed and threatened to explode. He needed to focus on that anger because otherwise his breaking heart would have caused him to let out a sound like that of a sheep bleating. His Eleanor and his Dare standing alone on the shores of Roanoke Island for who knows how long? That was the question that was driving John White mad.
My father believed in the Old North State. When I was eight years old, a significant age in our family, my father gave me a book entitled North Carolina Parade: Stories of History and People . The book was published in 1966, two years before I was born. It had the look and feel of a book written in a much less complicated decade than the sixties. The illustrations were inky black and white, gestural and naïve. The text, co-written by a man who, per his photo on the dust jacket, looked like a 1940s movie star, and a woman who took her photo with her cat, had much of the same qualities. Thirty-two short chapters all with the tone and depth of a sixth-grade book report. I was immediately pulled in. There was something reassuring about having the history and people of your world reduced to 209 pages and a handful of drawings. True to his nature, my father wanted me to have a book that would foster a sense of security and belonging. North Carolina contained easy-to-read histories, and he thought that they would do the trick. They did. But the trick was a different one from what he had intended. North Carolina was a bait and switch.
As with all fairy tales, a crime was committed. In “Snow White,” there was a poisoning. A hostage situation was at the heart of “Beauty and the Beast.” “Hansel and Gretel” featured attempted cannibalism. “Cinderella” involved the lesser offense of party crashing. North Carolina began with a trespassing. Not a “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” domestic breaking and entering but an act of large-scale land grabbing. But at first I thought North Carolina’s opening chapter about the baby Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island was about the crime of kidnapping or mass murder. Of course I did. I was being shown the world through Dare’s barely opened eyes. History always had a point of view. That was a trick worth learning.
Another was that history was what you wanted to remember. In North Carolina there was only one mention of a slave, George Moses Horton, who had earned extra money for his master by writing love poems for the young men of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. George
The Atlantic was too cooperative, John White also found himself thinking during the journey away from his new home. The ocean he knew was always brutal but in different ways. John White was right. The Atlantic safely returned him and his crew to a country at war. England’s ships, sailors, supplies, and every available maritime resource for the next three years were devoted to the sinking of the Spanish fleet. John White, during those years, developed a hatred for his son-in-law that bordered on a kind of obsession. The vein in John White’s temple throbbed and threatened to explode. He needed to focus on that anger because otherwise his breaking heart would have caused him to let out a sound like that of a sheep bleating. His Eleanor and his Dare standing alone on the shores of Roanoke Island for who knows how long? That was the question that was driving John White mad.
My father believed in the Old North State. When I was eight years old, a significant age in our family, my father gave me a book entitled North Carolina Parade: Stories of History and People . The book was published in 1966, two years before I was born. It had the look and feel of a book written in a much less complicated decade than the sixties. The illustrations were inky black and white, gestural and naïve. The text, co-written by a man who, per his photo on the dust jacket, looked like a 1940s movie star, and a woman who took her photo with her cat, had much of the same qualities. Thirty-two short chapters all with the tone and depth of a sixth-grade book report. I was immediately pulled in. There was something reassuring about having the history and people of your world reduced to 209 pages and a handful of drawings. True to his nature, my father wanted me to have a book that would foster a sense of security and belonging. North Carolina contained easy-to-read histories, and he thought that they would do the trick. They did. But the trick was a different one from what he had intended. North Carolina was a bait and switch.
As with all fairy tales, a crime was committed. In “Snow White,” there was a poisoning. A hostage situation was at the heart of “Beauty and the Beast.” “Hansel and Gretel” featured attempted cannibalism. “Cinderella” involved the lesser offense of party crashing. North Carolina began with a trespassing. Not a “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” domestic breaking and entering but an act of large-scale land grabbing. But at first I thought North Carolina’s opening chapter about the baby Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island was about the crime of kidnapping or mass murder. Of course I did. I was being shown the world through Dare’s barely opened eyes. History always had a point of view. That was a trick worth learning.
Another was that history was what you wanted to remember. In North Carolina there was only one mention of a slave, George Moses Horton, who had earned extra money for his master by writing love poems for the young men of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. George
Similar Books
