Read Online Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Monique Truong
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Moses composed these poems while he worked the land on his master’s farm. Little Virginia Dare would have asked how terrible could this “peculiar institution” have been if there was poetry in the fields?
North Carolina had yet another trick up its sleeve. History was in the missing details. The Wright brothers’ first flight on December 17, 1903, from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, was witnessed by a small group of people, including “a boy from Kitty Hawk village.” Why did the co-authors of North Carolina —the movie star look-alike and the cat lover—separate this boy from the group, and then leave him standing on the sand of Kitty Hawk, nameless and without a word to contribute? Another forgotten child on the coast of North Carolina was, perhaps, their theme. North Carolina was chock-full of children, well loved and well remembered. Buck Duke, Andrew Johnson, Daniel Boone, who all grew up to be somebody. Yet, it was this anonymous boy and the baby Virginia Dare, one without a name and the other without a future, who drew me in again and again. North Carolina’s final trick was this. It was neither a history nor a fairy tale, but a mystery.
When I left Boiling Springs for the optimistically named New Haven, I took North Carolina with me to remind me of my father’s face when I thanked him for the book and to remind me of the place where he was born and where he died. His afterbirth and his body were buried in the same land that had received his father’s and forefathers’ bodies. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Carolina to Carolina. In that way, my father belonged to an ancient order of men. In all other ways, my father was a modern man. He had traveled far from his home to educate himself among the race of men known as Yankees. He was never afraid, because his father and grandfather had commingled with these same folks and returned home to Charlotte, North Carolina, more or less unchanged. Within the Hammerick clan, a change of any kind was one more than was necessary. My great-grandfather Graven Hammerick, upon his return from New Haven, was said to have refused the cornbreads served to him by his mother because they weren’t sweet enough for his northern-influenced palate. Because she couldn’t stand the sight of him not eating, his mother always had a batch made just for him with heaping spoonfuls of sugar added to the batter, but she also made it a point to wrap these squares in a black cloth before bringing them to the table. She wanted to remind her son that something inside of him had died. My grandfather Spartan Hammerick caught the travel bug after his graduation from Yale and spent two years crisscrossing Europe. During this time abroad, he sent home only two postcards, each written and postmarked on the date of his mother’s birthday. Spartan returned to Charlotte with a stack of letters scented by the hands of an Italian baronessa, which his mother found and made him burn. For the Hammericks, the important thing was that their men came home again. When my great-uncle Harper told me this, I thought, Of course they came home. Where else in the world could they live with those first names?
I have never met anyone on my father’s side of the family. All that I know about them is courtesy of my great-uncle Harper. Unlike the Burch branch of our family, no tragic event had wiped the Hammericks from the face of the earth. The tragedy here was my father. Thomas had come home to North Carolina, but he had brought too much of the world back with him. From where they stood, scattered about the four corners of Mecklenburg County in the towns of Charlotte, Cornelius, Pineville, and Mint Hill, the Hammerick clan closed ranks, leaving Thomas and the family that he had formed standing on the outside.
The first sign that Thomas Hammerick differed from his forefathers was his decision not to attend the law school at UNC Chapel Hill. For that part of his education, he not only stayed north of the Mason-Dixon
North Carolina had yet another trick up its sleeve. History was in the missing details. The Wright brothers’ first flight on December 17, 1903, from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, was witnessed by a small group of people, including “a boy from Kitty Hawk village.” Why did the co-authors of North Carolina —the movie star look-alike and the cat lover—separate this boy from the group, and then leave him standing on the sand of Kitty Hawk, nameless and without a word to contribute? Another forgotten child on the coast of North Carolina was, perhaps, their theme. North Carolina was chock-full of children, well loved and well remembered. Buck Duke, Andrew Johnson, Daniel Boone, who all grew up to be somebody. Yet, it was this anonymous boy and the baby Virginia Dare, one without a name and the other without a future, who drew me in again and again. North Carolina’s final trick was this. It was neither a history nor a fairy tale, but a mystery.
When I left Boiling Springs for the optimistically named New Haven, I took North Carolina with me to remind me of my father’s face when I thanked him for the book and to remind me of the place where he was born and where he died. His afterbirth and his body were buried in the same land that had received his father’s and forefathers’ bodies. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Carolina to Carolina. In that way, my father belonged to an ancient order of men. In all other ways, my father was a modern man. He had traveled far from his home to educate himself among the race of men known as Yankees. He was never afraid, because his father and grandfather had commingled with these same folks and returned home to Charlotte, North Carolina, more or less unchanged. Within the Hammerick clan, a change of any kind was one more than was necessary. My great-grandfather Graven Hammerick, upon his return from New Haven, was said to have refused the cornbreads served to him by his mother because they weren’t sweet enough for his northern-influenced palate. Because she couldn’t stand the sight of him not eating, his mother always had a batch made just for him with heaping spoonfuls of sugar added to the batter, but she also made it a point to wrap these squares in a black cloth before bringing them to the table. She wanted to remind her son that something inside of him had died. My grandfather Spartan Hammerick caught the travel bug after his graduation from Yale and spent two years crisscrossing Europe. During this time abroad, he sent home only two postcards, each written and postmarked on the date of his mother’s birthday. Spartan returned to Charlotte with a stack of letters scented by the hands of an Italian baronessa, which his mother found and made him burn. For the Hammericks, the important thing was that their men came home again. When my great-uncle Harper told me this, I thought, Of course they came home. Where else in the world could they live with those first names?
I have never met anyone on my father’s side of the family. All that I know about them is courtesy of my great-uncle Harper. Unlike the Burch branch of our family, no tragic event had wiped the Hammericks from the face of the earth. The tragedy here was my father. Thomas had come home to North Carolina, but he had brought too much of the world back with him. From where they stood, scattered about the four corners of Mecklenburg County in the towns of Charlotte, Cornelius, Pineville, and Mint Hill, the Hammerick clan closed ranks, leaving Thomas and the family that he had formed standing on the outside.
The first sign that Thomas Hammerick differed from his forefathers was his decision not to attend the law school at UNC Chapel Hill. For that part of his education, he not only stayed north of the Mason-Dixon
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