We went on field trips to battlefields with long, green lawns
grazed on in the dark by deer, bordered with split-rail fences
and tall pines. What I remember of Jamestown is the smell of
root-beer barrels and the slow demonstration of musket fire.
How we covered our ears and how we ducked down into longhouses
softened by furs. Later we hear of how, during those first few years,
the gate was left on its hinges. The palisade walls and homes whittled down
to firewood. How their trash pit held musk turtles, snakes, and
the skeleton of a small girl with bones marked from butchering.
Evidence of the colonists’ cannibalism. They took anything they could get:
even themselves. Hunger sharpens everything. My aunt tells me that
when I came to live with her I hid chicken bones and sugar packets
under my pillow for assurance. They called those years at Jamestown
the Starving Time but they called whatever was left in the end miracle.
I went to school on a battleground. I cut my teeth on the new world.