Chapter One
Despite the extravagance of Fanny’s lace wedding gown, ordered from France, the profusion of pink peonies, grown in a side
garden for the occasion, and the three-hundred-pound hog turning on a spit, all anyone could talk about were the twins from
Siam. They’d been living in Wilkesboro for four months and had already bought land and begun construction on a plantation.
Though we had yet to meet them, my sister Adelaide and I knew all about the Siamese Double Boys. Everybody did. They were
the most famous men ever to land on our small patch of earth. For the past decade, since their arrival in the United States,
the press had scrutinized their every move. Newspapers debated whether they were cursed by God or proof of His glory. They’d
been called an omen, a marvel, a monster. They were measured against other joined twins throughout history: the twelfth-century
Biddenden Maids, fused at the cheekbones, who needed a looking glass to meet each other’s gaze; seventeenth-century Scottish
brothers who shared a lower half, with separate heads, torsos, and arms; eighteenth-century Hungarian girls joined back-to-back
at the pelvis, immortalized by Alexander Pope as “two sisters wonderful to behold, who have thus grown as one.”
Unlike any joined twins before or since, however, Chang and Eng were entirely separate people linked only by a narrow band of cartilage just below their ribs.
They were hale and agile, needing neither cane nor chair.
They moved in harmony, ran with practiced ease, swam and hunted and fished like any other men.
One Boston newspaper hailed them as the “eighth wonder of the world,” declaring, “We have seen and examined this strange freak of nature. It is one of the greatest living curiosities we ever saw. The two boys are about five feet in height, of well-proportioned frames, strong and active, good natured, of pleasant countenances, intelligent and sensible.”
At Epps General Store, Adelaide and I bought the penny papers that chronicled their lives in minute detail. We traded facts
and stories about them like contraband. If Eng bit into a lemon, Chang winced at the sour taste. If Chang had a toothache,
Eng’s mouth ached. Tickling one made the other laugh. Poke one in his sleep, and both awoke.
Doctors reported that their hearts beat in unison.
But they didn’t share everything. If one drank whiskey, the other remained sober. Whisper into Eng’s ear, and Chang heard
nothing. Both felt pain when pricked with a needle in the center of the band connecting them, but within half an inch to either
side, only the nearer twin flinched.
They went to sleep at the same time and slept the same number of hours, but they dreamed different dreams.
The press was full of the legal and moral dilemmas their condition raised. If one twin was convicted of murder and sentenced
to prison, would the other be wrongfully incarcerated? If one paid his train fare and the other did not, must both be barred
from boarding?
Eng’s letter on the subject was printed in a newspaper.
If Chang committed a crime, he asked, “Must I go to prison with him? Having opposed his wicked design with all my might, am I required to attend his execution? I hope not. Whatever crime may be perpetuated by Chang, no one has any right to lay hands on me, so as to punish him.”
Adelaide and I, dressed in our Sunday best, rode with our father in his black-topped carriage to the inn six miles from our
farm, where the wedding and celebratory supper were to be held. It was a humid afternoon in early autumn; we passed hay waiting
to be gathered, clumps of apples hanging heavy on trees, giant sunflowers drooping by the side of the road.
The twins had been living at the inn since they’d arrived in North Carolina, along with their friend and manager, Charles
Harris. During that short period, Harris had become engaged to—and was now marrying—the innkeeper’s daughter, Fanny. Addie
and I had known Fanny since we were girls. And our brother, Alston, a merchant, had struck up a friendship with the twins
after visiting their store. They’d done some land deals together and played cards every few weeks.
With each turn of the wheels, our anticipation grew. Soon, at last, we would lay eyes on the Siamese Double Boys.
Though a year and two months older than Adelaide, I had never truly felt like her older sister. Her ambitions were larger
than mine, her opinions stronger. Since we were little, she believed fate had misplaced her in our small town and that one
day the error would be set right.
Addie possessed the self-assurance of the beautiful. She was used to being seen, and it made her bold about being heard. She
assumed people cared what she had to say, so she rarely hesitated to speak. She didn’t even realize this was a privilege.
I inherited our mother’s round cheeks, her solid bones and small gray eyes, her unruly auburn hair. Addie took after Papa’s family: tall and lean, with dark-fringed lashes and high cheekbones. She shone in contrast to my ordinariness. She was charming while I was shy.
I didn’t share my sister’s dreams, but I had some of my own. I longed to explore the world like the adventurers on Papa’s
shelf of well-thumbed favorites—Journey to the Polar Sea, Tales of a Traveller. In my mind I was right there with them, lighting a fire in the bitter cold beside a raging river, picnicking on some sunlit
slope in the Bois de Boulogne.
I’d never had much patience for fabric and furnishings, for ladies’ teas and luncheons and sewing bees that filled long afternoons.
I preferred the woods, the winding path to the pond, the thrill of coming home with a muddy hem and damp underarms, my hair
frizzed from the humidity, my cheeks blotched with heat. Mama scolded me to wear a bonnet—or better yet, to stay inside. “If
you keep carrying on like this,” she said, “you’ll never find a husband.”
In truth, I wasn’t much interested.
Getting married to a local boy, I knew, would mean little more than trading one farm for another, a life with people who knew
and understood me for one with someone who didn’t. Someone who had likely spent years slouched behind me in church, kicking
my bench. Someone who’d sat in the back of the schoolhouse, chewing on a stalk of hay, cracking jokes. Someone whose uninspired
observations and opinions I’d be expected to take seriously for the rest of my life.
I thought of the girls I knew who were already married: The hours they’d spent fretting over the embroidery on their wedding dresses and which cakes to serve at the reception.
The disillusionment once they settled into their day-to-day lives and learned what marriage was really like.
That a wife was meant to reflect, not to shine.
To echo, not to call. To walk a path someone else has cleared.
“A lady’s opinions are like her elbows,” Papa liked to say.
“Necessary, perhaps, but best kept covered.”
I wondered if romantic love was a made-up thing, like Father Christmas—invented to give people something to hope for, some
magic to believe in.
Our family plantation, Mulberry Farm, lay eight miles northwest of the county seat of Wilkesboro. The white clapboard house
stood high on a hill above apple and peach orchards, a large vegetable garden, twelve cabins, a red barn, several outbuildings,
and Mulberry Creek. Papa’s land stretched for more than a thousand acres below.
By the time the twins came to town, our four older siblings were grown and gone, with families of their own. Only Addie and
I remained at home. Our schooling was behind us, and the future ahead felt as fixed and familiar as the long road to our farm.
Each day was a version of the one before, varied only by the shift of seasons and the anticipation of holidays and birthdays.
Our primary task was to find, or be found by, suitable mates.
Alas, in recent years our birthdays had become more cause for anxiety than celebration. As we got older, the already small
pool of viable marriage candidates was rapidly diminishing. And the incident, as Mama called it, had only made things worse.
I still went on occasional chaperoned outings with young men from neighboring counties whose families were distant enough
that rumors hadn’t reached them, or flawed enough to overlook what they’d heard. But these dates were mostly miserable.
One prospect spent an hour explaining the minutiae of crop rotation. One tried to teach me to whistle. A third launched into
a sermon on wifely obedience, quoting Ephesians 5 from memory: Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.
And those were the most eligible ones. The bachelors over thirty-five, it seemed to me, had dulled like knives in a drawer.
“Do we really think they’ll be there?” I asked, blotting my brow with a handkerchief as we bumped along the dusty road. On
either side, tobacco fields stretched like patchwork squares, the plants broad-leafed and green, their waxy sheen catching
the afternoon light. Field hands—slaves—moved among the plants, bent low in the rows.
“Of course they will,” Addie said. “Charles Harris is their manager, after all. And they must know half of the county has
been waiting to get a glimpse.”
Papa grunted from the driver’s seat. “Best not to gawk.”
The stories about Chang and Eng’s escapades were so outlandish that they defied belief. In Massachusetts, they’d gone pigeon
hunting and were harassed by a boisterous crowd. Mr. Epps, the storekeeper, told it like a tall tale: how Eng fired powder
into the air to scatter the mob, then struck a man with the butt of his gun when they surged forward—only to be fined $200
for disturbing the peace.
Six months later, in Virginia, the state legislature decreed that the twins’ manager at the time, Abel Coffin—having purchased
them from their mother in Siam—was, in the eyes of the law, their slave master, and therefore liable for a steep “exhibition
tax.” Outraged at being called slaves, the brothers issued a statement declaring their intention to sever ties with Coffin
as soon as possible.
And then there were the romantic escapades.
When Coffin, in a countersuit, accused them of “whoring, gaming, and drinking” and thus requiring supervision, the brothers declared that they could drink whiskey and play cards as often as they pleased, and “had as good a right to a woman as Coffin had.”
In London, they courted a society lady named Sophonia Robinson, who published ardent poems about them, even borrowing a line
from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera: “How happy could I be with either, were t’other dear charmer away!” The papers dubbed the affair the tale of “Romeo . . .
and Romeo . . . and Juliet.” A wag named Reuben Ramble circulated a cheeky broadside titled “A Word or Two with Chang, the
Siamese Twin”:
The lady’s is a sorry case,
And really must dishearten her;
Why did you creep into her grace?
For you could not want a partner.
Already you’d your other half;
Why long, then, for three quarters?
Oh, Chang, you are too bad by half,
For any Yankee’s daughters.
Yet should the lady take Eng too,
How sweet were your community;
And how astonished eyes would view
Your Trinity in Unity.
In another story, Eng’s flirtation with a woman ended when Chang jealously interfered. The twins might have settled the matter
with a duel, the papers quipped, “but the parties could not agree on a distance.”
Later, it was reported that Chang had fallen in love with Catherine Bunker, the daughter of their New York City banker. Though she was already married, Chang bequeathed his fortune to her in his will.
And so on.
It was impossible to imagine one or the other of the brothers—or both—courting a woman without contemplating the practicalities.
How could you hold an intimate conversation with a person who is physically attached to another? Much less kiss them.
Much less . . .
The very idea confounded our minds.