Chapter Three
Several weeks later, we received an invitation. The brothers were planning an all-day quilting party a month hence, at their
new home along Little Sandy Creek, near the rural hamlet of Traphill. A housewarming. It was a clever idea; the task would
provide both a reason for ladies to attend and a focus for their attention. The invitees were to make a quilt in a single
day, to cover the twins’ new bed, specially made to hold both brothers and their future wives.
I ran my finger along the gilt-edged paper. Quilting parties were usually for brides. This felt a little odd to me. Intimate.
It had been reported that when the twins arranged to buy the 150-acre property, they shook both hands of the seller at the
same time and paid with a bag of silver coins. Construction began almost immediately. Within weeks, they’d cleared dozens
of acres—stones, trees, brush—and begun building what would become one of the grandest estates in the county: a two-story
house with several parlors and four bedrooms.
The newspapers quoted them as being “much delighted with their mountain settlement,” declaring themselves “as happy as lords.”
All they needed now, they told the press, were wives to love them—and children to carry on their good name.
When the twins applied for U.S. citizenship in Wilkesboro, it was discovered that they’d never had a surname. At the courthouse, when asked to provide one, Chang announced, “We will be Bunkers.”
Mrs. Epps told Addie and me the story while wrapping peppermints at the counter, her voice low but eager, as if sharing a
delicious secret. Her husband had been in the courthouse that day, she said, and witnessed it himself.
Rumors flew: Was it, as some said, simply that the man in line ahead of them was named Bunker? Was it in honor of their New
York banker? Was the banker’s daughter, Catherine, still named in Chang’s will?
He would not say.
Eng and Chang were the first men of Asiatic origin to become naturalized citizens in North Carolina. Federal law barred nonwhite
immigrants from citizenship, but the brothers had slipped through a legal gap: the state’s statute, written with only free
Negroes and Indians in mind, simply hadn’t accounted for anyone from the East.
The only debate was how many votes the Bunker twins should be entitled to.
The quilting party invitation was the talk of Wilkes County. Everyone wanted to see the new house, to judge whether it was
as extravagant as rumor claimed—and to witness firsthand how these two men managed a life together.
Late in the morning of the appointed day, buggies filled with farm wives and daughters lined the road to their house. (Our
mother, as usual, stayed behind.) The air was cool and mild. Stone Mountain, in the distance, lay hidden in shadow.
The brothers had invited three dozen ladies, Alston informed us, and their household was swirling with preparations.
There would be a luncheon, snacks and punch throughout the afternoon, and a buffet in the evening.
The cook was busy baking pans of cornbread and loaves of sourdough, churning milk into butter and cheese.
A few days earlier, two borrowed slaves from a neighboring plantation had slaughtered calves, hogs, and lambs for the feast.
Passing through the new wooden gate, Addie flicked the reins, and the buggy clattered up a hard-packed drive lined with young
oaks. It wasn’t often we drove ourselves—Papa thought it unladylike—but for a neighborly visit, arriving with a driver seemed
a needless display.
The unpainted clapboard house came into view, its brick chimney rising above the roofline. Roads wide enough for oxcarts veered
off from the drive. We passed a lawn dotted with grazing sheep. A goose crossed the yard, honking and hissing. As we drew
closer, I could hear the rhythmic clanging of an anvil.
Eng and Chang stood on a brick walkway between the house and the driveway, dressed neatly in matching gray sack jackets, vests,
narrow trousers, and white starched shirts, greeting each arrival.
When our buggy pulled up, Chang beamed. “This is all for you, Miss Adelaide,” he said, helping my sister down.
“Surely not.”
“And for your sister, of course,” he added.
Eng, behind him, gave me a bashful nod. Repeating his brother’s gesture to Addie, he held his hand out to me.
I took it. His hand was cool and finely boned.
And for your sister, of course.
There could be no Adelaide without Sarah.
Left to myself while the rest of the buggies arrived, I accepted a glass of tea from a housemaid and wandered inside.
The home was gracious in size, more functional than ostentatious.
The front door was framed by tall glass panels and topped with a horizontal transom, flooding the foyer with light.
On either side were two drawing rooms, each with a fireplace and oversize windows.
A hallway stretched ahead, wider than any I’d seen.
A breeze drifted through the screened front door to the back, carrying the scent of beeswax and woodsmoke.
I stepped into the room on the left. Wallpapered in pale blue toile, it was spacious and formally furnished, with a grand
piano at one end and a deep-hued Oriental rug. Several wingback chairs faced the fireplace, along with a settee and a wooden
chair, crafted for two. Two upholstered sofas had been pushed back to make space for a large quilting frame at the center.
Crossing the room to the tall casement windows, I brushed my fingers along the velvety curtains, pinned with braided sashes.
Sunlight warmed the pine floors. The room held fineries I’d never seen, even in the wealthiest homes in Wilkes County: hand-painted
porcelain vases, gold candlesticks, a silver cigar case, an elaborate music box. They must have been imported from Europe,
I realized—shipped to Wilmington, then hauled inland by porters.
Across the hall was a pine-paneled study lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Oil paintings in ornate frames depicted
horses and bucolic English landscapes; a chandelier glittered above. Brass lamps with glass globes sat on side tables and
a desk. In one corner, a grandfather clock with a carved arch stood against the wall, its brass pendulum ticking in the stillness.
I moved closer to the shelves and scanned the spines: a collection of plays by Shakespeare, Milton’s Paradise Lost, The Life of Christ by John Fleetwood, Life of Luther, Life of Calvin, Life of Wesley, the Bible.
D’Aubigne’s history of the Reformation in four volumes.
Books on planting, philosophy, music. Poetry by Lord
Byron and Alexander Pope. Lord Chesterfield’s Advice to His Son, on Men and Manners. Introduction to the Art of Playing on the Piano Forte. Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, The Odyssey, Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. Crabb’s Dictionary of General Knowledge.
I didn’t know anyone—not one person—who owned so many books.
I’d never heard of most of the titles, and, except for the Bible, hadn’t read any of them.
The distance between my world and the Bunkers’ seemed to widen with every title I skimmed.
These books hinted at journeys taken across oceans, arguments spun late into the night.
I imagined the hours the brothers had spent reading, learning, debating philosophies and concepts that had never crossed my family’s table.
I traced the gilt spine of Crabb’s Dictionary, feeling the imprint of the title beneath my fingers.
I pulled it down and settled into a chair.
The title page read: An Explanation of Words and Things Connected with All the Arts and Sciences.
Leafing through it, I found entries on politics, farming, industry, weather, house decoration—almost anything one might
want to know. Sentences were underlined on nearly every page, with handwritten notes in two different styles.
In the penny papers, I’d read that on the long voyage from Siam to Boston, the twins had learned to speak English and taught
themselves to read. This book was a manual for the world they hoped to enter. A way to learn how to behave in polite society,
how to move among the upper classes. How to live as if they already belonged.
I was still immersed in it when the brothers came in.
“Miss Sarah Yates,” Chang said, rather formally.
I set the book on the table beside me and jumped up. “Yes—hello! I was nosing around. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not. Make yourself at home.”
I gestured toward the shelves. “Have you read all these?”
“We aspire to,” he said. “We only buy books recommended by people we respect.”
“Though—obviously—it would take a lifetime to read them all,” Eng said.
These were the first words he’d spoken to me directly. For a brief moment, his gaze met mine.
I tapped the dictionary. “This one’s well marked.”
“It is a sort of Bible for us,” Chang said.
“Not to be sacrilegious,” Eng added.
“Oh, no, I know what he means,” I said.
“Do you like to read?” Eng asked.
“I do, but I confess my education has been somewhat piecemeal.”
Addie and I had attended the local schoolhouse until we were twelve, our lessons mainly spelling drills and Scripture. I thought
about the books on Papa’s shelf—those adventure tales from his youth, a few agricultural tracts, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, some atlases. He often sat on the porch leafing through a pile of newspapers.
Mama never read anything except the King James Bible. She didn’t encourage us to either.
Eng pulled out a slim volume, its cover dark red with gold-leaf lettering. “Have you read this?”
I took the book from him. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. “I haven’t.” I turned to the title page and skimmed the epigraph, a quote from Paradise Lost:
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?
“There’s an interesting story behind the book,” Eng said. “It was written by a nineteen-year-old girl, Mary Godwin. She and