Chapter Seven
For a surprisingly long time no one seemed to suspect that the twins’ flirtation with Addie and me was anything but innocent.
Through the winter and spring, we saw them only occasionally. But what began as a handful of casual encounters—walks, carriage
rides, shared picnics—gradually took on a more deliberate shape. A courtship, though none of us dared call it that.
The twins seemed to grasp the singular strangeness of the situation. They understood that whatever feelings Addie and I might
have been developing would take time—time to settle, to shape around the reality of who they were. Patiently, without pressing,
they gave us space to grow accustomed to them.
By summer, our visits had grown more frequent. Idle curiosity gave way to whispers. And then, one afternoon, when we accompanied
Eng and Chang on a ride to Wilkesboro, the gossip became impossible to ignore. I felt it the moment we crested the hill into
town. Women craning their necks and whispering behind their hands, young boys on the sidewalk pointing at the carriage and
laughing.
We did our best to ignore the curious stares of the townspeople, the hoots and exclamations, as we walked along Main Street
with a hinged basket. Addie was bolder than I was; she held her chin high and allowed Chang to lace his arm through hers.
In a small park across from the courthouse we spread a wool blanket under the shade of an oak and set out a picnic Dinah had
prepared: peaches, fried chicken, a loaf of bread, a jar of apple cider, a cherry pie.
All of us were unnerved by the commotion. We picked at the food.
“That was something. I suppose if we continue to—” Addie glanced at Chang. “We’ll have to learn to get used to it.”
“Or they will,” Eng said.
“Will they, though?” I asked.
The question hung in the air.
“Look at those trees.” Chang waved at a cluster of saplings. “See how they grow this way and that? Some fuse together, and
some turn toward the sun. We accept their differences and don’t judge them. It’s a pity that humans don’t allow each other
such latitude.”
“It is a pity,” Addie said.
Chang’s observation was undeniably heartfelt. But it sounded practiced to my ear, a little rote, as if he’d said it before.
I glanced at Eng. He rolled his eyes a little and smiled. I rolled my eyes and smiled back.
It was a small connection, less than a whisper. But it was something.
“So!” Addie said, seizing the lull. “Tell us more about how you ended up in Wilkes County. The king said you couldn’t leave
Siam, but here you are.”
“Ah yes.” Chang nodded. He clearly appreciated her talent for glossing over unpleasantries—a talent he shared. “It’s true,
Rama denied Hunter’s request. But Hunter wouldn’t give up. He befriended an American ship captain, Abel Coffin, who’d made
a fortune transporting tea from China and sugar from Siam. The king liked Coffin because he sold him American guns.”
“When Hunter suggested they become partners, Coffin signed on right away,” Eng said, chiming in. The brothers were well aware
of how dramatic their story was, and the flourishes it required. “He smelled money.”
“Coffin was a smooth talker,” Chang said. “He promised the king that Siam would become known throughout the world as the birthplace
of this living wonder.”
“As it did,” Addie said.
“As it did,” Chang echoed with a smile.
“But our mother refused,” Eng said. “She told them she’d be losing not only the company of her sons, but the income we produced.
So Coffin offered her a big bag of money.”
“Three thousand pounds. More money than she would’ve seen in a lifetime,” Chang said.
“And she changed her mind?” I asked.
“Most of our family had died a few years earlier,” Eng said. “Then a typhoon washed away our belongings. Life was fragile,
and security was hard to come by. Hunter promised we’d return to Siam after a five-year tour. So, yes, she signed a contract,
attesting to her ‘free will and consent.’ ”
“Though she didn’t know how to read or write,” Chang added.
“Did you ever see her again?” I asked.
The twins fell silent. Then Eng, his voice low, said, “No. We never went back.”
His tone was defiant, but under it I thought I heard something else—a long-buried ache.
“Did you miss her?” I asked.
Eng took a sip of cider. “At first. We got used to living without her.”
“She let us go,” Chang said. “She took the money. She made her choice.”
“She thought she was giving us a better life, Chang.”
They looked at each other for a long moment. “Maybe so. And maybe she was.” Chang exhaled and added, more lightly, “We learned
quickly that if we were smart about it, we had a chance to make something of ourselves.”
“So what happened next?” Addie asked.
Eng smiled, clearly happy to move on. “Well. We were eighteen years old by that point. Adults. We set off for Boston in Hunter’s boat with a crew of two dozen men. We didn’t know a word of English.”
“They conscripted our neighbor, Tieu, to come along and act as translator.”
“And they allowed us to bring our pet python in a cage.”
“Mercy!” Addie said.
“We left during a lunar eclipse, do you remember, Eng?”
“How could I forget? The moon was as red as the monks’ robes in the king’s court.”
Chang smiled at the memory. “The people in our village believed the eclipse was happening because a hungry dog was trying
to bite the moon. They stood on the bank to scare it away, banging on drums and gongs and pots and pans, firing muskets.”
“Even a cannon,” Eng said.
“We pulled away from the harbor while all of this was going on.”
“I’ll never forget standing on the deck of that boat, waving goodbye,” Eng said. “I think both of us were crying. It was the
first time we’d ever been away from our mother.”
“We knew she was banging on her pot as much for us as for that beast in the sky,” Chang said.
For a few moments we sat in silence. Addie and I sipped our cider. The men seemed deep in thought. Then Addie asked, “What
became of the snake?”
Eng looked up. “Oh, the python.” He grinned. “After a few weeks at sea, it slithered out of its cage and was never found.”
“Imagine the surprise in store for passengers on the next voyage,” Chang said.
It was midafternoon now, the heat as heavy as a quilt.
Addie and I shook out the napkins, stacked the plates, and packed the leftover food into the basket, but the brothers made no move to leave.
They seemed eager to keep talking. I caught Addie’s eye—shall we say something?
—but she gave a faint shake of her head.
I didn’t resist. This was undoubtedly more interesting than whatever else the afternoon might have in store.
She turned to them. “So you made it to Boston.”
Settling back on the blanket, the twins recounted their rise to fame. After arriving, they were immediately put to work. At
first, they were billed as “The Monster,” but their manager soon realized there was more money in marvel than in menace. He
renamed them “The Siamese Double Boys” and kept them hidden between shows to cultivate a sense of mystery.
As their fame grew, crowds lined the roads just to glimpse their enclosed carriage as they passed.
“We weren’t supposed to open the curtains,” Chang said, “but the roar of the crowd was so loud, we had to take a peek now
and then.”
“We were famous, like the king. Everybody wanted to lay eyes on us,” Eng said.
“Did it go to your heads?”
“It went to his head.” Eng poked his brother.
Chang laughed. “How could it not? Every day Hunter read us newspaper articles detailing every step we took. And we no longer
had to work long hours on the riverboat, scraping together a living. We did as we pleased, ate what we liked, took naps when
we chose.”
“Demanded the finest cigars,” Eng said.
“Met”—Chang gave us a sardonic smile—“all kinds of people.”
We’d read the articles. We knew what he meant.
The brothers described the exotic costumes their manager designed—pantaloons, scarves, braids woven with silk ribbon—to play
up their foreignness. They learned to play poker to fit in with what he called their “clientele.” Before long, they had a
standing engagement at the Grand Saloon of the Masonic Hall on Broadway: six days a week, two shows a day.
“Did it feel . . . I don’t know, debasing to charge money for people to see you?” I asked.
“Not at first. It was exciting. But then we realized Abel Coffin was making all the money,” Chang said.
Things soured when they learned he had taken out a $10,000 life insurance policy on them and purchased embalming supplies.
“We realized we were worth as much to him dead as alive,” Eng said.
But the last straw came when the state of Virginia legally branded them slaves. Only then did they break with Coffin and take
control of their own exhibitions.
“Once we were in charge, it felt different. People were going to gawk anyway,” Eng said. “We might as well get rich from it.”
Chang spread his hands like an impresario. “You have to understand—performing is a thrill. Most of the time, we liked doing
it. How many people do you know who earn a living just by being themselves?”
“Adelaide! Sallie!” Papa’s voice thundered through the house.
It was several hours after we’d returned from the picnic. Addie and I were upstairs in our rooms. I went to the banister,
Addie close behind me.
He was standing in the foyer with his hands on his hips, wearing the straw hat he wore in the fields.
We peered down at him.
“Yes, Papa?” I asked.
“What’s this I hear about an unchaperoned outing?”
“It was innocent,” Addie said. “Just a picnic in town.”
He snorted. “Just a picnic.”
She started down the stairs. “It was just a picnic. In the park. In plain sight.”
When she reached the bottom, he ran an open hand down his jaw. “In heaven’s name, Adelaide.”
“What?”
“Don’t pretend to be more naive than you are. You’re creating a scandal. The whole county is talking about it. Those two are . . .
unnatural. Freakish.”
“They are perfectly natural, Papa.”