Chapter Ten
Over the next few days, Papa kept to his study or the barn, speaking to Addie and me only when he had to. Dinah and Grace
moved differently around us, eyes lowered, as if our disgrace might be contagious. I slunk around the house. Only Addie seemed
untouched, humming as she brushed her hair or bent over her needlework. I envied her composure—or was it indifference?
Then came the summons.
This time it was from Mama.
“Why?” she moaned from her four-poster, a damp cloth draped across her eyes.
Addie and I stood at the foot of her bed, squinting at her in the gloom.
She wagged her head from side to side. “Why? It’s an abomination.” She lifted the cloth from her eyes. “I don’t know how you
can even contemplate what—what would be required for . . .” She shut her eyes again, the thought too much to bear.
“Surely you, Mama, of all people, understand what it is like to be judged and misunderstood,” Addie said.
I stepped back. The room was silent except for Mama’s labored breathing.
“I am not a freak like that monstrosity, Adelaide,” she said coldly.
Addie gave her a faint smile, at once pitying and defiant.
Behind me, the door clicked on its hinges. I turned. Papa had stepped into the room.
He looked at Mama, then at the two of us. “Your mother deserves an apology.”
“Sorry, Mama,” Addie said, her voice falsely sweet.
He shook his head. “For you to sneak away, without permission—”
“We didn’t sneak away, as we explained in that letter,” Addie broke in. “But we knew you would not grant permission. It was
life or death. If we hadn’t gone to Philadelphia, one or both of the brothers might be dead by now.”
“You’re so concerned about their health that you put your own at risk,” Papa said. “Traveling such a distance in midwinter—you
could’ve slipped off the road, gotten frostbite, or worse—”
“But we didn’t,” she said, laying a hand on his arm. “And we came back, when we might have married them in Philadelphia.”
At this, Papa stilled. “You wouldn’t have.”
Addie inclined her head. “Not in Pennsylvania, no. But Chang and I”—she said it so naturally—“are running out of time. And
patience. We want to be married. And Sallie and Eng are in agreement.”
Papa’s gaze fixed on me. “You are, are you?”
Addie stepped on my foot under the hem of my skirt. Speak.
My ambivalence was no match for their righteous certitude. “Well, it seems . . . yes, the best of my options.”
Papa made a face. “Oh, Sallie. You’re not as desperate as you think.”
“I don’t think you understand, Papa.” Addie lifted her chin. “Sallie and I are not acting in desperation. We’re thinking practically
about our futures.”
“Decidedly, you are not.”
She stared at him with open defiance. “You are no longer our keeper. We are free adult women.”
Echoing my words. And Grace’s.
“Free adult women,” he scoffed. “Acting like children.”
After our parents made their positions clear, the house settled into a brittle quiet, broken only by the creak of floorboards and the clatter of dishes at mealtimes.
Mama refused to speak of it. Papa busied himself with the planting schedule, barking orders to the field hands with unusual intensity.
But Addie was not one to back down.
“There’s no alternative. We will have to elope,” she said.
I recoiled at the thought. My only other experience with men was shrouded in shame and secrecy. It seemed unfair. “Surely
we could—”
“If Papa will not give his blessing, we must marry without it.”
Addie had already enlisted the help of a family friend and minister, James Davis, to try to sway Papa’s opinion. When that
failed, she found another pastor willing to marry us without his consent.
“You did all this without me.”
“I did it for you. For us.”
“Things are moving too fast, Addie. We need time to think this through.”
“For pity’s sake, how much time do you need? It’s been decided, Sallie.”
She told me she’d smuggled a note to the twins by way of a traveling salesman, asking them to meet us at the Covenant Meeting
House by the South Fork of Roaring River the following Tuesday at two in the afternoon.
She slipped the response, in Chang’s neat script, into my hand:
Joyful news. We will be waiting.
For nearly a week, I lived in a state of trepidation, torn between loyalty to my sister and dismay at the prospect of slinking off in secret.
I busied myself with household tasks, avoiding both Addie’s determined preparations and Papa’s watchful gaze.
He remained unusually tight-lipped, neither questioning our movements nor pressing us for answers.
I began to wonder if he knew what we were planning.
If he was holding his tongue to see how far we’d go.
At night, I lay awake staring at the ceiling, heart pounding, half hoping he’d storm into my room and say he knew everything—that
our plans were discovered, dismantled, done. That the decision had been made for me.
But morning would come, and the silence stretched on.
Then one morning, just two days before we were meant to leave, Papa strode toward me across the yard, a letter fluttering
in his outstretched hand. He handed it over without a word.
I unfolded the paper and began to read:
The subject upon which we presume to address you is one so near to our hearts, and so connected with our prospects of happiness
in this life, that we frankly find it difficult to summon resolution for the task. But sir, we have dared to entertain so
high an opinion of your goodness that we are emboldened to write to you with candor, to solicit the greatest favor it is in
your power to bestow . . .
The language was formal, the words carefully chosen. I could hear Eng’s measured voice in the sentences, overlaid with Chang’s
charm.
I glanced up at Papa.
He gave a heavy sigh. “At least they have the decency to let me know about your plans to elope. And are gentlemanly enough
to request my permission.”
His tone surprised me. I’d braced myself for resistance, for another barrage of arguments. Something had shifted.
Was he swayed by their plea? Did their humility soften him? Did he see himself in their boldness? Did he consider that he
might’ve been a hypocrite to raise a ruckus, given his own unusual union? Or had he simply given up?
Perhaps he calculated that a relationship with these wealthy businessmen could be advantageous for us all.
To this day, I’m not certain why he relented. Whether out of love, pragmatism, or sheer exhaustion, Papa put his hands on
his hips and let out a long breath. “All cats are gray in the dark, I suppose” was all he said.
The elopement was quietly set aside. Our courtship, now sanctioned, was carefully monitored. We were allowed to talk and play
board games in the front parlor with the door ajar. We rode in the brothers’ carriage, but only in daylight, for picnics and
brief outings to town.
It didn’t take long for news of our engagement to reach people in town and for their reaction to find its way back to us.
Two old ladies whispering in the aisle next to mine at Epps, where I was buying a bolt of cloth. Girls I’d known since childhood,
ducking their heads, crossing to the other side of Main Street. A cluster of field hands on the farm muttering as I passed,
shaking their heads. It’s not natural. It ain’t right.
“It’s a scandal, Addie,” I said to my sister one evening as we sat in her bedroom, brushing out our hair. “Everyone is gossiping
about us.”
“Oh, Sallie,” she said breezily. “Who cares what those dullards think? The twins have lived in New York City. They’ve toured
England and France. Do you know a single person who’s been to Paris?”
When we raised Papa’s concerns about our children being attached, Chang shrugged. “He’s right. We don’t know. If we have children,
we’ll take that risk. Though I suspect it’s unlikely.” He patted his chest. “You must remember: Eng and I do not view ourselves
as defective. If, like conventional twins, we risk having twins ourselves, we do not fear it. Why wouldn’t we want other people
who resemble us to exist?”
I glanced at Eng, sitting silently beside his brother. “Do you agree?”
He pulled a handful of peanuts from his pocket, letting them sift between his fingers.
Addie gave me a pointed look. She didn’t want me to encourage Eng’s dissent. Often, she and Chang treated us as irksome appendages,
tolerating our opinions only when they aligned with theirs.
“Please. Speak,” I said to Eng.
He wedged his thumbnail along the seam of a peanut, prying the hull open. “I’m not ashamed of my condition, but I wouldn’t
wish it on anyone. To be tied to someone, anyone, for life would be intolerable to most people. Sometimes it is intolerable
to me.”
“You wouldn’t have made a fortune if you weren’t joined, Eng,” Addie said.
“True. But we wouldn’t have had to. Our lives would be easier in countless ways.”
“So you won’t risk having children, then?” Addie pressed.
“I didn’t say that.” He popped the nut in his mouth.
“Well, then.” Addie smiled, as if she’d maneuvered him into contradicting himself.
Eng’s ambiguity and Addie’s need for certainty were often in conflict. She was determined to steer him toward hard-and-fast
declarations. But Eng, I was learning, existed in a space of contradiction. He could love his brother even when the bond felt
like a burden. He could hope his children wouldn’t be joined while accepting the risk that they might.
Three weeks after the engagement was made public, Papa, Addie, and I were finishing supper in the dining room when we heard
voices rising from the yard—laughter at first, then a loud shout, followed by a piercing whoop. A horse’s agitated whinny
cut through the noise, its hoofbeats pounding the dirt.
“What in the world . . . ?” Addie said, her fork hovering midair.
I hurried to the window and ducked behind the linen curtain, trying to peer out without being seen. Down near the barn, I
saw the flicker of torches, a crowd beginning to form. As the shouting grew louder, some of the figures began moving up the
slope toward the house.
“Step back, Sallie,” Papa said curtly.
He sat at the table a moment longer, as if considering his options. Then he folded his napkin with deliberate care, placed
it beside his plate, and stood. He held up a hand to Addie and me, his warning clear: Stay here.
My stomach clenched as he opened the back door and stepped out onto the porch.
Through the narrow gap in the curtains, I watched as the mob drifted closer, spilling into the yard. Torchlight bobbed and
wavered. Faces emerged in the glow, most of them unfamiliar. I heard Mina Greenbow’s high-pitched giggle and caught a glimpse
of her white-blond curls.
Mina, who just last Sunday had smiled and asked about my wedding plans.
I glanced back at Addie. She blew out the candles on the table, and the orange light from the yard cast jagged shapes across
the walls and over our half-eaten supper. Our white napkins lay crumpled on the floor like downed birds.
A crash shattered the silence. Addie leapt up with a gasp.
“It came from the parlor, I think,” I whispered.
Before we could move, another crash sounded.
“Papa!” Addie cried.
“Stay where you are,” he called from the porch. Then, to the crowd: “How dare you. Show yourselves!”
Several men stepped forward into the torchlight, their faces lit with a mix of excitement and unease.
“Girls? David? What is happening?” Mama’s panicked voice carried from her bedroom down the hall.
“It’s an abomination, Yates!” one man yelled.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You’ll let your daughters lie down with Chinamen?”
“Intermarriage is illegal! You’re breaking the law!”
They weren’t wrong, exactly. The census listed Eng and Chang as white, but not everyone was willing to accept that fiction.
Another voice, emboldened by the crowd, rang louder than the rest. “Are you not a man? Discipline your daughters!”
Papa’s voice was calm but wary. “Come now. Let’s be reasonable, gentlemen.”
The acrid scent of pitch torches hung heavy in the air as the fractious murmuring grew louder. As my eyes adjusted, I could
see the mob for what it was: a motley group—mostly overseers and field guards from neighboring plantations, hired for their
ruthlessness. They were men who liked to stir up trouble, with few qualms about meting out punishment to people they thought
deserved it.
One thrown bottle, one tossed torch, and our home could be reduced to ashes.
Papa stood silhouetted against the orange glow, shoulders squared.
“It’s a disgrace to the community,” someone shouted.
“Bestiality!”
A murmur rippled through the crowd—agreement, revulsion, something close to fear.
“If you don’t break up this unholy alliance—”
“We’ll burn your crops if we have to!”
Papa raised his hands, palms outward, as if pushing back the crowd. “That’s enough.”
A man stepped forward, sneering. “I don’t know what kind of beliefs you hold, Yates, but the rest of us are God-fearing Christians.
We will not abide this obscenity.”
Though Papa rarely spoke openly about his faith, it was well known in these parts. “I am a Christian too.” His voice rose with rare emotion. “And I will not abide this disrespect. Not on my property.”
“You’re a Quaker,” someone scoffed.
In another time and place, it might have been the twins’ murky religious beliefs that drew the crowd’s ire. But few in Wilkes
County had ever heard of Buddhism, let alone understood it. Eng and Chang’s faith—or lack of it—was just another part of their
confounding strangeness.
“I will not forget who has shown up here tonight to chastise and insult me,” Papa said loudly. “I will not forget who slandered
my flesh and blood.”
The crowd drifted uneasily, muttering.
“Good night, gentlemen. And ladies.” With that, Papa stepped back into the house, shutting the door with a firm click. His
footsteps echoed down the hall as he made his way to Mama’s room.
From behind the curtain, I watched the crowd lingering near the barn, torches aloft. Without direction or unity, they gradually
began to disperse.
Addie looked at me, her face ashen in the dim light. Neither of us spoke. I stayed at the window, motionless, until the last
of them had gone and the yard was still.
They never returned. I can’t say why. Maybe they hadn’t expected Papa to stand his ground without flinching. Perhaps they
felt the sting of being seen—not as righteous defenders, but for what they were: gossips and scandalmongers, playing at power.
Or maybe they understood that the cost—to the community, to their own sense of order—was too high.
Still, the talk didn’t end. It sank underground, resurfacing in murmurs at the market, in sidelong glances and averted eyes
at Sunday service. It hung in the air like the pressure before a storm.