Chapter Fourteen
After washing my face at the basin, brushing my hair and pinning it into a bun, and slipping on a yellow calico dress, I opened
the door to the hall. Nobody else seemed to be awake. The other bedroom doors were closed.
I crept down the stairs and drifted through the rooms, opening drawers and cupboards, peering into closets. Everything was
new.
In a closet in the hall, I found neatly arranged boxes of candles and soap, tonics and tinctures: camphor, quinine, alcohol,
soda, alum, cream of tartar, calomel, nitrate of potash. In the dining room, a glass-fronted cabinet displayed dishes and
linens. Silver and pewter serving pieces gleamed on the buffet. Cabinets held bolts of cloth, crockery from Germany, tobacco
from Virginia, West Indian rum. Ruby-colored goblets, wineglasses, water tumblers, decanters, and finger bowls—all carefully
chosen, all pristine.
The brothers had, it seemed, thought of everything.
I looked around the dining room at the peach-painted walls, the gleaming floor, the fireplace with its mahogany mantelpiece,
the large table surrounded by twelve walnut cane-bottomed chairs. Four places had already been set at the table for breakfast,
a mix of patterned china and plain earthenware. At one end, two settings were arranged close together in front of a double
chair. Bowls of stewed peaches and figs sat beside a platter of sliced ham in the center of the table, the meat pink in the
morning light.
The sight of food reminded me how hungry I was. But who—
Grace entered, balancing a tray with a butter dish, pots of jam, and a pitcher of milk. “You’re up early, Miss Sarah.”
“My goodness! When did you arrive?” I asked.
“This morning. Before dawn.”
“Oh, well, we would’ve managed just fine if—”
“I just go where I’m told.” She set the tray on the table and began laying out the dishes.
I hesitated, unsure of what to say. “Grace, I don’t know if . . .”
She paused, straightening to face me, her chin raised. “You don’t know if what.”
“I don’t know if . . . I’m not sure I’m going to stay.”
She shook her head. “Well.”
“To be honest . . .” I could see the wariness in her eyes. She wasn’t sure she wanted me to be honest. But the words burned
in my throat. “I couldn’t do it, Grace,” I blurted. “I couldn’t go through with it.”
“You mean . . .”
I nodded.
“Well,” she said again. She began placing pewter flatware beside each plate, forks and knives and spoons, the metal clicking
against the table. “It is a lot to abide.”
“It is.”
“But . . . you know . . . I reckon a body can get used to anything.” She waved her hand, as though to clear the air. “I’ll
call you when breakfast is ready. You go on now and do what you need to do.”
There was nothing I needed to do, but I got the message.
Standing at the bookcase in the study, I ran my hand along the shelves and came across a leather-bound collection of books by Jane Austen.
When I pulled one off the shelf—Mansfield Park—and opened it, the spine cracked, and the pages resisted.
Their edges remained uncut, still sealed from the bindery. No one
had yet taken a paper knife to them.
I thought of what Eng had said about reading novels. Maybe this was a place to start.
Just then, I heard a noise in the hall. The brothers were making their way down the stairs, their gait nimble but irregular,
not unlike that of a large dog.
“Ah,” Chang said from the doorway. “You’re up. Good morning, Sarah.”
My formal name. His voice laced with grievance.
I put the book back on the shelf. “Good morning.” I forced a smile.
Eng wouldn’t look me in the eye.
The brothers were dressed neatly in brown trousers and white cotton shirts, their hair combed and styled.
“Grace arrived. Breakfast is probably ready,” I said.
Neither replied.
I followed them out of the study and into the foyer.
Addie appeared on the staircase. She wore a pink dress that accentuated the blush on her cheeks. “Hello! How did everyone
sleep?”
So she didn’t know. For some reason, I’d assumed she would.
“Quite well!” I said, forcing a note of cheerfulness.
When she reached the bottom stair, Chang looped his arm through hers and stage-whispered, “I’d sleep all day if it made the
night come sooner.”
“You,” she said with a coy smile.
“You,” Chang echoed, low and teasing.
Eng, frowning, turned toward the dining room, pulling his brother along with him without a word.
At breakfast, Chang offered Addie toast, coffee, berries, like a mother bird feeding her chick.
Eng was mostly silent. He answered Addie’s bright questions with monosyllabic grunts, not even looking up from his plate.
She raised an eyebrow at me. What’s wrong with him?
I gave a half shrug. No idea.
She made a face. Don’t lie. You know.
Though hungry, I could barely eat. I took a sip of coffee and set my cup back on its saucer, the clink of porcelain on porcelain
too loud in the quiet room. Just the sight of Eng buttering his bread across the table from me made my stomach turn.
“What a lovely morning,” Addie said, stretching her arms above her head in a slow, theatrical arc. “Sallie, let’s take a walk.
I want to see the garden.”
“What in the world happened?” she asked as soon as we were alone. We were strolling along a red clay path that led to a small
garden neatly contained inside a short white picket fence.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Her voice sharpened. “You mean . . . nothing?”
I gave a wordless nod. We wandered along tidy rows of lettuce, spinach, and other hardy greens interspersed with spring onions
and radishes. Unruly vines clung to wooden stakes, their buds promising tomatoes, peppers, and squash.
“Why not?” she asked.
“It just felt . . . wrong.”
She let out a long sigh. “Oh, Sallie. That will have to change.”
I shook my head.
“Honestly,” she said, “I didn’t know how it would happen, or what I would feel. I didn’t know you could just . . . shut out
the world and get on with it. But you can. I mean, I did.”
“I don’t think I can do that, Addie.”
“Of course you can,” she said briskly. “You just have to . . . trick yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well . . . this is going to sound silly, but I pretended I was underwater. Swimming. And no one could hear me or see me.”
“I heard you.”
She laughed. “It was my wifely duty, Sallie.” She seemed unembarrassed, almost proud. “And it’s yours too. You did not have
to agree to marry Eng, but you did. You knew what it would entail.”
“I didn’t. I couldn’t have imagined it.”
“Well, that’s your own fault.” She said it lightly, but her words had a sting.
I wanted to sting her back. “You’re right,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. “I was foolish to allow myself to be
swayed by you. I knew it was wrong.”
She made a face. “It’s not wrong.”
“You forced me into this.” My words felt bitter in my mouth. “You used me.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“You might at least own up to it, Addie.”
“You had no options,” she snapped. “I was doing you a favor.”
“You were baiting a trap.”
“Don’t ruin this, Sallie,” she said, her voice tight with anger. “You have no right.”
I turned to face her. “I knew I didn’t want this. And now I’m trapped here. With you. And—and . . .” I waved my hand toward
the house. “Grace doesn’t want to be here either.”
“Grace. Please. She said that? How insolent.”
“She didn’t have to say it. It’s obvious.”
“Well, that is neither here nor there.” She flicked her hand dismissively. “And anyway, it’s too late for second thoughts. You need to pull yourself together. We are married women. We live here now. This is our home.”
We trudged back along the path in tense silence. As we neared the house, Addie said, “You might at least try to be pleasant.
For pity’s sake.”
The brothers were sitting in the study at a round table littered with newspapers. They both looked up when we came in.
Chang set down the paper he was reading and folded it in half. “How was your walk?”
“The kitchen garden is coming along,” Addie said.
“The orchard too,” he said with a note of pride. “Apples and peaches. Even some plum trees.”
“How nice.” She gave him a bright smile. “I think I’ll get my needlework and join you.”
Eng rolled a peanut casing between his thumb and forefinger until it split with a crack.
“I have a headache,” I said. “I think I’ll go upstairs for a short rest. If you don’t mind.”
Chang pursed his lips.
Eng’s gaze dropped to the newspaper in front of him.
“Do as you please,” Chang said.
Inside the bedroom, I stood at the window, trying to catch my breath. A breeze lifted the curtains, carrying the scent of
clover and sun-warmed grass. Swallows darted and swooped through the sky.
How nice it would be, I thought, to swoop out that window like a swallow.
I turned and picked up a half-finished piece of needlework I’d tucked into my bag, the wooden frame taut with ivory linen. The pattern was one I’d begun weeks earlier: a wreath of rosebuds encircling two bluebirds on a flowering branch, bordered with scalloped hearts.
I studied the embroidery—the French knots at the center of each pink rosebud, the neat satin stitches shaping the birds’ wings.
It was the kind of ornamental work a young lady was expected to master, proof of patience and an agreeable temperament.
I didn’t feel particularly agreeable just now.
Still, the thought of going downstairs to fetch a book filled me with dread, and I had nothing else to occupy my time.
I pulled the only chair in the room closer to the window and settled into it. Rummaging through my wooden box of silks, I
chose a light blue thread and began to fill in one of the birds with small, precise stitches. When it was done, I moved on
to the rosebuds, then the leaves.
Thread through linen, color into shape; in this way, the afternoon passed.
When the light dimmed, I trimmed and lit the oil lamp on the side table and sat back in my chair. I felt a flutter in my chest—not
fear, exactly, but the sense of standing at the edge of something.
I looked down at the pattern. The birds and hearts I’d so carefully stitched now struck me as insipid, girlish, sentimental.
I took a small pair of silver scissors from my sewing box and pressed the blades against the rosebud I’d just finished. With
a quick snip, the threads parted. I tugged at the pale pink until it loosened, leaving a ragged trace. Then I turned to the
rest, clipping and pulling until the wreath of buds collapsed, the hearts dissolved, and the bluebirds were reduced to fragments
of thread. Soon all that remained was a scatter of colored snippets in my lap and the faint ghost of the pattern pressed into
the linen.
I sat holding the hoop, listening to the chirp of crickets through the open window. What I needed to do, I realized in the stillness, was speak to Eng alone.
But that, of course, was impossible.
The tinkle of a bell drifted up from downstairs, signaling that it was time for supper.
I couldn’t avoid them any longer. I tucked the hoop back in my bag and brushed the threads into a small pile.
In the dining room, Chang and Addie bore the weight of conversational niceties. My exchanges with Eng were terse and bland,
freighted with the words we wouldn’t speak. I hardly tasted the roast chicken.
When supper was over, I excused myself from the table and went back up the stairs to my room. Once inside, I shut the door
and leaned against it in the semidarkness and cried.
This wasn’t marriage. I couldn’t live this way.
Could I?