Chapter Twenty-Two
Within four years, we had six children among us: my Katie, Julia Ann, and Stephen; Adelaide’s Josie, Christopher, and Nancy.
Every corner was filled, every room brimming with noise and motion: babies crying in the night and waking other babies; toddlers
quarreling over toys, crawling up and down the stairs; shrieks and chatter ringing through the house from dawn till dusk.
Most couples learn to speak freely with each other, falling into a private shorthand that might sound brusque or indulgent
to anyone listening in. Eng and I never had that. Whatever I said, Chang could hear. There was no space for the kind of talk
other husbands and wives take for granted, the idle observations and whispered truths that deepen trust in a marriage.
Which isn’t to say I didn’t try. Late at night, when the house was still, I’d shift closer in bed, my lips to Eng’s ear, and
speak just above a breath. Was Chang asleep? It was impossible to know. But something had upset me—a cutting remark from Addie,
an offhand comment from Chang—and I wanted to talk it through.
Inevitably Eng would press a finger to his lips. Or whisper back, “We shouldn’t.”
So I learned to edit myself. To shrink the words before they left my mouth.
The bedrooms Addie and I had claimed as refuges were now filled with children.
We had no choice but to crowd into the twins’ bedroom every night, with no break from our husbands or each other.
Every habit, every preference, was a negotiation.
In summer, the heat of four bodies made the air stifling; in winter, we argued over whether to crack a window.
Addie rose before dawn, her bustling preparations waking us all.
There was no part of my life that didn’t touch hers. I often felt I couldn’t think a thought without her knowing it. Perhaps
it would’ve been the same for anyone—too many people, too little space. But between sisters with a history of hurts and half
healings, every word, every gesture felt charged.
And always, the old competitiveness lingered. Did her children walk first? Talk first? Did mine learn to read before hers?
We measured our words carefully, trying to sound light, generous. But the words we swallowed formed a language of their own,
full of reproach and unspoken griefs. I began to tense before entering a room, bracing for the smallest interaction. If I
had a thought, an impulse, a need, I measured it against hers and usually deferred. I was forever bumping up against her way
of doing things, the force of her will bending me toward her desires before I’d even had a chance to name my own.
I know Addie felt as trapped as I did. Maybe more so. Trapped by her own impossible standards, her belief in how a proper
household ought to run. She was constantly exasperated with me. She rearranged the furniture I’d positioned for the morning
light. Changed the table linens I’d chosen for Sunday dinner. Her mouth tightened when I left my needlework in a chair, when
I gave Katie a piece of cake before supper, when I forgot to record a purchase in the household ledger.
And caught between us were Grace and Phoebe, simply trying to care for the children, and for us, without offending one or
the other.
The two couples had different visions of what a family should look like, even as we tried to build one together.
There were constant skirmishes over how to raise the children, each one a test of how much we all could bend.
Addie and Chang believed in order and obedience; Eng and I could not resist a pleading voice.
They cared about neat collars and careful manners; we let our children run barefoot.
They saw insolence where we saw playfulness, rebellion where we saw curiosity.
To us, they were rigid, too quick to correct.
To them, we were inattentive and indulgent.
“Your children are as wild as March hares,” Addie said.
It was true. They tumbled into my lap with their stories, grimy fingers clutching treasures from the woods—a bird feather,
a perfectly round stone. Julia Ann chased the chickens around the yard while Katie sprawled under a tree, her dress streaked
with grass stains, hair ribbons unraveling as she traced letters in her primer with one finger. Stephen, still unsteady on
his feet, toddled after them barefoot, dragging a stick horse through the dirt, knees smudged, jam on his cheeks.
Some nights I’d lie awake, wondering how we could go on. But go on we did, day after day. We made compromises large and small.
We spoke in clipped, careful tones, our exaggerated politeness tinged with frustration. We avoided certain topics. We grew
adept at reading silences.
One evening, after another strained supper, I stole away to the porch and pulled out my embroidery hoop with its design of
Leah at the well. I’d completed a dozen pieces of needlework over the past few years—gifts, pillows, items for the church
bazaar—but this one was different; I kept picking it up and setting it down, drawn to it for reasons I didn’t fully understand.
In truth, I’d made little progress. The cloth was pocked by holes where I’d ripped out stitches. Threads trailed at the edges
where I’d abandoned one color to begin another. I’d barely finished Leah’s brown dress, and the well was forming slowly, brick
by brick, in pale blues and grays.
From the dining room, Chang’s voice drifted through the window, a low murmur, laced with Addie’s brittle replies.
My needle hovered in the air as I stared at the pattern.
Almost without thinking, I opened my thread box and chose a spool of emerald blue. Starting at the base of the well, I stitched
a thin line that rippled away from Leah’s feet and into the foreground. I added a layer of green, a line of black. The colors
spread across the linen, water flowing beneath Rachel’s gown. I wove in silver, each stitch catching the light. The story
was shifting under my hands. Leah now stood in the water. The colors—blue, green, black, silver—undulated all the way to the
border of the frame. I could almost feel the cool current rising around my own ankles, inviting me to follow where it led.
By the time I set down my needle, I knew what I had to do.
I went to the library, sat down at the little desk, and took out a sheet of paper. As I dipped the quill into a bottle of
ink, I hesitated, aware of the enormity of what I was about to propose.
In the dim lamplight I began:
Dear Eng,
I write what I cannot speak aloud, for fear of disturbing the fragile peace in this house. But there is no peace, only the
pretense of it.
Sharing a household only breeds resentment among us all. There are too many of us under one roof. I do not wish to be at odds
with my sister, nor should you be forced to endure the conflict between us. And the noise, the press of bodies, the never-ending
decisions make every one of us snappish and difficult.
My sister and I must live in separate houses, for all our sakes.
Not because we love each other less, but because, in these close quarters, we cannot love each other well.
I understand the complications this would bring, but one household must become two if we are to preserve our family’s happiness and harmony.
If we continue as we are, I fear the day will come when there is nothing left between us but bitterness.
I know this is a difficult request, the most difficult I have ever made of you. But I implore you to consider it, not only
for my sake, but for yours, for the children, for all of us. I truly believe it is the only way forward.
Your devoted wife,
Sallie
I patted the paper dry, folded it carefully, and slipped it into Eng’s jacket pocket when Chang wasn’t looking.
That night, as we lay in bed, with Chang asleep beside us, I felt Eng shift toward me. “I think you’re right,” he whispered.
He was silent for a long time. I could feel the tension in his body as he weighed what this would mean.
We both knew that dividing the household would be no small feat. The brothers would need to agree on how to split their belongings,
their property, their time with their wives. But I also knew that Eng shared my relief at the thought of living without constant
negotiation, without the daily tug of divided loyalties.
For the first time, I allowed myself to imagine running my own household with my husband, a place where I could move freely.
This could be a chance for all of us to get some peace.
One afternoon, a few months later, the brothers announced that they had purchased 650 acres along Stewart’s Creek in Surry County, five miles south of Mount Airy and forty miles from our farm.
The distance gave me pause. In their light cart behind a sturdy workhorse, the journey back and forth over rough roads would take six to eight hours.
But the land, they insisted, was worth it.
Most of the farmland around Wilkes and Surry Counties was hilly, wooded, or bound with red clay, but this parcel, tucked beside the creek, had deep, loamy soil and gentle slopes that drained well.
It was rare to find such productive acreage, and rarer still to find it at a price they could afford.
When the house was built, I would stay with my children on the Wilkes County property, and Addie would move to Surry County
with hers. Eng and Chang didn’t ask us what we preferred. They told us. But if I wasn’t given a choice, at least I had the
easier lot. The thought of staying felt like a mercy. Addie, meanwhile, seemed eager for the adventure and buoyed by the prospect
of a house she could arrange to her own liking, room by room, without consultation or compromise.
The brothers proposed a schedule modeled on our sleeping arrangements: they would spend three days at each household, alternating
at the end of every third day.
“There will be no exceptions,” Chang said, laying out the rules. “Not weather, not illness, nothing. During the three days
in the home of the host, the visiting brother will conduct no business and express no opinions. He is to be a silent partner.”
The decision to separate was like lancing a wound. Painful, but necessary.
In the final weeks under the same roof, knowing that change was coming somehow made living together both easier and harder
to bear. Easier because we could glimpse an end to the tension. Harder because now that we’d admitted we couldn’t live this
way, every small friction felt like proof.
The practical details of separating became a refuge.
It was simpler to count linens and tally household inventories than to face the enormity of what we were dismantling.
Chang wanted to take the copper pots and the new spinning wheel to Surry County.
Fine. Eng and I would keep the piano. Addie carefully folded her damask tablecloth, the one that was impossible to clean, and packed it away.
Each item we divided loosened another thread, pulling apart the knot that had bound us together.
“Let’s plan to have a family gathering once a month,” Addie said as she recorded items in her tidy ledger.
“That’s a good idea,” I said, though I was doubtful. Forty miles each way with young children in a buggy sounded miserable
under the best of conditions.
The day Addie and her children left, I found her sitting with her baby, Nancy, on the front step. It had been raining on and
off all morning. The sky was gray, leaden with clouds, and the air smelled like wet earth. Water pooled in the ruts on the
drive. In front of us, the wagons were being loaded. Children’s voices carried through the damp air.
“Remember how we used to play house in the barn?” she asked. “How simple life was back then?”
A memory surfaced: Addie braiding my hair, her fingers quick and gentle, telling me to hold still, hold still. “You were always
the mother,” I said, sitting down beside her. “I was the unruly child.”
She gave me a smile. “You still are, in a way.”
“And you’re still trying to keep everyone in line.” I moved closer, our shoulders touching like when we were girls. I ran
my fingers along the slats of the step, tracing the grain of the wood. We knew each other’s rough edges, but also every soft
place. “I’ll miss you,” I said.
She didn’t answer, but pressed her shoulder more firmly against mine. Finally, she said, “I know you’re close to Grace. I don’t mind if she stays with you.”
“If you need her, she can travel back and forth.”
Addie shrugged. “I’ll find myself another girl. I don’t think Grace likes me much.”
Now that she said it, I realized she was probably right. Grace was formal around her, careful in a way she wasn’t with me.
Certainly, Addie had never done anything to invite her closeness.
We sat in silence for a moment, listening to the clatter of a trunk being lifted into place.
“I’ve never lived without you,” she said. “It’s going to be very strange.”
When she rose to leave, we hugged goodbye. “No doubt I’ll be back for something in a few days,” she told me.
“No doubt,” I said.
But she wasn’t. It would be months before we saw each other again—at Easter, when both brothers wanted to celebrate the holidays
with their families.