Chapter Thirty
Since we moved to Surry County, Eng and Chang had been acquiring more land and more slaves, eager to expand their holdings.
Now, several years in, the plantation had nearly doubled in size. I tried to push aside my unease, but when Aunt Joan came
for an unexpected visit, her keen eyes missed nothing, and her small comments landed like pins, pricking at places I’d spent
years learning to ignore. It was one thing to carry doubt through the busyness of daily life; it was another to see it reflected
back, clear and unflinching, by someone with no reason to soften the truth.
It was late October 1856, the air carrying the last of summer’s humidity, when her battered buggy appeared at the bottom of
the drive. Grace and I were on the porch with my one-year-old, William, and her son Isaac. Eng and Chang were at Addie’s and
would be back later in the afternoon. The older children were at the schoolhouse with Jeb.
Joan’s chestnut mare clomped to a stop in the drive.
I stood in surprise. “Aunt Joan!” It had been years since I’d seen her.
“Hello, Sallie.” She grinned. Her face was wind chapped, with new creases at the corners of her eyes. Her hair, streaked with
gray, was pulled into a knot at the nape of her neck. She wore a man’s shirt and trousers and a broad-brimmed straw hat.
She turned to Grace. “And you are—?”
“Grace.” She wiped her hands on her apron and stood. “I can get someone to take your horse.”
“That’s all right. I’ll handle Betty. She’s not used to other people.”
“Would you like some lemonade?” Grace asked.
“Sure, if it’s not too much trouble.”
After Grace went off to the kitchen house, Isaac trailing behind, Joan said, “I thought I’d see how you’re getting on. Six
children now, I hear?”
“That’s right. How did you know?”
“I went to your sister’s place first.” Shaking her head, she said, “You girls have been busy.”
“We have.” I smiled, though I felt the weight of her judgment. “How did you know we moved to Surry County?”
“Word travels, same as it always has. A trader passing through from Mount Airy told me the Siamese Twins had set up their
commune in these parts—growing their ‘empire,’ he called it.” She tilted her head toward me. “I’m sorry about your baby girl.
Adelaide told me.”
“Rosalyn. It was a while ago now.”
Still, the name ached in my throat.
I watched Joan untie the horse’s traces with sure hands, looping the leather neatly over the shafts before moving to the bridle.
She slipped the bit from Betty’s mouth and slung the reins over the hitching post near the drive. Betty was placid under her
touch, ears flicking at flies, her brown coat shining in the midday sun. She bobbed her head, exhaling a deep, snuffling breath.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” I said. “If you’d let me know in advance—”
“I knew if I thought too much about it, I’d figure out a reason not to come. So I hitched Betty to the buggy, and here I am.”
For the next while, I showed her around the house, the kitchen building, the herb and vegetable gardens, the orchard. She
took in the new fields, the half-finished barn. “Ambitious” was all she said.
Patrick trailed after us for a bit before losing interest and running back toward the porch, where Grace sat shelling peas
with William beside her on the blanket.
“Those look pretty full,” Joan remarked as we passed the cabins.
Heat crept up my neck. “That decision wasn’t mine to make.”
“No, I expect not.” She took in the children sitting on the steps, tracing patterns in the dirt. A little one with a runny
nose chewed on a strip of bark. Another, no older than four, watched us warily from the shade, clutching a rag doll. “A lot
of young ones.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t see any adults.”
I pressed my lips together, swallowing the urge to make excuses. “There are some. Mostly in the fields.”
“Who takes care of these children?”
“Well, they kind of take care of each other. Grace helps.”
She gave me a skeptical look. “They don’t have mothers?”
“Some do.”
We ate a meal on the porch—slices of ham and Grace’s biscuits, applesauce and cider. Then we walked down to the pond. I removed
my shoes and stockings, and she took off her shoes and socks, and we waded in. Joan told me about her robust egg-laying chickens
and the new lean-to she’d built. She said she had to get back tonight, though it was clear there was no real reason.
I knew her well enough not to urge her to stay.
When Eng and Chang arrived a few hours later, we were back on the porch. After a few minutes of pleasantries, Joan asked abruptly,
“So how many slaves do you two own?”
Chang glanced at Eng. “We have separate farms.”
“I mean altogether.”
I didn’t even know the answer to that question.
“A few dozen, give or take,” Chang said.
“That’s a lot.”
“What is it to you?” Eng’s voice was cool.
Joan took a slow sip of cider, then tipped her cup toward the cabins. “Times are changing, you know, gentlemen.”
“What are you talking about?” he said brusquely.
Joan eyed him. “The tide is turning. And when it does, it’ll take everything with it.”
“What do you know about tides, Joan?”
Lifting a shoulder in a shrug, she said, “Enough to know you can’t stop them from rolling in.” She set her cup on the porch
rail. “It strikes me as a grand irony that you two are slaveowners. Weren’t you once slaves yourselves?”
“Not slaves. No,” Chang said.
“Your mother sold you to a merchant, didn’t she? And you bought your way out? That’s what the papers said.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Because it wasn’t chattel slavery?”
Eng didn’t hide his annoyance. “The papers exaggerate.”
“Hierarchies exist,” Chang said. “We did not invent the system.”
Joan squinted toward the cabins. “You’ve got children out there with no one to put them to bed at night. Do you ever imagine
your own little ones fending for themselves like that?”
A heavy silence settled over the porch. Chang shifted in the chair. Eng’s fingers drummed against the armrest.
“ ’Course not,” Joan went on, her voice mild. “Children need their mothers. Unless they’re somebody else’s, I guess.”
Abruptly, Eng stood, pulling Chang up with him. “That’s enough. We will not be lectured to by the family outcast. I only regret
that you are attempting to taint my wife’s views.”
With a sigh, Joan got out of her chair. “Well, I would like to thank your tainted wife for her hospitality. Clearly, I have
overstayed my welcome.”
Joan and I walked back to her buggy, the brothers watching us from the porch.
After clipping Betty in, Joan climbed up and took the reins.
“I understand they want to fit in down here, Sallie,” she said.
“But no matter how many acres they own, or how many slaves they buy, their righteous and respectable neighbors will never see them as equals.” Settling into her seat, she added, “Freedom’s a funny thing.
Most people only want it for themselves. ”
Joan’s words lodged under my skin like a splinter, catching at odd moments. When I passed the fields and saw the overseer,
Tillman, on his horse, whip sinuous as a black snake in his hand, watching the slaves toil, backs bent against the sun. When
I heard the wails of children in the cabins or saw them wandering barefoot in the dirt, left to fend for themselves. When
I watched Grace brush off her own children, telling them to leave her be while she tended to mine.
I had borne seven children, and yet my hands had never felt the full weight of raising them. The copper bell at my elbow could
summon help at any hour. While I sat on the porch, sipping lemonade and watching the children run barefoot through the grass,
Grace kneaded dough, stirred grits, scrubbed the floors until they gleamed. I played piano with my daughters, embroidered
flowers on their dresses, gave them little baskets to help me gather herbs from the garden. I taught them lessons at school.
But Grace was the one who picked up after them. Who made poultices from willow bark when they were feverish, cooled their
damp foreheads, and cleaned their sickbeds.
I turned my mind from what I could not reconcile. I assured myself that a new blanket here, an extra ration there, made Grace
feel appreciated. I told myself that our arrangement was the natural order of things, as Mama had taught me, as her mother
had taught her, as most of the white women in the farmhouses around us believed.
There are sins of action and sins of inaction. I cannot forgive myself for the times I saw the wrong and turned away.
I was still turning over Joan’s words when, the following week, I carried a stack of dishes from the dining room to the kitchen
house. I set them on the table and paused. Crumbs were scattered across the usually spotless surface; a film of grease clung
to the cast-iron skillet. As I glanced around the room, something on the narrow staircase caught my eye. On the top step,
just before the door to Grace’s room, lay a single peanut shell, split and discarded.
I frowned. Grace didn’t eat peanuts.
Who would have—
A field hand, maybe? A child sneaking a handful from the pantry?
But no—no one else in the household ate them this way, cracking them open, letting the husks fall where they may.
Only Eng.
It didn’t make sense. What would Eng—or Chang—be doing here? The kitchen house wasn’t their domain. Grace’s room even less.
Had they come looking for someone? A message? A favor?
That didn’t make sense either.
Was Chang . . . or Eng . . . or . . .
My mind stumbled, caught on pieces of memory. Fragments of overheard conversations. Things I’d seen without knowing what they
meant.
Eng and Chang whispering together, stopping when they noticed me watching. A stiff formality in Eng’s manner when Grace was
nearby, as if forcing himself to behave normally. A house girl’s smirk, quickly hidden behind a lowered gaze.
Once, I’d come across Grace in the hallway outside the brothers’ room, her hands clenched in the fabric of her apron. She
startled when she saw me.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She hesitated a moment before saying, “Just checking on the bed linens.”
I nodded, but it was strange—it wasn’t laundry day.
The way Grace had stopped meeting my eye.
It was because of the demands of the children, I’d told myself. The chaos of our lives. The weight of the unending work.
My heart hammered in my rib cage.
Puzzle pieces that had seemed unconnected, random, now slipped into place.
Other memories surfaced. Grace’s first pregnancy. Her joyless announcement one morning as she kneaded bread.
“That’s wonderful news! Where does he live?” I’d asked, hoping she might confide in me.
Her hands stilled in the dough. “Nearby,” she said. “Down the way.”
The second child. The third. The same vague answers.
I accepted them without pressing, without really caring to know.
After Phoebe left, Grace had nursed my children. I’d been grateful—for her health, her fertility, her abundance of milk.
Did I wonder about the lighter shade of her children’s skin?
No. I told myself her partner must be fair-skinned. It wasn’t uncommon.
I’d explained away their features—the defined cheekbones, the shape of their eyes, their looser hair—as quirks of lineage.
My mind twisted, desperate for another explanation. Any other explanation.
But the truth was there on the top step.
Peanut shells. Unmistakable proof of the twins’ presence.
As damning as a bloody knife.
I found the brothers in the parlor, seated next to each other at the chessboard, the pieces mid-play.
Eng looked up at me first. Chang followed a beat later, his fingers resting lightly on his knight.
I thrust the peanut shells onto the chessboard, scattering them across the polished wood.
Eng looked down at them, then slowly back at me.
Chang brushed the husks onto the floor, slow and deliberate.
“These were in front of Grace’s door.” My voice sounded foreign. “What were you doing there?”
Neither of them answered. Chang poured himself a generous glass of whiskey.
“Eng,” I said.
A pause. Then: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie.”
A longer pause. Just enough to tell me I wasn’t wrong.
“When did this start?” My voice shook.
Chang took a long sip. “You’re being dramatic, Sallie.”
“Him too?” I asked Eng, nodding at his brother. “Both of you?”
“No,” Chang said flatly. He set down his glass and moved his knight.
I turned to Eng. “So just you, then.”
I thought he might flinch. Protest. Deny it. But he did none of these things. He just stared at me.
“How could you?” My knees felt weak. I gripped the edge of the table to steady myself. “You took a vow.”
“It has nothing to do with that.”
Chang lifted his queen into the air, weighing one move, then another.
I gripped Eng’s shoulder. “How can you say that?”
He rubbed the spot where my fingers had pressed into him, then shrugged me off. “She is my property, Sallie.”
“And she doesn’t say no, like you do,” Chang added.
My skin felt hot. I looked back and forth between them, searching their faces. “Because she can’t.”
Chang tilted his head. “She could say it.”
“You vile man.” I shoved Eng’s shoulder, hard. The chessboard tipped. A knight toppled to the floor. “How could you? How could
you—force yourself on her?”
He touched his temple, exhaling through his teeth. “Sallie.”
“How could you betray my trust?”
His fingers tightened on the chair arm.
“Grace’s children,” I said, my voice rising, my gaze locked on Eng. “They’re yours, aren’t they?”
“You’re overreacting.” A tired, placating tone. “Calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down.”
“Why are you asking questions you don’t want the answers to?” Chang said.
Eng looked down at the board. Nudged a bishop forward.
I turned and walked out.
In the study, I shut the double doors behind me and leaned against them. I couldn’t catch my breath.
I felt vertiginous, as if I were falling. I pressed a palm to my mouth to keep from being sick.
And then—another realization, more terrible than the last.
Beyond my fury, beyond the revulsion, the deep shame, the sympathy I felt for Grace, I now saw that it might be even worse
than I had imagined.
Grace would have had to contend with two men, as I did. But there were protocols for husbands and wives. Lines the brothers
wouldn’t cross. Outside of marriage, with someone who had no rights, those lines didn’t hold.
I did not want to imagine what Eng—or Eng and Chang—might have done to her.
I was heartbroken. But I was no longer surprised. Whatever else was true about my husband, this was too.