Chang and Eng

by Darin Strauss

  One noontime, just after she’d said yes to my brother, Adelaide and Chang and I sat on a blanket she had spread over the dusty, leaf-strewn grass of the Yateses’ backyard. In that warm weather, the old longing to return to Siam was reawakened in me by the green treetops all around and the sunlight casting shadows and bestowing upon the leaves the bright transparency of emeralds.

  Mrs. Yates was watching us from the back porch, out of earshot. Her husband Mr. Yates was trying to avoid being seen as he peeked out the window at his daughter and her two exotic companions. Yates did not know of his daughter’s engagement; Mrs. Yates planned to hold off telling him for as long as possible. I couldn’t understand why Adelaide and Mrs. Yates did not share Mr. Yates’s opposition.

  You owe it to your brother to end it, I said to myself. For his own good.

  Expose to him the unlikeliness of his position, I told myself. It will spare both of you regret.

  Adelaide lay flat on the blanket, facing Chang, her chin on her folded forearms. She and my brother looked at one another, each like a child eyeing a wrapped Christmas present on December 24. They both wanted to speak but did not know each other well enough to converse without restraint.

  “You’all obviously have to stay right here,” Adelaide said finally, brushing the dust off. “And I mean every night till we’re married.” She leaned close to my brother and looked fiercely into his eyes. “You’ve got to show Daddy how good your intentions are. How you going to do that someplace else than here, Chang?”

  “Why?” I said.

  My two companions turned their attention to me in a hurry, as if I had happened out of the air; I had not said a word in hours. “Why are you talking marriage with us?” I asked. “Why, why?”

  My brother’s eyes flash with anger. “Because she—”

  “How?” I did not want to let my brother finish his thought. “Why would she love one such as you?” His face registered the effect of my words on his heart.

  As for Adelaide, she looked away, but she may have had to suppress a smile. I found myself thinking: Sarah wouldn’t do that, smile so nastily. I hadn’t talked much to Sarah, seeing her daily but not summoning the audacity to engage her in courtship, and I surprised myself now by feeling delighted at the thought of her, and the infrequency of her sincere smile.

  “Listen.” Adelaide pointed a finger at me and she took on the conspiratorial, radiant demeanor of a schemer. “You know something, Eng.” She was definitely smiling. “It’s obvious you should get to know my sister.”

  I am not sure how successful I was at keeping my mouth from falling open. She shrugged and I realized she was taunting me. Or was I wrong? I narrowed my eyes at her. “You think that I—”

  “That’s why I said it,” she smiled. Chang looked at Adelaide as if she had just solved the mystery of flight.

  She said, “It obviously don’t make sense for me and Chang to get married if there’s a single brother around.” Her voice was composed of whisper and giggle. “Two plus two is easier than two and one.”

  “Yes,” I said, still understanding very little of her motivations, but understanding that little sliver with rapture. I was a caricature of composure. “Perhaps I would like that very much.”

  From there, things proceeded quickly.

  A few hours later, my brother and I were sitting on the Yateses’ porch with Adelaide and Mrs. Yates. Chang and I were silent as mother and daughter considered how to arrange my future with Sarah. I sat mutely while these two near-strangers planned my life.

  Adelaide sat stiffly on the edge of the railing. Mrs. Yates set her face as rigid as a marionette’s.

  “It’s what that girl needs,” said Adelaide. “She just don’t know it.”

  “Ooh, I figured it,” said Mrs. Yates, smacking her knee. “A Christmas quilting.”

  I was too embarrassed even to ask what that was. Chang’s knuckles wandered across his lap, and his eyes were blank.

  Mrs. Yates was saying: “Get all of our people together—get the whole town together—and everyone will be in a good spirit....” The mother luxuriated in the excellence of her idea. “That girl won’t know what hit her.”

  Adelaide added: “Maybe it will finally shut the town up about her for once—”

  Both Adelaide and her mother froze after Adelaide stopped herself from saying more. I saw an unexplained bitterness in Mrs. Yates’s face suddenly, the way you can sometimes catch a quick glimpse of a trout rising in the current of a river.

  Chang did not catch the festering anger in Mrs. Yates’s eyes, and so he smiled at his would-be mother-in-law. She regained her cheer and smiled at him, too.

  How horrible my days and nights would become if, while my brother lived the married life, I ended up unsuccessful in my quest for Sarah’s heart! Whatever the outcome, I would survive, I told myself. Mekong Fishermen stay abreast of change.

  “What is a Christmas quilting?” I asked, interrupting the others.

  My question, however, would at least for now remain unanswered—no one told me a quilting was a get-together where a large group of women sewed while the men drank—because at that moment Mr. Yates stepped out onto the porch, putting a hasty end to this discussion. He looked at Adelaide, and then at Chang, and though he had been told nothing, he had to see the shipwreck of his family life. Holding his hat in his hands, Yates was smaller than he had been a few weeks before, and more pale. Unrest had caused that; grief had caused that.

  Though Christmas had come and gone, Mrs. Yates began to arrange a Christmas quilting. She would invite the entire town to spend the following Saturday, January 3, in her backyard. Though ostensibly a belated celebration of the holiday season and, according to Mrs. Yates, a way for Wilkesboro to demonstrate the meaning of Christmas to its famous double-boy visitors, the plan was actually designed to force Sarah to spend time with me. That quilting would mark my sole chance to win her affections, I thought. My charm had to be in top form if I wanted to get to her—did I even want to get to her? I felt great stress.

  On the porch one morning, we were sitting by ourselves when Sarah walked past us and into the inn. “Hello,” I said as she went by; I did not hear a response. After that a strange fatigue came on, and I wallowed in it. An hour or so later, she breezed out the door and past us again, on her way into town with her sister. “Hello, Mr. Eng,” she said this time, after I’d said hello first. And just like that I got sucked into some dead place hidden under the sparks and minerals of my own heart and mind. I had no pride anymore, no brain. Just a longing not to be left alone while Chang had happiness.

  The night before the quilting saw a raging fight.

  Adelaide and Mrs. Yates were off with Mr. Yates in one of the upstairs bedrooms while Chang, Sarah, Jefferson, and I sat in the living room. The noise of an argument crashed down on the air, with a clamor as distinct and as unhappy as a cannon’s roar.

  “I will not have it!” screamed Mr. Yates. “I don’t care what people say about us, this is not the way! That’s no reason. No reason to—”

  At our side, Sarah looked at me. Her face was flushed with embarrassment. “Nice weather for Christmastime, ain’t it?” I was not prepared for Sarah’s words, and so did not hear this first attempt of hers to draw our attention from the sounds of the argument in the other room. “I can’t remember the last time we had such nice weather in January,” she repeated, louder this time.

  “Yes,” I said, ready to play this game. “The—the temperature is splendid.” I smiled at her, and she managed to return the favor. Her lower lip was trembling, though.

  “Pa, you obviously don’t understand what it’s like!” came Adelaide’s voice skittering through the wall. “I been punished for ten years,” she was screaming, “and it weren’t even my mistake!”

  “Hush!” said Mrs. Yates. “Hush!”

  “I’m a woman grown now, Pa, and have been!”

  “Well, Sarah ...” I cleared my throat, forced a smile. “Are you looking forward to the q
uilting?”

  “I don’t care who hears me!” Adelaide’s voice resonated through the wall.

  “Oh,” Sarah answered me, though her eyes grew dim as she concentrated on both speaking and listening. “Are you coming to our quilting, Mr. Eng?”

  “Mind your tongue, Adelaide Yates, I’m still your father! You liked to have said too much already!”

  “I am looking forward to it,” I told Sarah. I patted together my palms, which were sweaty. “The quilting, I mean.”

  Across the room, Jefferson broke his silence with a moan. “I hate a quarrel.” He sat in his mother’s custom-built double-wide chair, staring at his hands intertwined in his lap.

  “Yes,” said Chang. “Not good.”

  Sarah began to cry. A tear trod romantically down her cheek. The image of this weeping girl ranked with the true purities of this life, a flower wanting to open, a day with your family by the riverside when you are five years old, the lavarous sunset reflected by a hundred gleaming temple spires on your King’s royal grounds, all happy memories. But she did not look at me.

  Still, the morning of the quilting came in due time. Just as I never found highborn personages, sold-out performances, or a new city on the horizon quite as grand as I had been hoping, in my eyes the actual affair paled before the grandeur my imagination had bestowed on it.

  Still, my disappointment was short-lived.

  On what was a sunny morning hour, Jefferson and Mr. Yates helped Mrs. Yates out into the backyard, where they positioned her on her unseemly double-wide seat. Next to Mrs. Yates, the father and son set up a picnic table, upon which they put a big green Christmas quilt and numerous sewing needles. Beside that, a second picnic table enticed the guests—and some backyard flies—with a pig, a fatted calf, a large holiday turkey, cranberry sauce, and gravy.

  Adelaide, in a bright yellow dress, talked to Chang and me. “Daddy will come around to our way of thinking.” She was gleeful.

  Sarah, on the other hand, was nowhere to be found, and so I put to my love’s sister a few artfully veiled questions in regard to Sarah’s whereabouts.

  Adelaide, though she wore a broad-brimmed yellow hat to match her dress, put a hand over her eyes to shade out the sun. “Look at this one,” she said to my brother, “he’s nervous as a wet kitty.” She shook her head at me, the kindest sort of mocking. “Don’t you worry about a thing, Eng. I put a heap of thought into this. Chang and I can’t have a wedding with just him and not you.”

  With the delight her words brought me, I began to feel an affection for Adelaide that was in some ways greater than what I felt for Sarah—at any rate different. Adelaide was bringing the object of my desire to me, whereas Sarah herself was still indifferent to my charms. Besides, it was Sarah that I desired, and who therefore made me nervous every time I saw her. Adelaide was a sympathetic collaborator. I tipped my head at my brother’s fiancée to show my thanks.

  “May I ask a question, Adelaide?” I cleared my throat. “Is there something that—happened to your sister? Something people are—reluctant to talk about?”

  Adelaide’s eyes got dismissive and hot. “I believe it’s obvious to everyone you never will screw up the courage to talk to her,” she snorted. “That is, on the outside chance that she decides to take a shine to you’all.” Her lips curved into a smile.

  Then Adelaide, an inch or so shorter than Chang and two shorter than me, looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was keeping an eye on us. Furtively, she brought her hand very near my brother’s coat sleeve, whereupon he grinned like he’d won a sweepstakes and positioned his arm so the cotton of his jacket touched her fingers slightly.

  Guests arrived, a few at a time. First a small number of women made their appearance, and then some tall ruddy North Carolina men joined the quilting, each one the owner of a broad set of arms and thick sideburns. The women’s table soon clattered with the sound of busy needles, and before long tobacco smoke streamed in ribbons from each man’s mouth to blanch the warm air.

  Next to the quilting table, perched on top of her home-crafted seat, Mrs. Yates, with Jefferson quiet at her side, beamed delight. About ten yards from the guests, on the back porch, Adelaide still attended to my brother and me—Chang and I being too nervous to handle the social pressures of party conversation. “Try not to look fidgety, you’all,” she said. She pulled at her hair and chewed her lip, and kept looking back and forth at us and at the party. “Adelaide Yates, Adelaide Yates,” she murmured to herself, “Adelaide Yates, Adelaide—”

  The partygoers did not talk much, opting instead to stare at Chang and me. Milling about with the men was the girls’ “cousin” Will, the red-headed cur who had given us trouble in town a few weeks earlier. He was not related to the Yates family at all, I had found out, and he worked hounding escaped slaves as far as Canada, branding the ones he apprehended on the spot. He was shaking his head as he wondered at us.

  Meanwhile, Sarah still had not made her appearance. Neither had Mr. Yates made his. I began to give up hope, but then the lady I may have loved strolled from the house onto the back porch accompanied by a tall and curvaceous girl with cross-eyes. Sarah nodded at me as she passed by on her way to the quilting table, a meager salutation.

  Adelaide glared. “Go on, boy,” she whispered to me, motioning in Sarah’s direction.

  Chang and I headed for the quilting table.

  Before we got there, a man walked over to my brother and me, stepping between us and our destination. He was large and drunk, and his long frock coat hung off his round shoulders. He gripped a sewing needle that had been on the quilting table, and he stood a few steps ahead of us.

  In a loud voice he said, “You those Siamese twins?”

  I said nothing. My brother, too, held silent.

  “Chang and Kang?” The man went on. He was also turning his head to look at his friends behind him. He tightened his grip around the needle. “From Siam? Tweedle-one and Tweedle-two.”

  My brother and I tensed.

  “You really attached?” Even as he accosted Chang and me directly, the man spoke in a very loud voice, as if he meant to embarrass us before the whole gathering.

  “Right again,” I said. “Sir.”

  The entire crowd’s eyes were on us. We held our hands against the sun to see our adversary. At the same time, Mr. Yates emerged from the house. He too said nothing as he watched from a distance.

  Adelaide came over to stand by Chang. The three of us faced this man, who seemed to grow taller with every wordless second he faced us.

  From the picnic table, Will, the cousin, barked, “See that?” He rose from his seat. “See that girl just make her way towards them attached Chinamen?” He headed for us until he was shoulder-to-shoulder with the man holding the needle.

  “C‘mon, Sarah, ain’t you planning to join this little freak show? Or are Chinamen too white for you?” Will said, searching my eyes the whole time, contriving to look rugged. He put a thought to everybody: “Whatever it is they’all are doing, I wouldn’t want to watch it.”

  At this Chang and I bounded right up into the faces of these rivals—after one skip we stood an inch from them at most; my nose was nearly touching Will’s mouth. Thuggish as they were, the men must have been astonished at the quickness of our united movement.

  “Keep talking,” Chang whispered, “and my brother am have to knock you down.”

  From out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Yates—and though I had no way of knowing if he was planning to say or do anything, I raised my hand in his direction, indicating that he should stay put and be silent. The guests rustled as they moved closer to watch.

  “Renounce what you said about Sarah Yates,” I said in a very soft voice. Slowly I reached across my chest and put my hand on the wrist of the drunkard who wore the long frock coat, and I brought my fingers casually over his sewing needle. His hand did not flinch at my touch, nor did he oppose my hold as I drew the needle from his fingers. He took a step backward, away from us, and
then he took another.

  I held the needle now, and I raised it to Will’s chin, where I rested it delicately, with the point just under his lip. He stiffened.

  “Just what do you expect you’re doing?” His voice was all at once high-pitched and girl-like.

  “Do you understand my words?” I asked. The man smelled of dirty clothes. If he makes a move, I thought, I will lance his face. “Never, never again will you speak ill of Sarah Yates.” I raised my outside hand, the one not holding the needle, and—to my eternal surprise—Sarah walked over to me to stand beside us.

  Will slid his eyes to her and back to me. I put a bit more pressure on the needle against his skin. He swallowed.

  I was very conscious of Sarah, who had set her lips; she looked to be having trouble holding back from speaking. She placed her fingers around my hand, the one that held the needle, and she lowered it away from Will—her grasp was harder than feminine, but this woman’s touch was pleasant. She did not know what to do next, I could see that.

  Not saying a word, leaving the company at the quilting openmouthed, Sarah took Chang and me and led us away from the party. After a few feet, Will cried at her back, “You finally caught something else in your trap!” But it did not matter; she was leading us into the woods toward the Yadkin River. I saw a last face before we entered the forest: it belonged to Mr. Yates, and he was frowning.

  Sarah did not quit shaking and muttering as we walked. Chang and I shrugged our shoulders, not knowing in what direction we were being led, but I was too happy to care.

  Maybe I will have what you have, brother, I said to myself.

  Does my twin feel the pounding of my heart? I asked myself. The way I felt his when he asked for Adelaide’s hand?

  Sarah ushered us up a steep, thicketed hillside, to the crest where the Yadkin first bubbled into the world, its clear water fretting down a series of bouldered steps. Abreast of the brook, within a gathering of high trees, three colorless boulders surrounded a patch of flat, soft green about the size and shape of a bed. When we reached this clearing, which was striped with bright spokes of sunlight, Sarah sat herself down on the grass, her back against one of the jagged dusky rocks. Not knowing what else to do, Chang and I sat next to her. My brother patted me subtly on the back, and I loved him without bitterness. We had lived so much together, in our three decades and more.