Chang and Eng

by Darin Strauss

  By the beginning of 1865, all of the Carolinas were demoralized, and the battle was taken to Wilkesboro. The North’s General William Tecumseh Sherman battered and burned his way north through South Carolina with an army of soldiers and “freedmen.” Even as authentic instruments of communication had broken down—the Columbia Whig Daily was burned with the rest of her city—gossip somehow flew about the South, and stories of a South Carolina aflame and demoralized panicked Wilkesboro. We knew the Union was coming, marching through the Salk swamps at a rate of a dozen miles a day, and we thought Sherman would destroy our town and home. He was reducing the South to ash.

  The war itself finally came to our home in the name of the Union general George Stoneman, whose directive was to raze the countryside of North Carolina, to destroy rail lines and disrupt Lee’s retreat. On March 29, 1865, Union soldiers came riding through the heart of town like a blue windstorm, turning everything upside down, yelling and scaring off the thirty-odd Confederate soldiers who happened to be stationed here. Stoneman’s Raiders prowled for goods in every business in town, they burned down the jail, and then they canvassed the countryside. In a timid attempt to gain goodwill, Negro and white inhabitants of Wilkesboro offered liquor to the first Union soldiers marching down Main Street, but that was exactly the wrong strategy, as the soldiers took one sip of that hateful “refreshment” and turned into madmen.

  On that March afternoon, I did not know yet that the Union army had stormed into my town. Though evening looked to be coming early in the form of dark rain clouds overhead, Chang and I and Thom and the other slaves were plowing vigorously in the field, trying to extract something from the tired red earth. The air was heavy and wet and silent and smelled of dung. Chang and I were fifty-three years old now. I had grown more than an inch and a half taller than my twin, and our constant leaning on one another had hooked his backbone more than mine. Suffering didn’t necessarily give one strength.

  First a yell, then the rumble of hoofbeats, and then without warning four Federals thundered onto our property and straight up to us, kicking up a whirl of dust. Their uniforms were divided, especially dark from their waists down to their feet, as if the men had just crossed a river that had been up to their belts. Their horses’ legs, too, were darker than the top half of their equine bodies.

  When these Unionists came to a halt before us, they sat unmoving atop their horses for a second, silently scratching their heads at my brother and me as if we were talking pigs. I could hear our slaves dropping their farm tools.

  “What’s this?” One of the soldiers raised his eyebrows at Chang and me. He had a bushy brown mustache that covered his whole mouth.

  “I don’t know,” said another. His horse let out a long breath.

  “I don’t know,” the first soldier repeated through his mustache. He pulled out his pistol and trained it on my brother and me. “What is this?” he repeated, softly to himself. Chang and I both tensed. Over our shoulders sat our house; in that house sat our children, our wives. That was the thought that sat on my mind: Adelaide, and how defenseless she was. And poor Katherine, too, who would be frightened to death if she were looking out the window at this. Be brave! I told myself. Be brave!

  Another soldier, a young pimpled boy with twitching lips, now aimed his rifle at us.

  The fourth Union conscript—the only one without his cap—screwed his eyes at my brother and me. “I seen these oddball Chinamen before,” he said. “In Boston, a long time ago when I was a kid. They’re—”

  The soldier with the pistol interrupted: “The Siamese Twins.” He did not move his firearm as he talked, and he closed one eye, as if to sharpshoot. “What town is this?” he asked.

  It took a while to realize he was addressing us. “You are on Trap Hill on the outskirts of Wilkesboro,” I said. Chang looked over our shoulders at the house, and then turned again to the men. He said, “Please—”

  “Ever heard of it, Abe?” this first soldier asked one of the others. “Wilkesboro?”

  “No.” The pimply conscript who held the rifle had a nasal voice. “Look—one half of it acts drunk. What we should do is—”

  “Don’t boss me, I know what to do,” the first soldier said, then focused on us again. “You’re a pretty strange secesh, aren’t you?” His face was covered with a heavy growth of whisker. “Maybe you want to crawl around for us.”

  Sweaty-palmed, I could feel our stomach turning in our chests.

  “I heard it can hover over the ground by mental powers and Chinese spell,” said the pimpled one under his breath. “Is that right, can you do that?”

  “That’s what this double-monster did in Boston, I’ve seen it.”

  “Maybe we do that for you,” Chang said furtively, his neck thin and creased, his hair thinner than mine. “If you leave after.”

  “I never saw these two before,” the one with the pistol still aimed at Chang and me said, “except could be in a dream.” Then, to us: “And what if you can’t hover by mental powers and Chinese spell?”

  We did not answer. The few slaves who had been inside the Negro shanty at the side of our property now walked out into the drab open air.

  With their hands visoring their eyes, the Negroes looked up at these less than majestic soldiers like they were gazing into the sun. No words were spoken. The two Unionists who were not pointing their guns at Chang and me rested their hands on their swords. In the silence between the soldiers and our slaves and us there ran a clear understanding. My slaves began cautiously to walk in the direction of the Union men. All of the slaves did this. They were not smiling or laughing, but slowly and soberly walking.

  The first soldier, the one with the pistol, glanced at our house over Chang’s and my shoulders, and then at his fellow soldiers, and then they all looked to where our wives and children were. The slaves gathered around the horses of the soldiers. And the soldiers, still facing forward and pointing their guns at us, started to back away, their horses stepping gracefully backward. A few of the slaves broke with their brethren to run into the shanty to grab things to take with them, keepsakes and the like, but most of them simply followed the soldiers off our land. Old faithful Thom, who had emerged from the shanty holding only a string of three wooden beads, rejoined the rest, walking off right before our eyes, without saying good-bye.

  After the war was lost, Lincoln’s coldhearted successors argued that the Confederacy be treated like conquered provinces. With prices in North Carolina so dear after the fall of the South—all told, the cost of many essential items had risen by thousands of percent—and as Confederate dollars became worthless overnight, Wilkes County was ravaged.

  Bandaged veterans hobbled about, many simply falling dead in the streets. Families who had lost their homes wandered the oncecheerful open spaces. Sunshine—and it seemed now always to be sunny—sunshine was now more depressing than rain, shining as it did on every misery. The pile of worthless Rebel bills I’d heaped in my stables mocked me every time we went to ride into town. My brother was as poor as I was. How had I ended up in this position—trying to make sense of my accounts, fretting over debts, struggling to support a family in which I often felt like a stranger? Meanwhile, I did not talk much anymore, not to anyone.

  Chang and Addie and Sarah and I had never stopped having children, even in the bad times, even when we were older than any other new parents in North Carolina. I think bringing forth babies had almost become a contest to Sarah and Adelaide. As if the number of people involved could make a lonely situation less so.

  Our house was too small for the number of children we now had, and our wives were disagreeably assuming all of Thom’s child-rearing duties. I was father to seven (Julia, Roslyn, and Georgianna had died from childhood illnesses), and Chang to nine (his Josephine had passed too). My teenage son Stephen and Chang’s Christopher lived in the old slave quarters, which we had refurbished with wood we’d chopped from our own land. In the house itself were two bedrooms for the children. Nine slept in beds
, the youngest in pallets on the floor.

  My poor little Katherine contracted pneumonary consumption and died almost as soon as the war ended, the very same week that my father-in-law died. At first, when the frail fifteen-year-old girl passed, my grief was mild, respectful, an even, vacant dullness I could manage. Then one cold day when Chang and I were riding our buggy into town, I saw a young dark-haired boy idling on a pony near a few roadside bluebirds; as we passed, he yelled “Gid’yap!” and kicked his horse, and easily outraced our buggy down the dusty lane. The group of birds took off and fluttered into the warm afternoon, and I was hit blindside by grief. I do not know why it struck at that moment, but I was stupefied by it, and had no one to share it with.

  Later that week, Chang and I sat with our wives on our porch eating buckwheat cakes, loitering sadly, the sound of my Stephen and Chang’s Christopher chopping wood echoing across our property, and I looked upon my land, my Stephen, even Adelaide, and I wondered how I could ever have derived joy from any of it.

  Stephen was a typical Southern boy on the edge of his teenage years—alternately confident and shy, foolish and taken with what he thought was his own wisdom. More than any of my other children, he looked Siamese—and because of that I believed that of all my remaining children, he would grow into a thinking person, as I was.

  After the boys had been chopping wood for a while, Stephen and Christopher came to join us on the porch. Stephen was tall, and, unlike I had been, barrel-chested for a lad. My nephew was portly and slow in the ways of the world.

  The boys were perspiring. And so, too, I noticed, was Adelaide.

  “You are done with the wood?” I asked my son, but not too harshly because he had been working hard at a chore I’d told him to do. And because I was thinking of Katherine and the sadness of fatherhood.

  “We was hoping for some buckwheat cakes, sir.” Stephen wiped his forehead. What was amazing is that we carried on, still sitting on the porch, still eating buckwheat cakes.

  “You were hoping,” I said.

  “Oh, have a cake,” said Sarah. “You know your father, Stephen.” She gave him a look I had trouble accounting for. She treated me with too much apathy, I thought, at least too much for people who have been married for as long as we had been, and given birth to as many children as we had.

  Sarah said, “Oh, Eng, don’t go troubling me or my stomach will go off.” She was almost laughing. And as Stephen took a cake, he laughed, too, though he was sure not to look at me.

  This was a moment, I knew, that had nothing to do with buckwheat cakes. My wife and surviving children had devised a private language of family comedy; they often chuckled about something I was not given the secret vocabulary to understand.

  At least, Adelaide—sitting there but not paying mind to any of us—did not take part. I still saw her not as my gray, ever-wider sister-in-law on the porch, but as the exquisite newlywed she was the first night her bedclothes came undone and her eyes said, I’m wicked. Memory paved smooth the wrinkles on her face; her eyes were still the wickedest on earth, worlds in which to escape the circumstance of what I was.

  But now she was yawning, and her face, as mine must have been, was a portrait of resignation and prospects lost.

  Meanwhile, my brother addressed his boy. “You have cake, too, Christopher.”

  “Thank you, Father.” Slow as he was, Chang’s son had Adelaide’s big eyes, which were happy now and fixed on his father—as his mother’s never were on me.

  “My son,” Chang said. “My good boy.”

  Christopher’s face was filled with gratitude and amity.

  “Enjoy your cake, too, Stephen,” I said to my son.

  Stephen, who had already begun delighting in his meal, turned to me as if I had given him permission to continue breathing. “Yes, Father,” he muttered. “Thank you.” And he shot a glance at his mother.

  This was the state of my relations with my family. Stephen was a talented violinist, and my Patrick liked books as much as I did—I spoke with them sporadically about these topics, but never anything else.

  You have failed as a father and a husband, I said to myself. You deserve your heartache.

  What have they given me? I said to myself. Any of them?

  What have you given them? I said to myself. Not the fullness of your heart, nor honesty.

  Do you truly love anyone? I said to myself. Even Adelaide—do you love her truly?

  The one responsibility in life, I answered, is to trust in oneself.

  By 1867 Chang and I were lucky enough to string together a modest tour of the districts around Richmond.

  After three weeks on display, we headed home on a Monday morning. Picturing the house I was returning to put me in a melancholic mood.

  Chang and I got home from Richmond late in the evening on a Tuesday. As we brought our buggy to a stop in our front yard, the ruined little moon did not bother to cast its dim light; all the lamps in our house were blown out, and everyone inside was sure to be asleep. That Sarah would be slumbering in bed when I arrived cheered me. I wondered if Adelaide was awake.

  Gathering my box of clothes and books from the carriage while Chang lifted out his own suitcase, I stepped down with my brother and walked into our home. Both Adelaide and Sarah were sitting by lamplight in the parlor. Adelaide was holding a little gray cat in her arms, an animal I had never seen before; Sarah was perched beside her sister and laughing happily on our overstuffed red divan. I was surprised not only because it was late for Sarah to be awake, but also because the sisters had not enjoyed each other’s company over the past few years. With no slaves anymore, Adelaide and Sarah had had to spend almost every hour side by side—in the kitchen, at the dinner table, cleaning together, tending house—and they had started bickering. That had led our children to begin fighting with one another.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Adelaide said as Chang and I entered the parlor side by side. “Look what’s here on my doorstep.” I believed she was referring to Chang and me, though she failed to look up from her pet.

  Sarah, however, did not ignore our entrance. More than two decades into this arrangement, her quick blue eyes still darted around nervously whenever I entered the room.

  Adelaide turned her broad frame to us at length. “Look at this little critter.” She was rubbing the cat’s furry little head and rising to her feet holding the animal. “I found her behind the slave house, isn’t she precious? Just what this lonely trap needs—and it does need something—listen to her purr when I scratch.” I had not had a conversation with her in months outside of those of my own imagining, had not stolen a hand-clasp with her in years. Her now-gray hair, the long spear of her nose, the slight trace of some unshared joke behind her smile—

  “—And it’s obvious she’s real affectionate,” Adelaide said of the cat. “See, you’all?”

  She held the little creature to her face and lovingly brought it to her sweet lips, and the animal could not have understood the pains I would have endured to trade places with it.

  “Dirty creature,” my brother said, and shook his head. He reached in his coat pocket for his flask, then took a sip of moonshine.

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Adelaide, where in heaven’s name do you find these quare things to bring them into our lives?” The exertion of speaking was souring her. She was, admittedly, the gentler one, the more compassionate mother, and after all this time I wasn’t sure she had a personality.

  “Do you see it’s beautiful, my kitty?” Adelaide held the cat outstretched. Her physical characteristics had shifted over time, from soft to hard, from blond to gray, and tight to slack to swollen. This doyenne of crochet and pregnancy was to me one woman and all women, because everything about her was variable, including her temperament. Now she walked in my direction with the animal.

  Addie put the cat’s little face toward my mouth, and I backed away instinctively. Chang growled as I recoiled into him. “Brother!” He shook his head. “Brother, you spill my drink! Get t
he dirty animal away,” he cried.

  Adelaide laughed, and drew the pet back to her own cheek. “I like nosing him, anyways,” she said. “I thought Eng would like him—I thought he was the one around here with a sense of things.” She nuzzled her face into the tiny beast’s fur, smiling with the bliss of innocent affection.

  She should not be doing this, I thought. Should not be exciting my imagination and awakening my heart in such a way in front of my brother and my wife. Did she even know she was taunting me? It was work to stop my hand from shaking on my brother’s shoulder.

  “I’m going to find a place for kitty,” Addie said, and immediately she was gone, leaving the room airless in her absence. I walked Chang over toward Sarah on the divan. We took a seat next to my wife, with my arm atop my brother’s shoulder.

  Sarah crinkled her forehead as if she were especially interested in the frayed cloth of the divan—she was picking at it. She breathed loudly out of her nose. Chang muttered, “Dirty animal,” and then he chuckled bitterly.

  Through the walls, the sound of Adelaide rooting around in the kitchen reached my ear.

  My wife beside me on the couch must not have been aware that she had a hint of lip rouge on her front teeth. “What is it, you’all?” she said. “What are you looking at?”

  Chang held in a belch as I took Sarah’s hand in mine abruptly. I had not held her hand in many years. And now I was stroking her palm with my thumb. It was as tender as the wood of a doorknob.

  Puzzled, Sarah was stricken with a kind of nervous slouch. She perspired now, and scratched her delicate wrist with her free hand.

  I drew her to us and kissed her lips.