Chang and Eng

by Darin Strauss

  At that, the sisters excused themselves and went out into the corridor, continuing to whisper to each other as they walked down the hall. I could make out Sarah saying something to Adelaide. “All right,” I thought she said, “what do you want me to do?”

  What was happening with the Yates sisters?

  Later on, after we’d blown out the bug-swirled lamp on the night table and climbed under the sheets and blankets, Chang and I could not sleep. We did not really fit on this bed, which was very narrow—the only width of bed that would have fit in this modest room. Though we huddled close, lying face-to-face, my back hung in the air, aching, unsupported by mattress.

  I caught Chang’s eye and, without a word, we rolled together in my direction to get up, stood, yawned, grabbed our pillows, and prepared to lie on the floor.

  His face an inch from mine as we knelt to the floorboards, Chang was breathing excitedly. “I like the one whose face is not as long,” said Chang. “Adelaide.”

  I narrowed my eyes to see if he was joking.

  How ridiculous to discuss which sister each of us “liked” better. Perhaps I “liked” Adelaide better as well, but I found it pointless even to consider. He liked her. How preposterous!

  Not that I bore women malice—I even secretly surrounded the ideal of romance with much veneration, much tenderness, though I could not fathom what love really meant. The ladies of my fantasies were not of that real, mysterious gender, but a mysterious confederacy flattered by the mellow light of imagination. Chief among them was Mother, encircled at a deferential remove by King Rama’s daughter Princess Xenga and heroines from romances I had read.

  Chang’s hand was next to mine, and he was absentmindedly tapping his fingers across his half of our band as we pulled the blanket over ourselves.

  I knew what he was thinking.

  “You are mistaken,” I said. “They are just pleasant people. Do not give their friendliness more meaning than it deserves. Brothers such as we cannot ‘like’ a woman.”

  “That mother say husbands. I see you look at them, too. Why you cannot admit it to yourself?”

  I did not realize I was rapping my fist against the floor until after it became unpleasant. “There will never be any marriage offer presented other than as a jest,” I said. “Besides, it’s men who make offers. Not women’s corpulent mothers.” Had he forgotten the path our life had taken? Going from exhibit hall to exhibit hall in a cage, a thousand nights spent smiling while such words as “horrible” and “disgusting” made their way above the din and into our ears? To add hope to the unremitting current of derision, gawking, and distaste that was our equilibrium could only bring heartache. Not to mention, would any judge look kindly on bigamy—what else would they call it?—and would we not be liable to arrest? “Stop being ridiculous,” I said. But hadn’t the girls lingered with us at the door?

  “I am looking for this my whole life,” Chang said.

  “What woman would expose the secret of her bridal bed—a single bed, as ours would have to be?”

  He shook his head. “Does not matter.” Then his confidence gave way to doubt that crept across his face.

  “And what about their mother, then?” I asked. “Do you not find it strange, that this woman seems to want her daughters to—”

  “You don’t care?” he spat out. “If you no care, you take Sarah.”

  “I should do what?” I found Adelaide the more interesting of the two. “How absurd even to discuss it!” I laughed.

  Soon Chang fell asleep. He always drowsed off first, and often snored.

  The next afternoon, after some encouragement from Mrs. Yates, the girls took us for a walk. Jefferson, whose silent presence likely would have gone unnoticed had he not been gawking at our band the entire time, came along as chaperone. I could not fathom any of it—What was happening with the Yates sisters?—but I said nothing as we started off.

  Just a few acres behind the inn, a green forest began, verdant and comparable in leafiness to the great Russian woods of Tsarskoe Selo that we had visited while touring St. Petersburg four years earlier; Wilkesboro was beautiful once you dug deep enough. Quiet, a relief from the bustle, speculation, and the embarrassment of big cities, she squatted beneath the Blue Ridge Mountains, which looked down at the dusty, shed-pocked scene with an air of disappointment. Peaceful desolation surrounded the town, with unplowed land giving way—slowly at first, in rust-colored streams—to the modest banks of the Yadkin River. Deer lived in the nooks of the mountains, foxes in the fields outside of town, and the green of the trees was more rich than the murky swampland colors of the Mekong.

  Within a half hour we were winding through the foothills of the mountains, above the river. It was a bright blue noontime. The sisters (and Jefferson) hurried ahead to show us the sights to be had, and we followed a natural path tufted with poplars and bordered by the summits of gray rocks, guarded by bending wildflowers, scented by sun-warmed forest, and I could not deny I was happy.

  Once we had reached a high bluff, the girls bid us to turn around, and—beyond the dust-brown blemish of Wilkesboro proper on the landscape below—we beheld the purple distance as it rolled out as spacious as desire. Ten counties could be seen. I felt I had never been so high, so near to the sky.

  Do not forget your place, I said to myself. Do not mistake feminine friendliness for insanity.

  Look at your brother, I told myself. That fool grins like someone’s tickling his insides.

  Before long it was almost sunset, and the five of us were winding our way downward, chatting, laughing—What was happening?— walking a bit more, and then we rounded a clearing and I saw something that told me to stay in Wilkesboro for the rest of my life. The Yadkin River. Shrouded in haze with thin curls of white mist hovering over the water like strands of goat’s hair, and even on a day of such sunshine, this place upon which we had wandered seemed to adopt the coloring of another country. Gray shadow washed out the drab banks, overhanging trees arched up from the shoals to dip their wet green leaves into the mucky green water, cicadas chirped, and, in places, the modest scale of the Yadkin gave way to somewhat wider shores. My memory fled America for home.

  “Brother,” Chang said, his eyes and mouth wide as I’d seen them as he walked us to the bank of the river. Big speckled trout swam in number through the blue-green water, waiting for Chang and me to resume our fishermen’s instincts.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” I said, “I know.” The fragrance of marsh brought my exaltation to a pitch.

  Chang’s breath bristled the hairs on my neck as he laughed. I patted the back of my twin’s head.

  The Yates sisters began to laugh, too—though their giggles were more lighthearted than the heavy, deep laughter my brother and I let out at the sight of this Mekong in miniature. With the pink light of sundown on the water, the Yadkin started to blush. The delicate turn of light was girlish and sensitive.

  My brother looked at Adelaide as an orphan would a homecooked meal, and she focused her charm on him, her face long and thin and her complexion like cream left too long in the sun, with her puckered nose being the perfect center of her coy grin. Feeling his hand on my shoulder—he did not even notice me—I felt a chilling weight of anxiety and bitterness. Adelaide avoided my stare. I did not know what to do. I turned to Sarah, who had the light in her hair and in her eyes. She caught me looking at her, and with a shy smile—maybe her first since our arrival—she tucked her chin into her shoulder. But she didn’t take her eyes from mine.

  What, if anything, separated these girls from those who laughed as they walked past our cage, arm in arm with their suitors, enjoying the “merriment of the fair”? And what pleasure had Chang and I ever experienced, what knowledge had we of the way people live their lives, people who are not beholden to each other, to a cage, to another nation, to the next gasping crowd?

  Yet here we were, climbing mountains with the Yates girls and looking at a world so colorful it was like the view at the far end of a chromatoscope
. We had arrived at a nearly identical match of our homeland—except this was a land free of pontoons, a place with blessedly solid ground only yards back from the banks of the river. I stood overlooking that scene, standing beside women who had not mocked us yet, at least not maliciously.

  And why hadn’t they?

  Two weeks passed, with Chang convincing me to stay in Wilkesboro at least another week. This is when my brother changed—to all appearances, overnight. Christmas was fast approaching, and Chang had tacked on a new personality: that of Adelaide’s suitor. He no longer craved the attention of the stage, going so far as to say he did not even want to tour until he had secured Adelaide’s heart. “Everyone entitled to hope,” Chang would sigh from time to time, paraphrasing, he claimed, advice from Mother (though I never heard her say it). “Everyone.”

  As for me, I was unruffled. I did not concern myself with my heart. What had it to say to me after all these years? Instead, I decided to prove Chang wrong. Let my brother make vulnerable his hopes and “court” Adelaide. I decided to be nice to Sarah, and I was sure she would not respond. I did not think to do any earnest courting, nor even to become fond of her. I wanted only to prove my hypothesis. And as for my brother and Adelaide, I had no doubt; she would disappoint him this week, she would disappoint him next week, then we would get on with our lives. That is how it had to be.

  One Sunday afternoon my brother and I went for a walk into town looking for a place to eat our dinner. We crossed dusty Union Square alone, walking in step, side by side, with Chang waving at the few finger-pointing, whispering townsfolk who strolled the streets as dusk approached.

  We came toward a tap house that read EATING HERE in big letters above its two swinging doors. But we did not make it to the tavern. “Mr. Chang! Mr. Eng!” we heard a familiar womanly voice calling from behind.

  We turned to see Adelaide and Sarah Yates, in matching, spotless white dresses with blue sashes, kicking up dust as they rushed toward us. They ran past a red-headed man who was walking slowly in our direction. Beside the girls scurried Jefferson, his hand atop his straw hat to prevent it from falling off.

  “Hello, girls,” we said as they reached us. My brother looked at me, grinned, and made a haughty face. Meanwhile, the girls stood there, catching their breath. At length, they caught it—and we all smiled at each other. Except for Sarah, who neither frowned nor smiled.

  Jefferson spoke to us in a soft voice. “My mother was thinking maybe you’all should want to eat with us again.”

  “Wouldn’t you want to? Oh, please do,” said Adelaide.

  Sarah clamped her sister’s enthusiasm with a severe glance. Adelaide bit her lip. “Mother would like it,” Sarah said, fighting out of the drab of her shyness.

  Soon the red-headed man had stopped about ten yards away to stare at us. He had big sideburns and a series of dueling scars across his cheek that looked like the weave of a fishing net. He held a toothpick in his fingers.

  “What are you doing there, girls?” he yelled, as if chastising two pets. His shirt was too small for his chest.

  Sarah blushed, glanced around, and began smiling uneasily. Adelaide, though turning pale, assumed an air of false confidence. “Nothing, Will—just talking to the twins here,” she said, rocking back and forth on her feet.

  The man stood stock-still, staring at the girls, at my brother and me, then at Jefferson. “Son,” the man said to the boy, “you’re only half grown, and these girls are going to need a pair of chaperones. That makes you one and a half men short.”

  I gave the man the eye. He guided his toothpick to and fro between his fingers.

  Adelaide turned her back on the man. “Please,” she whispered to Chang and me. “Come with us to our mother’s supper.”

  Sarah, also in a whisper, added: “Careful not to give Will dirty looks.” She could not even muster the determination to glance at the man. “Especially not Will.”

  My brother and I, however, continued to stare; Will threw the toothpick to the ground deliberately. His wrists were thick as baby tree stumps. Sweat ran down my spine. I was not afraid.

  Almost to himself, the man grumbled: “Ain’t you caused enough trouble in this town, Sarah Yates?” His expression was bleak. “Ain’t you got enough shame on you’all?”

  Sarah shriveled. Adelaide, meanwhile, whispered to Chang and me: “He’s just our cousin, forget him.” At that, Jefferson cocked his head, as if he’d been left out of some family secret. Adelaide kept her brother quiet with a stern look.

  “Trouble?” Chang asked. “Shame?”

  “Will didn’t mean nothing except as a joke,” Adelaide said under her breath. Sarah closed her eyes tight.

  “Did you,” the man snarled and pointed at the girls, having no idea of the damage we could do to him, “come to Wilkesboro for this?” His face was full of disgust. “You’re not going to get that.”

  We could have struck then, but I wanted to remain dignified. I did say, “Look here.”

  As the girls led us away, I kept an eye on the so-called cousin. He returned my glare all the way down Main Street.

  That night we did not talk much at dinner. Mr. Yates failed to join us. Afterward we sat on the porch, where each of us felt that there was little to say. All except for Chang, that is.

  “My brother wants to marry,—” Chang announced, a smile across his face. “If any young lady would have him, we hold wedding today.”

  At his words my heart quaked all through its cords and vines.

  I could think of no response. The sun was setting at a snail’s pace before my eyes—the sky as pink as the now embarrassed cheeks of the Yates women before us on the porch—and it reached below the horizon before I managed, “The reason I don’t marry, as Chang knows, is because I am stuck fast to him.” I pointed to our ligament.

  Chang said, “And I don’t marry because am stuck to him,” and hinted at me. “It is sad?”

  “If anyone, it is he who wants to marry, not I,” said I, swallowing, sweating, shamed.

  “He putting it off on me,” Chang said. “He marry at the drop of a hat. He drop it himself, if that help.”

  “Is there no chance for you to be separated?” said Mrs. Yates. The flap of skin beneath her chin seemed to quiver in my direction as she posed her question, as if her skin, too, were curious.

  “We have decided,” I said angrily, “that we would rather simply look upon pretty girls, chastely, than take up residence in a graveyard.” I cleared my throat. “So the answer is no, we cannot be separated.”

  Chang, laughing: “He drop the hat himself if ugliest girl in town would say yes.”

  “What a pity,” Mrs. Yates smiled. “You two men who obviously love womenfolk so much would have liked not to marry, and what a loss, because some two lucky young ladies somewhere are denied the good husbands you would have been.”

  Sarah looked at her mother with anger that seemed to rival my own. Adelaide was fixed on Chang, however, and for the first time I believed him; there was affection in Adelaide’s eyes for my brother.

  I leaned forward, indicating to Chang that I wanted to stand. “We are going to retire,” I said, my breathing labored.

  “Tomorrow I come downstairs,” Chang said, rising and motioning with his head toward me. “I leave him behind.”

  As soon as Chang and I crossed the doorway of our bedroom, I asked my brother, “Have you lost your senses?” I swiveled, and we were face-to-face.

  I wanted to chop him in his throat. We hadn’t fought since we were children, but that didn’t stop my hand from assuming the position of the leopard. His vulnerable Adam’s apple looked particularly inviting. The fibber, he knew it was I who longed more than anything for that dream of disconnection, while he was the one who thought of marriage!

  We stood just inside the door, half in shadow. “Sorry” he said. His wide, toothy smile showed me just how much he had meant his apology.

  Later that night, before resigning to the inn’s damp floor, Cha
ng said: “I want to see her.”

  “What?” I said.

  He made for the door and soon I found myself peering down the hallway cheek-to-cheek with my twin, trying to get a look into the far-off living room at the Yates family’s evening activities.

  The inn was mostly quiet except for the occasional creaking sound of an old hostel coming to terms with its frailty—or the occasional owl’s inarticulate lament out in a nearby tree. The living room door was fully opened. Mr. Yates had fallen asleep in his armchair, his Wilkes County Spectator unfolded across his lap. The two daughters and their mother mutely admonished each other to keep quiet. Sarah bent low under the lamplight, sewing needlepoint. Mrs. Yates fanned herself. Adelaide seemed to rebuke her sister with her glance. Every once in a while, the father would shake himself out of sleep, and—as if trying to convince his family he had been awake the whole time—he’d clear his throat and nod, pretending to be part of the conversation that he assumed they were having. Then he would fall back asleep and the girls would smile knowingly at each other.

  This comic drama of household repose seemed lovely, and I felt a pang for family as I never had before. Chang and I closed the door quickly, so as not to be noticed.

  Two days later was Christmas Day.

  When we woke that morning, it was to an inn as fresh and trim as a Yuletide pie; green holiday garlands decorated the banister to the stairway, and balsam fir wreaths and an evergreen Christmas tree decorated with pinecones, rose hips, and a red velvet bow made the anteroom pretty.

  Wiping the sleep from our eyes, we entered the room and saw Mrs. Yates sitting in her special double-wide chair, beside the big Christmas tree. Adelaide was perched on a step stool, fixing the star atop the tree.

  “Our guests is up!” Mrs. Yates called out. “Merry Christmas, sirs,” she smiled.

  Adelaide turned round on the stool to face us, holding her lace-trimmed yellow hat on her head with two fingertips to keep it from falling. And at the same time the soft sounds of far-off feminine laughter dribbled from the porch through the walls and open windows of the inn—it must have been Sarah’s; I hadn’t known her to be capable of it.