Hyphenated Lives
Chang and Eng Bunker, 1811-1874*

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I. Beginnings: Melange, Siam
I cannot turn my back on my brother –
we’re fused in front, made to face each other,
can turn our heads only so far. Chang.
Forever in the corner of my eye. We live so close,
our urine often splashes on the other’s feet
or slippers. We don’t know what it is
to be alone. Pregnant women skirt us
but our mother says she’s blessed. We’re as nimble
and as quick on our feet as any other, as lithe
in the Mekong as the fish our father catches,
are wont to row his boat for him –
our arms and legs are strong.

II. The Road Show
We're Captain Coffin's 'Siamese Double Boys'.
People flock to see us. The freckled ones
with funny eyes and frizzy hair ooh at our back-flips,
aah at our battledore. We fly across the ground
like the small cork ball with feathers that we chase
for their entertainment. But later, so many questions!
Yet, what of their own strangeness? We would not trade
our band of skin for such hairy limbs and faces.

III. Experiments
Doctors are fascinated – they wonder if
we’re really one; not two. They tickle Eng.
I laugh. They prod me in the dead of night.
It is Eng who wakes. They feed me asparagus –
are confounded when Eng’s urine doesn’t smell.
So, we run our own little experiments ...
Only Eng buys a ticket. And who can lawfully
throw him off a train because his brother doesn't?!

IV. Turning Point
Yet since our dual marriage, we try to turn
aside as best we can. But I sense my brother's
hand upon her sex, I hear their bliss; am rocked
by them as though upon a ship. I cannot brace myself
against the tempest – I cannot calm the pounding
of my heart, nor slow or quiet the quickening
of my breath. The darkness that envelops us
is nothing. I'll sometimes slip a hand beneath
the sheet and come, as one, with them. At other
times I wake, my trousers wet. I cannot turn
my back on my brother. I cannot turn my back
upon this woman in our bed. But each morning,
we sip tea together from fine blue china cups.

V. Secrets
At first, I was shy. When my husband’s brother spoke,
I kept my eyes lowered. But I cannot tell the man
I married secrets, without his brother hearing them as well.
They wend their way into his brother’s ear, carried via
the blood across shared flesh. I am wedded, now, to both.
But still, it is my husband’s seed trickling down
the inside of my leg. Or is it?

VI. Sisters
We, too, are tied by blood, though not by flesh.
Our bodies spin full circle, separate. Once,
we kept no secrets from each other; but now
I dare not tell her how her husband cups my breasts,
how tenderly he mouths them in the dark.
My brother’s hands are deft, the intrigue sweet.
I pity women bedded by one man.

VII. The Allure
Her skin smells of sandalwood, her hair,
of temple flowers. I brush her lips with mine
as she lies slumped across his chest. Her breath's
like clouds of lemongrass and fresh-cut coriander.
I dream again my past; smell again my mother...
Brother's wife, wife's sister – sister-in-law
twice over. Surely, then, as near to me as wife.

VIII. Questions
We do not walk abroad, now, very often.
People turn to look. Not only children point.
It isn’t hard to know what they are thinking.
Our cat’s tail, too, is a curling question mark.
It asks us who belongs to whom.
We are no longer sure. And does it matter?

IX. The Thin Edge
I do not have my husband's ear. Always,
his brother has it. Though even they are come
to blows, what with Chang's penchant for whisky
and Eng's for late-night poker! But they nested
in their mother's womb together; limbs entwined,
breast to breast; pressing ever closer to each other.
And flesh links them, still, like a broad umbilicus.
I thought through carrying children I would better
understand the bond they share. Bone of my bone...
flesh of my flesh...But no! Every child I grow
is separate. And my sister and I don’t speak now –
except for our bickering. Today, she turned her back
on me and simply walked away. It was that easy...
For us ...

X. Endings: North Carolina
I’m pinned here in the dark, chilled by his stillness –
can just slip one foot off the edge of the mattress.
I touch the floor’s coolness – so different from the marble-cold
of him. I sweat; am faint with effort; can barely muster
strength to rouse my son. He goes rushing
through the house sobbing, Uncle Chang is dead!
Already I feel numbness in my toes and in my fingers,
my son’s voice sounding like the death knell that it is.

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*Although this sequence is based on documented fact, the nature of
the marital relationship/s is largely imagined. In terms of paternity,
Eng Bunker and Sarah Ann Yates are documented to have produced
11 children together; Chang Bunker and Adelaide Yates, ten.

Winner of the 2004 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize .

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LESLEY WALTER is a widely published poet whose collection watermelon baby was published by Five Islands Press in 2000. Her poems also preface each chapter in the nonfiction book, The Natural Way to Better Birth and Bonding (Random House, 2000). She holds a Master of Letters degree in Australian Literature from the University of Sydney and is a past president of the Society of Women Writers NSW Inc. She lives in Sydney.

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