In a society that values “self-actualization,” the discovery of one’s “true self,” identical twins are something of a cultural snag, a contradiction to the way we think selfhood works. It’s not that twins aren’t individuals. Of course, we are. But popular culture portrays twins as exactly the same, souls assembled from the same base parts according to the same DNA blueprint. In contrast, individuality is about uniqueness, a quality that identical siblings aren’t always granted.

In Oxford, Mississippi, what matters is story. Fact and fiction blur. Boredom is sin. In a state iconic for American ills lives a gritty legacy of southern letters, a literary family tree made mostly of men.

I had felt giddy about love but ambivalent about becoming a wife. The word itself seemed like an erasure, privileging domesticity over desire, association over achievement. In marriage, I had seen women lose their names, their ambition.

From the ages of nine to eleven, I worked as a spy. No one paid me, nor did I report my findings to any higher-ups. I discussed my cases with my partner, who went by code name Mountain Chicken Mother of the Buddha. Mountain Chicken also happened to be my identical twin sister, and during morning recess or summer afternoons at the neighborhood pool we let lifeguards, teachers, and stray dogs in on our findings. Eventually, the Department of Labor, the U.S. Postal Service, the Virginia State Police, and the State Corporation Commission got involved. Our next-door neighbors were indicted in September of 1998 by a federal grand jury, Joe Bob on eighteen counts and his wife, Jeannie, on fifteen.

In truth, I lost Catherine long before she died, our parting another cost of growing up. No two personalities survive the machinery of adolescence in quite the same way, and we were no exception. We merged and then divided. Kept secrets. Fought. In high school we didn’t know that some rifts don’t heal, that geographical separation would enable our wounds to grow septic, hot with narratives of accused and accuser, guilty and indignant, the righteous one and the wronged.

At four in the morning, the Beijing airport has all the orderliness of an upended anthill. Half-naked women advertise diamond watches from billboards pinned to third-floor windows, while below them security officers struggle to manage endless streams of anxious travelers. Voices call out from loudspeakers. My father’s friend, a Beijing local, insisted we arrive four hours early for our morning flight. Now that we’re here, I’m not sure four hours will be enough time.

His voice was raspy and warm. “Stella . . . I’m gonna beat the hell outta you,” he sang. “I’m gonna put my shoes in yo head / I went to jail for kicking a man’s ass. I started walking, going home / I’m mad as hell.” The guitar rang raw. I thought of rusty farm equipment, the sound a stick makes when it’s trailed across the curved tines of a drag harrow. “I’m going to remember some fuckers how to play.”