Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

church.”
    I lay on my back on the alkaline ground and gazed up into the sky. Mother and First Sister took off their shoes and knocked them against the handles of the cart to empty them of alkaline soil. The heels of their feet looked like rotten yams. All of a sudden, a frightened flock of birds swooped down close to the ground. Had they seen a hawk? No, it was a pair of black, double-winged airships buzzing through the sky from the southeast. The sound they made was like a thousand spinning wheels turning at the same time. At first they were flying high up in the air, traveling slowly, but when they were directly overhead, they went into a dive and picked up speed. They flew with the grace of winged calves, plunging at full speed, propellers buzzing loudly, like hornets circling the head of a cow. As they flew past, nearly scraping the top of our cart, one of the goggled men behind the glass smiled at us like an old friend. I thought he looked familiar, but before I could get a good look, he and his smile sped past me like a bolt of lightning. A violent gust of swirling wind, carrying a cloud of fine dust sucked up loose grass, sand, and rabbit pellets, and flung them into us like a hail of bullets. The mess kit in Zaohua’s hand flew into the air. Panic-stricken, I jumped up, spitting dirt out of my mouth, as the second airship bore down on me even more savagely, spitting two long tongues of flame from its belly. Bullets kicked up dirt all around us. Trailing black smoke behind them, the airships tacked to one side and flew into the sky above the sandy ridge. Flames continued to spurt from under their wings in bursts, the sound like barking dogs, sending more puffs of yellow dirt up into the air. They dove and dipped like swallows skimming the surface of water, swooping down recklessly and then abruptly soaring upward again, sunlight dancing off the glass and turning the wings a bright steel blue. Dust gray soldiers on the sandy ridges were thrown into a panic, leaping and shouting. Yellow flames spat into the sky around them, announcing the insistent crack of gunfire, like continuous gusts of wind. The airships were like gigantic startled birds wheeling through the sky, the sound of their engines like a crazed form of singing. One of them abruptly stopped wheeling as thick black smoke belched from its belly; it gurgled, it rocked, it spun, and then it plunged straight down into the wilderness, gouging out a furrow in the mud below. The wings shuddered briefly before a crackling ball of fire consumed its belly, creating an earsplitting blast that rocked all the wild rabbits in the vicinity. The other bird banked sharply high above with a cry of anguish, and flew off.
    At that moment, we saw that half of Big Mute’s head had disappeared and that a fist-sized hole had appeared in Little Mute’s belly. Not yet dead, he showed us the whites of his eyes. Mother grabbed a handful of alkaline dirt and pressed it up against the hole, but too late to hold back the sizzling green liquid and white intestines that squirmed out. She rammed more and more dirt up into the hole, but couldn’t stop the flow. Little Mute’s intestines began filling up the basket. My goat’s front legs buckled, drawing a series of strange-sounding complaints; then its belly contracted violently and its back arched, as it threw up a mouthful of half-eaten grass. First Sister and I both bent over and vomited. Mother, her hands smeared with fresh blood, stood there gaping in bewilderment at the mass of intestines. Her lips were quivering; suddenly, her mouth flew open, releasing a jet of red liquid, followed by loud, grief-stricken wails.
    Shortly after that, volleys of black artillery shells tore into the sky like flocks of crows from the artillery blind in the little stand of trees, heading straight for our village. Blue flashes of light turned the sky above the grove the color of lilacs. The sun was a dull, colorless gray. After the first volley, the ground trembled, followed by the shrieks of the shells overhead; then came the muted thuds of explosions, sending columns of white smoke into the air above our village. Finally, the shooting stopped, producing a momentary silence that was quickly shattered when guns on the opposite bank of the Flood Dragon River sent their answer our way with even bigger shells; some landed among the trees, others fell in the open wilderness. And so it went, like a series of family visits. Waves of hot air swept