Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

the people’s frosty eyebrows and beards, pink mist rose from their mouths. Other people had lost sight of the fact that it was the morning when they normally ate bowls of fruity rice porridge, but not the members of my family. Mother tried to infect us with her feigned enthusiasm, but Sima Liang’s constant weeping had us in a foul mood. Like a little mother, Eighth Sister felt around for a sponge she’d picked up on the sandbar and dried Sima Liang’s copious tears. He wept without making a sound, which made it worse than if he’d been bawling loudly. First Sister stayed close by Mother, who was running around busily, and asked over and over, “Mother, if he dies, will I be expected to die with him?”
    “Stop talking nonsense!” Mother reprimanded her. “You wouldn’t be expected to do that even if the two of you had been properly married.”
    By the tenth or twelfth time she asked the same question, Mother lost patience and said pointedly, “Laidi, does face mean anything to you? When you hooked up with him, it was nothing more than a brother-in-law taking up with his sister-in-law, a shameful act in anyone’s book.”
    First Sister was stunned. “Mother,” she said, “you’ve changed.”
    “Yes, I’ve changed,” Mother said, “and yet I’m still the same. Over the past ten or more years, members of the Shangguan family have died off like stalks of chives, and others have been born to take their place. Where there’s life, death is inevitable. Dying’s easy; it’s living that’s hard. The harder it gets, the stronger the will to live. And the greater the fear of death, the greater the struggle to keep on living. I want to be around on the day my children and grandchildren rise to the top, so I expect all of you to make a good showing for my sake!”
    Her eyes, wet with tears, yet spitting fire, swept across our faces, resting finally on me, as if I were the repository of all her hopes. That made me incredibly fearful and restive, since, with the exceptions of an ability to memorize school lessons and sing the “Women’s Liberation Anthem” with a degree of accuracy, I couldn’t think of a thing I was particularly good at. I was a crybaby, I was scared of my own shadow, and I was a weakling, sort of like a castrated sheep.
    “Get yourselves ready,” Mother said, “so we can give him a proper send-off. He’s a bastard, but he’s also a man worthy of the name. In days past, a man like that would come around once every eight or ten years. I’m afraid we’ve seen the last of his kind.”
    We stood as a family on the river dike and watched the people around us slink away. Many sideward glances were cast our way. Sima Liang tried to move up closer, but Mother grabbed hold of his arm. “Stay right here, Liang. We’ll watch from a distance. If we’re too close, it’ll just give him something else to worry about.”
    The sun rose high in the sky as truckloads of armed, helmeted soldiers crept across the Flood Dragon River Bridge and through the breach in the dike. They wore the looks of men confronted by a powerful enemy. After the trucks came to a stop beside the tent, the soldiers jumped to the ground in pairs and dispersed rapidly to form a blockade line. Two soldiers then climbed out of one of the trucks and opened the tailgate. Out stepped Sima Ku, wearing a pair of shiny handcuffs, in the custody of a squad of soldiers. He stumbled when he was pushed to the ground, but was immediately picked up by a tall, robust soldier who was obviously handpicked for this assignment. Sima Ku, his swollen legs covered with thick blood, stumbled along with his captors, leaving putrid-smelling footprints in the dirt. They led him over to the tent and up onto the raised platform. Out-of-town witnesses who were seeing Sima Ku for the first time, and had assumed him to be a murderous demon, half man-half beast, a monster with fangs and a ferocious, green face, later said that seeing him in person had been a disappointment. This middle-aged man with his shaved head and big, sad eyes didn’t look threatening at all. In fact, he struck them as a guileless, good-natured fellow, and had them wondering if the police had arrested the wrong man.
    The trial quickly got underway, beginning with the magistrate’s reading of Sima Ku’s crimes and ending with the pronouncement of the death sentence. Soldiers then led him down off the platform. He hobbled as he walked, causing the soldiers to stumble as they