Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel
Mother’s
kang.
He tried to sit up, but Mother held him down and stuffed the nipple of a bottle of goat’s milk into his mouth. Dimly, he recalled that the old goat was long dead, so where had the milk come from? Since he couldn’t get his stubborn brain working, he wearily closed his eyes. Mother and First Sister were talking about exorcism, but the thin sound of their voices seemed to come from a bottle far away. “He must be possessed,” Mother said. “Possessed?” First Sister asked. “By what?” “I think it’s an evil fox spirit.” “Could it be that widow?” First
Sister asked. “She worshipped a fox fairy when she was alive.” “You’re right,” Mother replied. “She shouldn’t be coming for Jintong… we barely had a chance to enjoy a few good days …” “Mother,” First Sister said, “these so-called good days have been torture for me. That half-man of mine is crushing me to death … he’s like a dog, but a useless one. Mother, don’t blame me if I do something.” “Why would I blame you?” Mother said.
Jintong lay in bed for two days, as his mind slowly cleared. Natasha’s image kept floating before his eyes. When he washed up, her weeping face appeared in the basin. When he looked in the mirror, she smiled back at him. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard the sound of her breathing; he could even feel her soft hair brush up against his face and her warm fingers move over his body. His mother, frightened by her son’s erratic behavior, followed him everywhere, wringing her hands and whimpering like a little girl. His gaunt face stared back at him from the water in their vat. “She’s in there!” “Who is?” his mother asked. “She is?” “Who is she?” “Natasha! And she’s unhappy.” She watched as her son thrust his hand into the vat. Nothing there except water, but her excited son muttered words she couldn’t understand. So she dragged him away and covered the vat. But Jintong fell to his knees in front of a basin and began speaking in tongues to the spirit of the water inside. As soon as his mother dumped the water out of the basin, Jintong pressed his lips up against the window, as if to kiss his own reflection.
Tears glistened on his mother’s face. Jintong saw Natasha dancing in those tears, jumping from one to the next. “There she is!” he said, a moronic look on his face, pointing at his mother’s face. “Don’t go, Natasha.”
“Where is she?”
“In your tears.”
Mother hurriedly dried her tears. “Now she’s jumped into your eyes!” Jintong shouted.
Finally, his mother understood. Natasha appeared anywhere there was a reflection. So she covered everything that held water, buried the mirrors, covered the windows with black paper, and would not let her son look into her eyes.
But Jintong saw Natasha take shape in the darkness. He had moved from the stage of trying everything possible to avoid Natasha to a frenzied pursuit of her; she, meanwhile, had moved from the stage of being everywhere to hiding from place to place. Calling out, “Listen to me, Natasha,” he ran headlong into a dark corner. She crawled into a mouse hole under a cabinet; he stuck his face up to the hole and tried to crawl in after her. In his mind, he actually made it, and followed her down a winding path, calling out, “Don’t run away from me, Natasha. Why are you doing this?” Natasha crawled out through another hole and disappeared. He looked everywhere for her, finally spotting her stuck to the wall, after stretching herself out thin as a sheet of paper. He ran up and began stroking the wall with both hands, as if he were caressing her face. Bending at the waist, Natasha slipped under his arms and crawled up the stove chimney, her face quickly covered with soot. Kneeling at the foot of the stove, he reached out to wipe the soot from her face, but it wouldn’t come off. Instead, his own face was streaked with soot.
Not knowing what else to do, Mother fell to her knees, kowtowed, and summoned the great exorcist Fairy Ma, who had not practiced his craft for many years.
The man of spirits came in a long black robe, his hair hanging loose around his shoulders. He was barefoot, both feet stained bright red. Holding a peachwood sword in one hand, he murmured things no one could understand. The moment he saw him, Jintong was reminded of all the strange tales he’d heard about the man and, as if he’d swallowed a mouthful of vinegar, felt his head
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