Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

so don’t think I can’t do the same with you!”
    The well-meaning newsletter editor spoke up: “Little Qiao, do as Commander Ma says. This is, after all, a scientific experiment. Over in Tianjin District, they successfully grafted cotton onto a parasol tree, and rice onto reeds. I read that in
The People’s Daily.
This is an age of breaking down superstitions and liberating thought, an age of creating human miracles. If you can produce a mule by mating a donkey with a horse, who can say you won’t produce a new species of animal by mating a sheep with a rabbit? So go ahead, do as she says.”
    The flower of the medical college and ultra-rightist, Qiao Qisha, felt her face turn beet red, and indignant tears swam in her eyes. “No,” she said obstinately, “I won’t do it. It flies in the face of common sense!”
    “You’re being foolish, little Qiao,” the editor said.
    “Of course she’s foolish. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be an ultra-rightist!” Ma Ruilian shot back, offended by the editor’s concern for Qiao Qisha.
    The editor lowered his head and held his tongue.
    One of the other assistants walked up. “I’ll do it, Commander Ma. Sheep sperm into a rabbit is nothing. I don’t care if you want me to inject Director Li Du’s sperm into the sow’s womb.”
    The other assistants broke up laughing, while the newsletter director managed to cover up his laughter by pretending to cough. “Deng Jiarong, you bastard!” Ma Ruilian cursed, enraged. “This time you’ve gone too far!”
    Deng removed his mask, exposing his insolent horselike face. With a reckless sneer, he said, “Commander Ma, I don’t have a cap, permanent or not. I come from three generations of miners, as red and upright as they come, so don’t try to intimidate me the way you did with little Qiao.” He turned and walked off, leaving Ma Ruilian to vent her anger on Qiao Qisha. “Are you going to do it, or aren’t you? If you don’t, I’ll take back your grain coupons for the rest of the month.”
    Qiao Qisha held back, and held back, until she could hold back no longer. Tears coursed down her cheeks and she cried openly. She picked up the insemination utensil in her gloveless hand, stumbled over to the rabbit — it was a black animal tethered by a piece of red rope — and held it down to keep it from struggling free.
    At that moment, Pandi, now Ma Ruilian, spotted me. “What are you doing here?” she asked coldly. I handed her the note from the farm management director. She read it. “Go to the chicken farm,” she said. “They’re short one laborer.” Then she turned her back on me and said to the newsletter editor, “Old Yu, go turn in your story. You can leave out the unnecessary parts.” He bowed. “I’ll bring the galleys over for you to check,” he said. Then she turned to Qiao Qisha. “In accordance with your wishes, Qiao Qisha, your transfer out of the breeding station is approved. Get your things and report to the chicken farm.” Finally, she turned back to me. “What are you waiting for?” “I don’t know where the chicken farm is,” I said. She looked at her watch. “That’s where I’m headed now, so come with me.”
    She stopped when the whitewashed wall of the chicken farm came into view. We were on the muddy path leading to the chicken farm, which ran past the munitions scrapyard; the little ditch alongside the road ran red with rust, and the fenced-in yard was overrun by weeds that covered the caterpillar tracks of crumbling tanks, their rusting cannons pointing into the blue sky. Tender green morning glory vines were wrapped around the remaining half of a heavy artillery piece. A dragonfly rested on the muzzle of an antiaircraft gun. Rats scampered in and out of the gun turret. Sparrows had made a nest in one of the cannons to raise their fledglings, feeding them emerald-colored insects. A little girl with a red ribbon in her hair sat dully on the blackened tire of a gun carriage, watching a couple of little boys bang rocks against the controls of one of the tanks. Ma Ruilian, who had been staring at the scrapyard desolation, turned to me. No longer the commander who was ordering people around at the breeding station, she said, “How’s everyone at home?”
    I turned away and stared at the antiaircraft gun, the morning glories appearing like little butterflies, in an attempt to hide my anger. What kind of question was that, coming from someone who’d gone and changed her