Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

outside. Sunlight warmed the body of this woman whose rotting flesh smelled like mildew. She looked up at the sun, without seeing it. Mother, who was in the yard weaving rush mats for the production team, stood up. “Xiangdi,” she said anxiously, “my poor daughter, what are you doing out here?”
    Xiangdi sat huddled at the base of the wall, her scaly legs sticking out straight. Her belly was exposed, but modesty had long since played no role in her life, and she was no longer bothered by the cold. Mother ran inside for a blanket, which she draped over Xiangdi’s legs. “My precious daughter, all your life, you …” She wiped her eyes dry of the few tears that may have been there, and went back to weaving mats.
    The shouts of grade-school children sounded nearby: “Attack attack attack all class enemies! Garry out the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution!” Their hoarse slogans traveled up and down the streets and lanes. Childlike drawings and badly written but intense slogans in colored chalk adorned all the walls in the neighborhood.
    Xiangdi said in a muffled voice, “Mother, I've slept with ten thousand men and earned a great deal of money. With it I bought gold and jewels, enough to keep food on your table for the rest of your lives.” She rubbed her hand across the box of her lute, which the commune official had smashed, and said, “It was all in here, Mother. Look at this night-luminescent pearl. It was a gift from a Japanese client. If you sew it into a cap and wear it at night, it lights the way like a lantern … I traded ten rings and a small ruby for this cat’s eye … this pair of gold bracelets was a gift from Old Master Xiong, who took my maidenhead.” One by one she removed the precious memorabilia that had been inside the lute. “There’s no need to worry, Mother, not with all this. This emerald alone is enough to buy a thousand catties of flour, and this necklace is at least worth a donkey … Mother, on the day I entered the fire pit of prostitution, I vowed that I would give my sisters a good life, since sleeping with one man is no different than sleeping with a thousand of them. This is what I traded my body for. I carried this lute with me everywhere I went. I had this longevity locket made especially for Jintong. Make sure he wears it… Mother, put these things where thieves cannot find them, and don’t let the Poor Peasants Association take them from you … what you have here is your daughter’s blood and sweat… are you hiding them?”
    Mother’s face was now awash in tears. She wrapped her arms around Xiangdi’s syphilitic body and sobbed, “My precious daughter, you’ve shredded my heart… all that we’ve been through, no one had it worse than my Xiangdi…”
    Jintong had just returned from having his head split open by a gang of Red Guards while he was out sweeping the streets. Now he stood beneath the parasol tree, all bloody, listening to Fourth Sister’s heartbreaking tale. Red Guards had nailed a row of placards to the gate of their compound, with notices such as: Traitor’s Family, Landlord Restitution Corps Nest, and Whore’s House. But as he listened to his dying sister, he had the urge to change the word “Whore’s” to “Filial Daughter’s” or “Martyr’s.” Up till now he had kept his distance from his sister because of her sickness; how he wished he hadn’t done that. He walked up to her, took her cold hand in his, and said, “Fourth Sister, thank you for the locket… Fm wearing it now.”
    The glow of happiness shone in Fourth Sister’s blind eyes. “Really? It doesn’t give you a bad feeling? Don’t tell your wife where you got it… let me touch it… see if it fits.”
    During Xiangdi’s final moments on earth, all the fleas on her body left her, sensing, I guess, that there would be no more blood from her.
    A smile, an ugly smile, rose on her lips and she said, her voice faltering, “My lute … let me play something … for you …”
    She strummed the strings a time or two before her hand fell away and her head slumped to the side.
    Mother wept for a moment only; then she stood up and said, “My precious daughter, your suffering has come to an end.”
    Two days after we buried Xiangdi, just as things were calming down, a team of eight rightists from the Flood Dragon River Farm brought the body of Shangguan Pandi up to our gate. A man with a red armband, their leader, pounded on the gate. “You, Shangguans, come claim