Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

of the 1980s, Jintong, having served his time, sat in an out-of-the-way corner of a bus station waiting room, feeling shy and confused as he waited for the bus to Dalan, the capital of Northeast Gaomi Township.
    The fifteen long years now behind him truly seemed like a bad dream. He thought back until his head ached, but all he could conjure up were memory fragments, all linked to bright light that stung his eyes like shards of glass imbedded in mud. He recalled the moment when handcuffs were first snapped on his wrists, and the reflected light that seared his eyes just before darkness enshrouded him and he heard his mother’s shouts in the distance: “What right do you have arresting my son? My son is a good man, he’s never hurt anyone” … and then he recalled the frightful days spent in the lockup awaiting sentencing, how every night by the muted light in his cell he had been forced to perform oral sex on the bearded guard … and he recalled the unbearable heat beating down on the labor camp salt works, creating even more blinding light. The guards wore sunglasses; the inmates were not permitted to. Wherever he looked the salty, corrupting, blinding light brought tears to eyes that were exposed to the salty air… then he recalled scenes of gathering kindling in the freezing cold of winter, sunlight sparkling on the snow-covered ground and glinting off the guards’ rifle barrels. The deafening crack of rifle fire straightened him up, and as he looked into the sun he saw a dazzlingly dark figure wobble and fall to the ground. He later learned that it was an inmate who had tried to escape, only to be shot by a guard … his thoughts then took him back to a summer when bursts of lightning the size of basketballs lit up the skies over the fields. Terrified, he fell to his knees. “Heavenly Father,” he prayed, “spare me. I did nothing wrong, please don’t strike me dead … let me go on living … let me live out my sentence and regain my freedom … I want to see my mother once more” … another blast of thunder rent the sky, and when he came to, a goat lay beside him, struck dead by lightning, the smell of burnt flesh hanging in the air …
    Outside, the predawn sky was still dark. The dozen hanging lights in the waiting room were mere decorations; the little bit of light inside was supplied by a pair of low-wattage wall lamps. The ten or so black benches were monopolized by trendy youngsters who lay there snoring and talking in their sleep, one with his knees bent and his legs crossed, his bell-bottom trousers looking as if they were made of sheet metal. Hazy morning sunlight gradually filtered in through the windows and lit up the place, and as Jintong examined the clothes of the sleepers arrayed around him, he knew that he had reentered the world in a new age. In spite of the patches of spittle, the filthy scraps of paper, even the occasional urine stain, he could see that the floor was constructed of fine marble. And even though the walls provided rest for plenty of fat but weary black flies, the wallpaper pattern was bright and eye-catching. For Jintong, who had just emerged from a rammed-earth hut in the labor reform camp, everything around him was fresh and new, completely alien, and his unease deepened.
    Finally, the early-morning sun lit up the foul-smelling waiting room, and passengers began to stir. A pimply-faced young man with a mass of wild hair sat up on his bench, scratched his toes and feet, closed his eyes as he took out a flattened filter cigarette, and lit it with a plastic lighter. After taking a deep drag, he coughed up a mouthful of phlegm and spat it on the floor. He slipped his feet into his shoes and rubbed the sticky mess into the floor. Turning to the young woman lying beside him, he patted her on the rear. She moaned seductively as she squirmed herself awake. “Here’s the bus,” he said louder than he needed to. Slowly she sat up, rubbed her eyes with her reddened hands, and yawned grandly. When it finally occurred to her that her companion had tricked her, she gave him a few symbolic thumps and moaned once more, before stretching out on the bench again. Jintong studied the young woman’s fat face, her stubby, greasy nose, and the white, wrinkled skin of her belly, which poked out from under her pink shirt. With an air of impertinence, the man slipped his left hand, on which he wore a digital watch, under her blouse and caressed her flat chest, eliciting a feeling in