Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

always looking from side to side, moving as rapidly as possible alongside a wall, like a thief. When Jintong reached the bottom of the stairs, Old Jin shouted from the second floor, “Liu Daguan, my adoptive son’s here. Put on a couple more dishes.” Out in the yard, someone — he didn’t know who — sang a nasty little ditty: “If a child wants to grow up strong, he needs twenty-four wanton adoptive mothers …”
    As he climbed the wooden staircase, the heavy aroma of perfume floated down to him. He looked up timidly and saw Old Jin standing at the top of the stairs, her legs spread, a mocking smile on her powdered face. He stopped and clenched the metal banister with his sweaty palm.
    “Come on up, adoptive son,” she welcomed him, her mocking smile now gone.
    He forced himself to keep going, until a soft hand gripped his wrist. In the dark hallway it felt as if the odor of her body were dragging him along to a den of seduction, a brightly lit, carpeted room where the walls were papered; colorful balls made of paper hung from the ceiling. In the center of the room stood a desk, on which a fountain-pen holder rested. “That’s all for show. I don’t read or write much.”
    Jintong stood rooted to the floor, unwilling to look her in the eye. All of a sudden, she laughed and said, “I can’t believe this is happening. This has to be an all-time first.”
    He looked up and met her seductive gaze. “Adoptive son,” she said, “don’t let your eyeballs drop out and injure your feet. Look at me. With your head up you’re a wolf; with your head down you’re a sheep. The most uncommon thing in the world is a mother arranging sex for her own son, and I’m impressed she even thought of it. Do you know what she said to me?” Old Jin made her voice sound like his mother’s: “‘If you’re going to save someone, dear sister-in-law, go all the way; if you’re seeing off a guest, take them to their door. You saved him with your milk, but you can’t feed him for the rest of his life, can you?’ She was right, since I’m over fifty already.” She patted the robe over her breast. “This treasure of mine won’t hold up for long, no matter how I use it. When you stroked it thirty years ago, it was, in the popular phrase of a few years back, ‘high-spirited and full of life, militant and ready for a good fight.’ But now it’s more a case of ‘the phoenix past its prime is no match for a chicken.’ I owe you from a previous life. I don’t want to think about why, nor is it important for you to know. All that’s important is the fact that this body of mine has simmered for thirty years, until it’s cooked through and through. Now it’s up to you to feast on it any way you want.”
    Jintong stared at her single breast as if in a trance, greedily breathing in its fragrance and that of the milk it held, not even seeing the full thighs she exposed for his benefit. Out in the yard, the man in charge of the scale shouted, “This guy wants to sell this to us, Boss.” He held up some thick cable. “Do we want it?” Old Jin stuck her head out the window. “Why bother me?” she said unhappily. “Go ahead, take it.” She slammed the window shut. “Damn! I’ll buy anything someone has to sell. Don’t look so surprised. Eight out of ten of people with things to sell are thieves. I’ll get whatever’s being used at the work site. I’ve got welding rods, tools in their original packages, steel ribs, cement. I don’t turn anyone away. I pay scrap prices, then turn around and sell it as new, and there’s my profit. I know this will all fall apart one of these days, so I use half of every yuan I make to feed those bastards down there and spend the other half any way I want. I’ll tell you straight out that at least half of those clever, fancy men out there have visited my bed. Know what they mean to me?” Jintong shook his head. “All my life,” she said, patting her breast again, “this is what has gotten me where I wanted to go. Those idiot brothers-in-law of yours, from Sima Ku to Sha Yueliang, fell asleep with this nipple in their mouths, and not one of them meant a thing to me. In my lifetime, the only person who’s ever set my soul on fire is you, you little bastard! Your mother told me you’ve only been with a woman once, and that was a corpse, and she figured that’s the source of what’s bothering you. So I told her not to worry, that there’s at least one thing I’m good at.