Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

Send your son to me, I said, and I’ll turn him into a man of steel.”
    Old Jin opened her robe seductively. She was wearing nothing underneath. The white parts were white as snow, the black parts black as coal. His face bathed in sweat, Jintong sat down weakly on the carpet.
    She giggled at the sight. “Scared you, didn’t I? There’s nothing to be scared of, adoptive son. Breasts may be a woman’s treasure, but there are even greater treasures. You can’t eat steaming bean curd if you hurry it. Stand up and let me fix what’s wrong with you.”
    She dragged him into her bedroom like a dead dog. The walls were ablaze with color; a large bed sat on deep pile carpeting near the window. She undressed him as if he were a naughty little boy. Beyond the sunlit window, the yard was alive with men walking around. Recalling Birdman Han’s movements, Jintong cupped his hands over his crotch and squatted down. He saw his reflection in a floor-to-ceiling dressing mirror — it was so disgusting it nearly made him puke. Old Jin doubled up with laughter — she sounded so young, so wanton, the laughter flying out into the yard like a dove. “My god, where did you learn that? I’m no tiger, you know, and I won’t bite that thing off!” She nudged him with her foot. “Get up, it’s bath time!”
    She led Jintong into the bathroom, where she turned on the light and pointed to a pink bathtub beneath a crystal fixture with a frosted bulb, bordered by tiled walls, a coffee-colored Italian commode, and a Japanese water heater. “I bought all this from scrap dealers. Half the people in Dalan are thieves these days. I don’t have running hot water, so I need to heat my own bath water.” She pointed to four water heaters arrayed around the tub. “I spend half my day soaking in the tub. I never took a single hot bath the first half of my life, so I’m making up for that now. But you’re worse off than I, son, and I don’t imagine the labor reform camp supplied hot water for baths.” While she talked, she reached out and turned on all four heaters, from which hot water gushed into the tub and steam quickly filled the room. Old Jin, pushed him in, but he shrieked and jumped back out. She pushed him in again. “Tough it out,” she said. “It’ll cool down in a minute.” So he gritted his teeth, as all the blood in his body seemed to rush to his head. He felt a prickly sensation all over. Neither truly painful nor totally numbing, it fell somewhere between agony and bliss. He went limp, his body slipping weakly under the water, as the four jets pummeled his skin with watery arrows. Through the steamy air he saw Old Jin slip out of her robe, climb in like a big white sow, and cover him with her soft, lustrous body. The steam was suddenly perfumed. Picking up a bar of fragrant bath soap, she washed his head, his face, and his body, which was quickly covered with a rich lather. He submitted weakly, and when her nipple brushed against his skin, he nearly died of ecstasy. The dirt and grime fell away as the two of them moved and shifted in the tub; his hair, his stubbly beard, were cleansed of filth. An ordinary man would have thrown his arms around her, but he just lay there and let her scrub and pinch him all over.
    After they emerged from the bath, she flung the rags he’d worn home from the camp out the window and dressed him in clean underwear. Then she helped him into a Pierre Cardin suit she’d readied for the occasion. After completing the outfit with a tie, with which she struggled for a moment, she combed his hair, adding some Korean hair oil, trimmed his beard, and splashed on some cologne. She then led him over to the dressing mirror, where a tall, handsome, impressive-looking Chinese man in Western garb looked back at him. “My dear,” Old Jin exclaimed, “you look like a movie star!” He blushed and turned away. But he’d liked what he’d seen. It wasn’t the Shangguan Jintong who had survived on stolen eggs at the Flood Dragon River Farm, and it surely wasn’t the Shangguan Jintong who had tended livestock in a labor reform camp.
    Old Jin led him over to a sofa at the foot of the bed and handed him a cigarette, which he refused. Fearfully he accepted the tea she held out to him. She leaned against the folded comforter on the bed, spread her legs casually, and covered herself with her bathrobe, as she leisurely blew smoke rings from a cigarette she’d lit for herself. With the powder washed off in