Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

there!” Aunty Sun demanded angrily.
    Shangguan Lu’s belly was jerking and twitching horribly; blood gushing from between her legs washed out another down-covered infant.
    When she spotted the little wormlike object between the baby’s legs, Shangguan Lü fell to her knees beside the
kang.
    “What a shame,” Aunty Sun said pensively, “another stillborn.”
    Suddenly dizzy, Shangguan Lü fell forward and banged her head on the
kang.
She stood with difficulty, propping herself up by the
kang
, and gazed at her daughter-in-law, whose face was stone gray. Then, with a moan of despair, she shuffled out of the room.
    A pall of death hung over the yard. Her son was on his knees, the bloody stump of his neck resting on the ground, a stream of fresh blood snaking along the ground; his head, a look of fear frozen on the face, sat perfectly upright in front of his torso. Her husband was gnawing a brick on the path; one of his arms was tucked under his abdomen, the other stretched out in front of him. A mixture of gray matter and bright red blood from a gaping wound in the back of his head stained the path around him. Pastor Malory was on his knees, making the sign of the cross and mumbling something in a foreign tongue. Two massive horses, reins draped across their backs, were eating the sorghum stalks supporting the peanut vines, while the donkey and her newborn mule huddled in a corner of the wall, the young animal’s head tucked under one of its mother’s legs, its tail writhing like a snake. Two Japanese men in khaki stood there, one cleaning his sword with a handkerchief, the other hacking down sorghum stalks with his sword, sending peanuts to the ground, where they were eaten by the two horses, whose tails swished happily.
    Suddenly feeling the earth wheel on its axis, Shangguan Lü had a single thought: to rescue her son and her husband. Instead, she crumpled heavily to the ground like a toppled wall.
    Aunty Sun quickly skirted Shangguan Lü’s body and strode steadily out of the yard. But one of the Japanese soldiers, who had remarkably wide-set eyes and short eyebrows, threw down his handkerchief and moved to block her way, standing rigidly between her and the gate. Pointing the tip of his sword at her heart, he said something that was only gibberish to her, a loutish expression on his face. She looked at him calmly, the hint of a sneer on her lips. She took a step backward; the Japanese soldier took a step forward. She retreated two more steps, he took two steps forward, the tip of the sword still pressed up against her breast. As he bore relentlessly down on her, Aunty Sun reached up and brushed his sword to the side. Then one of her feet flashed through the air and landed precisely on his wrist, knocking the sword out of his hand. She rushed up and slapped him across the face. With a yelp of pain, he covered his face. His comrade ran up, sword in hand, and aimed it at Aunty Sun’s head. She spun out of the way and grabbed his wrist, shaking it until he too dropped his sword. Then she boxed his ear, and although it didn’t seem to be much of a slap, his face began to swell immediately.
    Without so much as looking back, Aunty Sun strode out of the yard, as one of the soldiers raised his rifle and fired. Her body stiffened for a moment, then sprawled forward in the gateway of the Shangguan house.
    At that moment, the two youngest mute grandsons, who had come looking for her, were felled by the same bullet on the steps leading up to the Shangguan gate. The three older grandsons were, at the time, occupied with cutting up the rump of a dead horse on the riverbank, where the smell of gunpowder thickened the air.
    At around noon, a swarm of Japanese soldiers filled the Shangguan compound. The horse soldiers found a basket in the barn, into which they scooped the loose peanuts and carried them out into the lane to feed their weary horses. Two of the soldiers took Pastor Malory captive. Then a military doctor, eyeglasses perched on the pale bridge of his nose, followed his commander into the room where Shangguan Lu lay. With a frown, he opened his medical kit, donned a pair of surgical gloves, and cut the babies’ umbilical cords with a stainless steel knife. Picking up the infant boy by the feet, he slapped it on the backside until a hoarse cry emerged from the other end. He then picked up the baby girl and repeated the procedure until there were signs of life. After cleaning the cuts on the umbilical cords