Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

brilliant sunset. Throwing herself into his arms, she wrapped her arms around his neck and thrust her heated bosom into his face, rubbing her breasts back and forth until an oily substance ran from his nose and tears oozed from his eyes. “Sima Liang, I’ve waited for you more than thirty years.” “Don’t give me that,” he said. “Thirty years. Do you know what that makes me guilty of?” “I’m a virgin.” “A thief
and
a virgin? If that’s true, I’ll jump out that window!” Zaohua began to cry, stung by his comment. But then, as anger got the better hand, she jumped to her feet, shed her dress, and lay down on the carpet in front of him. “Sima Liang, come, you be the judge. If I’m not a virgin, I’ll jump out that window!”
    Before walking out of the room, Sima Liang looked down at the aging virgin and said glibly, “Well, I’ll be damned, sure and truly damned. You are a virgin.” Sarcasm aside, a pair of tears filled the corners of his eyes. As for Zaohua, who still lay on the carpet, her eyes were moist with joy and infatuation as she looked up at him.
    When Sima Liang returned to the room, Zaohua was seated on the windowsill, stark naked, obviously waiting for him. “Well, am I a virgin or aren’t I?” she said coldly.
    “Cousin,” Sima Liang replied, “you can forget the act. Remember, I’ve spent most of my life around women. Besides, if I were to marry you, what difference would it make if you were a virgin or not?”
    Zaohua responded with a shriek that caused Sima Liang to break out in a cold sweat. A blue glare, like poisonous gas, emerged from her eyes. He sprang toward her just as she tipped backward; the last thing he saw were the reddened heels of her bare feet, heading down.
    With a sigh, Sima Liang turned to me as I rushed into the room, drawn to the bloodcurdling shriek. “Did you see that, Little Uncle? If I follow her out the window, I won’t be a worthy son of Sima Ku. But the same is true if I don’t. What should I do?”
    I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
    Grabbing an umbrella some woman had left in his penthouse, he said, “If I die, Little Uncle, you take care of my body. If I don’t, then I’ll live forever.”
    He flicked open the umbrella, and with a loud “Shit!” leaped out the window and fell like a ripe fruit.
    Nearly blind with fright, I stuck the upper half of my body out the window and yelled, “Sima Liang — Sima Liang —” But he was too busy falling to pay attention to me. People below craned their necks to witness the spectacle, ignoring the body of Sha Zaohua, which was splattered like a dead dog on the cement in front of them, and watching as Sima Liang parachuted right through the canopy of a plane tree and into a cluster of holly trees, trimmed as neatly as Stalin’s mustache, sending what looked like green sludge out in waves. The people on the ground crowded around the trees just in time to see Sima Liang emerge as if nothing had happened, patting the seat of his pants and waving to the crowd. His face was a riot of colors, like the glass windows of the church we went to as children. “Sima Liang,” I shouted tearfully. He pushed his way through the crowd, walked up to the building’s entrance, and hailed a yellow cab. He opened the door and jumped in before the purple-clad doorman could react. The cab sped away with a burst of black exhaust, turned the corner, and entered the stream of traffic; then it was gone.
    I heaved a great sigh, as if awakening from a nightmare. It was a bright, sunny, intoxicating, and lazy day, the sort that seems filled with hope but is rife with traps. Sunlight glistened off of Mother’s seven-story pagoda at the edge of town.
    “Son,” Mother said weakly, “take me to church. It’ll be the last time …”
    With my nearly blind mother on my back, I walked for five hours down the lane behind the Beijing Opera dormitory that wound past the polluted stream by the chemical dye plant, until I found the recently restored church. Tucked away among a row of squat houses, it was simple and a bit run-down, no longer the imposing place it had once been. The front of the church and both sides of the lane were packed with bicycles decorated with colorful ribbons. An old woman sat at the gate entrance, looking like a cross between a ticket-taker and a lookout for secret activities occurring inside. She gave us a friendly nod and let us pass through the gate. The yard was packed