Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

mosquito bites all over,” the man said as he blew on a smoldering wick of repellent made of mugwort. “Mosquitoes around here can bring down an ox, so it’s no wonder they did such a job on your fair skin.”
    Fragrant wispy smoke from the mugwort filled the tent as he reached into a basket hanging from one of the supports and took out a little red metal box filled with orange salve, which he rubbed on the swelling bites on Mother’s face and arms. The coolness penetrated deeply. He then took out a piece of rock candy and forced it into her mouth. What was about to happen, given the remote setting in which a man and a woman were alone, was inevitable, Mother was certain of that. With tears in her eyes, she said, “Kindly brother, do with me what you will, but please lead me out of this place as soon as you can. There are nursing children waiting for me at home.”
    Mother gave herself to the man without a struggle, feeling neither pain nor joy. Her only hope was that he would give her a son.
6
    After Lingdi, my third sister, came Xiangdi, the daughter of a quack doctor.
    He was a rail-thin, hawk-nosed, vulture-eyed young man who roamed the streets and byways ringing a brass bell and chanting, “My grandfather was a court physician, my father ran a pharmacy, but I am penniless and in deep sorrow, which is why I must wander to and fro with my bell.”
    As she was returning home from the fields with a load of grass on her back, Mother spotted him using tweezers to remove little white “tooth worms” from the mouth of an old man. When she got home she told her mother-in-law, who was suffering from a toothache, what she had seen.
    After summoning the physician to the house, Mother held the lantern while he poked at Shangguan Lü’s aching tooth. “Madam,” he said, “your problem is what we call ‘fire tooth,’ not tooth worms.” So he stuck some silver needles into Shangguan Lü’s hand and cheek, then reached behind him and removed some medicinal powder from a sack, blowing it into her mouth. That did it, the pain vanished.
    His treatment finished, he asked to be put up for the night in the family’s eastern side room. The following morning, he offered them a silver dollar to let him use the room to treat patients. Since he had cured her toothache and was offering a shiny silver dollar, Grandmother was happy to accommodate him.
    The man lived in the Shangguan household for three months, paying for his room and board on the first of each month. He was like a member of the family.
    One day, Shangguan Lü asked if he had any sort of fertility drug. He did, writing out a prescription for Mother, which consisted of ten hen’s eggs fried in sesame oil and honey.
    “I’d like to try some of that myself,” Shangguan Shouxi said.
    One day Mother, who had developed a fondness for the mysterious physician, slipped into his quarters and revealed the fact that her husband was sterile.
    “Those tooth worms,” he revealed to her, “were in my little metal box all along.”
    Once he was sure that Mother was pregnant, it was time to be on his way. But before he left, not only did he hand Shangguan Lü all the money he’d earned treating patients at their house, but formally declared her to be his adoptive mother.
7
    During dinner, Mother dropped a bowl and broke it. An explosion went off in her head, and she knew she was in for more misery.
    Following the birth of my fourth sister, a pall settled over the Shangguan household. A permanent frown adorned my grandmother’s face, which had the hardened look of a sickle ready to lop off Mother’s head at the slightest provocation.
    The age-old tradition of a lying-in month was abolished at the house. Before she even had time to clean up the mess between her legs after the birth of the baby, Mother heard the clang of tongs on the window frame and the voice of her mother-in-law: “You think you’ve made another contribution, don’t you? One fucking daughter after another, and you think you’ve earned the right to have your mother-in-law wait on you hand and foot! Is this the sort of training you got at the house of Big Paw Yu? You’re supposed to be the daughter-in-law of this family, but you act like you’re the mother-in-law. Maybe I disturbed some heavenly order by slaughtering an old ox in a previous life, and this is my retribution. I must have been out of my mind, blind as a bat, to find a woman like you to marry my son!” She banged the tongs against