Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

call myself a man. Xuan’er, take that knife and put me out of my misery.” He pointed to a gleaming melon knife on a shelf, as tears sluiced down his cheeks. Mother experienced a welter of emotions. She reached out to stroke the man’s bald head. “Uncle,” she said, “I don’t blame you a bit. It’s them, they drove me to this.” At that point, her voice turned shrill and she pointed to the melons on the ground outside the tent, as if they were people. “Listen to me! Go ahead, laugh! Uncle, life is full of twists and turns. I did my best to remain chaste and upright, and how was I rewarded? I was yelled at, beaten, and sent back to my childhood home. So what must I do to gain their respect? Get pregnant by other men! Sooner or later, Uncle, my boat is going to capsize, if not here, then somewhere else.” A wry smile twisted her mouth. “What is it they say, Uncle — Do not fertilize other people’s fields?” Her uncle stood up anxiously. She reached out, unladylike, and jerked his pants down.
    Father and son rested in the cool shade near the Shangguan threshing ground; the family dog was sprawled out at the base of the crumbling wall, its pink tongue lolling to the side as the animal panted from the oppressive heat. Mother’s body was covered with rancid-smelling, sticky sweat. Her throat was on fire, her head ached, she was nauseous, and the veins on her forehead throbbed so violently they seemed about to burst. The lower half of her body felt as if it were cotton packed in a tub. Thoroughly prepared to die there on the threshing ground, she summoned up an astonishing amount of strength to keep working. Golden flashes of light on the floor made the tassels seem to come alive, like schools of tiny goldfish, or millions of squirming snakes. As she turned over the grain, Mother experienced a sense of tragic sorrow. Heaven, open your eyes and look around! All you neighbors, open your eyes and look around. Feast your eyes on this member of the Shangguan family, working on a threshing floor with the sun blazing overhead, after just giving birth, the blood not even dry on my legs. And what about my husband and father-in-law? Those two little men are resting in the shade. Pore over three thousand years of imperial history, and you’ll not find more bitter suffering! Finally, as tears slid down her cheeks, she passed out, overcome by the heat and her own emotions.
    When she came to, she was lying in the thin shade at the foot of the crumbling wall, covered with mud that attracted swarms of flies, thrown there like a dead dog. The family mule was standing at the edge of the threshing floor, near Shangguan Lü, who was just then whipping her lazy husband and son. Covering their heads with their arms, those two little darlings filled the air with screeches as they tried, unsuccessfully, to avoid being hit.
    “Stop hitting me, stop …” Mother’s father-in-law pleaded. “Venerable wife, we’re working, what else do you want?”
    “And you, you little bastard!” she screamed as she turned her whip on Shangguan Shouxi. “Every time you two pull something off, I know it’s your idea!”
    “Don’t hit me, Mother,” Shangguan Shouxi said, tucking his head between his shoulders. “Who would look after you in your old age or handle the funeral arrangements if you accidentally killed me?”
    “Do you really think I’m depending on you to do that?” she said sadly. “I expect they’ll use my bones for kindling before anyone comes out to bury me!”
    Father and son struggled to harness the mule; once that was done, they picked up their tools and headed out into the field.
    Whip in hand, Shangguan Lü walked over to the wall. “Get up and go inside, my fine little daughter-in-law,” she said accusingly. “Why lie out here like that, just to make me look bad? To make it easy for neighbors to curse me behind my back, saying I don’t know the proper way to treat my daughter-in-law? I said, get up! Or are you waiting for me to hire an eight-man sedan chair to carry you inside? I don’t know what the times have come to when a daughter-in-law thinks she’s better than her mother-in-law. I hope you have a son one of these days, so you’ll get a chance to see what it means to be someone’s mother-in-law.”
    After Mother rose unsteadily to her feet, her mother-in-law took off her conical hat and put it on the younger woman’s head. “Go on, now. Pick some cucumbers in the garden. Tonight you can