Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

specifically, what she saw was the little pecker standing up like a silkworm chrysalis between my legs — and the dullness in her eyes was replaced by light. She picked me up and kissed me, like a hen pecking rice. Crying hoarsely, I sought out the nipple, which she stuck in my mouth. I began to suck, but instead of milk, all I got was a taste of blood. I was bawling, Eighth Sister — the girl born just before me — was whimpering. Mother laid me alongside my sister and struggled to get down off the
kang.
She walked unsteadily over to the water vat, bent over, and drank a ladleful of water. Numbly she looked out at the corpses in the yard. The adult donkey and her baby mule stood trembling beside the bed of peanuts. My older sisters walked into the yard, cutting a sorry figure. They ran to Mother and wept weakly before crumpling to the floor.
    White smoke billowed out of our chimney for the first time since the catastrophe. Mother broke open Grandma’s trunk and removed some preserved eggs, dates, rock candy, and a piece of old ginseng that had lain there for years. She threw it all into the wok, and when the water began to sizzle, it set the eggs in rapid motion. Finally, Mother called all the girls in and sat them around a large platter. “All right, children,” she said, “eat.”
    My sisters scooped the hot food out of the platter and ate ravenously. Mother only drank the broth, three bowlfuls, until there was nothing left. They were quiet for a while, but then threw their arms around each other and wailed. Mother waited until they had cried themselves out before announcing, “Girls, you have a little brother, and another little sister.”
    Mother suckled me. Her milk tasted like dates, rock candy, and preserved eggs, a magnificent liquid. I opened my eyes. My sisters looked at me excitedly. I returned their looks bleary-eyed. After draining Mother’s breast of its milk, surrounded by the cries of my baby sister, I closed my eyes. I heard Mother pick up Eighth Sister and sigh. “You’re one I didn’t need.”
    Early the next morning, the clang of a gong shattered the quiet of the lane. Sima Ting, the Felicity Manor steward, called out hoarsely: “Fellow villagers, carry out your dead, bring them all out.”
    Mother stood in the yard holding Eighth Sister and me in her arms and wailing loudly; there were no tears on her cheeks. She was surrounded by her daughters, some crying, some not; there were no tears on their cheeks either.
    Sima Ting walked into the yard with his brass gong, looking like a dried-out gourd, a man of inestimable age, his face deeply wrinkled. He had a nose like a strawberry, deep black eyes that kept rolling in their sockets, the eyes of a little boy. His aging stooped shoulders gave him the look of a candle guttering in the wind, but his hands were fair and plump, the palms nicely dimpled. He walked up to Mother and struck his gong with all his might. A gravelly
klong wah-wah-wah-wah
emerged from the cracked gong. Mother swallowed a sob, straightened her neck, and held her breath for at least a full minute. “What a tragedy!” Sima Ting said with an exaggerated sigh. Desperate grief was written on his lips, in the corners of his mouth, on his cheeks, even on his earlobes. And yet, despite the obvious sense of righteous indignation, there was an unmistakable hint of a smirk hidden in the space between his nose and eyes, a look of furtive glee. He walked up to the rigid body of Shangguan Fulu and stood woodenly beside it for a moment. Then he went over to the headless body of Shangguan Shouxi, where he bent down and looked into the dead eyes of the severed head, as if wanting to establish an emotional link. Saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth. In contrast to the peaceful expression on Shangguan Shouxi’s face, Sima looked somewhat stupid, and savage. “You people wouldn’t listen to me, why wouldn’t you listen to me?…” He was scolding the dead men in a low voice, talking to himself. He walked back up to Mother: “Shouxi’s wife, I’ll get someone to take them away. In this weather… well, you see.” He looked heavenward, and so did Mother. The sky was an oppressive leaden gray, and off to the east, the sunrise, blood red, was being beaten back by dark clouds. Our stone lions were damp. “The rain, it’s coming. If we don’t carry them away, once it starts raining, and then the sun comes out, you can imagine what it will do to them.” Mother held my