Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

shake of his head, a foolish smile on his face. “The little wretch suckles like a wolf.” “Like someone else I know.” Mother replied mischievously. He smiled even more foolishly. “You don’t mean me, do you? What sort of child was I?” His eyes grew clouded as he thought back to his youth, which he’d spent in a place spent many thousands of miles away. Two teardrops fell from those eyes. “What’s wrong?” Mother asked. He tried to hide his embarrassment with a dry laugh as he wiped his eyes with thickly knuckled fingers. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I’ve been in China … how long now?” A note of displeasure crept into Mother’s voice: “I can’t remember a time when you weren’t here. You’re a local, just like me.” “No,” he said, “I have roots in another country. I was sent by the archbishop as one of God’s messengers, and I once owned a document to prove it.” Mother laughed. “Old man,” she said, “my uncle says you’re a fake foreign devil, and that your so-called document was a forgery from an artisan in Pingdu County.” “Nonsense!” Pastor Malory jerked upright, as if deeply offended. “That Big Paw Yu is a stupid ass!” “Don’t talk like that about my uncle,” Mother said unhappily. “I’ll forever be in his debt.” “If he weren’t your uncle,” Pastor Malory said, “I’d relieve him of his manhood.” Mother laughed. “He can fell a mule with his fist.” “If you won’t believe I’m Swedish,” he said dejectedly, “then no one will.” He took out his pipe, filled it with tobacco, and began smoking silently. Mother sighed. “Isn’t it enough that I admit you’re an authentic foreigner? Why be angry with me? Have you ever seen a Chinese as hairy as you?” A childlike smile appeared on Pastor Malory’s face. “I’ll return to my home someday,” he said. Then, after a thoughtful pause, he added, “But if I really had the opportunity to do it, maybe I wouldn’t go. Not unless you came with me.” “You’ll never leave here,” she said, “and neither will I. So why not make the best of it? Besides, don’t you always say that it doesn’t make any difference what color hair a person has — blond, black, or red — that we’re all God’s lambs? And that all any lamb needs is a green pasture. Isn’t a pasture the size of Northeast Gaomi enough for you?” “It’s enough,” Pastor Malory replied emotionally. “Why would I go anywhere else when you, my grass of miracles, are right here?”
    Seeing that Mother and Pastor Malory were otherwise occupied, the donkey at the millstone began nibbling the flour on the stone. Pastor Malory walked up and gave it a loud smack, sending it quickly and noisily back to work. “The babies are asleep,” Mother said, “so I’ll help you sift the flour. Go get a straw mat, and I’ll spread it out in the shade.” Pastor Malory brought a mat over and spread it under a parasol tree; yet even as Mother was laying me on the cool mat, my mouth was clamped defiantly around her nipple. “This child is like a bottomless pit,” she said. “He’ll suck the marrow right out of my bones before I know it.”
    Pastor Malory kept the donkey moving: the donkey turned the millstone, the millstone crushed the kernels of wheat, which turned to coarse powder and fanned out atop the stone. As she sat beneath the parasol tree, Mother put a willow basket on the mat and fixed the rack atop it. She then poured the coarse powder into her sieve and began shaking it back and forth rhythmically at an even pace; the snow white flour floated down into the basket, leaving the broken husks behind at the bottom of the sieve. Bright sunlight filtered through the leafy cover and fell on her face and shoulders. An air of domesticity hung over the courtyard, as Pastor Malory followed the donkey round and round the millstone to keep it from slacking off. It was our donkey; Pastor Malory had borrowed it that morning to help mill the wheat. The sweat on its back darkened its hide as it trotted to avoid the sting of the switch. The bleat of a goat beyond the wall heralded the arrival at the gate of the mule that had entered the world the same day I had. The donkey kicked out with its rear hooves. “Let the mule in,” Mother said, “and hurry.” Malory ran over to the gate and shoved the young animal’s lovely head backward to put some slack in the tethering chain. He then unhooked it from the post and jumped back as the