Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

whiskbroom used to keep the
kang
neat. Raising it over her head, she screamed hysterically, “How dare you talk to me like that! Just see if I don’t beat you to death!”
    Mother jumped off the
kang
, holding the whiskbroom high in the air. But instead of getting ready to duck the blow that was sure to come, Laidi raised her head defiantly, and Mother’s hand froze in midair; when it finally came down, there was no steam behind it. Letting the whiskbroom fall to the floor, Mother threw her arms around my sister’s neck and sobbed, “Laidi, we and that fellow Sha live in two different worlds. I can’t sit by and watch my own daughter throw herself into a burning pyre …”
    By then, Laidi was sobbing too.
    Once they’d cried themselves out, Mother dried my sister’s face with the back of her hand and implored her, “Laidi, give me your word you won’t have anything to do with that Sha fellow.”
    But Laidi stood her ground. “Mother,” she said, “this is something I really want, and not just for me, but for the good of the family.” Out of the corner of her eye, Laidi looked down at the foxskin overcoat and the two little lynx jackets lying on the
kang.
    Mother too stood her ground. “I want you all to take off those coats tomorrow.”
    “Don’t you even care if we freeze to death?” my sister said.
    “A damned fur coat peddler is what he is,” Mother complained.
    My sister unbolted the door and strode to her room without a backward glance.
    Mother sat down feebly on the edge of the
kang
, and I heard raspy breaths coming up from her chest.
    Then I heard Sha Yueliang’s hesitant footsteps outside the window. His tongue was thick and his lips seemed paralyzed; I knew he wanted to knock against the window frame and, in a tender voice, raise the subject of marriage. But alcohol had dulled his senses and made it impossible for his actions to match his desires. He banged on our window frame so loud and so hard that his hand tore through the paper covering, letting cold air from the outside pour in, along with the stench of alcohol on his breath. In the tone of voice so common to drunks — disgusting yet at the same time somehow endearing — he bellowed, “Mother —”
    Mother jumped down off the
kang
and stood there sort of dazed for a moment, before climbing back up on the
kang
and dragging me over from beneath the window, where I’d been lying. “Mother,” Sha said, “Laidi and me, when can we be married … I’m not a patient man …”
    Mother clenched her teeth. “You there, Sha,” she said, “like the toad who wants to feast on a swan, you can just dream on!” “What did you say?” Sha Yueliang asked her. “I said, dream on!”
    As if he’d suddenly turned sober, Sha said without a trace of slurring, “Adoptive mother, I have never in my life begged anyone for anything.”
    “Nobody’s asking you to beg me for anything.” With a snicker, he said, “Adoptive mother, I tell you that Sha Yueliang gets and does exactly what he wants …” “You’ll have to kill me first.”
    “Given that I want to marry your daughter,” Sha said with a laugh, “how could I kill you, my future mother-in-law?” “Then you can forget about marrying my daughter.” Another laugh. “Your daughter is a grown woman, and you can no longer decide her fate. We shall see what happens, my dear mother-in-law.”
    Sha walked up to the eastern window, poked a hole in the paper covering, and flung a handful of candy into the room. “Little sisters-in-law,” he shouted, “have some candy. As long as Sha Yueliang is around, you’ll eat sweets and drink spicy drinks along with me….”
    Sha Yueliang did not sleep that night. Instead he walked around the yard and, except for an occasional cough or an outburst of whistling, which he did quite well, since he could imitate the voices of a dozen different birds, he sang arias from old operas or contemporary anti-Japanese songs at the top of his lungs. One minute he’d sing about Chen Shimei, the evil husband beheaded on the order of the angry Kaifeng magistrate, the next he’d bring his sword down on the neck of a Jap soldier. To keep this resistance hero, drunk on alcohol and love, from breaking into the room, Mother added a second bolt to the door, way up high, and, if that weren’t enough, stacked anything she could move, from a bellows to a wardrobe to a pile of broken bricks, up against the door. Then, after putting me safely on her back, she