Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

please …” And so she prayed and pleaded, assaulted by wrenching contractions. As she clung to the mat beneath her, her muscles twitched and jumped, her eyes bulged. Mixed in with the wash of red light were white-hot threads that twisted and curled and shrank in front of her like silver melting in a furnace. In the end, willpower alone could not keep the scream from bursting through her lips; it flew through the window lattice and bounced up and down the streets and byways, where it met Sima Ting’s shout and entwined with it, a braid of sound that snaked through the hairy ears of the tall, husky, stooped-over Swedish pastor Malory, with his large head and scraggly red hair. He stopped on his way up the rotting boards of the steeple stairs. His deep blue ovine eyes, always moist and teary, and capable of moving you to the depths of your soul, suddenly emitted dancing sparks of startled glee. Crossing himself with his pudgy red fingers, he uttered in a thick Gaomi accent: “Almighty God …” He began climbing again, and when he reached the top, he rang a rusty bronze bell. The desolate sound spread through the mist-enshrouded, rosy dawn.
    At the precise moment when the first peal of the bell rang out, and the shouted warning of a Jap attack hung in the air, a flood of amniotic fluid gushed from between the legs of Shangguan Lu. The muttony smell of a milk goat rose in the air, as did the sometimes pungent, sometimes subtle aroma of locust blossoms. The scene of making love with Pastor Malory beneath the locust tree last year flashed before her eyes with remarkable clarity, but before she gained any pleasure from the recollection, her mother-in-law ran into the room with blood-spattered hands, throwing fear into her, as she saw green sparks dancing off those hands.
    “Has the baby come yet?” her mother-in-law asked, nearly shouting.
    She shook her head, feeling ashamed.
    Her mother-in-law’s head quaked brilliantly in the sunlight, and she noted with amazement that the older woman’s hair had turned gray.
    “I thought you’d have had it by now.” Shangguan Lü reached out to touch her belly. Those hands — large knuckles, hard nails, rough skin, covered with blood — made her cringe; but she lacked the strength to move away from them as they settled unceremoniously onto her swollen belly, making her heart skip a beat and sending an icy current racing through her guts. Screams emerged unchecked, from terror, not pain. The hands probed and pressed and, finally, thumped, like testing a melon for ripeness. At last, they fell away and hung in the sun’s rays, heavy, despondent, as if she’d come away with an unripe melon. Her mother-in-law floated ethereally before her eyes, except for those hands, which were solid, awesome, autonomous, free to roam where they pleased. Her mother-in-law’s voice seemed to come from far away, from the depths of a pond, carried on the stench of mud and the bubbles of a crab: “… a melon falls to the ground when it’s time, and nothing will stop it… you have to tough it out, za-za hu-hu … want people to mock you? Doesn’t it bother you that your seven precious daughters will laugh at you …” She watched one of those hands descend weakly and, disgustingly, thump her belly again, producing soft hollow thuds, like a wet goatskin drum. “All you young women are spoiled. When your husband came into this world, I was sewing shoe soles the whole time …”
    Finally, the thumping stopped and the hand pulled back into the shadows, where its hazy outline looked like the claws of a wild beast. Her mother-in-law’s voice glimmered in the darkness, the redolence of locust flowers wafted over. “Look at that belly, it’s huge, and it’s covered with strange markings. It must be a boy. That’s your good fortune, and mine, and the whole Shangguan family, for that matter. Bodhisattva, be here with her, Lord in Heaven, come to her side. Without a son, you’ll be no better than a slave as long as you live, but with one, you’ll be the mistress. Believe me or not, it’s up to you. Actually, it isn’t…”
    “I believe, Mother, I believe you!” Shangguan Lu said reverently. Her gaze fell on the dark stains on the wall, grief filling her heart as memories of what had happened three years before surfaced. She had just delivered her seventh daughter, Shangguan Qiudi, driving her husband, Shangguan Shouxi, into such a blind rage that he’d flung a hammer at her, hitting