Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

seemed, had warned her coldly that Sima Ku had three wives. All right, then, she thought, I’ll be his fourth! Just then Fourth Sister shouted: “Sister, a big meat stick!”
    The so-called meat stick was in fact a silver-skinned eel that had risen to the surface and was writhing clumsily in the water. Its snakelike head was the size of a fist, its eyes cold and menacing, like those of a ferocious snake. As its head broke the surface, bubbles oozing from its mouth popped in the air. “It’s an eel!” Second Sister shouted, picking up her bamboo carrying pole and crashing it down on the head, the hook on the end sending water splashing. The eel’s head fell below the surface, but floated right back up. Its eyes were smashed. Second Sister swung again; this time the eel’s movements slowed and it stretched out stiffly. Throwing down her pole, Second Sister grabbed the head and dragged the eel out of the water. By then it was frozen stiff; it had indeed turned into a meat stick. The girls trudged home, with Third and Fourth Sisters carrying water and Second Sister carrying the hammer in one hand and the eel in the other.
    Mother sawed off the eel’s tail and cut the body into eighteen parts, each severed chunk hitting the floor with a thunk. Then she boiled the Flood Dragon River eel in Flood Dragon River water and produced a mouthwatering soup. Beginning that day, Mother’s breasts were youthful again, though scars from the wrinkles mentioned earlier remained on the tips, like the crumpled pages of a book.
    That night the delicious soup also lightened Mother’s mood and put a saintly look back on her face, like the merciful expression of the Guanyin Bodhisattva or the Virgin Mary, with my sisters seated around her lotus perch. Her loving children were with her on that peaceful night. Northern winds howled over the Flood Dragon River, turning our chimney into a whistle. Ice-covered branches of the trees in the yard cracked as they swayed in the wind; an icicle broke free of the house eave and shattered crisply on the laundry stone below.
    On that same wonderful night, Sima Ku was crossing the metal railroad bridge over the Flood Dragon River, some thirty li from the village, and on the verge of adding a new chapter to the history of Northeast Gaomi Township. That rail line was the Jiaoji Line, built by the Germans. The Wolf and Tiger Brigade warriors had fought a heroic, bloody battle, employing every conceivable tactic to slow down the construction, but in the end they’d been unable to stop the unyielding steel road from slicing through the soft underbelly of Northeast Gaomi Township, dividing it in two. In the words of their forebear Sima the Urn: Goddamn it, that’s the same as slicing open the bellies of our women! The metal dragon had belched thick black smoke as it rolled through Northeast Gaomi, as if rolling right across our chests. Now the rail line was in the hands of the Japanese, who turned it to transport coal and cotton, ultimately for weapons and gunpowder to be turned on us.
    Orion’s Belt was drifting west; a crescent moon hung just above the treetops. A punishing west wind swept over the frozen river, evoking creaks and groans from the steel bridge as it swayed. It was a bitterly, almost demonically, cold night, so cold that the ice kept cracking to create cobwebs over the surface of the river. The cracks were louder than gunfire. Sima Ku’s sled brigade reached the foot of the bridge and stopped at the river’s edge. Sima Ku jumped down off his sled, his backside feeling as if it had been clawed by a cat. Dim starlight made the river glimmer slightly, but the sky between the stars and the ice was so black you couldn’t see the fingers of your hand. He clapped his hands, the sound echoing around him from other clapping hands. The mysterious darkness energized and excited him. Later, when asked how he’d felt before destroying the bridge, he’d said, “Great, just like New Year’s.”
    His troops groped hand in hand up to the bridge, where Sima Ku climbed onto one of the stanchions, took a pickax from his belt, and hacked away at one of the supports. Sparks flew and loud clangs rang out. “Legs of a whore!” he cursed. ” Nothing but steel.” A shooting star streaked across the sky, trailing a long tail and hissing as it filled the sky with lovely blue sparks, momentarily lighting up the space between heaven and earth. Thanks to the light of the shooting star, he had a good look