Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

without even aiming. One of the partridges fell to the ground like a stone, landing right at Third Sister’s feet. The bird’s head was smashed. Its mate cried out as it circled overhead. The man took out another pellet, fired it into the air, and the second bird fell to the ground. He bent down, picked up the bird, and walked up to my sister. He looked right at her; she returned his gaze with a hateful stare of her own. By that time, Third Master Fan had been to our house to inform us of the movement to drive away the outsiders, which fired up our hatred of them. But rather than pick up the bird at Third Sister’s feet, he tossed her the one in his hands, then turned and walked off without a word.
    Third Sister came home with the partridges; the meat was for Mother, the broth for my sisters and the little Sima bastard, and the bones for my grandmother, who crunched them up loudly. Third Sister didn’t tell anyone that the outsider had given her the partridges, which were quickly transformed into tasty juices that wound up in my stomach. On a number of occasions, Mother waited until I was asleep to stick one of her nipples into the mouth of the little Sima baby; but he refused it. He preferred to grow up on grasses and bark. Blessed with an astonishing appetite, he swallowed anything that was put into his mouth. “He’s like a donkey,” Mother commented. “He was born to eat grass.” Even the turds that came out of him were like equine droppings. Not only that, Mother believed that he had a pair of ruminating stomachs. We often saw clumps of grass rise up from his stomach into his mouth, then watched as he closed his eyes and chewed contentedly, white foamy bubbles gathering at the corners of his mouth. After he’d chewed for a while, he’d stretch out his neck and swallow it down with a gurgling sound.
    Battles between the villagers and outsiders broke out following an attempt by Third Master Fan to ask them politely to leave. The outsiders’ representative — the young man who had given Third Sister the partridges — was called Birdman Han, the bird-catching specialist. With his hands on the slingshots at his waist, he argued vigorously, without giving an inch. He said that Northeast Gaomi had at one time been an unpopulated wasteland, and everyone was an outsider then. So if you can live here, why can’t we? But those were fighting words, and an argument ensued; that soon led to pushing and shoving. One young villager, an impetuous fellow everyone called Consumptive Six, came bursting out from behind Third Master Fan, picked up a steel club, and swung it at the head of Birdman Han’s aging mother. Her skull cracked and, leaking a gray liquid, the old woman died on the spot. Birdman let out a wail that sounded more like that of an injured wolf. Taking his slingshots from his belt, he let two pellets fly, blinding Comsumptive Six where he stood. All hell broke loose then, with the outsiders gradually getting the worst of it. With the body of his mother over his shoulder, Birdman Han retreated, fighting every step of the way,- all the way back to the sandy ridge west of the village. There he laid his mother out on the ground, loaded his slingshot, and took aim at Third Master Fan. “You had better not try to kill us all, headman. Even a rabbit bites when it’s cornered!” Before he’d finished, one of his pellets cut the air with a whoosh and struck Third Master Fan in his left ear. “Since we are all Chinese,” Birdman Han said, “I’ll spare you this time.” Cupping his hand over his split ear, Third Master Fan backed off without a word.
    The outsiders threw up dozens of tents on the sandy ridge, making it their own. Birdman Han buried his mother on the sandy ridge, then picked up his slingshots and walked up and down the street twice, cursing in his unfamiliar accent. What he was telling the villagers was this: I am a single man, so if I kill one of you, we’re even, and if I kill two of you, I’ll be one ahead. It is my hope that everyone can live in peace. With Consumptive Six’s blinded eyes and Third
    Master Fan’s shattered ear as examples, none of the villagers was willing to take them on. “Just think,” Third Sister said, “he’s lost his own mother, so what else can he fear?”
    From that time on, the outsiders and the villagers coexisted peacefully despite the grudges each carried. My third sister and Birdman Han met nearly every day at the spot where he had laid the