Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

and carried her inside, laying her on the
kang.
    At around dusk Third Sister came to. With tears in her eyes, Mother asked, “Are you all right, Lingdi?” Third Sister looked up at Mother and appeared to nod her head, but maybe not. Tears seeped from her eyes. “My poor, abused child,” Mother said. “They’re taking him to Japan,” Lingdi said frostily, “and he won’t be back for eighteen years. Mother, I want you to make an altar for me. I am now a Bird Fairy.”
    The comment struck Mother like a thunderbolt. A welter of mixed feelings filled her heart. As she gazed into the now demonic face of Third Sister, there was so much she wanted to say; but not a single word emerged.
    In the brief history of Northeast Gaomi Township, six women have been transformed into fox, hedgehog, weasel, white snake, badger, and bat fairies, all a result of love denied or a bad marriage; each lived a life of mystery, earning the fearful respect of others. Now a Bird Fairy had appeared in my house, which both terrified and disgusted Mother. But she didn’t dare say anything that went against Third Sister’s wishes, for a bloody precedent had been set in the past: a dozen or more years earlier, Fang Jinzhi, the wife of the donkey dealer, Yuan Jinbiao, was caught in the arms of a young man in the graveyard. Members of the Yuan family beat the man to death, and then beat Fang Jinzhi to within an inch of her life. Overwhelmed by shame and anger, she took arsenic, but was saved when someone forced human waste down her throat. When she came around, she said she was possessed by a fox fairy and asked that an altar be set up for her. The Yuan family refused. From that day on, the family’s woodpile often caught fire; their pots and pans and other kitchenware frequently broke apart for no apparent reason; when the old man of the family tipped over his wine decanter, out came a lizard; when the old woman of the family sneezed, two front teeth came flying out of her nostrils; and when the family boiled a pot of meat-filled
jiaozi
dumplings, what came out of the water instead were toads. The Yuans finally gave in and set up an altar for the fox fairy and installed Fang Jinzhi in a meditation room.
    The meditation room for the Bird Fairy was set up in a side room. With my fourth and fifth sisters in tow, Mother cleaned up the bits and pieces left behind by Sha Yueliang, swept the walls clean of cobwebs and the ceiling of dust, and then put fresh paper coverings in the windows. They put an incense table up against the northern wall and lit three sticks of sandalwood incense left over from that earlier year when Shangguan Lü had worshipped the Guanyin Bodhisattva. They ought to have put an image of a Bird Fairy up in front of the incense table, but they didn’t know what one looked like. So Mother asked Third Sister for instructions. “Fairy,” she said piously as she knelt on the floor, “where can I obtain the image of an idol for the incense table?” Third Sister sat primly in a chair, her eyes closed, her cheeks flushed, as if enjoying a wonderful erotic dream. Not daring to hurry or upset her, Mother asked again even more piously. My third sister opened her mouth in a wide yawn, her eyes still closed, and replied in a twittering voice somewhere between bird and human speech, making her words nearly impossible to understand, “There’ll be one tomorrow.”
    The next morning, a hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed beggar came to our door. In his left hand he carried a dog-beating staff made of hollowed-out bamboo, while in his right he held a ceramic bowl with two deep chips on the rim. He was filthy, as if he’d just rolled in the dirt, or had completed a thousand-mile trudge; dirt filled his ears and was crusted in the corners of his eyes. Without a word, he walked into our parlor, freely and casually, as if it were his own home. He removed the lid from the pot on the stove, ladled out a bowlful of herbal soup, and began slurping it down. When he’d finished, he sat on the stove counter, again without a word, and scraped Mother’s face with his knifelike gaze. Despite the discomfort she felt inside, she put on a calm exterior. “Honored guest,” she said, “poor as we are, we have nothing for you. Please don’t be offended if I offer you this.” She handed him a clump of wild herbs. He refused the offer. Licking his chapped and bloody lips, he said, “Your son-in-law asked me to deliver two things to you.” But he took nothing