Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

better with a hammer and anvil than her husband could ever hope to be. The mere sight of steel and fire sent blood running hot through her veins. The muscles of her arms rippled like knotted horsewhips. Black steel striking against red, sparks flying, a sweat-soaked shirt, rivulets of salty water flowing down the valley between pendulous breasts, the biting smell of steel and blood filling the space between heaven and earth. She watched Sima Ting jerk backward on his perch, the damp morning air around him soaked with the smell of gunpowder. As he circled the tiny platform, he broadcast a warning to all of Northeast Gaomi Township:
    “All you elders, fellow townsmen, the Japs are coming!”
2
    Shangguan Lü emptied her dustpan onto the exposed surface of the
kang
, whose grass mat and bedding had been rolled up and put to one side, then cast a worried look at her daughter-in-law, Shangguan Lu, who moaned as she gripped the edge of the
kang.
After tamping the dirt down with both hands, she said softly to her daughter-in-law, “You can climb back up now.”
    Shangguan Lu trembled under the gentle gaze of her mother-in-law. As she stared sadly at the older woman’s kind face, her ashen lips quivered, as if she wanted to say something.
    “The devil’s gotten back into that old bastard Sima, firing his gun so early in the morning!” Shangguan Lü announced.
    “Mother …” Shangguan Lu said.
    Clapping her hands to loosen the dirt, Shangguan Lü muttered softly, “My good daughter-in-law, try your best! If this one’s a girl, too, I’d be a fool to keep defending you.”
    Tears trickled from Shangguan Lu’s eyes as she bit down on her lip; holding up her sagging belly, she climbed back onto the dirt-covered
kang.
    “You’ve been down this road before,” Shangguan Lü said as she laid a roll of white cotton and a pair of scissors on the
kang.
“Go ahead and have your baby.” Then, with an impatient frown, she said, “Your father-in-law and Laidi’s daddy are in the barn tending to the black donkey. This will be her first foal, so I should be out there giving them a hand.”
    Shangguan Lu nodded. Another explosion flew in on the wind, setting off a round of barking by frightened dogs. Sima Ting’s booming voice came in fits: “Fellow townsmen, flee for your lives, don’t wait another minute …” She felt the baby inside her kick, as if in response to Sima Ting’s shouts, the stabbing pains forcing drops of rancid sweat out of every pore in her body. She clenched her teeth to keep the scream inside her from bursting out. Through the mist of tears she saw the lush black hair of her mother-in-law as she knelt at the altar and placed three sandalwood joss sticks in Guanyin’s burner. Fragrant smoke curled up and quickly filled the room.
    “Merciful Bodhisattva Guanyin, who succors the downtrodden and the distressed, protect and take pity on me, deliver a son to this family…” Pressing down on her arched, swollen belly with both hands, cold to the touch, Shangguan Lu gazed up at the enigmatic, glossy face of the ceramic Guanyin in her altar, and said a silent prayer as fresh tears began to flow. Removing her wet trousers and rolling up the shirt to expose her belly and her breasts, she gripped the edge of the
kang.
In between contractions she ran her fingers through her matted hair and leaned against the rolled-up grass mat and millet stalks.
    The chipped quicksilver surface of a mirror in the window lattice reflected her profile: sweat-soaked hair, long, slanted, lusterless eyes, a pale high-bridged nose, and full but chapped lips that never stopped quaking. Moisture-laden sunbeams streamed in through the window and fell on her belly. Its twisting, swollen blue veins and white, pitted skin looked hideous to her; mixed feelings, dark and light, like the clear blue of a summer sky in Northeast Gaomi with dark rain clouds rolling past, gripped her. She could hardly bear to look at that enormous, strangely taut belly.
    She had once dreamed that her fetus was actually a chunk of cold steel. Another time she’d dreamed that it was a large, warty toad. She could bear the thought of a chunk of steel, but the image of the toad made her shudder. “Lord in Heaven, protect me … Worthy Ancestors, protect me … gods and demons everywhere, protect me, spare me, let me deliver a healthy baby boy … my very own son, come to Mother … Father of Heaven, Mother of Earth, yellow spirits and fox fairies, help me,