Big Breasts & Wide Hips

they had amazing stamina and could be ridden for long distances. Sha had selected these twenty-eight donkeys from over eight hundred: not gelded, blessed with loud, strident voices, young, black, and energetic. Those were their mounts. The twenty-eight animals formed a black line, like a flowing stream. A milky white mist floated about the road; sunbeams were reflected off the donkeys’ backs. When he spotted the battered clock tower and watchtower, Sha reined in his lead donkey. The ones behind kept coming stubbornly. Looking back into the faces of his band, he told the men to dismount, then ordered them to wash up and clean their donkeys. A look of sobriety and seriousness adorned his dark, gaunt face as he dressed down his band of men, who lazed around after dismounting. He had elevated washing up and cleaning mounts to glorious heights. He told his men that the anti- Japanese guerrillas were popping up everywhere, like mushrooms, and that the Black Donkey Musket Band was going to take its place ahead of all others, owing to its unique style, until it became the sole occupying force of Northeast Gaomi Township. In order to impress the villagers, they needed to carefully watch what they said and did. Under his mobilization, the band’s morale surged; after taking off their shirts and spreading them on the ground, they stood in the shallows of the river and sent water spraying as they washed up. Their newly shaved heads glinted in the sunlight. Sha Yueliang took a bar of soap from his knapsack and cut it into strips, which he handed out to his men, telling them to wash every speck of dust off their bodies. Joining them in the river, he bent down until his scarred shoulder nearly touched the water, so he could scrub his dirty neck. While their riders were washing up, the donkeys grazed among the leafy water reeds or chewed the leaves of sorghum stalks or nibbled at one another’s rumps; some just stood there deep in thought or slipped the meaty clubs out of their sheaths and beat them against their bellies. As the donkeys busied themselves with whatever pleased them, Mother struggled free of Pastor Malory’s embrace. “You’re crushing the babies, you foolish donkey!”

Pastor Malory smiled apologetically, revealing two neat rows of white teeth; he reached out to us with one of his big red hands, paused for a second, then reached out with the other. Grabbing hold of one of his fingers, I began to gurgle. But Eighth Sister lay there like a log, neither crying nor squirming nor making any noise at all. She had been born blind. Cradling me in one arm, Mother said, “Look at him, he’s laughing.” She then deposited me into those big, sweaty waiting hands. He put his head down next to mine, so close I could see every strand of red hair on his head, the brown whiskers on his chin, his hawkish nose, and the benevolent gleam in his eyes. Suddenly I felt sharp pains up and down my back; taking my thumb out of my mouth, I let out a howl and a gusher of tears as the pain seemed to penetrate the marrow of my bones. I felt his whiskery lips on my forehead – they seemed to be trembling – and got a powerful whiff of his goat’s milk and oniony breath.

He handed me back to Mother. “I frightened him,” he said sheepishly.

Mother handed Eighth Sister to Pastor Malory after taking me from him. She patted and rocked me. “Don’t cry,” she purred. “Do you know who he is? Are you afraid of him? Don’t be, he’s a good man, your very own… very own godfather…”

The pains in my back continued, and I cried myself hoarse. So Mother pulled open her blouse and stuck a nipple into my mouth. I seized it like a drowning man clutching at a straw and sucked desperately. Her milk had a grassy taste as it poured down my throat. But the shooting pains in my back forced me to let go so I could cry some more. Wringing his hands anxiously, Pastor Malory ran over to the base of the wall, where he pulled up a tasseled weed and flicked it back and forth in front of me to stop me from crying. It didn’t work. So he ran back and pulled up a sunflower, as big as the moon and ringed with golden petals, then brought it over to wave in the air for me. I was drawn to the flower’s smell. All during Pastor Malory’s frantic running back and forth, Eighth Sister slept peacefully in his arms. “Look at that, darling,” Mother said. “Your godfather plucked the moon out of the sky for you.” I reached out for the moon, but was stopped short by more shooting pains. “What’s wrong with him?” Mother asked, her lips pale, her face bathed in sweat. Pastor Malory said, “Maybe something’s pricking him.”

With Pastor Malory’s help, Mother took off the red outfit she’d made for me in celebration of my hundredth day in this world, and discovered a needle caught in one of the folds. It had drawn dozens of bloody pinpricks on my back. She flung it over the wall. “My poor baby,” she said tearfully, “it’s all my fault! My fault!” She slapped herself, hard. Then a second time. Two crisp smacks. Pastor Malory grabbed her hand, then walked behind her and put his arms around both of us. He kissed Mother on her cheeks, her ears, and her hair with his moist lips. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “It’s mine. Blame me.” His tenderness had a calming effect on Mother, who sat in the doorway and stuffed the nipple back into my mouth. Her sweet milk moistened my throat, as the pain in my back gradually disappeared. With my lips around a nipple and my hands cupping one breast, I kneaded and protected the other one with my foot. Mother pushed my foot away, but as soon as she let go, it sprang right back up there.

“I checked the clothes when I put them on him,” she said uncertainly, “so where did that needle come from? The old witch must have put it there! She hates all the females in this family!”

“Does she know? About us, I mean,” Pastor Malory asked.

“I told her,” Mother said. “She kept pressuring me, until I could no longer take her abuse. She is an outrageous old witch.”

Pastor Malory handed Eighth Sister back to mother. “Feed her,” he said. “They are both gifts from God, and you should not play favorites.”

Mother’s face colored as she took the baby from him. But when she tried to give her the nipple, I kicked my sister in the belly. She started bawling.

“Did you see that?” Mother said. “What a little tyrant! Go get her some goat’s milk.”

After Pastor Malory had fed Eighth Sister, he laid her down on the kang. She didn’t cry and she didn’t squirm. He then studied the downy fuzz on my head. Mother noticed his quizzical look. “What are you looking at? Do we look like strangers to you?” “No,” he said with a shake of his head, a foolish smile on his face. “The little wretch suckles like a wolf.” “Like someone else I know.” Mother replied mischievously. He smiled even more foolishly. “You don’t mean me, do you? What sort of child was I?” His eyes grew clouded as he thought back to his youth, which he’d spent in a place spent many thousands of miles away. Two teardrops fell from those eyes. “What’s wrong?” Mother asked. He tried to hide his embarrassment with a dry laugh as he wiped his eyes with thickly knuckled fingers. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I’ve been in China… how long now?” A note of displeasure crept into Mother’s voice: “I can’t remember a time when you weren’t here. You’re a local, just like me.” “No,” he said, “I have roots in another country. I was sent by the archbishop as one of God’s messengers, and I once owned a document to prove it.” Mother laughed. “Old man,” she said, “my uncle says you’re a fake foreign devil, and that your so-called document was a forgery from an artisan in Pingdu County.” “Nonsense!” Pastor Malory jerked upright, as if deeply offended. “That Big Paw Yu is a stupid ass!” “Don’t talk like that about my uncle,” Mother said unhappily. “I’ll forever be in his debt.” “If he weren’t your uncle,” Pastor Malory said, “I’d relieve him of his manhood.” Mother laughed. “He can fell a mule with his fist.” “If you won’t believe I’m Swedish,” he said dejectedly, “then no one will.” He took out his pipe, filled it with tobacco, and began smoking silently. Mother sighed. “Isn’t it enough that I admit you’re an authentic foreigner? Why be angry with me? Have you ever seen a Chinese as hairy as you?” A childlike smile appeared on Pastor Malory’s face. “I’ll return to my home someday,” he said. Then, after a thoughtful pause, he added, “But if I really had the opportunity to do it, maybe I wouldn’t go. Not unless you came with me.” “You’ll never leave here,” she said, “and neither will I. So why not make the best of it? Besides, don’t you always say that it doesn’t make any difference what color hair a person has – blond, black, or red – that we’re all God’s lambs? And that all any lamb needs is a green pasture. Isn’t a pasture the size of Northeast Gaomi enough for you?” “It’s enough,” Pastor Malory replied emotionally. “Why would I go anywhere else when you, my grass of miracles, are right here?”

Seeing that Mother and Pastor Malory were otherwise occupied, the donkey at the millstone began nibbling the flour on the stone. Pastor Malory walked up and gave it a loud smack, sending it quickly and noisily back to work. “The babies are asleep,” Mother said, “so I’ll help you sift the flour. Go get a straw mat, and I’ll spread it out in the shade.” Pastor Malory brought a mat over and spread it under a parasol tree; yet even as Mother was laying me on the cool mat, my mouth was clamped defiantly around her nipple. “This child is like a bottomless pit,” she said. “He’ll suck the marrow right out of my bones before I know it.”

Pastor Malory kept the donkey moving: the donkey turned the millstone, the millstone crushed the kernels of wheat, which turned to coarse powder and fanned out atop the stone. As she sat beneath the parasol tree, Mother put a willow basket on the mat and fixed the rack atop it. She then poured the coarse powder into her sieve and began shaking it back and forth rhythmically at an even pace; the snow white flour floated down into the basket, leaving the broken husks behind at the bottom of the sieve. Bright sunlight filtered through the leafy cover and fell on her face and shoulders. An air of domesticity hung over the courtyard, as Pastor Malory followed the donkey round and round the millstone to keep it from slacking off. It was our donkey; Pastor Malory had borrowed it that