Big Breasts & Wide Hips

coats. The looks on their faces showed that they were delighted to be immersed in such warmth, and that they felt warmed by their delight. As she stood there shivering, Mother said weakly, “Have you all turned deaf?”

Sha Yueliang removed the last two overcoats from one of the bundles and gently rubbed the black fur covering the brown satiny-sleek hide. “Adoptive mother,” he said emotionally, “these are lynx hides. There was only a single pair of them anywhere in a hundred-li radius of Northeast Gaomi. It took old man Geng and his son three years to catch them. This is the male, and this is the female. Have you ever seen a lynx?” His eyes swept the fur-clad girls. Since they didn’t answer, he told them about lynxes, like a schoolteacher lecturing his class. “The lynx is a cat, only larger, and resembles a leopard, only smaller. It can climb trees and it can swim. It can leap several feet in the air and is capable of snatching birds off the limbs of trees. It’s a very clever animal. This particular pair of lynxes lived amid Northeast Gaomi’s unmarked burial mounds, which made it harder to catch them than climbing to the sky. But, eventually, they were caught. Adoptive mother, these two jackets are my gifts to young brother Jintong and his twin sister.” With that, he laid out the two tiny jackets made from the lynxes, animals that when alive could climb trees, could swim, and could leap several feet in the air. He then bent over, picked up the flame-red foxskin coat, shook it out, and laid it too in the crook of Mother’s arm. “Adoptive mother,” he said with a catch in his voice, “please don’t make me lose face.”

After night fell, Mother bolted the door and called Laidi into our room. She laid me down at the head of the kang, alongside my twin sister. I reached out and scratched her face. She cried out and curled up in the corner, as far away from me as possible. Mother was too busy bolting the bedroom door to concern herself with us. My eldest sister was standing at the head of the kang, bundled in her purple marten coat, the fox stole around her neck, looking bashful and proud at the same time. Mother climbed onto the kang. Taking a silver hairpin from the bun at the back of her head, she picked the knot out of the lamp wick to make it shine brightly. Then she sat up straight and said in a taunting voice, “Sit down, young mistress. Don’t be afraid you’ll soil your new coat.” Laidi blushed and sat on a stool beside the kang, pouting to show she felt hurt. Her fur stole raised its sly chin; oily green lights shot out from her eyes.

The yard was Sha Yueliang’s world. Ever since he’d set up a bivouac in our eastern side room, our main gate was never closed all the way. On this particular night, there was a lot more going on in the eastern side room than usual. The bright light of a gas lantern shone through the paper covering of the window, lighting up the whole yard and adding a radiance to the snowflakes swirling in the air. People were running around; the gate kept creaking open and shut; and the crisp sound of donkey hooves clattered up and down the lane. Inside the room, husky male laughter burst into the night between shouts of their finger gambling: Three peach gardens! Five stalwart leaders! Seven plum blossoms and eight horses! The aroma of meat and fish drew my six sisters up to the window in the eastern room, where they leaned against the windowsill and drooled hungrily. Mother watched my eldest sister like a hawk, eyes blazing; Laidi returned the look with unyielding defiance. Blue sparks flew from the clash of gazes. “What are you thinking?” Mother demanded.

“What do you mean?” Laidi asked as she stroked the lush tail of the fox.

“Don’t play dumb with me,” Mother said.

“Mother,” Laidi said, “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

Changing her tone to one of sadness, Mother said, “Laidi, you’re the oldest of nine children, and if you get into trouble, who am I going to rely on?”

My sister jumped to her feet and, in an indignant tone I’d never heard from her before, said, “Just what do you expect of me, Mother? All you care about is Jintong. As far as you’re concerned, we girls aren’t worth as much as a pile of dog turds!”

“Laidi,” Mother said, “don’t change the subject. Jintong may be gold, but you girls are silver. So no more talk about dog turds! It’s time for mother and daughter to have a heart-to-heart talk. That fellow Sha is a weasel coming to the chickens with New Year’s greetings. He does not have good intentions. He has his eye on you for sure.”

Laidi lowered her head and stroked the foxtail again as tears glistened in her eyes. “Mother,” she said, “I’d be happy to marry a man like him.”

Mother reacted as if struck by lightning. “Laidi,” she said, “you have my blessings no matter whom you marry, just so long as it isn’t that Sha fellow.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you worry about why.”

With a hateful edge to her voice that seemed out of place for a girl her age, Laidi said, “The Shangguan family has worked me like a beast of burden long enough!”

The shrillness of her comment stunned Mother. Scrutinizing her daughter’s face, red with anger, she then glanced down at the hand stroking the foxtail. I felt her reach for something close by; it was the whiskbroom used to keep the kang neat. Raising it over her head, she screamed hysterically, “How dare you talk to me like that! Just see if I don’t beat you to death!”

Mother jumped off the kang, holding the whiskbroom high in the air. But instead of getting ready to duck the blow that was sure to come, Laidi raised her head defiantly, and Mother’s hand froze in midair; when it finally came down, there was no steam behind it. Letting the whiskbroom fall to the floor, Mother threw her arms around my sister’s neck and sobbed, “Laidi, we and that fellow Sha live in two different worlds. I can’t sit by and watch my own daughter throw herself into a burning pyre…”

By then, Laidi was sobbing too.

Once they’d cried themselves out, Mother dried my sister’s face with the back of her hand and implored her, “Laidi, give me your word you won’t have anything to do with that Sha fellow.”

But Laidi stood her ground. “Mother,” she said, “this is something I really want, and not just for me, but for the good of the family.” Out of the corner of her eye, Laidi looked down at the foxskin overcoat and the two little lynx jackets lying on the kang.

Mother too stood her ground. “I want you all to take off those coats tomorrow.”

“Don’t you even care if we freeze to death?” my sister said.

“A damned fur coat peddler is what he is,” Mother complained.

My sister unbolted the door and strode to her room without a backward glance.

Mother sat down feebly on the edge of the kang, and I heard raspy breaths coming up from her chest.

Then I heard Sha Yueliang’s hesitant footsteps outside the window. His tongue was thick and his lips seemed paralyzed; I knew he wanted to knock against the window frame and, in a tender voice, raise the subject of marriage. But alcohol had dulled his senses and made it impossible for his actions to match his desires. He banged on our window frame so loud and so hard that his hand tore through the paper covering, letting cold air from the outside pour in, along with the stench of alcohol on his breath. In the tone of voice so common to drunks – disgusting yet at the same time somehow endearing – he bellowed, “Mother -”

Mother jumped down off the kang and stood there sort of dazed for a moment, before climbing back up on the kang and dragging me over from beneath the window, where I’d been lying. “Mother,” Sha said, “Laidi and me, when can we be married… I’m not a patient man…”

Mother clenched her teeth. “You there, Sha,” she said, “like the toad who wants to feast on a swan, you can just dream on!” “What did you say?” Sha Yueliang asked her. “I said, dream on!”

As if he’d suddenly turned sober, Sha said without a trace of slurring, “Adoptive mother, I have never in my life begged anyone for anything.”

“Nobody’s asking you to beg me for anything.” With a snicker, he said, “Adoptive mother, I tell you that Sha Yueliang gets and does exactly what he wants…” “You’ll have to kill me first.”

“Given that I want to marry your daughter,” Sha said with a laugh, “how could I kill you, my future mother-in- law?” “Then you can forget about marrying my daughter.” Another laugh. “Your daughter is a grown woman, and you can no longer decide her fate. We shall see what happens, my dear mother-in-law.”

Sha walked up to the eastern window, poked a hole in the paper covering, and flung a handful of candy into the room. “Little sisters-in-law,” he shouted, “have some candy. As long as Sha Yueliang is around, you’ll eat sweets and drink spicy drinks along with me…”

Sha Yueliang did not sleep that night. Instead he walked around the yard and, except for an occasional cough or an outburst of whistling, which he did quite well, since he could imitate the voices of a dozen different birds, he