Big Breasts & Wide Hips

That evening, we all sat around the kang eating turnip slices and slurping wheat congee, when we heard someone pounding on the gate. Second Sister, who had gone over to the western side room to take food to Shangguan Lu, ran in and announced breathlessly, “Mother, there’s trouble. The mute and his brothers are at the gate, and they’ve brought a pack of dogs with them.” My sisters were thrown into a panic, but Mother sat there calmly feeding my twin sister Yunu – Jade Girl – then turned her attention back to the turnip slices, which she chewed loudly. She looked as calm as a pregnant rabbit. The commotion outside the gate died out as suddenly as it had arisen. In about the time it takes to smoke a pipeful, three dark, red-faced figures clambered over the wall on the south edge of the yard. It was the three mute brothers of the Sun family. Three black dogs, their glistening coats looking as if they had been smeared with lard, entered the yard with them. They glided over the wall like black rainbows and landed noiselessly on the ground. The mutes and their dogs froze for a moment in the deep red sunset, like statues. The eldest held a glistening Burmese sword; the second wore a blue steel hunting knife at his waist; and the third carried a large, rusty short-handled sword. They all had little cotton bundles – blue with white flowers – over their shoulders, like men about to set off on a long journey. My sisters sucked in their breath fearfully, but Mother sat calmly slurping her congee. Without warning, the eldest mute roared, followed by his two brothers, and then the dogs. Spittle from human and canine mouths danced in the dying rays of the sun like glowing insects. The mutes then made a show of their skill with their knives and swords, a reprise of their battle with the crows during the funeral in the wheat field. On that winter evening, knives and swords flashed as three stocky men, looking a bit like hunting dogs, leaped into the air, stretching their bodies as far as they’d go to hack at dozens of dead rabbits hanging from the trees in our yard. Their frenzied dogs howled and swung their big heads around as they flung the rabbits’ broken corpses right and left. When the men finished, our yard was littered with dismembered rabbits. A few lonely rabbit heads still hung from branches, like unpicked, wind-dried fruit. Leading their dogs, the satisfied mutes strutted around the yard a few times in a show of authority before skimming over the wall like swallows, the same way they’d entered, and disappearing in the gloom of falling night.

Holding her bowl out in front of her, Mother smiled slightly. That singular smile burned its way into our heads.

4

The first signs of aging in a woman appear on her breasts and work their way from the nipples backward. After our sister eloped, Mother’s pink nipples, which had always jutted out playfully, suddenly sagged, like ripe tassels of grain. At the same time, the pink turned to date red. During those days, her output of milk fell off, and it wasn’t nearly as fresh or fragrant or sweet as it had been. In fact, the now anemic milk tasted a little like rotting wood. Happily, the passage of time gradually improved her mood, especially after eating a big eel, which sparked a resurgent rise in her sagging nipples and a lightening of the color. But the deep wrinkles that appeared at the base of each nipple, like creases in the pages of a book, were disturbing; granted they were now smoothed out, yet an indelible trace of the indentation remained. This sounded a warning to me; thanks to instinct, or maybe divine intervention, a change in my reckless, indulgent attitude toward breasts occurred. I knew I must treasure them, conserve and protect them, treat them with the care due to the exquisite containers they were.

The winter that year was unusually bitter, but we moved safely and confidently toward spring, thanks to half a room filled with wheat and a cellar piled high with turnips. During the coldest days, heavy snowfalls sealed us inside, while outside, tree branches snapped under the wet accumulation. Wearing the fur coats Sha Yueliang had given us, we huddled around Mother and fell into a sort of hibernation. Then the sun came out one day and began to melt the snow; as large icicles formed beneath the eaves and sparrows reappeared, chirping for us from branches in the yard, we stirred from our wintry slumber. My sisters experienced deep revulsion over the melted snow on which we had relied for so long, and the same meal of turnips boiled in snow water, over and over, hundreds of times. My second sister, Zhaodi, was the first to mention that the snow this year carried the smell of raw blood, and if we didn’t hurry down to the river to draw fresh water, we might all come down with some strange illness, and that not even Jintong, who survived on mother’s milk, would be spared. By this time, Zhaodi had quite naturally taken over Laidi’s leadership role. This particular sister had thick, fleshy lips and spoke with a husky voice that oozed appeal. She became the voice of authority, since she’d assumed complete responsibility for meal preparation as soon as winter closed in, while Mother sat on the kang shy as a wounded milk cow, occasionally wrapping herself in the precious fox fur, as she should, so as to stay warm and ensure the continued flow of high-quality milk in her breasts. With a look at Mother, my second sister said imperiously, “Starting today, we will fetch our water from the river.” Mother did not object. My third sister, Lingdi, frowned and complained about the taste of the turnips boiled in snow water, and repeated her suggestion that we sell the donkey and use the money to buy some meat. “We’re surrounded by ice and snow,” Mother said sarcastically, “so where do you suggest we go to sell it?” “Then let’s go catch some wild rabbits,” Third Sister said. “With all this ice and snow they’re so cold they can hardly move.” Mother blanched in anger. “Children, remember one thing. I don’t ever want to see another wild rabbit as long as I live.”

In fact, there were many people in the village who grew tired of eating wild rabbit over that bitter winter. The plump little rabbits crawled across the snowy ground like maggots, so lethargic even women with bound feet easily caught them. These were golden days for foxes. Owing to the ongoing battles, all the hunting rifles had been confiscated by guerrillas of one stripe or another, depriving the villagers of their most effective weapons; the battles also had a debilitating effect on the villagers’ mood, so that during the peak hunting season, the foxes did not have to fear for their lives as they had in years past. Over the long, seemingly endless nights, every female was pregnant, as the foxes cavorted freely in the marshes. Their mournful cries had people constantly on edge.

Using a pole, my third and fourth sisters lugged a big wooden bucket down to the Flood Dragon River, followed by my second sister carrying a sledgehammer. As they passed the home of Aunty Sun, their eyes were drawn to the yard, which was dreary beyond imagining, with no sign of life. A flock of crows lined the wall, a reminder of all that had happened there. The excitement back then was long gone, as were the mutes, to destinations unknown. The girls walked through knee-deep snow to the riverbank, observed by several raccoon dogs in the scrub brush. The sun was in the southeastern sky, its slanting rays glistening on the riverbed. Ice near the bank was white, and walking on it was like stepping on crispy flatcakes, crackling under their feet – ge-ge zha- zha. Out in the center the ice was light blue, hard, smooth, and glossy. My sisters walked gingerly across it, and when my fourth sister slipped and fell, she pulled my second sister, who was holding her hand, down with her. The bucket and hammer crashed loudly on the ice, which made the girls giggle.

Second Sister picked out a clean patch of ice and attacked it with the sledgehammer, which had been in the Shangguan family for generations, raising it high over her head with her thin arms and bringing it down hard; the sharp, hollow sounds of steel on ice flew through the air and made the paper covering of our window quiver. Mother rubbed the top of my head, with its yellow fuzz, and then stroked the fur of my coat. “Little Jintong,” she said, “little Jintong, sister’s making a big hole in the ice. She’ll bring back a bucket of water and pour out half a bucket of fish.” My eighth sister, wrapped in her lynx coat, lay huddled in a corner of the kang, smiling awkwardly, like a furry little Goddess of Mercy. Second Sister’s first hit produced a white dot the size of a walnut; several splinters of ice stuck to the head of the hammer. She raised it again, straining to get it over her head, then brought it down unsteadily. Another white dot appeared on the ice, this one several feet away from the first one. By the time twenty or more white dots covered the patch of ice, Zhaodi was gasping for breath, as long, dense puffs of white mist shot from her mouth. She raised the hammer once more, but in using the last bit of strength to bring it down, she fell headlong onto the ice. Her face was ashen, her thick lips were now bright red; her eyes misted up, and the tip of her nose was dotted with crystalline beads of sweat.

By then my third and fourth sisters were muttering, voicing discontent over their elder sister as gusts of wind from the north swept across the riverbed and sliced into their faces like knives. Second Sister stood up, spit in her hands, picked up the sledgehammer again, and brought it down on the ice. But the next swing sent her sprawling on the ice a second time.

Just as they were gathering up the bucket and carrying pole and were about to head home dejected, resigned to the fact that they would have to continue using melted snow or ice to cook, a dozen or so horses pulling sleighs and leaving trails of icy mist galloped up on the frozen river. Owing to the bright rays of sunlight glancing off the ice and the fact that the horsemen rode in from the southeast, at first Second Sister thought they had coasted down to