Big Breasts & Wide Hips

1

The twenty-sixth year of the Guangxu reign of the Great Qing, the Manchu dynasty, the year 1900 in the Western calendar.

My maternal grandfather, Lu Wuluan, was a martial arts practitioner who barely left footprints when he walked. As a leader of the Red Spears, he was active in training and arming troops and in building bunkers and moats to ward off attacks by foreign troops. But after several months of uneventful waiting, the local forces’ vigilance had slackened, and on the foggy seventh morning of the eighth lunar month, German forces under the leadership of County Magistrate Ji Guifen surrounded Sandy Nest Village in Northeast Gaomi Township. When the day’s battle was over, nearly four hundred Sandy Nest residents lay dead. That included my grandfather, who was killed by German soldiers after burying his spear in the belly of their comrade, and his wife, who had hidden her daughter, Xuan’er, in a large flour vat before hanging herself from the rafter to preserve her chastity. My mother, now an orphan, was six months old on that day.

On the following day, my aunt and uncle found my mother in the flour vat, barely alive, her body coated with flour. After clearing the baby’s mouth and nose and patting her on the back, my aunt was relieved to hear her little niece cough and begin to cry.

2

When Lu Xuan’er reached the age of five, her aunt fetched some bamboo strips, a wooden mallet, and some heavy white cloth. “Xuan’er,” she said to her niece, “you’re five years old, time to have your feet bound.”

“Why do I have to do that?”

“A woman without bound feet cannot find a husband.”

“Why do I have to find a husband?”

“You don’t expect me to look after you for the rest of your life, do you?” her aunt replied.

Mother’s uncle, Big Paw Yu, was an easygoing gambling man. Fearless and swaggering out in society, at home he was docile as a kitten. He was sitting in front of a fire roasting some tiny fish to go with what he was drinking. His huge hands were not nearly as clumsy as they looked. The tantalizing aroma of the sizzling fish drifted into Xuan’er’s nostrils. She was particularly fond of this lazy uncle, because every time her aunt went out to work, he stayed home to eat what and when he wasn’t supposed to. Sometimes he’d fry eggs, at other times it was dried meat, but there was always something for Xuan’er, on condition that she didn’t say a word to her aunt.

After scaling the little fish with his fingernails, he peeled off a strip, placed it on his tongue, and washed it down with a drink. “Your aunt’s right,” he said. “Girls who don’t bind their feet grow up to be big-footed spinsters that nobody wants.”

“Did you hear what he said?”

“Xuan’er, do you know why I married your aunt?”

“Because she’s a good person.”

“No,” Big Paw Yu said, “it’s because she has such tiny feet.”

Xuan’er looked down at her aunt’s feet and then her own. “Will my feet look like yours?”

“That depends on you. If you do as I say, yours will be even smaller.”

Every time Mother talked about having her feet bound, it was a mixture of blood-and-tears indictment and personal glory.

She told us that her aunt’s steely resolve and dexterity were renowned throughout Northeast Gaomi Township. Everyone knew she was the head of the household, and that Big Paw Yu was good for gambling and bird-hunting only. The fifty acres of land, the two donkeys that worked it, the household chores, and the hiring of workers all fell to Mother’s aunt, who was barely five feet tall and never weighed more than ninety pounds. That such a small person could get so much done was a mystery to everyone. When she promised to raise her niece into a fine young lady, she certainly was not about to cut corners on foot binding. First she bent the toes back with bamboo strips and wrapped them tightly, wrenching loud squeals of protest from her niece. Then she wrapped the feet tightly with the alum-treated white cloth, one layer after another. Once that was done, she pounded the toes with her wooden mallet. Mother said the pain was like banging her head against the wall.

“Please, not so tight,” Mother beseeched her aunt.

“It’s tight because I love you,” her aunt said with a piercing glare. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t care how loose they were. One day, when you have a perfect pair of golden lotuses, you’ll thank me.”

“Then I won’t get married, all right?” Mother pleaded tearfully. “I’ll take care of you and Uncle for the rest of your lives.”

Hearing this, her uncle softened. “Maybe you can loosen them a little, don’t you think?”

“Get out of here, you lazy dog!” her aunt said as she picked up a broom and threw it at him.

He jumped to his feet, picked up a string of coins, and ran out of the house.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the Great Qing fell and was replaced by a republic. Xuan’er was now sixteen and the possessor of perfect lotus feet.

Her uncle, who took great pride in Xuan’er’s tiny bound feet and viewed his uncommonly beautiful niece as a truly marketable treasure, hung a plaque over the front gate. “Fragrant Lotus Hall,” it read. “Our Xuan’er will marry a zhuangyuan, top scholar at the Imperial Examination,” he announced. “Big Paw,” they said, “the Manchu dynasty has fallen. There are no more zhuangyuan.” “Then she’ll marry a provincial military governor, and if not that, a county magistrate.”

It was the summer of 1917. Upon taking office, the newly appointed magistrate of Gaomi, Niu Tengxiao, banned the smoking of and trade in opium, outlawed gambling, vowed to annihilate bandits, and prohibited foot binding. The sale of opium went underground, gambling continued unabated, and annihilating bandits proved impossible. That left only foot binding, which hardly anyone opposed. So County Magistrate Niu personally went down into the villages to promote the ban, which earned him considerable prestige.

It happened during the seventh month, on one of those rare clear days. An open sedan drove into the town of Dalan. The county magistrate summoned the town head, who summoned the community heads, who summoned the neighborhood heads, who summoned the residents, all of whom were to gather at the threshing ground – men, women, young, and old. Nonattendees would be fined a peck of grain.

As the crowd gathered, Magistrate Niu spotted the plaque above Uncle Big Paw’s gate. “I’m surprised to see such sentiments at a peasant’s house,” he said. “There is a perfect pair of golden lotuses at that house, Magistrate,” the town head said fawningly. “Depraved tastes have become a national illness. Those so-called fragrant lotuses were once nothing but stinky feet.”

Eventually, the crowd settled down to hear what Magistrate Niu had to say. Mother told us that he was wearing a black high-collar tunic and a brown top hat. He had a dark mustache and wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses. A pocket watch chain dangled in front of his tunic, and he carried a walking stick. His voice was raspy, almost ducklike, but even though she had no idea what he was saying, she was sure he spoke with great eloquence.

Shy and timid, Mother clung to her aunt’s clothes. Once the foot binding process had begun, she’d stopped going outside, spending nearly all her time weaving nets or doing embroidery. She had never seen so many people before, and was too frightened to look around. She felt that everyone’s eyes were on her tiny bound feet. Mother told us she was wearing a leek green satin jacket, with wide sleeves and borders of fine silk. Her glossy black braid hung down nearly to her knees. Her trousers were cerise, also with hand-sewn borders. On her feet a pair of high-heeled red-embroidered shoes with wooden soles peeked out from beneath her trousers from time to time and clicked on the roadway when she walked. Since she had trouble standing, she had to hold on to her aunt.

During his oration, the magistrate singled out Fragrant Lotus Hall in his exhortation against the evils of foot binding. “It is a poisonous legacy of a feudal system,” he said, “a morbid aspect of life.” Everyone turned to gape at Mother’s feet; she didn’t dare look up. The magistrate then read the anti-foot binding proclamation, after which he summoned the women he’d brought along to perform the “Natural Foot Olio.” Six young women jumped spryly out of the open car, chattering as they showed off their fine figures. “Fellow villagers and elders, boys and girls, open your eyes wide and watch this!” the magistrate said. Everyone stared at the women, who wore their hair short, with bangs across the forehead, and were dressed in long-sleeved sky blue blouses with turn-down collars over short white skirts that showed a lot of leg. Short white socks and white sneakers completed the outfit.

A breath of fresh air had blown into the bosom of Northeast Gaomi Township.

After lining up and bowing to the crowd, the young women raised their brows and began to recite in unison: “We have natural feet, no abnormal fads, our bodies are precious, they came from moms and dads” – they bounced up and down, raising their feet high in the air to show their natural beauty – “we can run and jump and play in the rain, not like crippled feet that bring so much pain” – more bouncing and running around – “the feudal system is bad for a woman, who is only a toy, but we have natural feet, so take off your wrappings, girls, and share in our joy.”

As the “natural feet” girls hopped and bounced away, their place was taken by an orthopedic surgeon who brought an oversized model of the foot to demonstrate how the broken bones of bound feet forever altered the shape of the foot.

Just before the meeting ended, Magistrate Niu had a brainstorm. He ordered that Northeast Gaomi’s number one golden lotus come up and bear witness to how disgusting bound feet can be.

Mother nearly passed out from fright and hid behind her aunt. “The county magistrate’s orders are not to be ignored,” the town head said. But Mother wrapped her arms tightly around her aunt’s waist and begged her not to make her go up there.

“Go on, Xuan’er,” her aunt coaxed. “Show them your feet. As long as they know what they’re looking for, you’ll do fine. Don’t tell me that golden lotuses I personally created won’t compete favorably with the hooves on those six donkeys.”

So her aunt escorted her up front, and then stepped aside. Xuan’er swayed as she walked, like a willow in the wind, and in the eyes of tradition-bound Northeast Gaomi men, that was the mark of true beauty. They stared at her, desperately wishing that by raising their eyelashes they could lift a leg of her trousers for a good view of one of those tiny feet. Like a moth drawn to a flame, the magistrate’s gaze flew to that spot beneath her trouser hem, and he just stood there for a moment, mouth agape, before regaining his composure. “Just look,” he announced. “Such a lovely girl turned into a freak incapable of manual labor.”

Unmindful of the consequences, Mother’s aunt refuted the magistrate’s comment. “A golden lotus girl is meant to be pampered. Manual labor is what servants are for!”

With her aunt’s gaze boring into him, the magistrate asked, “Are you the girl’s mother?”

“What if I am?”

“Are her bound feet your handiwork?”

“What if they are?”

“Take this shrewish woman into custody,” he ordered, “and keep her there as long as her daughter’s feet remain bound.”

“I’d like to see any of you try!” Big Paw Yu thundered as he leaped out from the crowd, fists clenched, to protect his wife.

“Who are you?” the magistrate asked.

“I’m your elder,” he said defiantly.

“Seize him!” the enraged magistrate demanded.

Some of his underlings stepped up warily and reached out to restrain Big Paw, who brushed them aside with a swipe of his arm.

Now the crowd got involved, and amid the flurry of opinions, some people picked up dirt clods and threw them in the direction of the six natural feet girls.

The people of Northeast Gaomi have always been known for their boldness, something the magistrate must have been aware of. “I have important business to take care of today, so I’ll let you off this time. But unbinding women’s feet is national policy, and anyone who defies that policy can expect to be severely punished.”

The magistrate threaded his way through the crowd and climbed into his car. “Let’s go,” he told his chauffeur, who went to the front of the car and turned the crank until the engine started with a loud cough. The natural feet girls and other hangers-on piled in as the chauffeur ran around to the driver’s seat, grabbed the steering wheel, and drove off, leaving a trail of smoke behind.

A youngster in the crowd clapped. “Our Big Paw Yu scared off the county magistrate!”

That night, Shangguan Lü, wife of the local blacksmith Shangguan Fulu, presented a bolt of white cloth to a matchmaker called Big Mouth Yuan with a request that she approach the Yu family with a marriage proposal on behalf of her only son, Shangguan Shouxi.

“Elder sister-in-law,” Big Mouth said to Mother’s aunt as she tapped her feet with a rush fan, “if the Manchu dynasty hadn’t fallen, I wouldn’t dare cross your threshold, even if someone shoved a drill up my backside. But we now live in the Republic of China, and girls with bound feet are out of favor. The sons of well-to-do families have taken up new ways of thinking. They wear uniforms, they smoke cigarettes, and they chase after girls educated in foreign schools, girls with big feet, who can run and jump and chat and laugh and giggle when a boy puts his arm around her. I’m afraid your niece is a fallen phoenix, which is worse than a common chicken. The Shangguan family is willing to overlook that, and I think it’s time to burn the incense. Shangguan Shouxi is a good-looking, well-mannered boy, and the family owns both a donkey and a mule. Running their own blacksmith shop doesn’t make them rich, but they’re not badly off. Xuan’er could do worse than a family like that.”

“Have I raised a proper young lady just so she can marry the son of a blacksmith?”

“Haven’t you heard that the wife of the Xuantong emperor was sent up to the city of Harbin to polish shoes? Life is unpredictable, elder sister-in-law.”

“Tell the Shangguans to come see me in person.”

On the following morning, Mother peeked through a crack in the door to get her first glimpse of the robust woman who was to be her mother-in-law, Shangguan Lü. She also watched as her aunt and Shangguan Lü argued over the betrothal gifts until they were both red in the face. “Go home and talk it over,” Mother’s aunt said. “Either the mule or two acres of arable land. Raising the girl for seventeen years has to be worth something.”

“All right,” Shangguan Lü said. “You win. The mule is yours, and we’ll take your wooden-wheeled wagon.”

With a clap of the hands, the deal between the two women was struck. “Xuan’er,” Mother’s aunt called to her. “Come out and meet your mother-in-law.”

3

Three years into her marriage to Shangguan Shouxi, Xuan’er remained childless. Her mother-in-law railed at the family hen, “All you do is eat, and we still haven’t seen a single egg.” Her meaning was clear.

The weather that spring could not have been better, and business at the blacksmith shop reaped the benefits, selling new scythes and repairing broken ones for a steady stream of peasants. The furnace was in the middle of the yard, under a sheet of oil cloth to keep out the sun. The pleasant smell of burning coal hung over the yard, and dark red tongues of flame crackled in the sunlight. Shangguan Fulu handled the tongs, his son, Shouxi, worked the bellows. Shangguan Lü, wearing a tattered robe cinched at the waist by an oilcloth apron spotted with black marks from burning sparks, and an old straw hat on her head, handled the hammer. With sweat and soot streaking her face, the only way anyone could tell she was a woman was by the two protuberances on her chest. The clang of hammer on hot steel resounded from morning to night. As a rule, the family ate only two meals a day; Xuan’er was responsible for preparing the meals and tending the family livestock, pigs included, chores that kept her hopping all day long. And still her mother-in-law found fault, keeping an eye on her even as she hammered the red-hot steel, and muttering nonstop. When she ran out of complaints about her daughter-in-law, she’d turn her attention to her son, and from there to her husband. They were all used to being harangued by the head of the household and the best blacksmith in the family. Xuan’er both hated and feared her mother-in-law, but she admired her as well. Standing around watching Shangguan Lü work was a bit of a holiday at the end of the day, and the compound was frequently filled with people coming and going.

Her son, Shouxi, was small everywhere – nose, eyes, head, arms, hands – and one would be hard pressed to spot any resemblance to his burly mother, who often sighed and said, “If the seed’s no good, fertile soil is wasted.” He worked the bellows while she pounded the steel into shape.

On this particular day, as the last scythe was tempered, she raised it to her nose, as if its smell could determine its quality. Finally, she shrugged her shoulders and said in a voice that revealed her exhaustion, “Serve dinner.”

Like a foot soldier receiving a general’s command, Shangguan Lu ran on tiny bound feet, back and forth, setting the table under the pear tree, where a single hanging lantern produced a murky yellow light and drew hordes of moths that flew noisily into the lantern shade. Shangguan Lu had prepared a platter of buns stuffed with ground-up pork bone and radish filling, a bowl of mung bean soup for each person, and a bunch of leeks and a paste to dip them in. She cast an uneasy look at her mother-in-law to gauge her reaction. If there was plenty of food, she’d pull a long face and complain about wastefulness; if it was a simple meal, she’d toss down her bowl and chopsticks and complain angrily that it was tasteless. Being her daughter-in-law was not easy. Steam rose from the buns and the rice porridge. This was the time that the family, deluged by the clang of metal on metal during the day, fell silent. Xuan’er’s mother-in-law sat in the center, her son on one side, husband on the other, while Xuan’er stood beside the table awaiting her mother-in-law’s instructions.

“Have you fed the animals?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Closed up the chicken coop?”

“Yes, Mother.”

Shangguan Lü bent down and slurped a mouthful of soup.

Shangguan Shouxi spat out a sliver of bone and grumbled, “Other people eat pork-filled buns, but all we get are the bones. Like dogs…”

His mother slammed down her chopsticks. “You,” she cursed, “what gives you the right to be picky about what you eat?”

“We’ve got all that wheat in the bin and plenty of money in the cupboard,” Shouxi said. “What are we saving it for?”

“He’s right,” his father pitched in. “We deserve a reward for all our hard work.”

“That wheat in the bin and money in the cupboard, who does it belong to?” Xuan’er’s mother-in-law asked. “When I finally stretch out my legs for the last time and journey to the Western Heaven, do you think I’m going to take it with me? No, I’m leaving it for you.”

Xuan’er hung her head and held her breath.

Shangguan Lü exploded to her feet and stormed off. “Listen to me,” she shouted from inside the house. “Tomorrow we’ll fry fritters, braise pork strips, hard-boil some eggs, kill a chicken, bake some flat-cakes, and make dumplings! Why spread it out? One of our ancestors must have done something to make us suffer. We bring a barren woman into the family, and all she can do is eat. Well, since our family line is coming to an end, who are we saving for? Let’s finish it all off and be done with it!”

Xuan’er covered her face with her hands and burst out crying.

“You should be goddamned ashamed of yourself, crying like that!” Shangguan Lü shouted. “You’ve eaten our food for three years and haven’t even presented us with a daughter, let alone a son! You’re eating us out of house and home! Tomorrow you can go back where you came from. I won’t let this family line die out all because of you!”

Not a minute passed that night when Xuan’er’s tears didn’t flow. When Shouxi wanted to have his way with her, she submitted weakly. “Nothing is wrong with me,” she said through her tears. “Maybe it’s you.”

Without climbing off, he growled, “A hen can’t lay an egg, so she blames it on the rooster!”

4

The harvest was in, and the rainy season was about to begin. Local custom demanded that new brides return to their parents’ home to pass the hottest days of the year. Most of those who had been married three years returned proudly holding the hand of one child, suckling a second, and carrying a third inside, plus a bundle filled with patterns for shoes to be made. Poor Xuan’er. All she brought home, besides her sadness, were scars and bruises bestowed upon her by her husband, the echoes of her mother-in-law’s curses, a pathetic little bundle, and eyes red and puffy from crying. Now, the most caring aunt is still no match for your own mother, so even though she returned with a bellyful of bitter complaints, she had to keep them to herself and put on the best face possible.

As soon as she stepped through the doorway, her keen-eyed aunt saw right through her. “Nothing yet, I see.”

That simple comment brought tears of pain gushing from Xuan’er’s eyes.

“Strange,” her aunt muttered. “You’d think three years would be long enough to produce something.”

At dinnertime that evening, Big Paw Yu spotted the bruises on Xuan’er’s arm. “That sort of wife-beating has no place in a modern republic,” he said angrily. “I’d like to burn that turtles’ nest of theirs to the ground!”

“I see that not even rice can stop up that foul mouth of yours!” her aunt said as she glared at her husband.

For a change, there was plenty of food in front of Xuan’er, but she forced herself not to overeat. Her uncle placed a large piece of fish in her bowl.

“You know,” her aunt said, “you can’t blame your in-laws. Why does anyone take a wife? To continue the family line.”

“You didn’t continue my family line,” her husband said, “and I’ve been good to you, haven’t I?”

“Who asked you? Get the donkey ready so you can take Xuan’er into town to see a woman’s doctor.”

Sitting astride the donkey, Xuan’er passed through the fields of Northeast Gaomi Township, which were crisscrossed with rivers and streams. The sun sent down blistering rays of heat, raising steam from the ground and drawing groans from the foliage around her. A pair of dragonflies, connected at the rear, darted past; a pair of swallows mated in the sky above. Baby frogs that had just shed their tails hopped across the roadway; locusts that had just emerged from eggs perched on the tips of roadside grass. A litter of newborn rabbits followed their mother in a hunt for food. Baby ducks paddled behind their mother, their tiny pink webbed feet sending ripples to the edge of a pond… rabbits and locusts can produce offspring, so why can’t I? She felt empty inside, and was reminded of the legend regarding a child-rearing bag that existed in the bellies of all women, all but hers, it seemed. Please, Matron of Sons, I beg you, give me a child…

Even though her uncle was nearly forty, he had not lost his playfulness. Instead of holding the donkey’s halter, he let the animal trot along on its own while he ran up and down the roadside picking wild-flowers, which he made into a wreath for Xuan’er – to keep out the sun, he said. After chasing birds until he was out of breath, he went deep into the field, where he found a fist-sized wild melon, which he handed to Xuan’er. “It’s sweet,” he said, but when she bit into it, it was so bitter it nearly paralyzed her tongue. Then he rolled up his pant cuffs and jumped into a pond, quickly catching a pair of insects the size of melon seeds and shaking them in his hand. “Change!” he shouted. Holding his closed hand up to Xuan’er’s nose, he asked her, “What do they smell like?” She shook her head and said she didn’t know. “Like watermelons,” he said. “They’re watermelon bugs. They come from watermelon seeds.”

Xuan’er couldn’t help thinking that her uncle was really just an overgrown, playful child.

The results of the doctor’s examination? There was nothing wrong with Xuan’er.

“The Shangguan family will pay for this!” Xuan’er’s aunt said indignantly. “They’ve got a sterile mule of a son, and have no right to take out their frustrations on Xuan’er!”

But she only made it as far as the door.

Ten days later, during a pouring rain, the aunt prepared a sumptuous meal, complete with some of her husband’s strong liquor. With her niece seated across from her, she placed one green cup in front of each of them. Candlelight cast her shadow on the wall behind as she filled both cups with liquor. Xuan’er saw that her hand was shaking.

“Why are we drinking liquor, Aunty?” Xuan’er asked. She had the uneasy feeling that something was about to happen.

“No reason. It’s a rainy, sultry day, and I thought we could stay inside and talk, just the two of us.” She raised her cup. “Drink up.”

Xuan’er held out her cup and looked at her aunt with fear in her eyes. The older woman clinked glasses with her before tipping her head back and draining the cup.

Xuan’er emptied her cup.

“What do you plan to do?” Xuan’er’s aunt asked.

With a sorrowful look, Xuan’er just shook her head.

Her aunt refilled both cups. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to accept things the way they are,” she said. “The fact that their son is sterile is something we have to keep in mind. They owe us; we don’t owe them. Girl, I want you to understand that in this world, some of the finest deeds are accomplished in the dark, out of sight. Do you know what I’m getting at?”

Xuan’er shook her head, completely mystified. Her head was already spinning from the two cups of strong liquor.

That night, Big Paw Yu visited Xuan’er’s bed.

When she awoke the next morning, suffering a splitting headache, she was surprised to hear someone snoring loudly beside her. With difficulty she opened her eyes, and there, lying naked beside her, was her uncle, one of his big paws cupping her breast. With a shriek, she pulled the blanket up to cover herself and burst out crying, waking Big Paw from his sleep. Like a child who’s gotten himself into trouble, he jumped out of bed, grasping his clothes around him, and stammered, “Your aunt… made me do it…”

The following spring, shortly after the Grave-Sweeping Festival, Xuan’er gave birth to a scrawny, dark-eyed daughter. Her mother-in-law knelt before the Bodhisattva’s ceramic icon and kowtowed three times. “Thanks to heaven and earth,” she announced gratefully. “The seam has finally split. Now I ask the Bodhisattva to look over us and deliver a grandson next year.”

She went into the kitchen and fried some eggs, which she brought in to her daughter-in-law’s room. “Here,” she said, “eat these.”

As Xuan’er looked into her mother-in-law’s face, her eyes filled with tears of gratitude.

Her mother-in-law looked down at the infant lying in the tattered cloth wrapping and said, “We’ll call her Laidi – Brother Coming.”

5

My second sister, Zhaodi – Brother Hailed – also came from Big Paw Yu’s seed.

After Xuan’er delivered two daughters in as many years, Grandmother’s unhappiness showed clearly. It didn’t take Mother long to realize the cruel reality that for a woman, not getting married was not an option, not having children was not acceptable, and having only daughters was nothing to be proud of. The only road to status in a family was to produce sons.

Mother’s third child was conceived in a reedy marsh. It happened at noon on a day shortly after Zhaodi was born. Grandmother had sent Mother to the reed pond southwest of the village to catch snails for the ducks. That spring a man had come to the village selling ducklings. A tall, husky stranger with a piece of blue cloth over his shoulder and hemp sandals on his feet, he carried two baskets filled with downy yellow baby ducks. A crowd quickly gathered to gawp at the furry little animals, with their pink beaks and tiny quacks, as they tumbled all over each other in the baskets. Shangguan Lü stepped up and bought a dozen; others followed her lead, quickly snapping up the rest. The peddler took a turn around the village and left. That evening, as it turned out, Sima Ting was taken from Felicity Manor by bandits and not returned until the family had paid a ransom of several thousand silver dollars. People said that the duck peddler had really been an informer for the bandits, who wanted a detailed report on the layout of Felicity Manor.

But those were good ducks he sold. In five months they had grown to the size of tiny boats. Shangguan Lü, who loved those ducks, sent her daughter-in-law out to look for snails, anticipating the day when the ducks would begin laying eggs.

So Mother took an earthenware jar and a wire strainer on a pole wherever her mother-in-law told her to go. The ditches and ponds near the village had been picked clean of snails by villagers who were raising ducks, but on her way to the market at a place called Liaolan the day before, Shangguan Lü had seen that the shallows in a nearby pond were alive with snails.

When Mother got there, however, the surface of the pond was covered with green-feathered ducks that had eaten all the snails. Knowing she would be yelled at if she returned empty-handed, she decided to follow a muddy path that skirted the pond to see if she could find some water that hadn’t been visited by ducks, where there still might be snails she could take home. Sensing a heaviness in her breasts, she thought about her two small daughters at home. Laidi had just begun to walk and Zhaodi was barely a month old. But her mother-in-law placed greater value on her ducks than on her granddaughters, whom she refused to even pick up when they were crying. And as for Shangguan Shouxi, well, to call him a man was a terrible exaggeration. He was as useless as a gob of snot outside the house and totally subservient in front of his mother. But abject cruelty characterized his treatment of his wife. He had no use for either of the children, and whenever he abused Mother, she mused angrily, “Go ahead, you ass, beat me. Neither one of those girls is yours, and if I have another thousand babies, not one of them will have a drop of Shangguan blood running through their veins.” In the wake of her intimacy with Big Paw Yu, she did not know how she could face her aunt again. So that year she did not go home. “They’re all dead,” she said when her mother-in-law pressed her to return home for a visit, “so there’s nothing to go home to.” Big Paw, obviously, could give her only daughters, so she began the search for a better donor. Go ahead, Mother-in-law, Husband, beat me and curse me all you want. Just you wait, I’ll have my son one of these days, but he won’t be a Shangguan, and to hell with you!

Caught up in these thoughts, she walked on, parting the reeds that all but sealed off the path. The scraping sound and chilled, mildew-laden odor of water plants evoked a pale fear in her. Water birds cried out from the surrounding foliage as breezy gusts swirled among the plants. Up ahead, no more than a few paces, a wild boar blocked her path. Mean-looking horns poked out from the sides of its long snout; tiny staring eyes, surrounded by bristly brows, glared hatefully at her, accompanied by snorts of intimidation. Mother shuddered and awoke to unknown surroundings. How did I get here? she wondered. Everyone in Northeast Gaomi knows that the bandit hideouts are somewhere deep among the reeds. No one, not even armed troops, dares to set foot here.

Anxiously, Mother turned to head back, but she quickly discovered that human and animal traffic had formed a checkerboard of footpaths, and she couldn’t tell which one had brought her this far. Panic-stricken, she tried several of the paths, but they led nowhere, and she wound up crying over her predicament. Scattered shards of sunlight shone down on the ground, where years of fallen leaves rotted. Mother stepped into a pile of loose excrement, which, though foul-smelling, actually boosted her spirits; it could only mean there were, or had been, people in the vicinity. “Hello!” she shouted. “Is there anyone out there?” She listened as her shouts careened off of densely packed reed stalks before being swallowed up. When she looked down at her feet, she saw coarse vegetation amid the squashed pile of excrement, which meant it wasn’t human after all, but the droppings of a boar or other wild animal. Once again she headed down a footpath, but soon lost heart and sat on the ground, where she cried tears of despair.

Suddenly she felt something cold on her back, as if sinister eyes were watching from a hiding place behind her. She spun around to look – nothing but interlaced leaves of reed stalks, the top ones pointing straight up into the sky. A light breeze was born and died among the reeds, leaving behind only a soft rustle. Birdcalls from deep in the patch had an eerie quality, as if made by humans. Danger lurked everywhere. All those green eyes hidden amid the reeds, whose tips played host to will-o’-the-wisps. Her nerves were shattered, the hair on her arms stood on edge, her breasts hardened. As all rational thoughts fled, she shut her eyes and took off running, until her feet sank into the shallow water of a pond, startling clouds of dark mosquitoes into the air, and from there straight back to her, stinging her mercilessly; a sticky sweat oozed from her pores, attracting even more mosquitoes. At some point she’d lost her earthenware jar and wire strainer; now she was running to escape the mosquito onslaught and screeching pitifully. As she was about to give up hope altogether, her God sent a savior in the person of the duck peddler.

With a palm rain cape over his shoulders and a conical rain hat on his head, he grabbed Mother and led her to a high spot in the field, where the reed plants weren’t nearly as dense, and into an awaiting tent. A metal pot hung from a rack over a fire outside; millet was cooking inside.

“Please, kindly brother,” Mother said as she fell to her knees in the tent, “help me find my way out of here. I am the wife of blacksmith Shangguan.”

“What’s your hurry?” the man said with a smile. “I don’t get many visitors out here, so at least allow me to play the host.”

A waterproof dog pelt covered the bed on a wooden platform. “You’ve got mosquito bites all over,” the man said as he blew on a smoldering wick of repellent made of mugwort. “Mosquitoes around here can bring down an ox, so it’s no wonder they did such a job on your fair skin.”

Fragrant wispy smoke from the mugwort filled the tent as he reached into a basket hanging from one of the supports and took out a little red metal box filled with orange salve, which he rubbed on the swelling bites on Mother’s face and arms. The coolness penetrated deeply. He then took out a piece of rock candy and forced it into her mouth. What was about to happen, given the remote setting in which a man and a woman were alone, was inevitable, Mother was certain of that. With tears in her eyes, she said, “Kindly brother, do with me what you will, but please lead me out of this place as soon as you can. There are nursing children waiting for me at home.”

Mother gave herself to the man without a struggle, feeling neither pain nor joy. Her only hope was that he would give her a son.

6

After Lingdi, my third sister, came Xiangdi, the daughter of a quack doctor.

He was a rail-thin, hawk-nosed, vulture-eyed young man who roamed the streets and byways ringing a brass bell and chanting, “My grandfather was a court physician, my father ran a pharmacy, but I am penniless and in deep sorrow, which is why I must wander to and fro with my bell.”

As she was returning home from the fields with a load of grass on her back, Mother spotted him using tweezers to remove little white “tooth worms” from the mouth of an old man. When she got home she told her mother-in-law, who was suffering from a toothache, what she had seen.

After summoning the physician to the house, Mother held the lantern while he poked at Shangguan Lü’s aching tooth. “Madam,” he said, “your problem is what we call ‘fire tooth,’ not tooth worms.” So he stuck some silver needles into Shangguan Lü’s hand and cheek, then reached behind him and removed some medicinal powder from a sack, blowing it into her mouth. That did it, the pain vanished.

His treatment finished, he asked to be put up for the night in the family’s eastern side room. The following morning, he offered them a silver dollar to let him use the room to treat patients. Since he had cured her toothache and was offering a shiny silver dollar, Grandmother was happy to accommodate him.

The man lived in the Shangguan household for three months, paying for his room and board on the first of each month. He was like a member of the family.

One day, Shangguan Lü asked if he had any sort of fertility drug. He did, writing out a prescription for Mother, which consisted of ten hen’s eggs fried in sesame oil and honey.

“I’d like to try some of that myself,” Shangguan Shouxi said.

One day Mother, who had developed a fondness for the mysterious physician, slipped into his quarters and revealed the fact that her husband was sterile.

“Those tooth worms,” he revealed to her, “were in my little metal box all along.”

Once he was sure that Mother was pregnant, it was time to be on his way. But before he left, not only did he hand Shangguan Lü all the money he’d earned treating patients at their house, but formally declared her to be his adoptive mother.

7

During dinner, Mother dropped a bowl and broke it. An explosion went off in her head, and she knew she was in for more misery.

Following the birth of my fourth sister, a pall settled over the Shangguan household. A permanent frown adorned my grandmother’s face, which had the hardened look of a sickle ready to lop off Mother’s head at the slightest provocation.

The age-old tradition of a lying-in month was abolished at the house. Before she even had time to clean up the mess between her legs after the birth of the baby, Mother heard the clang of tongs on the window frame and the voice of her mother-in-law: “You think you’ve made another contribution, don’t you? One fucking daughter after another, and you think you’ve earned the right to have your mother-in-law wait on you hand and foot! Is this the sort of training you got at the house of Big Paw Yu? You’re supposed to be the daughter-in-law of this family, but you act like you’re the mother-in-law. Maybe I disturbed some heavenly order by slaughtering an old ox in a previous life, and this is my retribution. I must have been out of my mind, blind as a bat, to find a woman like you to marry my son!” She banged the tongs against the window again. “I’m talking to you! Are you playing deaf or dumb or what? You haven’t heard a word I said!” “I heard you,” Mother sobbed. “Then what are you waiting for? Your father-in-law and your husband are out threshing grain, and I’ve swapped a broom for a hoe, so damned busy I wish I could be in four places at once. But you, like a pampered princess, lie there in luxurious comfort. Now, if you could bring a son into this family, I would personally wash your feet in a gold basin!”

So Mother got out of bed, put on a pair of trousers, and wrapped her head in a filthy scarf; casting a longing glance at her baby, still covered with blood and muck, she dried her eyes with her sleeve and walked out into the yard on rubbery legs, putting up with the shooting pains the best she could. The glare of the midsummer sun nearly blinded her as she scooped up a ladleful of water from the vat and gulped it down. Why can’t I just die? she was thinking. Living like this is sheer torture. I could end it myself! But then she saw her mother-in-law was pinching Laidi on the leg with her tongs, while Zhaodi and Lingdi huddled fearfully in a pile of straw, not making a sound and wishing they could hide their little bodies by burrowing out of sight. Laidi howled like a pig being slaughtered and rolled around on the ground. “I’ll give you something to cry about!” Shangguan Lü growled as she pinched the girl’s legs over and over, putting her years of practice and strength as a blacksmith to work.

Mother ran up and grabbed her mother-in-law’s arm. “Mother,” she pleaded, “let her go. She’s just a child, she doesn’t know anything.” She knelt weakly in front of her mother-in-law. “If you must pinch someone, pinch me…” Flinging her tongs to the ground in an explosion of anger, her mother-in-law paused for a second before pounding her own chest and crying, “My god, this woman will be the death of me!”

Mother had no sooner dragged herself out to the field than Shangguan Shouxi hit her with a rake. “What took you so long, you lazy ass? Thanks to you, I’m about to die from all this work!” She fell to the ground in a seated position, and heard her husband, who had been baked in the sun until he looked like a bird roasted on a spit, yell hoarsely, “Quit faking. Get up and rake some of this grain!” He threw the rake down in front of her and wove his way over to a locust tree to cool off.

With both hands on the ground, Mother managed to get to her feet, but when she bent over to pick up the rake, she nearly passed out. She propped herself up with the rake, as the blue sky and yellow earth whirled like gigantic wheels, wanting to topple her dizzily back to the ground. Somehow she managed to remain upright, in spite of the tearing pains in her belly and the excruciating contractions in her womb. Chilled, nauseating fluids kept leaking from between her legs, soiling her thighs.

The sun’s diabolical rays burned their way across the land like white-hot flames; stalks of grain and the tassels that topped them happily gave up the last remaining moisture in the form of evaporation. Bearing up as best she could with the pain racking her body, Mother turned over the tassels on the threshing floor to speed up the drying process. She was reminded of what her mother-in-law had said: There’s water on the hoe, but fire on the rake.

An emerald green locust that had ridden a tassel to the threshing floor spread its pink wings and flew onto Mother’s hand. She noticed the delicate little insect’s jadelike compound eyes, then saw that half of its abdomen had been lost to the sickle. And yet it lived on and could still fly. Mother found that indomitable will to live extremely moving. She shook her wrist to get the locust to fly away, but it stayed where it was, and Mother sighed over the sensation of the tiny insect’s feet resting on her skin. That reminded her of the time her second daughter, Zhaodi, was conceived, in her aunt’s tent in the melon field, where breezes from the Black Water River cooled purple melons as they grew amid the silver leaves of vines. Laidi was still nursing at the time. Hordes of locusts, with pink wings just like this one, raised a din all around the melon shelter. Her uncle, Big Paw Yu, knelt in front of her, pounding his own head. “Your aunt tricked me into this,” he said, “and I’ve not been able to live with myself since. I’ve given up the right to call myself a man. Xuan’er, take that knife and put me out of my misery.” He pointed to a gleaming melon knife on a shelf, as tears sluiced down his cheeks. Mother experienced a welter of emotions. She reached out to stroke the man’s bald head. “Uncle,” she said, “I don’t blame you a bit. It’s them, they drove me to this.” At that point, her voice turned shrill and she pointed to the melons on the ground outside the tent, as if they were people. “Listen to me! Go ahead, laugh! Uncle, life is full of twists and turns. I did my best to remain chaste and upright, and how was I rewarded? I was yelled at, beaten, and sent back to my childhood home. So what must I do to gain their respect? Get pregnant by other men! Sooner or later, Uncle, my boat is going to capsize, if not here, then somewhere else.” A wry smile twisted her mouth. “What is it they say, Uncle – Do not fertilize other people’s fields?” Her uncle stood up anxiously. She reached out, unladylike, and jerked his pants down.

Father and son rested in the cool shade near the Shangguan threshing ground; the family dog was sprawled out at the base of the crumbling wall, its pink tongue lolling to the side as the animal panted from the oppressive heat. Mother’s body was covered with rancid-smelling, sticky sweat. Her throat was on fire, her head ached, she was nauseous, and the veins on her forehead throbbed so violently they seemed about to burst. The lower half of her body felt as if it were cotton packed in a tub. Thoroughly prepared to die there on the threshing ground, she summoned up an astonishing amount of strength to keep working. Golden flashes of light on the floor made the tassels seem to come alive, like schools of tiny goldfish, or millions of squirming snakes. As she turned over the grain, Mother experienced a sense of tragic sorrow. Heaven, open your eyes and look around! All you neighbors, open your eyes and look around. Feast your eyes on this member of the Shangguan family, working on a threshing floor with the sun blazing overhead, after just giving birth, the blood not even dry on my legs. And what about my husband and father-in-law? Those two little men are resting in the shade. Pore over three thousand years of imperial history, and you’ll not find more bitter suffering! Finally, as tears slid down her cheeks, she passed out, overcome by the heat and her own emotions.

When she came to, she was lying in the thin shade at the foot of the crumbling wall, covered with mud that attracted swarms of flies, thrown there like a dead dog. The family mule was standing at the edge of the threshing floor, near Shangguan Lü, who was just then whipping her lazy husband and son. Covering their heads with their arms, those two little darlings filled the air with screeches as they tried, unsuccessfully, to avoid being hit.

“Stop hitting me, stop…” Mother’s father-in-law pleaded. “Venerable wife, we’re working, what else do you want?”

“And you, you little bastard!” she screamed as she turned her whip on Shangguan Shouxi. “Every time you two pull something off, I know it’s your idea!”

“Don’t hit me, Mother,” Shangguan Shouxi said, tucking his head between his shoulders. “Who would look after you in your old age or handle the funeral arrangements if you accidentally killed me?”

“Do you really think I’m depending on you to do that?” she said sadly. “I expect they’ll use my bones for kindling before anyone comes out to bury me!”

Father and son struggled to harness the mule; once that was done, they picked up their tools and headed out into the field.

Whip in hand, Shangguan Lü walked over to the wall. “Get up and go inside, my fine little daughter-in-law,” she said accusingly. “Why lie out here like that, just to make me look bad? To make it easy for neighbors to curse me behind my back, saying I don’t know the proper way to treat my daughter-in-law? I said, get up! Or are you waiting for me to hire an eight-man sedan chair to carry you inside? I don’t know what the times have come to when a daughter-in-law thinks she’s better than her mother-in-law. I hope you have a son one of these days, so you’ll get a chance to see what it means to be someone’s mother-in-law.”

After Mother rose unsteadily to her feet, her mother-in-law took off her conical hat and put it on the younger woman’s head. “Go on, now. Pick some cucumbers in the garden. Tonight you can cook them with eggs for the two men. And if you think you’ve got the strength, go draw some water to wash the vegetables. I don’t know how I get through the days anymore. I guess it’s as they say, I carry the rest of you on my back.”

She turned and headed over to the threshing floor, muttering to herself.

Thunder crashed and rolled that night, threatening the grain on the threshing floor, a whole year’s blood and sweat. So, her body still racked with pain, Mother dragged herself outside with the rest of the family to move the grain inside. By the time they’d finished, she looked like a drenched chicken, and when she was finally able to crawl into bed, she was convinced she’d wandered into the doorway of Yama, the King of Hell, and that his little demons had looped a chain around her neck to drag her inside.

Instinctively, Mother bent down to pick up the pieces of the smashed bowl. She heard a bellowing roar that sounded like an ox as it raises its head out of water. That was followed by a blow on the head that knocked her to the floor. “Go ahead, smash it!” her mother-in-law screamed, the words exploding from her mouth as she flung away the now bloodstained garlic pestle. “Smash everything, since this family is falling apart anyway!”

Mother struggled to her feet after the pestle had smacked the back of her head. Warm blood ran down her neck. “Mother,” she wept, “it was an accident.”

“How dare you talk back to me!”

“I’m not talking back.”

With a sidelong glance at her son, the older woman said, “I can’t handle her, you worthless turd. Why not just put her on a pedestal and worship her?”

Understanding exactly what she was getting at, Shouxi picked up a club lying in a corner and drove it into Mother’s waist; she crumpled to the ground. Then he began hitting her, over and over, as his mother looked on approvingly. “Shouxi,” his father intervened, “stop that. If you kill her, the law will be on us.”

“Women are worthless creatures,” Shangguan Lü said, “so you have to beat them. You beat a woman into submission the way you knead dough into noodles.”

“Then why are you always beating me?” Shangguan Fulu asked.

Worn out from swinging the club, Shouxi dropped it to the floor and stood there gasping for air.

Mother’s waist and hips were wet and sticky. “Damn, that stinks!” her mother-in-law exclaimed, sniffing the air. “A few swats and she shits her pants!”

Propping herself up on her elbows, Mother raised her head and said, an unprecedented malicious edge to her voice, “Go ahead, Shangguan Shouxi, kill me while you’re at it. You’re a son of a bitch if you don’t…”

The words were barely out of her mouth when she lost consciousness.

She awoke in the middle of the night and saw a star-filled sky. And there, in the glittering Milky Way, on that night in the year 1924, a comet streaked across the heavens, ushering in an age of upheaval and unrest.

Three helpless little creatures lay alongside her – Laidi, Zhaodi, and Lingdi, while Xiangdi lay at the head of the kang crying hoarsely. Worms were crawling in and around the eyes and ears of the newborn baby, the larvae of greenbottle flies laid earlier that day.

8

Filled with loathing for the Shangguan family, for three straight days Mother gave herself to a bachelor named Gao Dabiao, a dog butcher. A man with bovine eyes and upturned lips, Gao was never seen, regardless of the season, without his padded jacket, so smeared with dog grease it looked like armor. Any dog, no matter how vicious, gave him a wide berth, then turned and barked at him from a safe distance. Mother went to see him one day when she was on the northern bank of the Flood Dragon River, where she had gone to look for wild herbs. He was, at the time, stewing a pot of dog meat. “Here to buy some dog meat?” he asked when she barged in the door. “It’s not ready yet.” “No, Dabiao, I’ve brought some meat for you this time. Remember that time at the open-air opera when you touched me when no one was looking?” Gao Dabiao blushed. “Well, today you don’t have to worry if anyone’s looking or not.”

Once she was sure she was pregnant, Mother went to the Matron’s shrine at the Tan family tent, where she burned incense, kowtowed, made her vows, and handed over the little bit of money she’d brought with her when she was married. But that changed nothing – she had another girl, whom she named Pandi.

Not until much later was Mother able to determine whether the father of her sixth daughter, Niandi, was Gao Dabiao or the skinny little monk at the Tianqi Temple. When Niandi was seven or eight years old, Mother could tell by the shape of her face, her long nose, and long eyebrows.

In the spring of that year, Shangguan Lü contracted a strange illness, with itchy silvery scales erupting all over her body from her neck down; in order to keep her from scratching her skin raw, her husband and son were forced to tie her hands behind her back. The illness had this iron woman howling day and night; out in the yard, the wall and the stiff bark of the plum tree were blood-specked where she had rubbed her back to relieve the terrible itch. “I can’t stand it, this itching is killing me… I’ve offended the heavens, help me, please help me…”

The two Shangguan men were so incompetent that a stone roller couldn’t get them to fart and an awl couldn’t draw blood, so the responsibility of finding help for her mother-in-law naturally fell to Mother. All in all, after riding the family mule from one end of Northeast Gaomi to the other, she engaged a dozen or more physicians, employing both Chinese and Western methods; some left after writing a prescription, others just left. So Mother brought in a shaman and then a sorcerer, but their magic potions and spirit waters also ended in failure. Shangguan Lü’s condition actually worsened daily.

One day, her mother-in-law called Mother to her bedside. “Shouxi’s wife,” she said, “as the saying goes, fathers and sons are bound by kindness, mothers and daughters-in-law are linked by enmity. After I die, this family’s existence will depend upon you, because those two are a pair of asses who’ll never grow up.”

“Don’t talk like that, Mother,” my mother said. “I heard from Third Master Fan that there is a wise monk at the Tianqi Temple in Madian Township who possesses remarkable medical powers. I’ll bring him to see you.”

“It’s a waste of money,” her mother-in-law said. “I know the source of my illness. Back when I was first married, I killed a damned cat by pouring scalding water on it. That hateful animal kept stealing our chickens, and I only wanted to teach it a lesson. I never thought it would die, and now it’s wreaking its vengeance.”

But Mother made the thirty-li trip on their mule.

The pasty-faced, effetely handsome, fragrant-smelling monk counted the beads on his rosary as he listened to Mother. “Madam patron,” he said at last, “this unworthy monk sees patients here in the temple. I never make house calls. So you go back and bring your mother-in-law to see me.”

And that is precisely what Mother did. She harnessed the mule to a cart and took her mother-in-law to Tianqi Temple, where the wise monk wrote out two prescriptions, one liquid to be ingested and another for washing the skin. “If these do not work,” he told them, “there is no need to see me again. If they do, then return and I will give you a new prescription.”

Mother went immediately to a pharmacy, bought the medication, and returned home to prepare and administer them. After her mother-in-law ingested one of the potions three times and was bathed twice with the other, almost miraculously, the itching stopped.

Deliriously happy, the patient withdrew some money from the family chest and sent Mother back to thank the monk and fetch the new prescription.

While she waited for the new prescription, Mother asked the wise monk if there were some way he could help her bear sons rather than daughters. As their conversation grew more intimate – a passionate monk and a woman eager to produce a son – they became lovers.

As for Gao Dabiao, the dog butcher at Sandy Mouth Village, his brief affair with Mother had whetted his appetite. So on the evening that Mother rode her mule home from Tianqi Temple, passing by the Black Water River as the moon was replacing the sun in the sky, Gao Dabiao leaped out from among the sorghum stalks and blocked her way.

“Lu Xuan’er, you are a fickle woman!”

“Dabiao,” Mother said, “I felt sorry for you, and that is why I closed my eyes and let you have your way a time or two. That is as far as it goes.”

“You can’t toss me aside just because you got a piece of that little monk!”

“That’s nonsense!”

“You can’t fool me. Do as I say, or I’ll spread the word all over Northeast Gaomi Township that you had an affair with the little monk on the pretense of seeking a cure for your mother-in-law.”

Mother let Gao Dabiao carry her into the sorghum.

Her mother-in-law’s illness was completely cured, but word of Mother’s illicit relationship with the monk reached the older woman’s ears anyway.

So when Niandi was born, and her mother-in-law saw it was another girl, she picked the baby up by her legs and was about to drown her in the chamber pot.

Mother jumped out of bed, wrapped her arms around her mother-in-law’s legs, and pleaded, “Mother, be merciful, please. For my sake, after taking care of you all these months, spare the little one…”

“That makes sense,” her mother-in-law said, lowering her voice. “But this business with the monk, is it true?”

Mother said nothing.

“Tell me! Is this a bastard I’m holding?”

Mother shook her head resolutely.

Her mother-in-law tossed the baby onto the bed.

9

In the fall of 1935, while Mother was on the bank of the Flood Dragon River cutting grass, she was gang-raped by four armed soldiers fleeing from a rout.

When it was over, she looked out at the river and decided to drown herself. But just as she was about to walk to her death, she saw the reflection of Northeast Gaomi’s beautiful blue sky in the clear water. Cool breezes swallowed up the feelings of humiliation in her breast, so she scooped up handfuls of water to wash her sweaty, tear-streaked face, straightened her clothes, and walked home.

In the early summer of the next year, eight years after the birth of her previous child, Mother gave birth to her seventh, Qiudi. The birth of yet another daughter threw her mother-in-law into despair. Stumbling as she walked, she retrieved a bottle from a trunk in her room and gulped down great mouthfuls of the strong liquor before dissolving into loud wails. Mother, too, was dejected, and as she looked with disgust into the wrinkled face of her newborn child, her only thought was: God in Heaven, why are you so stingy? All you had to do was add a smidgeon of clay to this child to make it a son.

Her husband then stormed into the room, pulled back the blanket, and staggered backward. The first thing he did after recovering from the shock was reach behind the door, pick up the club for pounding wet clothes, and bring it down on his wife’s head. Blood splattered on the wall as the crazed little man turned and ran outside, fuming. Snatching a pair of red-hot tongs out of the blacksmith furnace, he ran back to his wife’s room and branded her on the inside of her thigh.

Wisps of yellow smoke and the stench of burning flesh quickly filled the room. With a shriek of pain, Mother fell out of bed and curled into a ball on the floor, her body twitching.

When Big Paw Yu heard that Lu Xuan’er had been branded, he rushed over to the Shangguan home with a hunting rifle, and without saying a word, aimed it at the chest of Shangguan Lü and pulled the trigger. The rifle misfired. By the time he’d readied the weapon for a second try, Shangguan Lü had run into the house and slammed the door behind her. His anger building, he fired at the closed door, blowing a hole in it with buckshot and drawing a fearful shriek from Shangguan Lü on the other side.

Big Paw Yu then began battering the door with the butt of his rifle, breathing heavily but saying nothing. He looked like a bear, his burly figure rocking back and forth. Mother’s daughters huddled fearfully in the side room as they watched what was happening out in the yard.

Mother’s husband and father-in-law, one brandishing a steel-headed hammer, the other the pair of tongs, cautiously approached Big Paw. Shouxi was the first to act, rushing up and hitting Big Paw in the back with his tongs. Big Paw turned and roared at his attacker. The tongs fell from Shouxi’s hand, and he would have run away, if only his rubbery legs had let him. He tried to force a smile. “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!” Big Paw bellowed as he knocked Shouxi to the ground with his rifle, with such force that it snapped in two. Shouxi’s father rushed Big Paw with his hammer, but missed his target altogether, and nearly lost his footing in the process. Big Paw helped him along with a swat on the man’s shoulder, sending him sprawling alongside his son. Big Paw took turns kicking both men, then picked up the hammer, raised it over his head, and cursed, “Now I’m going to crack that melon head wide open, you son of a bitch!” just as Mother hobbled out into the yard. “Uncle,” she shouted, “this is family business. I don’t need your help.”

Letting the hammer drop to the ground, Big Paw, a pained expression on his face, looked at his niece standing there like a dried-out tree. “Xuan’er,” he said, “how you’ve suffered…”

“When I left the Yu home,” Mother said, “I became a member of the Shangguan family, and whether I live or die because of it is not your concern.”

Big Paw Yu’s rampage succeeded in deflating the arrogance of the Shangguan family. Realizing how she had mistreated her daughter-in-law, Shangguan Lü finally began treating her more humanely. Shangguan Shouxi, having barely escaped death, also began to see his wife in a different light, and subjected her to less abuse.

Meanwhile, Mother’s scalded flesh began to fester and smell. This time, she thought, I won’t survive, so she moved into the side room.

Early one morning, she was awakened from a half-sleep by the church bell. Although the bell was rung daily, on this day it seemed to be talking to her, the enchanting peal of bronze on bronze stirring her soul and sending ripples through her heart. Why haven’t I heard that sound before? What was stopping up my ears? As she pondered this change, the pain racking her body slowly went away. Her thoughts weren’t interrupted until some rats climbed up and began nibbling at her putrefying flesh. The old mule that had brought her over from her aunt’s house gave her a melancholic look, consoling her, inspiring her, encouraging her.

Mother stood up with the help of a cane and dragged her festering body out onto the road, one faltering step at a time, all the way up to the church’s gate.

It was a Sunday. Pastor Malory stood at the dusty pulpit, Bible in hand, intoning a passage from Matthew for the benefit of a handful of gray-haired old women:

“When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to divorce her privately. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shall call His name Jesus; for He shall save his people from their sins.’“

This passage brought tears to Mother’s eyes, tears that fell on her collar. She tossed away her cane and fell to her knees. Looking up into the face of the cracked jujube Jesus on the iron cross, she sobbed, “Lord, I’ve come to You late…”

The old women stared uncomprehendingly at Shangguan Lu, the stench from her rotting flesh crinkling their noses.

Pastor Malory laid down his Bible and stepped down off the raised platform to lift Lu Xuan’er up off her knees. Crystalline tears filled his gentle blue eyes. “Little sister,” he said, “I have been waiting for you for a very long time.”

In the early summer of 1938, in the dense grove of locusts in a remote corner of Sandy Ridge Village, Pastor Malory knelt reverently beside Mother, whose injury had begun to heal, and gently rubbed her body with trembling reddened hands. His moist lips quivered, his limpid blue eyes blended in with the fragments of Northeast Gaomi Township’s deep blue sky that filtered in through the gaps between the flowering locusts. “Little sister,” he stammered, “my lovely mate… my little dove… my perfect woman, your thighs are as glossy as fine jade, formed by a master craftsman, your navel is like a perfectly round cup filled with a mixed drink… your waist is like a sheaf of wheat tied with a string of lilies… your breasts are like twin fawns, like the sagging fruit of a palm tree. Your nose is as fragrant as an apple, your mouth smells like fine liquor. My love, you are beautiful, a sheer delight. You make me deliriously happy!”

Basking in the approving words and gentle fondling of Pastor Malory, Mother felt as light as goose down floating in the deep blue skies of Northeast Gaomi and in Pastor Malory’s blue eyes, as the subtle perfume of red and white locust blossoms flowed over her like waves.