Then he shouted at the top of his lungs, “Forgive me, dear Lord!”
Pastor Malory flung himself off the bell tower and plummeted like a gigantic bird with broken wings, splattering his brains like so much bird shit when he hit the street below.
3
Winter was approaching, and Mother began wearing her mother-in-law’s blue satin-lined jacket. Four old village women, who were blessed with many sons and grandsons, had come over on Grandmother’s sixtieth birthday to sew this jacket, which she would one day wear in her coffin. But now it was Mother’s winter jacket. Mother cut two holes in the top, so she could free her breasts anytime I was hungry. They had been ravaged during that infuriating autumn, when Pastor Malory leaped to his death, but the calamity would pass, and her fine breasts would prove to be indestructible. They were like people who are forever young or evergreen pines. To keep them from prying eyes and, more importantly, to protect them from the chill winds and keep their milk warm, Mother sewed red flaps over the holes. Her inventiveness started a tradition; flapped lined jackets are still worn in Dalan to this day, although the holes now are rounder, the flaps made of softer material, and they are embroidered with bright flowers.
My winter clothing was a thick pouch fashioned from durable canvas and lined with a drawstring at the top and two straps from which it hung just beneath Mother’s bosom. When it was feeding time, she would suck in her belly and shift the pouch until I was perfectly positioned: cradled in a kneeling position, my head nestled up against her breasts. Then, by turning my head to the right, I could put my mouth around her left nipple; by turning it to the left, I could nurse from her right nipple. It was a double-sided advantage worthy of the name. But my pouch wasn’t perfect, for it bound up my hands, and made it impossible to hold one breast while I was nursing at the other, as I had done in the past. By then I had completely stripped Eighth Sister of her right to nurse, and anytime she came near one of Mother’s breasts, I clawed and kicked until the poor blind thing cried her eyes out. She survived on a thin gruel, and this made my other sisters very unhappy.
My nursing process over the long winter months was shrouded in anxiety, for when my lips were wrapped around the left nipple, all I could think about was the right one. I felt as if a hairy hand would suddenly reach into the cavernous opening and take the temporarily idle breast away with it. Falling under the control of that feeling, I’d quickly switch nipples, leaving the left one, from which milk had just begun to flow, for the right one; but I’d no sooner begun to suck there than I’d switch back to the left. Mother would give me a puzzled look, seeing how I would suck from the left but never take my greedy eyes off the right, and quickly guessing what I was up to. Showering my face with kisses from her chilled lips, she would say softly, Jintong, Golden Boy, my little treasure, all Mama’s milk belongs to you, and no one can take it away from you. Her words lessened my anxiety, but didn’t drive it away altogether, for I could sense those hairy hands all around her, just waiting for an opening.
One morning, as a light snow fell, Mother put on her nursing blouse and strapped me onto her back, where I was kept warm in the cotton wrap. She told my sisters to move the red-skinned turnips into the cellar. Not knowing, or caring, where those turnips had come from, what attracted me to them was their shape: pointy tips that swelled out to the base made me hungry for the tit. And so, large red turnips were added to oily gourds, with their shiny skins, and sleek, white little doves. Each had its unique color, its aura, and its degree of warmth, and each was like a woman’s breast in one way or another. They came to symbolize breasts, each belonging to a different season and a different mood.
The sky was clear one minute and cloudy the next; snowflakes swirled one second and disappeared the next. My sisters, all wearing thin clothing, scrunched their necks down between their shoulders as chilled northern winds blew past them. My eldest sister was responsible for putting the turnips into baskets; Second and Third Sisters were responsible for carrying the baskets; Fourth and Fifth Sisters were responsible for stacking them in the cellar; Sixth and Seventh Sisters were free to help out here and there; and Eighth Sister, not yet old enough to do any work, sat alone on the kang deep in thought. Sixth Sister stacked the turnips four at a time, all the way to the cellar opening; Seventh Sister did the same, but two at a time. Meanwhile, Mother and her little Golden Boy toured the area among the piles of turnips, ordering the girls around, criticizing them for less-than-perfect work, and heaving sighs of emotion. Mother’s commands were intended to raise the quality of work, to keep the turnips healthy and allow them to get safely through the winter. Her sighs represented the central thought in her head: Life is hard, and the only way to survive is through hard work. My sisters reacted passively to Mother’s commands, unhappily to her criticisms, and apathetically to her sighs. To this day I’m not sure how so many turnips appeared in our compound, as if by magic; but what I eventually came to understand was why Mother took such pains to stockpile that winter.
When the stacking work was finished, a dozen or so small turnips of varying shapes, all resembling human breasts, remained on the floor. Mother knelt down at the cellar opening, bent over, reached down, and pulled Xiangdi and Pandi up through the hole, one at a time. During the process, I was turned upside down twice; each time I looked out under Mother’s armpit and caught a glimpse of snowflakes swirling in the hazy, gray sunlight. The last thing Mother did was move a cracked water vat – now filled with cotton batting and grain husks – to cover the cellar hole. My sisters formed a line against the wall, beneath an overhead beam, as if awaiting Mother’s next command. But she just sighed. “What am I supposed to use to make padded clothes for you girls?” My third sister, Lingdi, said, “Cotton shells lined with cotton batting.” “You think I don’t know that?” Mother said. “What I mean is money – where am I going to get the money to buy the stuff?” My second sister, Zhaodi, said somewhat gloomily, “Sell the black donkey and the little mule.” “If I do that,” Mother said reproachfully, “how will we till the field next year?”