The Girl Giant

by Kirsten den Hartog

  In the cellar Elspeth finds a nest of dead mice, babies without hair or teeth. At first they look like nine thumbs lying in a hatbox, they are that small. Their skin is crisscrossed, patterned like human skin, and she wonders if this is true for all animals when you take the fur away. For the cavies, too.

  For weeks there is no news of Stanley until the day a boy comes up the walk with a telegram. Angels of Death, they call these messengers. He was a little boy before the war, Elsie recognizes him from the neighborhood, and she equates the lurch in her stomach with pity for him, that he has to do this awful job.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, and then again, “I’m sorry.”

  Has someone told him to say it twice?

  He hands her the telegram and she notices the black dirt that fills his fingernails. He backs away and she stands watching him to make sure he doesn’t trip and fall. When he’s gone she opens the envelope. The sun beats down on her, as on the day she picked strawberries. A little crown swims at the top of the page.

  DEEPLY REGRET TO REPORT THE DEATH OF YOUR SON PTE STANLEY LAHEY ON WAR SERVICE. LETTER TO FOLLOW.

  But of course he is no one’s son now. It is almost a relief to have the notice in her hands because it means she won’t be faced with the task of telling him that all the cavies are gone; that their mother and father have died.

  They died in the street. They were buried in rubble.

  Why were they in the street? Why not the shelter, or the cellar at least?

  I was picking berries. I didn’t run back.

  You mean they went looking for you.

  I guess. I don’t know. Yes.

  There is good that comes out of their deaths, all three of them. They won’t have to lay blame; they won’t have to grieve for one another. They can leave all of that to her, just as they’ve left her their tangible things, each last scrap of paper and the tins of mixed nails and the delicate lavender sachets tucked into dresser drawers, a smell that lasts forever. Her father saved calendars every year since 1918, when the last war ended, but she has no idea why he kept them, or what she is meant to do with them now. There are no instructions as to how she should carry on. Everywhere in the store and the house above, piles of things form as she sorts like with like and examines the contents of her family’s lives. Grateful for the burden, reluctant to reach the end to her task.

  The sign on the door of the hat shop says CLOSED, but the latch is unlocked, so whoever comes could enter on his own. She is near the back of the store, where the heads are, when she sees Richard Wilson through the glass. He cups his hands and peers in, but doesn’t notice her. He only hesitates a moment or two before turning away. She watches him go, and sees an orange cat trot up to him and brush against his legs until he stops, stoops, and scratches its belly. He stands, and moves on.

  Within days, James appears in his place. He comes out of nowhere and pulls open the door. He blinks three times when he sees her, then composes himself.

  “I’m looking for a hat,” he tells her. Then he smiles nervously and adds, “That sounds as if I’ve lost one but what I mean is I’m looking to buy one.” He blushes. “For my mother. That is, if you have boxes. It has to travel a long way. Do you have something blue?” He pauses, waiting for her response, and then laughs awkwardly. “The hat, I mean. Not the box. But the box can be blue too. It can be any color.”

  He doesn’t seem to notice the darkness around her, or else it doesn’t scare him. Maybe he’s seen too much already, but he doesn’t look wise or jaded, or traumatized. He seems to have nothing to hide. In fact, in spite of his uniform, he looks as if he doesn’t know there’s been a war. She should tell him. But there’s something about his face she doesn’t want to spoil. The word that comes to mind is open. He’s not a beautiful man, but there is something beautiful about him. She can feel the spiderwebs losing their grip on her, drifting back and up to the corners of the room.

  In Elspeth’s absence, we ate cheese sandwiches, popcorn, and marshmallow desserts. Dust balls floated across the floor and the white bathroom sink turned gray. Water spots flecked the mirror above, and the towels smelled sour, like wet animals. As I expected, my sleeves and pant legs grew shorter. My skirts inched toward my knees, and I was afraid that soon I would not be able to walk with my legs secretly bent to make myself look shorter. But James and I were happy enough. We gave each other all the space we needed to pursue our private interests, and if I wasn’t following Suzy on my specialized bicycle—to our meadow, to our secret beach—I was alone in my room, thinking about her or me or the two of us together.

  She had lived in thirteen places, she said. That was about one place for every year of her life, whereas my house had been a constant around me, and the town a constant around my house. When we were old enough, or perhaps sooner, Suzy and I might strap on backpacks and go traveling, the way our fathers had in the war. I looked at the globe that sat on my dresser and gave it a spin, but there was something disorienting about my big hand hovering over the world—a sense that everywhere I went, the earth would be too small for me, and there was nothing I could do to change that fact.

  At fourteen, Suzy was sure she was full-grown. She was already a little taller than her stout mother, Margaret, but she reached only to my belly button, a cavernous hole that grew wider and deeper on a daily basis. I had never shown it to her, and I couldn’t imagine I ever would, and yet the private places on my body weren’t the ones that shamed me; the things that couldn’t be hidden were worse by far: face, knees, elbows, hands, feet. Each so obviously like no one else’s. My shoes would soon be too small, and I was hoping James would remember without me having to tell him that we needed to see the shoemaker.

  He was keeping himself busy, putting the finishing touches on the home’s renovations, painting door frames dazzling white, polishing the glass of the skylights. He tried to decipher who he was without Elspeth, and he had to suppose that he had actually been without her for some time, even before she’d left. Still, he was amazed to realize how much she did for him without his noticing. She not only brewed his coffee in the morning, but she stirred in the milk and sugar, too, and he felt resentful of the fact that he didn’t even know how he liked it. One sugar or two? It was never quite the right color without her. He decided she had—what was the word? Infantilized him. Or emasculated him. Either way, it wasn’t good, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t what he wanted.

  He wished she could see that he was some sort of catch, because twice that first week, Iris—suit factory Iris, who also attended his Spanish class—sashayed up the walk, once with a fistful of flowers, and next with a still-warm dish she had cooked just for him.

  “You’ll be missing a woman of the house,” she said coyly.

  She lifted the lid and showed him the ham, pink like her skin, and for a horrible flash he saw himself rolling with her naked on the bed, and later he couldn’t shake how the vision had had the clarity of a premonition. Unsettling, too, was the fact that Iris had cut her bangs between the first and second visit; they rose on an angle across her forehead with all the evidence of her intentions. Both times he accepted the gifts but didn’t invite her in. He stood on the step with the container in his hands, and the warmth it exuded (like a body part) embarrassed him.

  “Oh thank you. But really. You don’t have to.”

  “Oh, I want to. I really do.”

  A sour powder smell moved past him as she waved her arm, and a foody whiff drifted from the dish in his hands.

  “Yes. Well, thanks. Bye-bye.” Nod, nod, his foolish head bobbing, his blushing body slinking indoors.

  Even if Elspeth never returned, he believed he would never want anyone again. There was something peaceful about the thought of coming home, picking up a box of his beloved bite-sized Little Pleasures crackers on the way, and the rank cheese Elspeth detested, and just sitting nibbling those and some chocolate as the evening passed around him, like the man he’d seen in the apartment, who’d closed his blind to the world. And what w
as wrong with that? He had no great ambitions. He didn’t need to be remembered; didn’t need to make a mark. Why, then, the thrill at his next Spanish class when Iris sat down beside him and the smell of her perfume enveloped him? Spanish words were so romantic: lavadero, legumbre, murmuro. They worked the tongue and lips like a kiss did, and speaking them while Iris spoke them beside him made him feel like he was already cheating, bathed in sweat. Worse, Iris knew. He knew she knew.

  So when she said, after class, “Why don’t we walk together for a while? It’s such a nice evening,” he readily agreed, though it was hot and humid even after sundown. He trotted along beside her like a dog, embarrassed by the moon’s brightness, its naked fullness, the shameful longing inside him, but not embarrassed enough to turn back. He had always been proud of the fact that he had never cheated, had rarely even lied to Elspeth, and up until now, even if he’d wanted to, even if he’d had the opportunity, he wouldn’t have had the courage to cheat, and he believed that made him, in a roundabout way, a good man. But maybe it only proved that he was cowardly (as in Dieppe, and after). What if his whole life had been a sin of omission, a failure to act?

  That was about to change—he was about to change it. He could feel his common sense slipping away as they stepped through the streets, feet moving in unison, as if dancing. Iris had blue shoes on, a little fancy but not overly so, and her fat feet looked swollen and sore. He saw himself pulling the shoes off, one then the other, and the intimacy of the imagined gesture sent a tickle across his sweaty chest. The summer breeze caressed them as they walked and brought the smell of the moist leaves and grasses, and just as he was thinking he would be satisfied with this—a pleasant stroll with a friendly woman—they arrived at her door.

  “Would you like to come in?” she asked. So simple, and so cliché.

  For a moment he stood looking at her. Her curly hair was wild in the humidity, and her cheeks glistened. She had close-together eyes, whereas Elspeth’s were wide-set, which gave her a wise, elegant appearance. Iris looked down. A line of blue eyeshadow had gathered in the crease of each eyelid. Her coated eyelashes were like spider legs. It occurred to him that he wanted to do something wrong. The fact that it was wrong made it all the more tempting. She blinked and looked up at him again, and, wordlessly, he accepted her invitation, stepping into a kind of fantasyland. Like a world made of candy.

  Elspeth disliked sweets, he thought to himself as he removed his shoes. How could anyone dislike sweets?

  He noticed the drapes with red and pink flowers, an orange sofa laden with pillows, a shelving unit cluttered with tacky souvenirs. On the wall was a framed photograph of Iris amid a sea of other uniformed women who’d served in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps. His eye found her right away, in her tie and double-breasted jacket that strained at the buttons. She grinned out at him. He thought of asking her where she had served, but the question reminded him of his own treks through foreign lands and the tinnitus that haunted him for years afterward—it would spoil the mood.

  So, perched on the sofa with the pillows around him and a fan oscillating nearby, he accepted one and then another glass of wine as a Spanish record played in the background. The needle stayed at the end of the record, click-clicking, while he and Iris did what they knew they would do—the awful thing that could not be undone but felt so exquisite, even when he glimpsed his pale legs between hers, his dark socks still sealed to his feet, the clusters of purplish veins sprouting on her calves.

  They sat on the sofa again, straightening their clothes, and the fan moved back and forth as if it were looking at him, then her, then him, then her, accusing. The heady feeling stayed with him, and it only evaporated as he walked home and realized that he had cheated two people rather than one. For it wasn’t Iris who mattered to him. She might have been anyone, almost. All he needed from her was a certain level of desire that made him feel human again—but what kind of human was he, already regretting his act while at the same time knowing he would repeat it at the earliest opportunity?

  Chapter 7

  When James arrived home after his encounter with Iris, I noticed nothing different about him. To me he was a father, nothing more or less; and to him I was a child. He couldn’t tell that in the presence of my fragile new friend my ears rang louder and my head swooned. Who knew if that was normal or not? The ringing, I mean. Lately it was always there, but I still hadn’t told anyone. Not the doctor or my parents, or even Suzy, though night and day she told me things.

  Everything I learned about Suzy made me love her more. The reverse had to be true as well, and so I began to confide my secrets, but slowly, one at a time. I said I would like to learn to fly a plane; that sometimes, just sometimes, my eyes ached and I didn’t know why. Do yours, I wanted to ask—Do you worry like I do? But Suzy’s stories were always more interesting than mine, and it was easier to listen than tell.

  She hadn’t always lived with her mother, Margaret. Once, when she was about six years old and her mother was pregnant with Patrick, she was taken away by her aunt Dodie, her mother’s cruel sister; the morning before the drive, she ate a yard full of dandelions and threw up yellow in the backseat of the aunt’s car.

  “I thought eating them would bring me good luck,” she admitted, “but it didn’t.”

  Or maybe it had—because Suzy told me she’d escaped from the aunt’s clutches on that very trip. They had stopped for gas. Aunt Dodie asked Suzy to come inside the store with her. She showed Suzy an array of sandwiches, asking her to choose one for lunch, but they were squishy and pink, the filling oozing out, and they made Suzy feel queasy. Suzy shook her head, stood near the door, and worried that now she would get nothing to eat.

  Aunt Dodie rummaged in her purse and chatted with the man who owned the store, and Suzy watched the man’s fat face, which shone with sweat though a fan blew on him and fluttered his tufts of hair. Suzy looked at the chocolate bars and then once more at Aunt Dodie and the man to be sure they weren’t watching. She took a chocolate bar, slid it under her top, and then hurried out of the store. In the backseat of her aunt’s car she tore off the wrapper and shoved the chocolate into her mouth, but it was too late. Her aunt was already returning to the car and saw as she opened the door. She grabbed Suzy’s arm and pulled her out of the car.

  “Did I not ask you if you were hungry?”

  Suzy stood speechless with her mouth full of chocolate.

  “I have paid that man for what you stole from him, and now I will wait here until you go in and apologize for your abominable behavior.”

  Hot and sick with shame, Suzy trudged toward the store. She pulled open the door and stepped in. The fan was blowing air into the space where the man was supposed to be standing, but there was no man there. Suzy glanced all around. She looked out into the parking lot and saw Aunt Dodie leaning against the car, wearing her sunglasses on her head like a movie star. She looked around the store again, down each aisle that teetered with dusty canned food and pop bottles, but she didn’t see the man, so she began to walk to the back of the store, where a door opened out to trees and more trees. Then she heard a toilet flush and, realizing the man would appear soon, she opened the door that led into the forest, and that was that—she ran.

  “Weren’t you afraid?” I asked.

  “Of them catching me?”

  “Well, yes, them, too—but of the bees, I mean.”

  She looked confused for a moment, and then said, “Oh yeah. I wasn’t allergic then.” And went on with her story.

  I thought, But you were a baby that time you almost died. Can an allergy come and go? I felt a weird foreboding, but abandoned it as she recounted her run through the woods, the coolness among the trees. I imagined myself running away, something I’d always wanted to do but I’d never had the courage. Plus, everyone would see me. There was not a place I could go where I wouldn’t stand out from the rest, unless there really was a land of giants. But Suzy was lucky. She could slip undetected into the forest, and if I listened
closely, I could go with her.

  Birds and pieces of sky show through the branches above us as we run. We can’t imagine a man so fat could keep up with us, nor our aunt in her high-heeled shoes and with her purse dangling from her wrist. But our dread hurries us on anyway. We run and trip until our own shoes come off. We keep going, and the worry of being bitten or stung by some forest creature just makes us faster, more nimble, and soon our feet barely touch the ground, which means we’re almost flying.

  Once more the forest opens and lets in the blue summer sky. We can see a meadow, and a farm beyond it. Tired now, and hungry, we walk toward the barn, hoping we might rest there unseen and steal something to eat. But as we draw closer we realize no one will be there, no one could possibly live in such a run-down place. The faded wood walls collapse in on themselves, and the roof of every building on the property sags.

  The sun is hot so we move into a shed to find shade. We sit on the hard dirt floor and cry, and then we stop crying because no one can hear us. Sunlight streams through a small, open door in the roof, and an old ladder is propped there. We stand at the bottom of the ladder and look up through the square in the roof. A flock of starlings flies by like a moving picture. It’s hotter in the barn than outside. We put our hands and then feet on the rungs, and as we climb we wonder if we’ll see Aunt Dodie running, or the man from the store, or maybe our mother, scanning the dandelion yard for us. Once we’re through the opening we turn in a slow circle, but all we see is forest. Stepping out onto the roof, we look at our bare feet upon the soggy tiles, and just then there comes a great creak and groan beneath us, and the roof opens and we begin our fall.