The Girl Giant

by Kirsten den Hartog

  Her mother had seemed so old in that last year of the war, but in actuality she had not been much older than Elspeth was now. Bea, though, had lived nearly to eighty, and Franny to eighty-one, fair and worthy ages, and so their deaths, blessedly together, should have been an easy loss compared with the others. Yet now and then in the aunts’ small space, which still smelled of life, Elspeth gasped as though the floor had opened and she were falling. Franny and Bea were her last connection with the past; her family had withered to a close, and she was here to sweep up the remnants.

  One day she came upon a box of letters. She recognized her own handwriting on the pale blue envelopes, and saw that the dates ranged from the year she went to Canada right up to last year’s Christmas card. Each one had been saved and kept in order, though they offered so little.

  No, please don’t think of coming. The baby is healthy, and we’re really doing just fine, and I know the trip would be too much for you. Much as I’d love to see you. James’s mother comes some weekends and has been an absolute wonder.

  Then later on:

  Ruthie is growing like a weed! I’m sending along a snap of her in a new dress I made, but she grows out of them so quickly I can hardly keep up.

  And later still:

  I know it’s been ages since I sent a photo of Ruthie. I must get organized and send something soon or you just won’t know her anymore. Please don’t think of coming. The trip would be so tiring for you and the summers here are stifling. We’ll get there one of these years, I promise you that. James is itching to return to England.

  That wasn’t true, really. He had mentioned England on occasion, though only for her sake. And it had been easy to make the argument that they couldn’t afford to travel. Elspeth hated the thought of her worlds merging. In the early years especially she had missed her aunts and her home, but what she missed most was the time before the war, which could not be revived by visiting. Plus there was the question of the huge, unexplainable daughter. Never Ruthie for Elspeth, as the letters claimed, but Ruth. Missing was easier than interacting. Sooner or later, missing went away, so you really could bottle things up until they lost all their potency.

  Days later with Suzy, everything was forgiven, almost forgotten. We were on our bicycles and the breeze was sneaking through a slit I’d made in each shoe, right at the toe, to relieve the pressure. The coolness on my hot feet was wonderful, and anyway the shoes had already been spoiled by that other day at the beach, so what was the harm in cutting them, just a little bit, if I had outgrown them?

  As we rode along the south bank of the river, Patrick followed. We crossed the first bridge, then rode along the north bank to the school. That old nervousness wormed into my belly when the building came into view. It was red brick, old-fashioned, with a bell tower and big windows through which light streamed into the classrooms. Suzy dropped her bike and ran over, looking into the basement windows. She had never been inside the school but in a couple of weeks she’d be a student here, and I could picture her standing with her books in the crook of her arm, chatting so easily with the others as they flocked around her. I didn’t relish the day I would have to share her, but I gripped her waist and lifted her up to my height so she could look through the upper windows. Reflected in the glass, I could see Patrick behind us in the playground, doing wheelies on his bicycle. We looked in every window, one at a time, and I noticed how Suzy held her body stiffly, how she studied each space with a solemn expression. It surprised me to think she might be afraid when she was always so sure of herself, so brash and brave. I felt a surge of protectiveness—of confidence. The image of me creeping to school along the back lanes, dreading every encounter, seemed more like a scene from a movie than a memory. I had reason now, and purpose, and someone to walk with. We could go together. I set Suzy down and leaned close to her.

  “It’ll be okay, you know.”

  She looked up at me. The vulnerability vanished with a roll of her eyes and a sputtered breath. “What are you talking about, Ruth?”

  It was her idea, on the way back, to take the second bridge instead of the first. She pointed ahead, saying, “Let’s cross here,” and then we turned and saw it right away, stretched across the road in large letters:

  GIANT SLUT

  RUTH B. LOVES DAVID M.

  We both stopped riding, and stood looking at the words. I felt so dizzy I thought I would fall over. Suzy got off her bike and leaned it against the railing. She waited as a car passed, and then walked over to where the words were written and tried to rub them out with her shoe, but the letters stayed clear.

  “Oh, Ruth,” she said. “Who would do this?” She didn’t look at me. She kept her head down, and her feet worked furiously.

  I tried to make myself get off my bike as well, to put my big feet over the words and scuff them, but I couldn’t move. A sick feeling started in my stomach, and spread all through me. Even when Patrick appeared and poured his last bit of pop on the letters in a failed attempt to wash them away, I kept staring at the back of Suzy’s head, and the tangle of hair that had been there even the day before. I kept staring and staring until my eyes stung. We were standing close enough that I could reach over, grab the knotted mass of hair, pick her up, and drop her in the river. I closed my eyes to unthink the thought, and then I looked up to the sky to see if there were clouds that might release a great, cleansing rainfall, but the sky was blue. It was wide and clear, just like that day with the red balloon, when I was small and my parents towered over me.

  I am at a fair with giant pumpkins and cotton candy, animals brought from a farm. The pig’s nostrils perfect circles as on a telephone dial. A man on stilts sails past, with striped pants that make him taller still. He grips the strings to a bunch of balloons that stretch up to the sky. Something makes his eye catch me. I see him looking around and then finding me, smiling with his painted mouth—the real grin under the false one. He pulls a balloon loose, the way you pick a flower from a bouquet, and his gloved hand delivers it down to me. His thumb and finger pinch the string, and his other fingers spray up in the manner of a lady drinking tea. He raises his eyebrows, blinks and nods, and then he’s off with long strides, pant legs flapping. Tiny head with a hat tied on. I’m left holding the balloon, clutching the string with a sweaty hand, and mouthing thank you. Elspeth and James keep fussing with the string, trying to wrap it around my wrist and tie it, but I won’t let go. I squeeze my fingers shut, and my sharp little nails dig into my palm. The balloon is fat and shiny—it bobs and sways above me. I want Elspeth and James to stop talking, stop touching the string and making the balloon jerk this way and that. I love the red against the blue sky. We keep wandering. We look at a donkey with droopy eyes and stand in front of a pyramid of jarred preserves. I sit on the back of a pony as it walks around in a circle with other ponies carrying other children. James walks beside us, and Elspeth claps from the sidelines, calling out to me and waving, but I’m not listening. I’m watching the balloon dance to the clomp of the pony’s hooves. When the ride ends and I’m lifted off the pony’s back and set down on the ground, the string slips from my hand, just like that. James grabs for it, grabs again and again as the balloon rises, but it’s too late—the balloon sails up. I can see it for a long time but I know it will never come back to me.

  Chapter 8

  Summer was closing. The stink of the pulp and paper mill mixed with the fragrance of leaves dying, of old, dry grass. Such a complicated smell of hope and longing and fear. The bugs were fat and lazy, and the happy pink cosmos flowers were shriveling and going to seed. I knew, seeing the casual manner in which Suzy brushed away bees, that she was far from allergic, but I felt only relief, and maybe some small sense of bruising. It didn’t matter that she had lied if her life was no longer in danger. Or even if it had never been in danger. Whatever purpose her lies served, I felt sorry for her for needing them.

  She needed me, too. That was the important thing. At first I thought I was dreaming when she appeared besid
e my bed one night, shaking me and hissing, “Get up! Hurry! My mom has fallen!” And in my nightgown made from an old sheet, I threw off my covers and flew behind her, barefoot across the floor and out through the garden. I didn’t even think about whether or not James could see me from his bedroom window, where a light was still glowing. We rushed across the lawn, into the house that was full of silence, as if the rooms were holding their breath. We ran down the hall past Patrick’s room, and I glimpsed him there, standing near the door, eyes shining.

  From the top of the basement stairs we could see Suzy’s mother sprawled near the bottom step. She had been carrying laundry down, and it was strewn on the floor around her. Her eyes were closed; she was still. Suzy grabbed my arm and pulled me downstairs. My head grazed the ceiling. I had no time to turn my big feet sideways on the steps, and my heels plunked down. It seemed impossible that I didn’t fall, too, and barrel right over Suzy at the moment she needed me most.

  Suzy’s face was blotched from crying as she crouched beside her mother. But I saw Margaret’s chest rise and fall, and I knew she was alive. I could smell alcohol—bitter and tangy—and, as always, the pungent nicotine smell that permeated their clothes and surroundings.

  “We should call an ambulance,” I said.

  “No!” said Suzy. Then, more gently, “She just needs to be in bed.”

  Suzy stroked her mother’s face, tucked the coarse blond hair behind Margaret’s ear the way a mother would do for a child.

  “I can’t wake her up,” Suzy said. “Will you lift her? Please?”

  I stood there, hanging above them. I sensed someone behind me and turned to see Patrick at the top of the stairs. Blue airplane pajamas that bagged out at the knees. Frayed collar. Everything here was coming apart at the seams. They knew it, too, but not how to stop it.

  “I should get my father.”

  “Ruth—please! Will you help us or not?”

  Though bending was hard for me, I got myself down and slid my arms beneath Margaret, and I thought of those powerful weightlifters as I rose with her. Flexing every muscle, lifting from my core. I had never been strong until Suzy arrived. My bulk had been a useless thing. Now I could do anything she asked.

  Arms shaking, I carried Margaret stair by stair, Patrick leading the way down the hall, Suzy behind. I stepped through more dirty clothes on the floor of Margaret’s bedroom, and laid her in her unmade bed. As I was pulling away, her eyes opened and looked at me. She had the ragged look of a survivor—someone who keeps surviving in spite of herself.

  As I crossed the lawn to go home, Patrick called to me from his open window. I turned, but couldn’t see him in the darkness.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  I raised my hand to him as his curtains drifted closed.

  I couldn’t get back to sleep that night. What if Margaret’s back had been broken, or her neck? What if moving her had been the absolute wrong thing to do? If I found out I’d killed her, what would I do?

  In the morning I rushed over and rapped on the door, but Margaret herself answered, squat body wrapped in a dingy pink robe, bobby pins at her temples. Bacon sizzled in a pan.

  “Suzy’s still sleeping,” she said in her raspy voice. “Sleeps till goddamn noon if I let her.”

  She seemed to know nothing of the night before, and there was no sign that anything had been broken or bruised. She motioned for me to come in and crossed the kitchen floor in her bare feet. Her toenails were painted bright red and looked just like candies.

  “Suzy!” she hollered. “SUZY!” Without turning from the grease popping in the pan, she said, “Just go ahead in, Ruth. You’ll need a foghorn to get her moving.”

  I entered the hall down which I had carried Margaret the night before, folding her into a deep V so that her head and feet would not scrape along the walls. It was odd to be here again in the daytime, and see how things had reverted to normal. I opened the door to Suzy’s room and sat on the bed beside her. Her eyes moved under her eyelids and I wondered what she was dreaming about. Me? The fall? Or David?

  When she woke up, she wasn’t surprised to see me there. She just looked at me in that flat way she sometimes did, which locked me out. I couldn’t get at her, but couldn’t keep myself from trying.

  “I’m glad your mom’s okay,” I whispered.

  She rolled over so I couldn’t see her face, and I put my head on the pillow beside her.

  “Why do you always wear your hair like that?” she asked, still not turning to me. “It doesn’t look very good on you.”

  I pulled the elastic from my hair and asked, “What would look better?” Whatever she wanted, I’d give her. Nothing was too much to ask.

  Elspeth had been away three weeks but would return home within days. She would scrub the sinks and the floors and do the mounds of laundry, washing out the evidence of her absence. Once the stolen moments had slipped down the drain, everything would be clean, as it once was. She wanted and needed to clean things, both at home and in England.

  When she’d emptied the aunts’ flat, Elspeth swept and mopped it, and set to washing away all trace of Franny and Bea. The cleaning soothed her, and there was time to do it properly, whereas at home there were so many other chores, and work on top of them. She did it all, but mostly felt that she did nothing well, and the disappointment plagued her. All her life she’d been atoning for something, making amends, but even the amends didn’t seem good enough.

  On the shelf above the bathtub she found an array of strange, squiggly marks blackening the wood. She scrubbed and scrubbed, but they would not be erased. She covered them with a dusting of harsh cleansing powder, resolving to return to them later, and went about washing the bathroom floor. Beneath a loose tile she discovered a cluster of bobby pins, one still holding a strand of gray hair. Elspeth stood and rubbed away a bit of the cleanser so she could see the squiggles again, and as she laid a bobby pin down on the matching stain, she closed her eyes, for the image of Bea sinking back in the tub was so strong now that it brought tears to her eyes. She blew the powder away, and let the fossils remain.

  Every day when she left the aunts’ flat to pick up food for her simple meals, she traveled along Cockspur Street, not knowing she was walking in the 250-year-old footsteps of Irish giant Charles Byrne.

  He was one in a long line of giants who showed themselves for money. When he first got to England from Ireland, he was a twenty-one-year-old man embarking on what he was sure would be a bright future. Newspaper advertisements reported that he could be seen in an elegant apartment next to Cox’s Museum. The Living Colossus, they called him, or the Wonderful Irish Giant; he measured eight feet, two inches. The nobility and the faculty of the Royal Society hurried to see him, and claimed despite his gray complexion and chronic cough that he was more impressive than any natural curiosity ever offered to the public. They said his address was singular and pleasing, his person truly shaped and proportioned to his height, and that the sight of him was more than the mind could conceive, the tongue express, or the pencil delineate.

  From eleven o’clock until four o’clock he would stand there, letting them look at him, and his loathing for them grew by the hour. A woman whispered to her companion, “He isn’t as tall as they say,” and the fellow’s cruel eyes traveled down the length of him, as if measuring by glance. Charles’s feet ached and his brain hummed with boredom, though he composed rude poems to amuse himself. Sometimes the onlookers engaged him in conversation, and asked silly questions such as “How is it that you came to us all the way from Ireland?” And he would answer, “Well, I just felt an urge, and so I stepped across.” They would titter politely, but they did not take kindly to the dead look in his eyes, made deader each night at his favorite pub, as he drank himself into numbness.

  Not far from where Charles Byrne teetered on his bar stool, the eccentric surgeon John Hunter was steadily building his impressive collection of specimens. Little people and big ones were particularly intriguing. And this was the age,
after all, of bodysnatchers. Hunter hired one to approach Charles and offer a tempting sum to will his body to the doctor after death. Which would be soon enough, judging by Charles’s constant hacking and the yellowed whites of his eyes. But Charles recoiled and turned the offer down. The man appeared in the crowd the next day and the next, staring at him from amid a sea of faces.

  Charles’s paranoia grew; he drank more, and finally quit showing himself. He had always trusted in the idea that even if his body perished his soul would live on, no matter what happened to him, but he had begun to doubt that that was the case, because already, while he was still living, he could feel his soul withering away. He wandered the streets in the wee hours, when few would notice him, and as he drifted by the upper windows he peered in longingly at regular people asleep in their regular beds. When he returned to his quarters he wanted only to sleep as they slept, but his dreams were marred by nightmares of his own demise, and his soul displayed as a physical thing. Stuffed and shellacked.

  Once he began to cough blood, he made arrangements with some of his pub friends to promise, when the time came, that they’d place him in a lead coffin and dump him in the Thames, where no one could get at his remains. But somewhere along the line his plan was stymied. A handful of years after his death, when the publicity had quelled, a giant skeleton appeared in Hunter’s museum, encased in gleaming glass, the brown bones indicating a hasty boiling. And so the giant endured in Elspeth’s time, though she had no knowledge of him. He stood surrounded by skulls and bones and lizards in jars, an elephant’s see-through skeleton, and thousands of birds and animals whole or in pieces. Insect mouthparts and human teeth, coiled intestines, parasitic worms, and the delicate frames of woodpeckers. Wondrous things to be gawked at into eternity. Things that had to be seen to be believed.