Bearded Women Read online

  My snakes are like little kids. Defenceless.

  The Garden Society ladies come to Violet’s apartment for a meeting, cluster around my bed and chat in quiet voices. We mourn with Olivia—she’s in a rental agreement she can’t break but her apartment is so full of dust it’s making her allergies worse. No amount of sweeping seems to help. So many of us Garden Society members are in that situation, a state of trapped. We have fixed lives—fixed incomes, fixed rental agreements, fixed expenses—and none of us can break out. We feel hopeless. Like there are no good options.

  My prof leaves messages on the answering machine at my apartment (how did he get my number?) wondering why I was absent from class and saying he missed me and he hopes he didn’t do anything to make me upset. It’s too creepy.

  After a week of recovery I go back to work, still grieving.

  Rick, one of the bouncers who’s always trying to hit on me, asks if I’d like to come back to his apartment for a nightcap and a backrub.

  “I know you lost one of . . .” he touches his head. “Maybe I could help you feel better.”

  I stare at him so hard he’s perfectly still for a moment. “You have no fucking clue,” I say.

  “You could tell me how you feel at my place,” he says.

  I slam an empty plastic pretzel bowl against the counter. It breaks in two. Rick steps back. “You have no fucking clue,” I say again.

  He doesn’t bother me for the rest of the evening.

  The snakes weigh my head down, literally and physically. Tonight they are heavy with confusion. Drunk people depress me further. I can’t wait to leave the bar. My snakes drink beer out of near-empty glasses when I’m not looking. I’m toasted by the time I get off work, barely have it in me to walk home and flop on the couch. I’m mad at my snakes, prefer to medicate with chocolate, but they want booze. I go to the bathroom but can’t throw up, peer at myself in the mirror, and freeze for a moment because I look like shit. The snakes loll around my head. My eyes are dark, sunken, drunk.

  That’s what makes me puke.

  It’s better that way. Gets all the toxins out of my system. I rinse my mouth with warm water. I have to get away from the bar. I can’t let my snakes fall to temptation and develop some chemical dependency. They don’t have my willpower. I need to give them a better life than bartending and book sorting, but that means quitting my jobs, going to school full-time.

  That will be heavy financially. I worry it will be hard on my snakes, give them more headaches, but I’m so tired of all those long nights and the turn-to-stone cracks from drunk people. When I call Violet and tell her about the decision, she is pleased and worried.

  “Just don’t take on too much, dear,” she says.

  Too much debt. Too much stress. Too many dreams of the millions of ways my life will improve after I get a degree. I know nothing is guaranteed.

  When I tell Katie about my decision, she says I’m crazy.

  “Stick with what you’ve got,” she says. “It’s better than debt. You can sleep at night. I’ve given up on anything more, just need a paycheque to feed myself and my kid. The hell you know is better than the hell you don't.”

  She makes sense, speaks to my worries. She was the first in her family to go to college, to try and lift herself out of a blue-collar existence, but right now the important thing is paying bills. That’s what it comes down to. Food on the table. Keeping the gas and electric going.

  I’m trying to muster the courage to put in my two weeks’ notice at both my jobs on the night I return to my Greek mythology class. My prof is fine for the first hour, but then he asks me if I think the Minotaur is connected to the Greeks conception of primal male desires. Everyone snickers.

  “Sir,” I say after class, “the only thing I know about Greek mythology is that I don’t turn people into stone.”

  My prof nods and smiles. “It’s very interesting how the stories get twisted,” he says. “Perhaps we could discuss this over dinner sometime.”

  “Isn’t that a little improper?” I say.

  “It’s not strange for exceptional students like you,” he says.

  “I don’t think I’m exceptional,” I say, “at least in the studenting part.” I turn to load my books into my backpack. I bet he wants a trophy girlfriend to show off to all the other Greek scholars at the next conference. No one could best him by dating a siren.

  “But you’re really something,” he says, putting his hand on the small of my back.

  I don’t tell my snakes to bite my prof, but I don’t stop them. In that second when I let them attack, I firm my commitment to go to school full-time next semester. I wouldn’t have let them bite him three weeks ago. I cared too much about my grade. About those three credits. But I can’t do this stupid balancing act anymore. I have to make the jump. I don’t know if I’ll land in a soft place. I don't know if jumping is the best thing to do. But I’ll have a lot of time to think about it while I’m in the air.

  My snakes get my prof on the arm. They have very small teeth, so the wound is more of a pinch than a bite, but they have strong jaws.

  “Aack,” he screams.

  I pivot.

  He clutches his wrist. “Are they poisonous?”

  “No,” I say, “they’re little garden snakes. You’ll be fine.”

  “But you’d be immune to your own poison,” he says.

  “They’re not poisonous,” I say.

  He runs out of the room, yelling for a doctor.

  I roll my eyes, load my Greek mythology text into my backpack, and feel the caress of two of my snakes against my arm. I rub a finger over their heads. Sweet little guys.

  My feet aren’t as granite heavy as they were when I walked into the classroom tonight. That weight has been transformed into the weight of my backpack, the weight of books, the weight of things I need to learn. I hunch forward a bit while I’m walking, but at least I can move.

  Seventeen Episodes

  in the Life of a Giant

  (or, Ruminations on My Garbage Can)

  Cellophane wrappers from two packages of shoelaces.

  I’m twenty-seven years old, eight feet six inches tall, might be the world’s third or fourth or fifth tallest woman but I don’t care to know. My shoes are so big that a single lace won’t do, so I have to tie two together. The laces always break because I pull too hard, so sometimes Mom ties them for me. I toss the wrappers in the trash on top of Mom’s banana peel. She eats a banana every day at breakfast. I take out the garbage on Mondays just as the peels are beginning to stink.

  After breakfast but before I go to work at the stationery store, I finish writing my will. There isn’t much to it since I don’t have much stuff—books and clothes and records because I fell in love with vinyl at a young age. Mom is worried anyway.

  “I don’t want you to think about things like that.” She uses her stern voice, practising for the day ahead like she often does at eight in the morning. Mom teaches elementary art, spends her time plying children with crayons and markers and tempera paint.

  I say, “I want to make sure everything is secure. I want to make sure it all goes to you.”

  “You don’t need to,” says my mother, “you’ll be around a long time. At least if you stop thinking like this.”

  I keep writing. Giants usually go early, in their thirties or forties, from heart disease. I have the same circulation problems my father did, my hands and feet always feel cold, and I’m only five years younger than he was when he died. I have a physical twice every year and the doctor says I’m fine, but I never quite trust him.

  I walk to the stationery store because it’s only three blocks away and it’s hard for me to fit in cars. Mom has a minivan, one with the front passenger seat removed so I can sit on the bench in the middle and fit my legs where the front seat would have
been. It’s still a bit awkward, and she has to help me out so I don’t stumble. At the store I’m on my knees most of the day and direct customers from the register. Clerking on my knees hurts after a while, even with the foam pad I keep behind the counter, but I don’t like standing up in the store. Some people still come in just to see me. Most try to be discrete, but teenagers snicker and ask why I don’t play basketball. I am always very polite, very kind, even to rude people. I’ve won the employee-of-the-month award eight times in the past year and a half, which is a record though there are just four employees.

  Around noon the guy who works at the rent-to-own place three doors down comes in for paperclips. He does this every day, says he needs them for the store, but they can’t use that many. The rent-to-own guy is six feet tall. Around my age. He gives me a tiny smile when I hand him his change. Some days I think he’s sweet. Some days I think he’s creepy.

  “Hi,” I say, “how are you?”

  “Fine,” he says.

  I make small talk so he has an opportunity to ask me out to lunch, but he never does. It’s amusing to see his cheeks flush and his pupils widen. I think he’s attracted to me more than curious, but it’s hard to tell. No one has ever asked me on a date, though I am terribly kind.

  Bakery bag, slightly damp with used coffee grounds, containing two-day-old French bread crumbs.

  After work I stop at the bakery. Mothers stare. Kids point. I smile down at them and say hello, ask if they are having a nice day. The girl I have a crush on waits on me. I like the bakery, but come here often because of her. She’s petite and in her early thirties. I ask for a baguette, watch her hands as she chooses one from the rack and slides it into a long paper sack. Her hands are small and I know she has good muscles from working with trays of cookies and cakes and rolls and bread. I want her to knead my shoulders.

  “Thanks,” I say when she gives me the bread. It’s what I always say. Dumb. I’m too tired to converse. One problem with being a giant is bouts of weakness. It’s hard for a large body to be strong all the time. Some nights Mom helps me take off my socks.

  Empty bottle of acetaminophen (my mother believes in buying generic drugs).

  I take painkillers every evening because my knees ache. The number of bottles in the trashcan is embarrassing, but I need at least four pills for them to have any effect. Mom says Dad was the same way. He was almost nine feet tall. My mother is five foot three. They met when he modeled for her college life drawing class. The instructor felt that having a larger-than-life model would somehow help his students see details.

  For a while my parents didn’t think my father could conceive. It was a glandular issue. As my mom says, my father’s member was not to scale with the rest of his body. But, if it had been properly sized, it wouldn’t have been possible for the right parts to fit in the right places.

  My father died when I was two, before my size was clear. In all his pictures he looks a little sad. Dad was the world’s fourth or fifth or sixth tallest man—not good enough for record books, but good enough for ads. He did promotions for sports equipment and pants and breakfast cereals, squirrelled away money in stocks and bonds and savings accounts. Sometimes people drove by the house to take pictures of him doing normal things—weeding the garden or washing the car. Once he stood by the trashcan for half an hour posing for passes-by, a freakish and dutiful husband. The photographers paid ten dollars a shot. If anyone did that to me, I’d hit them. But Dad wanted to provide for my mother and me, knew his time was limited.

  Empty chicken noodle soup can.

  Mom and I have soup and bread for dinner (I hate cooking and she’s too tired). Afterwards we work on my latest outfit, a lavender pantsuit. We make all of my clothes. Mom pins the fabric and I cut it as she worries about my social life.

  “You should have a relationship,” she says, but I know she doesn’t want to marry again.

  “Nobody would date an eight-and–a-half–foot-tall woman,” I say. Wouldn’t be worth it if I might die in five years. Besides, Mom is all the company I need. I haven’t told her about the bakery girl I like or the rent-to-own guy who might like me. She’d just pester more.

  Mom peers at me over the rims of her glasses. Though she is shorter than me it feels like she is bigger, takes up more space when we sit at the table or on the couch. I don’t understand if it’s a cruel trick of the mind or the eye that makes her shrink when I look at her.

  I trim all the fabric to fit the pattern, plan to start sewing the following evening.

  At four o’clock in the afternoon, my mother calls the store. Her voice wavers. My grandmother, her mother, had a stroke. She lives in a condo in Arizona. My mother will fly there tomorrow morning. I do not know my grandmother well, have seen her eight or nine times since I was ten. She sends me two hand-sewn blouses every Christmas.

  I tell my boss what happened and she hugs me with frail arms. She’s just over five feet tall, shorter than me even when I’m on my knees. No one can ever hug all of me.

  Ten damp crumpled tissues.

  My mother and I sit side by side on the couch. Her pupils are the size of saucers. In sorrow she is huge. Mom daubs her eyes and asks if I want someone to come and stay with me at the house. I shake my head. I’m an adult. Should be able to care for the house on my own. But I don’t know if I can. I used to unload the dishwasher but broke too many plates, so now I’m responsible for taking out the trash. Mom is more confident about my abilities.

  “You’ll be fine.” She nods. “Mr. Wilson is always home if you need help.”

  Mr. Wilson is seventy-something, has lived across the street from us since before I was born. He keeps to himself—knits, drinks black coffee, and smokes outside because that’s what his wife made him do when she was alive.

  “How long will you be gone?” I say. Mom shakes her head. I don’t want her to leave. Selfish, but it’s early May and she could be in Arizona all summer. I’ve never seriously thought about moving out of the house, finding a place of my own, that my mother might not be around to care for me. I worry no one else will love me enough to do all of the small constant things she does. Everyone understands little people need shorter counters and step stools and special pedals in cars, but they don’t think about tall people, how sometimes I need help washing and dressing when I’m feeling weak. My father lived with his parents until he married my mother. I assumed I’d be like him, one of those ancient children.

  Three empty paper packets of instant oatmeal.

  Mom leaves at six in the morning. I wait to cry until she is gone. I make oatmeal for breakfast, though I’m not hungry. Mom doesn’t like oatmeal, eats raisin bran, but she always throws away my empty oatmeal packets before I can. I almost forget to pitch the packets, leave them by the coffee maker expecting her hands to whisk them away. I dump most of my oatmeal down the garbage disposal.

  I have problems with the buttons on my blouse. My grandmother should have sewn on larger ones. Because Mom isn’t here to fasten them I wear a rayon shirt, one I can pull over my head. I walk to work and hope being around people will make me happier, or at least take my mind off my mother. It works for a while. I smile. I direct customers to envelopes and erasers. I am excruciatingly polite, trying for a ninth employee of the month award, another chance to have my name engraved on that little plaque in the break room. An obscure kind of immortality. The rent-to-own guy needs ballpoint pens. I decide he looks more cute than creepy, has possibilities.

  “When are you going to ask me out for pizza?” I say. He stares at me. I smile. Sadness makes me say things I wouldn’t normally, and I’m anticipating lonely dinners.

  “Um,” he says, “I didn’t know you liked pizza.”

  “I do,” I say. “Don’t most people?”

  His cheeks flush pink, then almost purple. “My boss needs the pens,” he says.

  It will be interestin
g to see if he comes back tomorrow.

  At work I occupy myself with customer service, but afterwards I break down crying in the bakery. The bakery girl’s fingers remind me of my mother’s hands and how I am too dependent. Mothers gawk. Children stare. Three of my tears could fill a Dixie cup. The bakery girl comes out from behind the counter to pat my back. I want to tell the bakery girl I love her because her fingers are so delicate. Instead I say my grandmother had a stroke and my mother has gone to be with her. I tell her I am worried, let her assume it’s out of concern for my grandmother and not my own self.

  She tells me she’s sorry.

  I apologize for crying.

  “It’s okay,” the bakery girl says. I want to ask her to go out, get coffee, but I don’t.

  I walk home and can’t stay inside, pace around the block to tire my legs. I’m on my sixth lap when Mr. Wilson yells at me from his front porch.

  “You doing some sort of marathon or what?” he says.

  I walk to Mr. Wilson’s porch, tell him about my grandmother and how Mom has gone to be with her. Mr. Wilson lights a cigarette, says I should call him if I have any problems. He gives me two pairs of hand-knitted socks every Christmas. His wife died eight years ago. She was around seventy, a sad but more expected age for dying than thirty-two.

  Broken glass shards wrapped in three paper towels.

  The glass is filled with water when I bump it off the kitchen counter and onto the floor. I should only use plastic cups and paper plates until Mom returns. My body is hard to control. This is not necessarily because of my size. I’m probably just a clumsy person. Mom says my father was quite graceful.

  I bake a frozen pizza for dinner, eat in the living room because Mom insists we eat in the kitchen. I want to break habits. I turn the TV on for the company of voices. Every room in our home echoes. My parents bought the house because it was old and had high ceilings and doorways so my dad could be comfortable. I wonder what he would have said if he’d known I would become a giant. Maybe he would have felt bad about it, passing on the pains, but the one reason I like my size is because this is what I have of him.