• • •
“I call it . . . The Creation!”
“It’s hideous!”
“Well, so was the Creation. He was sewn together with dead body parts. This was sewn together with donated blankets.”
“Beats being naked as the day Ma bore me, I guess. I’ll call it . . . Frank.”
“After the doctor?”
“The very same.”
• • •
“I broke a pew today. Snapped it right in half. Without even thinking, just sat right on it and bam.”
“Oh.”
“I thought it was funny.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah. Funny.”
14 FEET
“Pretty little raven at the bird-band stand
Told them how to do the bob and it was grand
They started going steady and bless my soul
He out-bopped the buzzard and the oriole”
“God cares about us as a society. He loves us. And He is guiding us to the truth by punishing one town at a time. How, ladies and gentlemen of Pennybrooke, can we save our town?”
• • •
“Your feet! I didn’t even think about your feet. Do they hurt at all?”
“Nah. I pulled a splinter out the other day and barely felt it.”
“Well, that’s a relief. I don’t know where I could find enough leather to cover these. They’re huge.”
“Tell me about it. Pretty soon I could just strap a couple of cows to my feet.”
“Ha!”
• • •
“Nice night tonight.”
“Yeah.”
“. . .”
“. . .”
15 FEET
“He rocks in the tree tops all day long
Hoppin’ and a-boppin’ and singing his song
All the little birdies on Jaybird Street
Love to hear the robin go tweet tweet tweet”
“It is our job to rise up, to become larger than ourselves, and find a way to stop sinfulness in its tracks once and for all.”
• • •
“Here. I sewed you a, um, lady’s hygienic belt.”
“You did what?”
“You’re gonna need one, aren’t you?”
“. . . Thank you, Beth.”
• • •
“Well, see ya tomorrow, I guess.”
“Yeah, see ya tomorrow.”
• • •
Every night, after Lear left, Reverend Marsh would lock up the church while Pan-Cake curled up on my stomach and my eyes fluttered shut beneath Frank, my comforter Creation, belly full, skin tingling, and my growth not slowing an inch.
“Rockin’ robin,
Rock rock, rockin’ robin
Blow rockin’ robin
’Cause we’re really gonna rock tonight”
One crisp February afternoon when I was thirteen, I was walking back to the motel from the pictures in Sunrise Valley when I passed two girls who whispered, “Daughter of Ook,” and started giggling.
I continued, eyes on shoes, until I heard a grunting ahead. A boy was struggling in front of the barbershop. He was bundled up for winter, and his left arm was in a sling. He was pressed up against the plate glass window, trying to get his textbooks situated in his right arm.
“Push any harder, the glass’ll shatter and you’ll be a bloody mess on the tile.” I caught his American history book before it fell in the snow. “Maybe they’d give you a free haircut though.”
The boy looked at me in surprise. He was an Indian. I hadn’t noticed until now because he was all bundled up. Down the sidewalk, the girls stared. I could get a reputation for helping a kid like this.
The boy’s arm trembled. I took the rest of his books.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
I glanced back at the girls. “It’s my pleasure.”
I hefted the books up to my chest with a grunt and started walking. The boy followed.
“I only live three blocks from here,” he said, trying to keep up.
“You do?”
I hadn’t meant to sound rude—I just didn’t think Indians were allowed to live in this town. It was even illegal to marry someone with darker skin.
The boy didn’t take my question poorly. “My dad works at the base,” he said. “He’s a Navajo code talker. Helped win the war against the Japs in Iwo Jima.”
The girls whispered behind us. From then on in that town, I’d be “Daughter of Ook,” the girl who carried books for Indian boys.
“What’s your name?” the boy asked.
“Phoebe. But it doesn’t matter.”
“No,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the girls. “I guess it doesn’t.”
I winced. I’d said it didn’t matter because I’d most likely be gone soon, but he took it a different way. I didn’t know how to clear it up.
As we walked, I stole a couple glances to the side to size up his profile. He was handsome. His shoulders were broad, and his hair was short and shiny black. Maybe we could spend the next week or so hanging out at the sock hop together. Two outcasts. We could clear out a whole corner just for ourselves.
“How’d that happen?” I asked, nodding at his arm in the sling.
He held it up like a bird wing. “Helping build hogans for the Diné reservation. Axe came off the handle and snapped my ulna in two.”
My heart awoke—maybe thinking about the pain, or maybe thinking about his muscular arms chopping.
He gave a little chuckle. “Lucky it wasn’t two-sided or you’d have to carry my books until I graduated.”
“You’re lucky to get three blocks,” I said, smirking. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. His smile was so sweet I had to look away. “Ulna. That’s a smart word. You a whiz at school or something?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that.” He scratched the back of his head in such a way that let me know he really was. “Doctor said it at the hospital, and I just remembered.”
We looked left and right down an unpaved road, and then crossed along the driest hump of mud we could find. The girls were still shadowing us.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “What’s that other bone in your arm called?”
“Uh, radius? Humerus?”
“See?” I said, giggling. “Smarty-pan—”
My feet came to an abrupt stop. The textbooks slid out of my hands and plopped into a mud puddle. My eyes rose up up up up up. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t have the breath. I barely noticed the kid scrambling around my feet, rescuing his books from the mud with his one good arm.
There was a man.
A man was filling the sky.
Ma had tried to describe Daddy to me before. She’d told me the crown of his head stretched above the clouds and his shins faded in the haze of the horizon. But seeing him tower before me—the bulging stomach, the nostrils, the slowly waving wisps of hair on a bald head—it was too much to fit in my brain.
I blinked and helped the boy rescue his textbooks.
“This is what I get—” he said, half smiling, wiping the cover of Advanced Algebra with his sleeve—“letting a girl carry my books for me.”
He was joking, but I decided not to take it that way. I handed him the rest of his books and ran home, hoping he’d believe I left because of his comment and not because I was in a state of shock.
I practically knocked the motel door down.
Ma was painting her toenails. “Hiya, Beefy!”
That had been Ma’s nickname for me ever since she’d accidentally switched the halves of my name when I was eight, making me laugh till I couldn’t breathe. After this conversation, she would never use it again.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what, honey?”
“He’s ugly!”
I screamed this. I screamed it so loud, Ma whisked across the room in her slippers to shut the motel door. “What are you talking about?”
I grabbed the string for the blinds, yanked them open, an
d pointed. “Daddy. He’s fat and bald and he looks about as savvy as a cow on slaughter day.”
“You saw him? Why, honey, that’s wonderful! That means you’re a real woman n—”
My look silenced her.
Ma chewed her fingernail, considering the sky. “Well, no one would call him a looker, that’s for sure.” She clicked her tongue. “Guess I was so busy raising you, I just came to think of him as Daddy.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and squeezed my arms between my legs so my body didn’t feel so exposed.
“Oh, Phoebe,” Ma said. She came and sat beside me and tucked my hair behind my ear. “Sweetie, you’re beautiful. You’re gorgeous. You won the jackpot. You got your momma’s looks or I’m as blind as a mole rat.” She lifted my chin with her fingernail so I could see myself in the motel mirror. “See?”
I didn’t see. Looking at my body then, at my face and doughy torso, I knew exactly where I got my looks. I’d lost the jackpot. Lost it big time. Ma may as well call me Beefy for the rest of my life.
Ma went back to the window. “If you did get anything from your father, it’s his full lips and delicate hands. And I gotta disagree with you on one point, Phoebe.” She gestured to Daddy through the window like he was a fabulous prize on a game show. “I think he looks intelligent. Bright as a copper kettle.”
My expression told her I wasn’t buying it.
She put her hands on her hips. “How else would your father know where the next bad thing was gonna happen and warn us to get out, huh? Answer me that.”
My scowl deepened.
Ma relented. “It must be such a strange thing having no clue what your daddy looked like for thirteen years, then all of a sudden boom, there he is.” She sat on the bed and took my hands. “Think of it this way. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that big galook, and no one’s gladder about that than me. For better or worse, he’s your daddy and my main squeeze till the end of time. Daniel Framsky.”
“Daniel Framsky?”
“I never told you?” Ma squinted at the window. “It was the first name that popped into my head when I saw him. Maybe ’cause he looked like such a shlub.” She laughed and held my chin. “Good thing you didn’t inherit one iota of his shlubbishness.”
I turned my head to break free. I studied myself in the mirror and then finally looked out the window, where I could see Daddy’s gigantic hairy arm resting on an armrest across the western hemisphere.
Ma patted my knee. “You’ll always be a Lane, honey. Now, I’m gonna hop in the shower and we’re gonna go out and celebrate with a steak dinner and ice cream. Two women of the world eating whatever they want. I’ll even sneak you some of my beer in honor of your father.” She stood and de-robed. “And if intelligence is so important to you, maybe you should spend less time at the movies and more time at the library.”
She closed the bathroom door and I heard the water run while she sang, “If I Had a Talking Picture of You.”
I kept staring at that gigantic arm out the window. A gigantic ulna. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how nice the boy with a sling had been to me . . . even when I looked like this.
• • •
I saw the boy, same time, same place the next day. He was walking slow, hitching his books into his armpits every few steps. My hand reached out to help, but then I stopped.
I now knew for certain that Daddy wasn’t just a story Ma made up, and that we’d be running from town to town for the rest of our lives. I also knew what my father looked like now and that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.
I forced my hand back around my books from the library and walked straight past the boy. He didn’t say a word.
Daddy’s eyes wandered to the town a few days later. Once Ma and me were safely away from Sunrise Valley, we heard Jimmy Jamboney on the radio. “From my helicopter view, I can see the whole town is crawling with plants, sprung to life from the solar flare. These are not the sort of plants your grandma grows in her backyard, ladies and gentlemen. They’re like worms! Writhing, crawling, circling round unsuspecting ankles. Brr. This is one reporter who’s got the heebie-jeebies.”
I was grateful the reporter wasn’t too graphic about it. But when me and Ma stopped at a diner, we overheard two men talking about how the vines made shish kebabs of their victims, twining in one end and out the other. The men noticed my mother sitting at the end of the counter and apologized for using such indelicate language in front of a lady.
I went to the bathroom to throw up.
It’s strange having dinner with a boy when you’re naked and twenty feet tall.
I lay across the floor in front of the pulpit, as long as a pew but too wide to lie on one. Heck, my hips were so big, I couldn’t even fit between the pews to sit in the aisle anymore. Lear was sitting on the floor, eating a sandwich, Pan-Cake curled up in his lap. Beth was still working on my gown, so all I had was Frank, the comforter Creation, draped over my body like a bath towel.
My long limbs shifted around, trying to look as appealing as I could with my new proportions. But I kept banging my shin on the altar and nearly knocking over the pulpit. Growing up, I’d always felt like I was only allowed to take up a certain amount of space. And that my body was always betraying that. It didn’t help that I compared myself to Ma, whose voluptuous form seemed to take up the exact right amount of space at all times.
But this new body of mine . . . well, it was just ridiculous. Comical even. If Lear didn’t like me as I was, what was I going to do? Go on a diet and grow as skeletal as Ook? Lear could even call me by my old nickname “Beefy” and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash.
My limbs shifted again, more carefully this time. I kept waiting for him to sneak a peek at my shape under the comforter, but his eyes remained fixed on his sandwich. We were having our usual engaging conversation of slurps, sighs, and silent pauses when Marsh came in the back door sweating and carrying a shovel. He didn’t see Lear sitting behind my giant hips.
“The community garden has never been healthier,” Marsh said, pulling off his work gloves. “I have been telling people the fertilizer came from the elephants at the carnival.”
Now that I was a giantess, my stomach had much farther to fall. I cleared my throat so loud it rattled the stained glass and got Marsh’s attention. With my eyes I promised to throw him over the church if he breathed another word about the fertilizer.
“You have a guest.” Marsh’s nostrils flared at Lear like he was a skunk that may or may not have had its sacs removed. “You are Lear Finley, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have not seen you in my congregation.”
“I can’t leave Mother alone too long,” Lear said.
“What is the matter with her?” Marsh asked
Lear flinched and studied the ground. “When I was young, she—my dad, he—”
“She saved Lear from a fire when he was little,” I interrupted, spinning a story from nothing at all. “Lear’s dad didn’t make it out, and her lungs haven’t been right since. If Lear doesn’t keep a close eye on her, she could choke.”
Lear kept his eyes on the ground.
“I see,” Marsh said. He took out his keys and headed toward the front door. “I must purchase some pipe cleaner for the organ.” He paused at the entrance. “I do not imagine you can get up to any, em, fornicating in your current state?”
My face practically caught fire. I could see actual heat waves wafting off my cheeks. I didn’t dare look at Lear.
“I did not think so,” Marsh said.
The church door shut behind him.
If the reverend couldn’t think up any sins between me and Lear, what chance did I have?
I lifted a fruit can to my lips and nearly knocked the pulpit over with my elbow, barely managing to catch it. My limbs were so long now, they were starting to feel like they didn’t belong to me. My body felt like a tractor that could bring down the entire church if I didn’t navigate it right.
; “This is the last of the food,” Lear said.
“Oh.”
I looked over the rest of the food, half the amount he’d brought on other nights. My stomach suddenly felt so hollow I feared there was no bottom. I emptied a box of uncooked Kraft Macaroni & Cheese into my mouth, hoping the crunch would hide my panic.
Lear rubbed his eye with the palm of his hand. “My mom’s gonna have a stroke if she finds out it’s all gone. This was supposed to last us a year. She’s terrified the world could end any minute.”
I wished I could promise him it wasn’t. But with me hiding in this church, Daddy’s eyes were probably starting to glaze over again.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m still gonna pay you back. Promise.”
Lear sighed, frustrated. “Why won’t you tell me how you got big?”
“I don’t know. It’s all so confusing and scary. I don’t want to put you in any danger.”
Lear lifted Pan-Cake off his lap and set her aside. “I better go.”
I sat up, pinning Frank to my chest. “Will you still visit me tomorrow night? We could take another trip to the water tower after everyone’s asleep. Bet I could climb that ladder in three steps now.”
“Maybe,” he said.
The locusts hummed at the edge of my vision. It seemed the bigger I grew the more often they visited. That afternoon Beth had brought another gown, and just by bending forward, I had sent a rift straight up the back, mooning stained-glass Jesus. I was so frustrated I wanted to kick a hole right through the side of the church and keep on kicking until all of Pennybrooke was nothing more than rubble.
“It’s fine,” Beth had said, touching my knee, her fingers scabbed over from sewing. “I didn’t like the cut of this one anyway.”
Beth wasn’t here to calm me now. And I didn’t want Lear to leave. The bigger I got, the lonelier I became. It already felt like an eternity of waiting between Marsh in the morning, Beth in the afternoon, and Lear at night.
And time was growing short for my first kiss.
What would keep him around? What would get him to open up? What could I do to make him look not so terrified all the time?
“Wait,”I told Lear. “Don’t leave yet.”
Attack of the 50 Foot Wallflower Page 13