Tall Story - Candy Gourlay [2]
And then they laugh. They laugh because they look at me: they look at my feet so wide and so long I can only wear sandals made specially by Timbuktu the tailor, they look at my shoulders, rounded from the effort of squeezing through low doors, they look up, up, up to the top of my huge head … and they know better.
I’ll bet Bernardo Carpio, the giant, never used to be the smallest in his class.
The year that I was thirteen, it seemed as if all the other boys in my class had taken a dose of Super-Gro, the miracle plant food used by farmers to fatten up their crops. Everyone was suddenly shooting up like weeds, arms and legs thickening like tree trunks. Jabby too.
In fact, Jabby was a whole head and shoulders taller than me and he liked slinging an arm over my shoulders to prove the point. He even had hair under his armpits and he carried a can of Rexona spray deodorant in his bag, like a hidden weapon. His voice dipped an octave. Suddenly he was tall enough to get into eighteen-rated movies and tall enough to talk to girls. The Mountain Men, which was the local basketball team, signed him up.
Meanwhile, I remained small and squeaky and hairless as a just-born pup.
‘It’s nothing to worry about, it’s only a matter of time,’ Auntie Sofia had said. ‘We’re not tall people. Look at your ma. She’s tiny. Look at me.’
And I looked at Auntie’s squat pumpkin figure and my anxiety increased a hundredfold.
So when I finally started growing, it was as if my body had been held back against its will and was making up for lost time.
Two inches in one month. Four inches in two months. And so on. At night when everything was silent, I could hear a soft noise. Creak creak creak. My bones were lengthening, pulling and stretching my muscles like dough from the bakery.
The year I turned fourteen, Mama came to visit for a few weeks.
I was six foot tall. Taller than Uncle Victor. Taller than Jabby. ‘I told you it was only a matter of time,’ Auntie said smugly.
We took Uncle’s jeepney to the International Airport. Sitting on the rear bench used to be a peril, what with the potholes and the jeepney’s nonexistent shock absorbers. Auntie bounced around in the front seat like a Ping-Pong ball in a jar. I kept from being shaken to pieces by wedging myself firmly in place with my long legs. Being tall had its advantages.
The International Airport building was fancy enough, though slums girdled it like a tattered skirt. We were herded into a fenced-off area with other meeters and greeters just opposite the smart Arrivals terminal. Security guards kept the crowds at bay.
The holding pen seethed with waving hands and lips blowing kisses and hard elbows and crumpled Welcome Home! banners.
I didn’t have to fight my way to the front. That was another advantage of being tall. I could see clearly enough over the crowd.
‘Is she there yet?’ Auntie called up to me, cupping her mouth as if she was shouting up a mountain.
‘Wait … let me see.’
And there she was.
She was so tiny her wheelie bag seemed almost double her size. Ma bundled a coat under one arm and gazed into the crowd, shielding her eyes from the sun.
‘Ma! Ma!’
I waved my arms and her face brightened. She waved excitedly and began to drag her bag across to the holding pen, her eyes fixed on mine.
‘Pardon.’ I pushed a path through the crowd, with Auntie and Uncle following in my wake like a conga line. ‘Excuse us.’
I straightened my back. Ma would be so proud when she got a good look at me. Two years ago on her last visit, I came up to her shoulders, I was that small. She was going to be so surprised. She was going to say, Well done, Bernardo. You are on your way to becoming a man.
As she drew nearer her eyes grew wider, but the look on her face was not that of amazement. Instead, Ma bit her lip and stared at me like I had grown a third eye on my forehead. I bent down and put my arms around her and