Mother of Giants

Sophie Westergren

This is the tri-legged, three-foot piece of tooth that Carrie found in her Connecticut kitchen one morning. She dropped Janie off at Temple University the night before. A five-hour drive there, unpacking took three hours, tears, goodbyes, I love yous and a five-hour drive home bringing her to her bed at two in the morning. She was tired. Too asleep to have heard the ripping of wood, brick, and drywall that had been dug away to plant this mammoth hunk of yellowing bone next to her pale green breakfast nook.

At first she was totally shocked, but still so sleepy. Yesterday had been emotionally draining, she could barely pin up the lids of her eyes to keep them from draping into her sight. Aimlessly, she walked over to the pot of coffee that is set every night to brew at exactly 7:00 a.m. She grabbed her Boston College Class of 1971 mug like she did every morning, poured herself a cup, stirred in a splash of whole milk and a half a spoonful of sugar and examined the hole torn through the wall that held egg cup collection. Rays of dusty sunlight straightened themselves out in the air between her and the tooth.

“No, my mother’s clay cup.” She sucked air through her teeth like she was examining a dog with a broken leg, hurt and helpless. She picked up the sad remains of a boring hobby that she had once been so peppy about. All perky and newly married. What a home she was determined to have. Porcelain in Rosco Roscolux pale yellow, rough red clay. She remembered these things being very important to herself at a time in her life. When she was a size four waist, filling her cabinets with nonstick pans and stainless steel vegetable scoopers she had asked for in her registry. 

Her coffee felt warm against her hand that bent with muscle memory through the handle. One finger resting outside on top of its lip. An unfamiliar breeze rode through her kitchen as she rubbed her eyes and walked to grab a broom to sweep up the broken bits.

“What is this shit?” She shook her head at the bone and pulled away some of the dangling pieces of drywall. Piling them into the trash with the cups, she stared down at the pieces. These are pieces of my life. She thought. What is this shit? One glazed, shiny shard of egg cup read, December 11, 2001 in pink piped lettering. Janie Fields, 7lbs 2oz.  

Carrie turned to the tooth. It was severe looking and came to about her stomach. She was an average height at five feet, seven inches. It ripped a massive and expensive hole through her home and she began to think of the annoying costs it would take to repair. The people who would suffocate her kitchen for weeks making noise and dust; how it would never look the same as it had. She would never have her full egg cup collection. The pep. 

What the hell? She began coming-to with full force. My house has literally been bitten into. This is not normal. “What is this shit! Am I going crazy?” Her heart thumped faster. It felt lighter and less under her control; she began to feel dehydrated. A weakness entered through her knees.

She went to the living room and flipped on the news. Anchor Jim Harvey tells her, “Men and women as tall as skyscrapers have appeared out of what seems to be nowhere, today. Blindly walking through our country, shedding their limbs. Sightings of large arms on city streets and aggressive amounts of abnormally large human hair piled on people’s homes have been reported.” He went on to tell her that it was only in the northeast and to stay inside for now, but her ears were ringing.  “I––I’ve gotta call––off work. I’ve gotta call––” She stumbled backwards. It is a tooth. She felt needle thin pressure pierce her sharply somewhere in her back then it was everywhere.

She raced on tip toes to the telephone grabbing the receiver. Who do I call? Her finger hooked into the loops of the number wheel on her mother’s old telephone. Who do I call? She thought about John, her ex-husband. She wondered if he was safe, if he even knew what was going on right now. If he was even awake. Do I call John? It had been two years but there was a training period in her life where she mentally assigned him to be the one she told her biggest news to. She realized now that it was time to rewire that part of her brain. 

“Janie.” Of course I call Janie––that’s what you do. You call your daughter. Make sure she is okay. She ran to the little green address book John had given her in the seventies to see what the number of Janie’s new college cellphone was. She had given it to her as a graduation present. “Only for emergencies!” She had told her with a wink. Her finger pulled down on the wheel and she dialed her daughter’s number.

She pulled open the wooden liquor cabinet behind her with her socked toes. Her pointer finger wrapping nervously through the plastic loops of the light blue telephone chord, a long finger nail catching on the way out in a thin click. She grabbed the vodka and a bottle of tonic under her arm and walked to the cabinet for a glass. 7:23 a.m., I guess I’m drinking this morning. 

“Hello?” 

She brought the drink from her lips swallowing hard at the voice. “Janie, honey?”

***

Over the next couple of weeks, life continued almost as normal. The giants were primarily walking over Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island with a few sightings in New York state. Janie was living in Pennsylvania and she sounded happy from what Carrie had heard. Carrie went to work in the mornings, racing back home in the evenings. She stopped seeing her friends after work or at book club. She was always anxious, now. Anxious a finger the size of a car will fall onto her from the sky, squishing her like an ant. 

The idea of her photo on the news, Janie listening to Jim Harvey as he says “Our first citizen died as a result of these invasive Titans last night. Carrie Fonteyne found dead outside the CVS in West Hartford this morning after a finger fell from the sky.” Meanwhile her legs and arms would be bent in ten different directions the way Janie used to kink plastic straws at restaurants. Curly red hair frizzing against the pavement; blood dried and maroon crusting up under her calves. It was better if she stayed at home when she could.

So she started ordering her groceries and got to know and like the young girl with purple hair who would deliver them to her. Her name was Kalina. The two of them would talk when she came every four days about the Titans and where they came from. It was Kalina’s theory that some “lab coat,” as she called them, snuck some chemical home from work and started tinkering with it. 

“He probably added one wrong ingredient and a drop hit his finger or he wanted to drink it to grow taller but didn’t realize how tall he would get.” She explained it would have to be someone who didn’t talk to a lot of people that no one would notice he was missing. Kal watched a lot of sci-fi shows from the nineties. Carrie thought some of that dye went right into her brain, but it was nice to talk to someone again.

She could never sleep anymore. The plastic that patched up the hole in her kitchen was doing a lousy job at pretending it was Wall; always whipping around in the wind with loud thwacks! She was always by her window now; huddled in her blanket next to the hole, watching tall, unknowing villains bob their heads as they walked so far away. There hadn’t been one in her town for two weeks but there had been two in Granby, two towns over, so she could see them and their light halos of steam. Their warmth against the cold, their hands swinging just above the trees brushing the leaves. We are so lucky that no one has died yet. She thought to herself uncurling her toes under the heater, lifting her knees to her chest.

	She raised her vodka tonic and the ice settled in clinks. She never used to drink during the day. She had cared about making her home beautiful, making sure her daughter got to the bus on time in the morning. She was always worried about her daughter, Janie. She wanted to set a good example for her. How to be a woman, how to deal with a power outage or a leaky pipe. She taught her how to get red wine stains out of a pair of pants by dabbing it with white wine and how to stay organized for school, to go to the doctor on time and to never miss an appointment. Her life was organized and so would be her daughter’s. How are you handling all of this? Can I call you again, honey? Do you need to come home?  

She closed her eyes hard and they burned before they filled with water. She hadn’t been blinking. She shook her head and tried to stand up but was set right back down onto the windowsill and her head rang in a high pitch. Her legs kicked out to gain balance then found the floor. Arms reached out into the air to stabilize herself. Woof, maybe I should slow down on the drinks. It wasn’t even 4:00 p.m. yet.

	She tried again pulling her blanket over her shoulder shuddering as she stood. Stupid tooth hole. You are really a cavity in my home. She chuckled to herself, then felt pain. Janie, baby. How are you holding up? Can I call you?

***

Janie came closer to midterms week, it had been almost six weeks since she had gone to school, and things were going well for her. She started seeing a boy named Kurt Walls who she had met at a party when she went to switch the music when Ke$ha had come on. He was standing there holding some phone in a red case when Daft Punk started playing. “Same idea,” she had told him with a smile. They spent the whole night talking about music and movies and now she crawls over him when she has to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Everything was going as well as it could’ve been. 

There were forty-eight Titans reported in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which was almost double the amount there were four weeks ago. No one could say how they are multiplying, it was not clear what they were, and it was not clear where they came from. There were two more reported in Maine which was odd considering they crossed right over Vermont and New Hampshire without ever having been spotted. Jim Harvey seems to be the only man reporting on any of it nationally because he’s the biggest reporter in the biggest city in the northeast, New York City, News Channel 8. The guy had a monopoly.

Janie’s anthropology professor who taught her favorite course that semester, had begun coming undone at the seams which was understandable; he had been studying humans his entire adult life, and then something completely unexplainable happened in his area of expertise and he felt people were waiting for his answer. No one was, though. Everyone was stumped.

Kurt stroked Janie’s hand as he spoke to her sitting on his ugly green, plaid carpet he had brought from home. New Order sang lightly out of a small speaker in his pocket, it was Jannie and Carrie’s favorite song, Temptation. She was thinking about her mom.

“It is just insane to me that these fifty-foot beings have managed to do such little damage. No one has even been stepped on yet and they’re all continuing about their lives as normal. Don’t you find that odd? It is almost like their feet and other body parts are positive magnet ends interacting with other positive magnets… Like, people. But they don’t seem to have any intelligence. Do they know we are here? Like, can they even see us do you think?” Kurt looked at her with brown eyes and wrinkles much deeper than most eighteen year-olds had that scratched up his forehead. They were shiny under the overheads. 

	He was right. The only harm that had been done to humans was in instances where shedding body parts damaged cars or houses. My house… Janie thought. Mom… She grabbed his arm, strewing it over her crossed legs and rubbed his red fleece as she thought. But mostly it was in the way the Titans ripped trees out of the ground for food and drained the Connecticut River for water that damage was being done. Even then, they ate and drank so little, the trees weren’t really depleting. 

Janie’s pocket began to buzz.

***

“Janie, honey?” Carrie sat under her kitchen table with her feet cupping the base of her wine glass. Her chin rested on her knees. “How are you?” She could hear the whispering white noises of Kurt’s speaker spilling in from the other end. As Janie spoke, Carrie tasted blood and noticed she was chewing her nail beds. 

She had been fired from work. She stopped going two weeks ago. There was too much panic in her life. She was much too busy worrying to go to work. She felt she needed to be home, to be kept safe under tables. When she walked around her home she stayed in her door frame and counted to ten. one, two, three… then she would leap towards something safe. Her bed, under the wooden roof of a kitchen cabinet, her body leaning over her countertops. I am not the woman I used to be. Her thumb bleeding onto the hips of her glass.

She regularly caught herself pulling at her hair. It was thinning and when she tugged gently at it, clumps would show up in her hands, tangling themselves around her fingers, catching in her hangnails. There was always a strand or two of red hair hidden under or around her tongue that she was trying to fish out. She didn’t want to look in the mirror so she pulled towels over them and taped toilet paper on the bare spots.

“Mom, I’m really fine. Kurt is great and I love my classes still. You can’t keep worrying about me––I’m worried about you. How is everything? Are you safe?”

“I love you, honey.” Carrie told her because she did love her.

“Okay, but are you safe?” Janie asked again.

 If anything ever happened to Janie… Carrie thought, uncurling her legs from beneath herself and swam out from under her table.

	“Awe, shit.” Carrie spilled her wine on the floor as she wrestled to stand. Her jeans ran over the puddle absorbing most of it. Mmm… Wine. She tasted it on the skin around her lips and walked over to the bottle that sat on the tooth. How do I get a red wine stain out? She ran water over a paper towel and started scrubbing at it, rubbing it deeper into the denim fibers of her jeans. Janie, honey, how are you? Can I call you? Where is my phone?

***

Janie’s phone buzzed in her hand. “Mom” it read. But she had just hung up on her mother after she thought they had lost signal.

“Mom? I’m fine, Mom. Are you okay? You just called me asking how I was.” She picked at the pilly heads of fiber in Temple University’s signature carpet with her fingers, leaning her head into Kurt’s door. Dark green with specks of grey, white, and blue. The same carpet she had in her dorm. It felt calloused to walk barefoot on, so Janie always wore a pair of red and beige slippers her mother had given to her for Christmas when she walked around her room. 

“You are sure you’re fine? I get worried, Sweetie. You have to understand. It’s just, you know, we’ve never seen something like this.” Carrie told her.

The states who had hosted the majority of the Titans had been quarantined. Janie had seen it on the news earlier that day and her heart sank. It was almost Thanksgiving and she wouldn’t be able to go home. She hated the thought of not being with her mom over the Holidays. To not be able to watch the WestMinster Dog Show with her mom after the Thanksgiving Day parade. 

Since Janie was seven, they would cut onions, mash boiled potatoes with a big metal wand, and slice sticky cloves of garlic as they commented on the terriers and golden doodles they liked best. Her dad always worked on Thanksgiving morning in New York and commuted home for the early dinner. They’d bet against each other as to which dog was going to take home the blue ribbon as they chopped up sprigs of thyme. Their hair was normally wrapped up on top of their heads in bath towels as they would take a break to shower, their makeup half on. There was a pain in her chest thinking of what Thanksgiving would be like for her mom that year.

She hugged the phone into her ear and sat down on Kurt’s bed. Her elbows pressed into her knees, she arched over and stared at the carpet and her slippers. Kurt  put his hand on her calf and comforted her with a rub as he sat on the floor below her. “Mom, do you need me to come home?” 

“No, no, not home.” Carrie said, “You can’t! They won’t let you. Hmm… I just don’t understand any of this. States are closed, no one gets in, no one gets out. Tut tut… I love you baby. But how are you doing, are you safe?” 

“Mom,” Janie waited for her mom to say something but could only hear shuffling. “Mom?” She hung up the phone.

***

“Okay. I am not afraid of you, big men.” 

It was grey outside of Carrie’s window. “Grey, grey, grey. So smoggy lately.” She muttered to herself, biting on her thumb. 

“Stupid Giants don’t even do anything to anyone ‘cept poop your hands onto the road.” She was sitting on her cill as normal, next to the giant tooth she refused to remove from her home. She didn’t need people coming into her space with cranes and plaster and hard hats. The plastic tarp was fine enough for her if it meant being alone. 

She wore a red knit beanie that covered her to her eyebrows and still stood about a half a foot tall on her head. Her red hair sprung out of some of the stretched holes where the yarn had been pulled apart. She wore men’s large, black ski gloves that John must have left in the snow gear bucket in her mudroom that barely got any attention once Janie turned fourteen and they stopped skiing or playing in the snow. Her gloved hands wrapped around a martini she had poured into a glass, liquid measuring cup. It was full to 1 ¾ cups.

“I see one, two, three… four Titans. Four Titans who don’t know how to be scary––only bor-ing.” She waved her glove at the window with what looked like four fingers pointing at the Titans all wrapped in one mit. 

“I have nowhere to go! I was so worried about you guys, but I see now, that you are harmless.” Jim Harvey was speaking with his brows furrowed on her TV screen. She aimed her butt towards him, poured the blanket that draped down her back over the television, and farted in a ‘pffffffff.’ 

“Eat it, Harvey, didn’t you hear? They can’t hurt us.” She pulled back the blanket and lowered herself to the carpet. Her knees bent like straws.

	“As always, the only difference with these Titans, are in their numbers. Back to you, Jan.” She could see a person on the street behind Harvey on her TV sitting slumped on a bench. Very tired. I feel like him very much. Carrie went to grab her TV remote that was lying on the TV stand in front of her, but she neglected to uncross her legs as she stood up. She lost her balance and was quick to correct it as she swung her left leg, wrapped in the blanket to her left side, stomping her foot to the floor. 

The blanket pulled under the weight of her foot and tightened around her middle. This, mixed with three measured out cups of gin and vermouth, pulled Carrie forward. She tried to gain balance again but this time, her foot slipped with her knitted blanket against hardwood. 

As Carrie began to fall, her gloves squeezed so tightly around her drink and the weighted, glass cup slipped fast out of her hands into the air, smacking her in the left cheek bone. Her head shot up and to the right and her eyes focused on a photo of herself on the wall she had memorized. Janie hung, four years old, upside down in her arms, laughing so hard, it screwed her eyes shut. Carrie had the Rachel Green Haircut every woman her age had in the early 2000s and she was smiling at John behind the camera as her shiny hair kicked around. 

Her body fell forward. Her face cocked just to the right as the bottom of her nose slammed, with the whole weight of her body, into the mammoth tooth planted in her living room. The impact was so intense and severe, Carrie Fonteyne died almost instantly as the bone of her nose pushed up into her skull, stabbing her frontal cortex. Her lifeless body bounced heavily but far off the tooth, knocking the knit cap off her head. Her curly red hair piled aimlessly against hardwood. Her gloves were heavy and bloated with warm blood.