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The Small One in the Family

I remember when I was younger I used to think it was cool that I was adopted into a family of giants after my parents passed. They were a good family and it was a time in history when giants and humans were finally starting to co-exist. There were still plenty of segregated areas across the country but where I was going was not one of them. I was ten when I was adopted and at first – it was the coolest thing. I had a giant father, who could scoop me up with one hand and a mother who could literally drape me across her lap when I was feeling blue. I even had a little sister – only two years younger than me who I loved to play with. I didn’t mind being the ‘doll’ in her games because she was always old enough to know to be gentle. Sarah was important to me and even though I’m barely the size of one of her hands now, I wanted to protect her.
But at seventeen…those feelings were gone. I felt insignificant in my own home and suddenly ‘riding’ around with my family didn’t seem as cool anymore. It didn’t seem normal at all. I was going to be a man next year, hopefully going to college and living my own life, and my dad still thought it was funny for me to ride his shoe when he went up the stairs. It was…damn right humiliating and I intended to do something about it today.
With my eighteenth birthday on the horizon, I needed to talk to my parents about getting a place in a human-only town. I couldn’t be with giants anymore. I knew some people saw it as ‘fun’ but let me tell you. As a human, visiting giants may be fun, but it’s not the place you want to call home. You’ll never feel like a man. You’ll always feel insignificant. And why? Even when giants try to show you respect out of kindness, it’s not genuine because their kindness is a choice. They choose to treat you like you matter. They don’t have to. It was all a game to them and it was even that way in my own family.
I stretched out on the bed that morning and looked around my vast surroundings. My bed was a twin, but only up until I was twelve did my mother think it was safe enough to take down the damn baby fence. She was worried that I would roll out of the bed and possibly kill myself. A fair thing to worry about, I agree. But it was still humiliating. I hated when my little sister would walk by and smirk at my bed. It probably looked like a baby’s crib in her eyes. But she was always too nice to say anything. She had been taught from a very early age to respect me.
But I heard her laugh with her friends.
‘Humans are so pathetic, aren’t they?’
‘Scott’s lucky he’s my brother otherwise I would have more fun with him.’
‘Dad loves Scott more than he loves me and he’s just a human.’
But she never said those things to me. Maybe it was worse hearing them after watching her smile and wave good night to me.
Climbing down the ladder to the floor I knew both my parents were going to have a conniption when they saw me on the floor again. It was something new I was insisting upon and it drove them crazy with worry. Apparently humans shouldn’t be walking on the ground around giants because it just makes things too dangerous. I thought I deserved the right to walk on the floor and not have to climb those damn ladders all the time. Most of the contraptions only put them level with my mom and dad’s waist so what did it really matter? Did they think the damn things helped me feel equal in their monstrous home?
Poking my head out of the door of my bedroom, I made sure the coast was clear. I didn’t want to see my sister this morning. She had been ‘dating’ some guy at her private school and I just…I couldn’t deal with a giant dude around me. He was all she wanted to talk about and he was just too interested in me for my sake. He was obsessed about the size. Despite being fifteen he loved calling me ‘little guy’ and ‘Sarah’s little brother’ with a playful glint in his eye. I worried about being alone with him but Sarah kept him pretty occupied. Straining my ears, though it didn’t take much effort, I could hear my little sister on the phone in her room as she got ready for school. Her voice sounded happy. And why shouldn’t it? She got to live in a world made for her and date a man who made her feel small.
I was so tired of being small I could scream. I wasn’t a short guy. In fact, when I went to school, I was reminded that I was actually quite tall for my age. I towered over the girls in my classes and a few of the guys as well. But that feeling would come to a screeching halt every time I came home and I had to struggle just to get a snack from the kitchen until my mother would come in and offer to help me.
My mother.
Dammit. She was the one person I was not looking forward to breaking this news to, but the one person I knew I had to tell first. I…I loved my mom. Even as a child she was always so kind to me. I don’t know. Maybe I secretly liked being small as a child. I loved riding around in her blazer jacket when she went out to run errands and I loved when she would let me sleep in the great expanse of her lap after a long day of subbing at the giant school, two towns over. She was a good woman.
But she was still a giant.
And she still inadvertently elicited feelings of pure helplessness every time she was around because she literally wanted to do everything for me. Because it was faster. Because she could and because she loved me.
It was humiliating but I endured because I loved her.
When I finally reached the bottom of the stairs I looked back up with caution. It was still early. My dad was probably still getting ready for work. I hadn’t heard his thunderous voice or powerful steps overwhelm my senses until the point where I thought I cower and cry like a little baby. Let me tell you, there is nothing more embarrassing, nothing more humiliating than being so much smaller than your own father. A few inches? I say deal with it? A foot shorter? I would kill for such a difference. But my father? My father was large for a giant and in his expensive work shoes I barely topped over his ankles. It was so emasculating to think about and it was only getting worse by the day.
He still treated me like a ten year old. I wouldn’t mind so much but that meant riding in the cuff of his pants when he walked around and couldn’t wait for me to ‘keep up’. Tucking me on the top of his shoe when he wanted to play ‘bucking bronco’ while he watched football on TV with some of his friends. I literally cried for days the first time I realized how much it bothered me. Riding on that damn man’s sneaker while other male voices roared and laughed wildly at the ‘helplessness of humans’. He meant no harm. He was just being a father in the only way he knew how. But it was destroying me. I could handle having a giantess for a mom. I could handle having a giantess for a younger sister most of the time now because of her age. But a giant father? I felt emasculated.
When I made it to the kitchen I peered in through the doorway to see a very familiar pair of three inch heels working. I could smell bacon cooking and fresh orange juice. Even food was becoming overwhelming at this height. I cleared my throat awkwardly and glanced over my shoulder again to make sure my father wasn’t coming. Dammit. But my mother didn’t even hear me. Her loud shoes continued to just clack on the kitchen floor and from my place on the floor I couldn’t focus on much more.
“M-mom,” I called out to her.
“Hmm?” her voice thrummed heavily in her throat as she started to turn around, only to realize it was me on the floor. She quickly turned her attention back to whipping her eggs.
Let me explain something about my mom. She goes out of her way not to loom over me. I appreciate it but sometimes it just makes me feel ashamed that she has to do so much to make me feel ‘normal’ in her home lately. Her shoes shifted nervously on the floor and lately I couldn’t help but imagine what would happen if she ever lost track of me while wearing those things. She wore them so she wouldn’t be so short compared to my father…but to me…they just reminded me of how little I could do to be like either of them.
I was a freak in my own family.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” my mother said in a low voice as she kept her back turned to me. “You know your father doesn’t like you roaming around on the floor.”
“I’m not roaming,” I said with exasperation. “I’m allowed to have the right to walk around on the floor, mom. It’s not my fault that I’m a freak.’
“You’re not a freak,” she said gently. I could tell she wanted to turn around but then I would have to arch my neck and chin just to meet the face of my mother. Not many seventeen year old boys have to hover at the feet of their own mother. She knew how much I hated it. “You’re a human.”
“Which makes me a freak here,” I said. As she started to really whip the eggs I had to raise my voice. But I didn’t dare more closer. The closer I got, the bigger she looked. And the bigger she looked, the more embarrassed I felt. I lowered my eyes. I couldn’t bring myself to focus if I kept looking at those giant shoes. The heels alone were half my size. “Mom…I want to move out.”
She stopped stirring for a moment. The lack of sound rang in my ears and I could hear my dad and Sarah moving around upstairs. I didn’t have much time. She set the bowl down on the counter and rested two large, weathered hands on either side of her on the counter. “You’re only seventeen, Scott. That’s preposterous.”
“I’ll be eighteen in a few months. I want to start looking for an apartment.” I swallowed deeply as the most important part of my statement poured out. “I want to live in a humans-only part of town.”
The silence was deafening. Finally, I brought myself to lift up my head and find those shoes. Those beautiful, monstrous shoes which belonged to a woman who had only shown me kindness and love for the past ten years. I trailed my eyes up her legs to her professional pencil skirt which was always tight, but never tight enough to be inappropriate. I scaled up to her waist and her blouse. And then…as I found her chin I couldn’t look up anymore.
“You want to move out?” she asked softly. “You want to move to a place where we can never come see you?”
“I’ll come see you,” I said.
“Will you?” she asked. I finally heard those heels shift and the points of the toes of her shoes were finally facing my direction. “Will you please look at me if we’re going to have this conversation? Please?”
The cracking in her voice reminded me that, giant or not, my mother was still a woman. And she was still my mother.
“If you want I can lift you to the rail—”
“I don’t want to be lifted!” I shouted over her. I palmed my face as I heard her suck in a breath. “I mean…this is why I want to move, mom. I don’t want to be lifted. I’m tired of being embarrassed in my own home.”
“We embarrass you?”
“No!” I shouted. “I’m embarrassed of me. Living here…it makes me ashamed of myself.”
“Honey—”
“Ashamed because I’m so small. And I’m not small. Not by a long shot. But here…with you and Sarah…” I rolled my eyes, “…and dad.”
“He doesn’t mean any harm,” she continued. “He just loves you…”
“I’m going to be eighteen! Riding on that man’s shoe is humiliating! And he…” I trailed off as I didn’t want to say this to my own mother. I was talking about the man she loved. The man she married. The man who had helped give her children. “I feel humiliated around him all the time. Just for being me. That’s not right.”
“He doesn’t mean to—”
“I know he doesn’t but it happens none the less. It’s inevitable. Of course I’m going to feel less than worthy around a man like him. He’s huge…” I trailed off as I heard a door opening upstairs. My mom didn’t catch it at first but as the door upstairs closed again and a deep humming filled the air, she looked down at me with a worried glance.
“Your father’s up,” she said. “Don’t talk to him about this.”
“Talk to me about what?” a voice rumbled from the stairway. I winced when I heard those powerful steps land on each step. Each one brought the man who ruined me closer to my humiliating position on the floor. I looked over my shoulder as the steps stopped on the ground floor landing and I saw my father was wearing his good black Italian leather loafers. I could smell the damn leather from here and he hadn’t even come yet.
“Are you sure you don’t want a lift?” my mom whispered down to me as my father walked to the front window to check the weather. “If he makes you feel insecure—”
“Who feels insecure?” the voice rumbled overhead again. I wanted to cover my ears. That voice. That rumbling voice which sent butterflies through my stomach belonged to the man who was my father. And those steps…those horrible thunderous steps on the hardwood floor belonged to my father as well. I was so terrified of him…but I was also so jealous of him. Why was he born a giant? Why couldn’t he understand what it felt like to be at a full-grown man’s foot? Why couldn’t he live in my shoes for one day to understand just how degrading this all was for me? “Scott?” the voice said.
I turned around slowly and noticed he had stopped a few feet (for him) away from me. Once again, I didn’t lift up my head to try and meet his eyes, focusing on those shoes. I could hear the hardwood creak under his weight as he bent down to pretend to fix his cuffs. Really, he was just going down on one knee so he could talk to me without making it so obvious how small I was.
“Everything alright, little man?” he asked, fumbling with his cuff.
“You don’t have to do that.” I watched as he flushed gently and then decided to press his hand to the floor to steady himself. My father was a fine looking man. In his mid-fourties with only a trace of grey in his wavy brown hair. He was always clean shaven and dressed well for his job. Everything about him made me hate who I was. He was just so big.
“Why are we on the floor again?” he asked. “Didn’t we talk about this?”
“I already told mom,” I said, shuffling my feet. “I deserve to walk on the floor. I shouldn’t have to be suspended in the air for your comfort.”
“It’s not my comfort, Scott. It’s for your safety.”
“I’d be safer if I was with my own kind.”
“Scott,” my mom warned from the kitchen. “Honey. Come in the kitchen and get some eggs,” she called to my father.
He didn’t move right away and I could feel those dark brown orbs piercing into my diminutive form. But I couldn’t look at him. Everything about him made me frightened. He was a man…just like me. But he wasn’t like me at all. He was everything I wanted to be when I wasn’t at the human school. He was tall, regal, powerful.
Dammit, he was a giant and he could play around with my little sister. He could put her in a head lock when he wanted to. He could lift my mom off her feet when he wanted to hug her. While I…I couldn’t do anything except watch my father straighten up to his full 65 foot height and walk towards me. The ground rumbled under his powerful steps and I steadied myself against the frame of the kitchen doorway as he strode past me and towards my mom. I saw their feet come together and I stole a glance over. He had wrapped his huge arms around her waist and kissed the top of her head.
It wasn’t fair. I wanted to do all of those things. My dad got to be the only man in the house. My heart ached in jealousy and I hated being jealous of him all the time. He was a giant. I was a human. That was all there was to it. As the two broke apart I heard my dad take a seat the breakfast table he called out to me.
“What were you two talking about earlier?” he asked. “I heard something about being insecure. No one’s messing with my little man, I hope? I don’t want to have to go to that school. It’s always such a hassle—”
“No one’s asking you to come to my school, dad,” I said. I literally winced at the idea. No one at the human school had giant parents but me. No one. Granted it was a small school, but that wasn’t the point. Any time my mom or dad wanted to see what I was up to, it turned into a big deal. I was a celebrity for a day. And I hated it.
“Maybe you should just tell him,” my mom said. “Get it out in the open.”
“Get what out in the open?” my father said, starting to raise his voice. “What’s going on? What’s all this talk about? He’s not in trouble is he? Are Sarah’s friends messing with you again? I’ve told that girl a thousand times that I don’t trust that boy—”
I couldn’t take anymore. “I want to move out!” I shouted at the top my lungs. I finally looked up and up, and then up again to find my father still seated at the table. He looked stunned. But worse than that…he looked hurt. “I want to move out, dad. I can’t…I can’t stay here anymore. Not with you.” I winced as I knew these words would hurt him. My dad never had a son. Not a true son. I was the closest thing he had and now I was rejecting him simply because of what he was born and what I was.
“I can’t live with you anymore, dad,” I said, lowering my voice. “You make me feel…” I trailed off, hoping that he would get it. Hoping that he would understand.
“How do I make you feel, Scott?” he asked instead.
I rubbed the back of my neck. This was why I wanted to talk to my mom about this first. My old man had a way of making me feel…so childish. But it was terrible because I knew how much he loved me. I knew how much he wanted to care for me. But he didn’t see me as his equal. He wasn’t capable. I used to swing on his tie just a few years ago to entertain myself!
“I don’t feel like a man when I’m around you,” I admitted at last. “When I’m around you…I get so mad. I want to hate you…but what’s worse…” my eyes watered as my father’s eyes continued to grow increasingly worried, “…I want to be you. And I never can be. I can never be a giant and be with mom and Sarah like you can. I want that. I want that so bad but I can’t. Because I’m a human. And I’m tired of feeling like I’m not a real man because I’m so…I just hate who I am when I’m here.”