Chapter 1
When I pulled up to the property, I saw the biggest Amish barn I had ever seen. It was, as with most such structures, beautiful. It looked as if it had been built in the last year -- unusual, since the rest of the farm’s buildings looked decades old.
Amos was waiting for me when I got out of the car. It was he who had called me out here, promising the biggest story of my newspaper career.
As I got out, I gestured to the barn. “I hope you didn’t mean the barn is the biggest story,” I said.
“It’s not the barn,” Amos said. “It’s what’s in it -- or, more accurately, who’s in it.”
“So who’s in it?” I asked. “Elvis? The Dalai Lama? Walt Disney?”
Amos raised a hand. “In a minute,” he said. He turned to a man with a full beard and Amish clothing who was approaching. “Mr. Yoder,” Amos said. “Glad to see you again.”
“Howdy,” said Yoder. He tipped his head toward me. “This the reporter?”
I reached out my hand. “Howdy, Mr. Yoder,” I said. “I’m Wesley Bell.”
“Howdy” isn’t a standard greeting in northeast Indiana, but it is a standard Amish greeting, I had learned. It seemed the right thing to say.
“Mr. Bell,” Yoder said. “You’ll be wanting to talk to my Sarah, thern.”
I looked back and forth between the two other men.
“I … haven’t explained about Sarah’s situation to Wes, Mr. Yoder,” Amos said. “FVrankly, I was afraid that, if I did, he’d think I was joking.”
Yoder nodded. “You’re probably right,” he said. He added, more quietly, “Wish it were a joke.”
Yoder turned to face me. “It’s my daughter, Sarah, Mr. Bell. She can’t stop growing.”
I looked at Yoder. He appeared middle-aged. “How old is Sarah?” I asked.
“Twenty,” Yoder said.
“This isn’t normal growth,” Amos said. “Sarah’s been growing continuously for the last seven months, and it shows no signs of stopping.”
“I’ve heard of a case like this,” I said. “There’s this woman who’s, like, seven feet tall and keeps getting bigger.”
Yoder snorted. “Seven feet,” he mettered.
“Wes,” said Amos, “Do you really think a seven-foot-tall Amish girl would be something I would call the biggest story of a career?”
I had to admit it wasn’t. Amos, a Mennonite and former Amishman himself, had been a great contact within the Amish community, and he knew what was an important story and what wasn’t. He was a good source.
“So, how big are we talking?” I asked. “Eight feet, nine feet? Are we into double digits?”
Neither Amos nor Yoder said anything. Yoder looked grim.
As we approached the barn’s 50-foot peak, Yoder called out, “Sarah! The reporter’s here!”
Suddenly the barn’s 30-foot-tall doors swung open and Sarah appeared, crouching to get through the door. As she stood up -- and I do mean up -- the top of the door was even with her massive breasts.
It took me a moment to absorb what I was seeing, even with my reporter’s training. Sarah Yoder was at least 40 feet tall. Her body was covered in clothing typical of an Amish woman, but that clothing appeared a bit too small, and the extremity of her curves, especially at her chest, made it much more form-fitting than would be typical of an Amish woman.
Sarah’s head was covered, as I knew it should be, with a bonnet. Her face, with no make-up, was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen -- gracefully pretty, but with no pretense or arrogance about it. She had blonde eyebrows and enormous, sparklingly clear blue eyes.
Sarah smiled as she looked down at me. “Mr. Bell?” she said.
“Yes,” I said, struggling to regain my composure. “And you must be Miss Yoder.”
Sarah chuckled, kneeling in front of me, then sitting on the ground. Even like this, she was nearly four times my height. She extended her massive hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Bell,” she said.
“Howdy,” I managed to say as I touched her fingertip.
“Sarah,” said Yoder, “This should not be going on outside.”
Sarah looked down at her father. “Papa, we discussed this,” she said. The decision is made.”
Then the giantess looked around. “Still, if we want to keep your story exclusive, Mr. Bell, we should get inside. Would you like to see my home?”
I turned to Yoder, my eyes asking permission. He nodded. Sarah unfolded herself back to her amazing altitude and ducked into the barn. The rest of us followed.
As weentered, several things were racing through my brain at once. There was still the shock of meeting an un believably sexy Amish giantess. There was the odd element of needing her father’s permission to enter her house, as though I could do anything to the towering Sarah that she didn’t want or approve of.
But what especially stood out to me was the exchange between Yoder and Sarah. It seemed clear that Sarah had overruled her father, something not typical in an Amish father-daughter relationship, especially if the daughter is unmarried.
Inside the barn there was a loft about 25 feet above floor level. Sarah pulled over a pile of straw. “I’ll sit here,” she said. “Mr. Bell, this will probably be easier if you go up in the loft.”
“Of course,” I said. I slung my camera bag over my shoulder -- even though I had no idea of how I could use the camera in the barn’s dim light, or if I’d be permitted to use it due to the Amish’s religious belief that ban’s photos -- and climbed into the loft.
When I turned back toward Sarah, I froze for a few seconds. My body was now about eye-level with her head, and she was just as breathtaking from this angle as from below. The sheer size of her bosom was again emphasized from this view, as her waist was so comparatively small that, from the loft, it was virtually invisible.
Sarah smiled and my heart skipped a beat. “Now, then, Mr. Bell,” she asked, “what would you like to know?”
“Um, well, I usually start an interview checking the spelling of people’s names,” I said. “Is it S-a-r-a-h and Y-o-d-e-r?”
Sarah chuckled. “Yes, it is,” she said.
“And how tall are you?” I asked.
“What time is it?” Sarah asked in reply.
I laughed, then caught myself when I saw the look on Sarah’s face. A sadness, a melancholy had crossed that gigantic, beautiful face.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. Of course, idiot, I thought. If Sarah is this huge, she might well be growing quickly enough that time would make a difference.
Sarah smiled a sad smile. “it’s all right,” she said. “You had no way of knowing. Papa what time is it?
“It’s been two hours since you were measured,” Yoder said.
Sarah sighed, her enormous breasts heaving as she did. “That means I’m about 42 feet, four-and-a-half inches tall,” she said.
“How fast are you growing?” I asked.
As of now, it’s about an inch every four hours,” Sarah said, “and it keeps slowly speeding up.”
“How did this happen?” I asked.
“Nobody knows,” Sarah said. I simply started growing bigger -- especially my teats. The rest of me is growing about evenly, but these things have spurts of growing faster than the rest of me.”
I blushed when she said “teats,” in part because they were such a distraction, and in part because a woman was using the word. Still, I knew that, in Amish parlance and usage, this was just matter-of-fact speech, not anything “naughty,” as it was in the outside world.
“How long have you been growing?” I asked.
Sarah sighed again. “It was the beginning of February -- nearly eight months ago. Believe it or not, I was tiny before. I was just under four feet, six inches tall.
“It started slowly enough. I caught what my parents thought was a growth spurt. Mama was elated. I was finally growing tall enough to interest men. They need a strong woman for the household chores, and I was so puny then….” Her voice trailed of wistfully.
Sarah shook her head and resumed. “By mid-February I was five feet tall at last, and I just kept getting taller.
‘Then, by Feb. 21, I was five-foot-six. By now, Papa and Mama were commenting that they’d never seen anyone or any animal grow so fast. “I’d grown a foor in three weeks.”
I tilted my head. “When you hear about people growing really fast, it can lead to exhaustion and weakness. Did that happen with you?”
Sarah shook her head. “The opposite, in fact. The bigger I got, the better I felt -- stronger, more energetic.
“When I hit six feet tall on March 1, that was when my parents really seemed to be getting concerned. I’d gone from being puny to being taller than most of our men in one month.
“But I kept getting taller and bigger. I was seven feet tall by mid-March, now too big for many men. Still, my teats were gaining notice among the men folk.
“By the end of March, I was eight feet tall. Now my fingers were getting big enough that working in the kitchen was difficult and I couldn’t push the buttons on my cellphone anymore.”
I nodded. With covering the Amish, I knew that cellphones were actually common among the Amish, especially younger Amish. The group’s big objection to old-style telephones was being connected to the outside world by land lines. Cellphones aren’t connected to lines, so they’re accepted in many Amish communities, depending on how the local elders rule. Northeast Indiana’s Amish are among those who’ve accepted cellphones.
“Of course, by this time we were seeing doctors,” Sarah said. “But they couldn’t -- and still haven’t -- determined why I’m growing, or how it’s happening, or how to stop it or even slow it down.
“The doctors were able to figure out one thing. I was growing about one percent of my current height every day. Because I was so short when I started, that was only about a half an inch a day. By the time they figured it out, my growth rate was an inch a day -- and, the bigger I got, the faster I grew.
“By late April I was nine-foot-six. I couldn’t stand up in the house anymore. I was so big and strong that I spent most of my time helping Papa with the farm work.
“But the growing kept going. By late May I was twelve and a half feet tall. By then I couldn’t even crawl into the house. My hips were too wide. I moved into the barn.
But by mid-June I had reached sixteen-foot-six. As my growth sped up, it quickly became clear that I was going to need bigger quarters. The community helped Papa build this barn and the women are still making me bigger and bigger clothes.
By mid-July I was nearly 22 feet tall. By mid-August I was close to 29 feet tall. The doctors figured that every four weeks I was adding about a third to my height -- and, as that height keeps increasing, that third keeps shooting up.”
My brow furrowed. “But a third of your present height is --”
“Fourteen feet,” Sarah said. “In four weeks, if nothing changes, I’ll be 56 feet tall -- six feet taller than this barn. Within two moths after that, I wouldn’t even fit in it lying down, and by then it would be so small to me that it would feel like a coffin.”
“And that’s autumn, and then winter,” I said. “You’ll need shelter.
“That’s only one part of the problem, Mr. Bell,” Sarah said. “I’m outgrowing theses clothes and our women can’t make them fast enough.
As it is, I have no undergarments. As I get taller, men could walk under my skirt, even at ankle length, and get a full view. And my nipples -- Do you know that my nipples are nearly two feet across now? When I get a chill, these clothes can’t hide what happens.”
I was so flustered I dropped my pen. I must have been beet red.
Sarah raised an eyebrow. “You English don’t talk about nipples that way?”
I tried to chuckle. “Not in this context,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said, her smiel beaming. “But it’s true. There are all sorts of problems with being this big and continually getting bigger.”
Sarah stood up. “When I first moved in here, I could walk under the lofts with ease. Now I can only stand up straight along the center beam and the lofts are moving down my hips.”
I craned up to look at her. “This has to have been difficult for you,” I said.
“For me and everybody in the community,” she said. She was trying to look at me, but her boos were in the way. She knelt down so she could see me.
“And the community has kept this secret,” I said.
Sarah shrugged. “Since there’s nothing doctors can do, and since my coindition defies scientific logic, the only people outside the community who know have no motive to share it. And it’s not the Amish way to put things out in public/”
I pointed my pen toward the giantess. “So why are you going public with it now?”
“Step back,” Sarah said. I moved farther back in the loft.
Gingerly, Sarah folded her arms across the front of the loft, then placed her head on her arms. Her head was taller than me and was even more astonishingly beautiful up close.
“Because this is one secret we can’t keep much longer,” Sarah said. “I’m literally outgrowing any possibility of hiding this, and getting too big to keep myself alive in the winter.”
Sarah sighed again. “I’m even getting too big to be Amish,” she said. “Trying to keep me covered as an Amish woman is has become nearly impossible, and will soon be impossible. English women wear less clothes. I need to move into a setting that can handle me, at least for now.”
By this time, Amos and Yoder had joined me in the loft. I turned to Yoder. “How do you feel about this?” I asked.
Yoder looked morose. “She’s right,” he said. “I want her to be able to live a plain life, but her condition already prevents most of that. Soon it will be all.”
Yoder started staring at the floor of the loft.
“That’s not all, is it?” I said. “How do you feel about Sarah’s condition?”
“Bad,” said Yoder without looking up.
“Why do you think this happened?” I asked. My instincts were that this was at the heart of his reaction, and I expected his answer to be something along the lines of, “Sin.”
Without lifting his head, Yoder looked at me, “It’s my fault,” he said.
Even with my back to her, the air movement behind me told me Sarah had moved her head, reacting to her father’s words. “Your fault?” she said. What makes you think that?”
Yoder looked up into his daughter’s enormous blue eyes. “I was ashamed of you because you were so small,” he said. “I prayed for you to grow, But, because of my feelings, God answered my prayer with a curse -- and he cursed you, my daughter, my little Sarah.”
“Papa,” Sarah said, using an enormous finger to stroke his cheek with astonishing gentleness.
I turned to the giantess. “Is this a curse?” I asked.
Sarah set her jaw for a moment. “No,” she said, “It’s not. It’s a burden, a cross I’ve got to bear, and a very unique cross at that. But there are blessings and burdens both in my condition. And I hope to emphasize the blessing.”
“What do you hope to do?” I asked.
“I need to make living arrangements in the English world,” Sarah said. “And I need to be clear that I view this as a gift of God -- a difficult gift in many ways, but a gift nevertheless.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“Share my story,” Sarah said. “I hope that, by telling my story, I can give glory to God and find a way to live.”
My mind was racing as I nodded. To get this story in print, I’d need a proper photographer with a better camera than mine. As a reporter, I had a less fancy camera used primarily for grip-and-grin pictures of check donations.
But would getting a picture help Sarah?
I looked up at Sarah. Physically, she was easily the most powerful person on Earth, yet she was powerless to cope with this bizarre situation without help. And she had turned to me for that help.
“Miss Yoder,” I said, “your story is so unique that I think it will require some … special handling. Would you be willing to give me a little time -- a few days -- to sort out the details?”
Sarah bit her lip, thinking.
“I know I’m asking a lot,” I said, “and I know your condition will worsen during that time. But, if we’re going to do what you want to do, I think this will need to be handled far differently from an ordinary story -- differently enough that I’ll need to put some details in place.
“Look, this is your call. Are you willing? I’ll check with you before we do anything.”
Yoder looked up at his daughter. “Amos tells me Mr. Bell has always treated the Amish fairly and has a reputation for doing so with others, too. That’s why I asked him here when you wanted a reporter.”
I shrugged. “I work for a small-town newspaper,” I said. “If I’m not being fair, I’m out of a job.”
“It’s more than that,” said Amos. “You’re a religious man. You’re an honest man. And you see things other people miss.”
Sarah tilted her head slightly to the left. “Maybe I need to keep my mind open for all gifts of God. You have your few days, Mr. Bell.”
“Thank you, Miss Yoder,” I said, extending my hand.
Sarah reached out her right index finger. I took the tip in my hand and shook it.
Once we had said our goodbyes to the Yoders, Amos gave me a puzzled look as we walked to our cars. “What have you got in mind?” he asked.
I patted his shoulder. “I’m still figuring that out,” I said.
Giantess World
