Dwarf: A Memoir (5 page)

In one sweeping motion he picked me up anyway and placed me into the cart, guiding
me out of the doll aisle. Just before we finished our shopping trip, I was allowed
to pick one more item from the hodgepodge section, which we affectionately called
the
“junk aisle.” I snagged a small, multicolored porcelain swan. Dad paid for the toys,
smiling as he pushed the cart out to his GMC truck parked in the lot. He had done
a good job. He made me smile, bought me toys, and kept me from the stares and pointed
fingers as best he could.

“Dad, I’ll carry this in the house to show Mom, okay? I wanna show Mommy everything!”
I squealed, holding the bag up in the air.

“No, pumpkin. It’s easier if I do it.”

That night, my dad and I shared our usual post-bath-time ritual. I sat in our yellow
tub until my little hands and tiny toes turned into prunes. The swan sat beside the
sink. When the bathwater grew lukewarm, Dad would always help me out. The tub was
far too deep for me to get out of with my stubby legs, but with him, I never worried
about slipping on the wet tile— my biggest fear. He was always there to wrap me in
a towel and lift me directly from the water to the counter to dry off.

When he was sure that I was secure and wrapped up tight, he’d crouch down to open
the cabinet and take out his massive silver hair dryer with a shiny pearl handle.
We named it Silverado.

Silverado always excited me and made me laugh. The air roared out with such force!
My thick brown hair blew back as if I was facing a hurricane and my eyelashes barely
hung on to my eyelids. And when it was all over, Dad would run his fingers across
my head, making sure it was completely dry. “There,” he always said softly. “How’s
that?”

In those days we didn’t think about what would happen when I turned sixteen, or eighteen,
or twenty-one. Neither of us thought about the fact that one day I would get older
and want different things out of life.

Back then I was just his pumpkin pie.

Even when I faced a real problem at school due to my size, I still didn’t think of
myself as different, or worse, as a dwarf. No one used that word with me. No one ever
called me that or discussed my “condition” with me. I was just Tiffanie.

Then, in first grade, I got stuck. Suddenly, just being Tiffanie wasn’t enough.

Douglas Elementary School was a big place, considering the small town it served. There
were two major hallways and a large gym. What I remember most is the bathroom and
its dark blue and gray walls. It had two sinks and three stalls. There was one wastepaper
basket, two soap dispensers, and one paper towel holder. It’s funny how certain childhood
details stick inside your brain like chewing gum stuck to a desk at school.

One afternoon, I excused myself from my first-grade class and ended up getting trapped
for what felt like hours on the other side of that bathroom door. In reality, I’m
aware that it couldn’t have been longer than about fifteen minutes. In my young mind,
though, it felt like days.

The weight and imposing presence of a heavy fire door makes it a monstrous and impenetrable
object to a handicapped child. It’s more than just a door. It’s the difference between
freedom and imprisonment.

On this particular day, unlike others—when a teacher followed me, opened the heavy
door, and waited—I followed a friend and entered the girls’ room, armed with my reach
tool. Afterward, my friend flushed and left for class, and I couldn’t let myself out.
The door was too heavy to pull and the handle was too high for me to get a proper
grip.

I was trapped.

Weaponless and anxious, I waited for someone to rescue me. With my back to the wall,
I slid down to the floor. I felt grainy bits of dirt under my fingertips as I started
to cry.

I knew something was not right. It was the first time I remember feeling different,
even if I didn’t understand why.

Was it because I wasn’t allowed Kool-Aid? I wondered. Most of the other kids had Kool-Aid
for lunch, but I never convinced my mom to buy some. It was just 100 percent juice
for me.

Maybe the Kool-Aid had something to do with why I was different, I thought to myself.
What if I could fix everything by guzzling Kool-Aid by the gallon? Maybe that was
the key!

It was a childish, magical solution to a problem I didn’t fully understand— the best
connection I could make while growing up ignorant of my disability.

My mom had told me I’d be tested in life, and that not everything would be easy for
me. I would have to fight for what I wanted, but that was normal, she said. It wasn’t
until I sat on the floor in the blue and gray girls’ room that I wondered,
why
wasn’t this normal for other kids? I’d never heard of
them
getting stuck in the bathroom. Why was I the only one?

I brushed the dirt off my hands and looked around the room for a tool, a weapon, a
solution. There was nothing.

I knew I’d get out at some point, but what if this happened again? Would I ever be
able to drink enough Kool-Aid to prevent this from occurring a second time?

Eventually someone came looking for me. I made it out of the bathroom and back to
my class. The following day, swiftly and without any fuss, Dad took care of the problem
for me. He swooped in to Douglas Elementary to install additional locks and door handles
about a foot beneath the existing ones, so I could use the girls’ bathroom on my own.
And he did it without a word to
anyone. Not my mom. Not the school. He didn’t even ask for permission first.

He just did it.

I remember a teacher once asking each kid in my class, “What does your daddy do for
a living?”

My response? “He fixes things.”

Everyone Has Problems

With a friend at my preschool graduation, c. 1986.

T
HROUGHOUT MY CHILDHOOD
, I treasured my stuffed animal collection. It grew larger after every bone-corrective
surgery. One of my other favorite (if less traditional) playthings was my dad’s antique
Pioneer stereo, which he bought in 1972. The behemoth system seemed to take up half
our small, one-window living room. I was mesmerized by it. The base system, tuner,
and equalizer were stacked on top of one another, layered like metal cakes, and it
had reel-to-reel, a cassette deck, a turntable, and a radio. The entire thing towered
over me. At seven years old, most things did.

Beneath the stereo system, piles of colorful square sleeves with big round records
tucked inside stood against the wall. A pair of white bubble headphones slept on top
of the stack, its wire
coiled neatly underneath it. Dad liked to play the Beatles and the band America, but
the album I heard most was
Fiddler on the Roof
.

In the evenings when he came home from work, he’d make himself a rum and Coke and
sing along to “If I Were a Rich Man” as he relaxed in our blue recliner, shoes kicked
off, toes tapping along to the beat. I didn’t understand the lyrics, but I knew it
made him happy to watch me twirl around the living room and sing along, too.

Beginning in 1969, my father worked in Worcester in the sheet metal fabrication department
at Norton Company, a factory that produces grinding wheels, silicon carbide, and coated
and bonded abrasives. He always liked his job.

“You’ll never believe what this guy Jimmy did,” he’d say to my mom after work. “He
took one of the bulletproof Apache helicopter seats we produced and said he was going
to use it for his go-cart. Can you believe that? Pretty cool idea.”

Always the class clown growing up in a very strict Catholic school, Dad tried to find
humor in every situation. There was always a story to tell after his shift, and I
never saw him come home upset. His hours at Norton weren’t insufferable, and the job
didn’t interfere with the nighttime jewelry-making courses he loved so much. One evening
when he got home, Dad poured his usual into a tumbler glass and settled in the living
room. “Look what I made for Mom,” he said, pulling a domed, heart-shaped ring out
of his pocket to show me. I loved shiny things and anything that sparkled.

The ring was solid rose gold and reminded me of a full moon. Half of the heart was
smooth, while the other half was carved with deep ridges. He smiled at my wide-eyed
reaction. Time after time, my father proved he could make anything with his two
hands. I envisioned him constructing valuable, one-of-a-kind trinkets inside a vaulted
room lined with drawers filled with rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and sheets of gold.
One day when my surgeries were over, I thought, he’d bring me there.

“Let’s give it to Mom,” he said, tucking the ring back into his pocket. I followed
him out of the living room, through our tiny dining room, and into our even smaller
kitchen. It was a cozy room, with white walls, dark brown cabinets, and a single blue
curtain on the window above the sink. It took me a while to catch up to people as
they walked through our house, and I was endlessly impressed at how fast my dad could
get from one room to another. I watched as he gave my mom a kiss, then the heart-shaped
ring. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back. “Thank you, dear!” she
squealed. I had no idea they were still divorced. They would never officially get
remarried.

My eighth birthday was just a few weeks away. Maybe I’d get to wear this new heart
ring, I thought, the air catching in my throat and making a soft whistling sound as
I imagined this exciting possibility. Or, even better, maybe my dad would make me
one of my own.

After dinner that night, I followed him down to the basement to give our German shepherd,
Bruiser, the leftovers from our meal. Of all the rooms in our house, Bruiser loved
the basement most of all. The floor was cool against his thick fur, making it an ideal
sleeping spot. And if he got cold, he’d curl up on the big plaid dog bed by the furnace.
Hanging out in the basement also allowed him to play watchdog. But Bruiser was more
interested in watching me than keeping an eye out for intruders.

For as long as we had our loyal shepherd, he would never let me near the basement
staircase unless Dad was with me. The stairs, easily manageable for my parents, remained
a steep,
dangerous slope to me. I was scolded each time I approached them on my own and had
fallen down them too many times to count. It gave Mom nightmares, but their threats
never stopped me. They made me more determined to find a way— my way—to conquer them.
One day I wouldn’t have to sink down to the floor and descend the stairs on my behind.
One day, Bruiser wouldn’t need to protect me with a well-meaning shove away from them.
I’d be able to do it on my own.

“I’m off,” Mom announced, coming down to the basement to meet us. It was just before
seven p.m., and her night shift was about to start. I’d see her again at five in the
morning when Dad would bring me to her at the hospital and then leave for Norton Company.
She gave me a big hug and a kiss, lifting me off the cellar floor and then placing
me back down. She smelled of White Shoulders perfume and Suave shampoo.

“See you in the morning, honey bunny,” she said to me before she hugged Dad, squeezed
Bruiser’s ears, and went outside and got into her Pontiac Bonneville (we called her
Bonnie). The heart ring glistened on her finger.

Back upstairs, Dad relaxed with his drink while the Pioneer system played its usual
tunes. With a Cabbage Patch doll tucked tightly under my arm, I snuck into Mom’s bedroom.
Then I pulled out the bottom drawers of her dresser to make a ladder and climbed to
the top of her bureau. From up on my perch, I flipped open her glittery gold jewelry
box to reveal her long, beaded necklaces. My arms were too short to fasten a regular
one around my neck, but I could whip the beads over my head to put them on. I entertained
myself until bedtime with a solo fashion show.

“Pay attention to your
own
cart,” I said into the mirror, imitating my mom with a big smile.

On other afternoons, when the
Fiddler on the Roof
record was
returned to its sleeve, it was my turn to play music in the living room. Of all my
tapes, Cyndi Lauper was my favorite. Ruby, my imaginary friend (named after my mom’s
jewels), loved music just as much as I did.

“Let’s play Cyndi,” Ruby would suggest. “Let’s dance.”

Of course, I couldn’t reach the stereo buttons, but there were ways around this.

Though my feet were tiny, I knew that it would be too much of a gamble to stand on
top of the pile of records— I imagined them smashing into tiny, jagged pieces under
my weight, so I didn’t take the chance. Instead, I stood atop our extra-large lobster
pot and reached carefully to work the buttons of the cassette player. Balancing on
my makeshift stool, I envisioned Cyndi coming to my eighth birthday party, surprising
my friends.

I had lots of friends— real ones— but my closest friend was Katie Duso. She had brown
hair like me, a lisp, and wide-set, oblong brown eyes. Katie was more of a tomboy
than a girly girl, and we got along well. She helped me reach the art supplies at
school and walked beside me like a bodyguard in the hallway so I wouldn’t get trampled.