Lucía Zárate: The odyssey of the world’s smallest woman

by Cecilia Velástegui

  Without being consciously aware of it, Lucía yearned to keep her spark ignited, and she learned early on to extend a friendly smile and courteous words to any stranger, in order to preempt a reaction of shock or horror. No matter how exhausted she felt, in public Lucía tried to act the part of the happiest girl in the world. Her bright, welcoming smile almost always averted the dreaded response of fear from strangers.

  In fact, the last time Lucía had exhibited her most charming self to strangers had been after the downpour in Veracruz. That day, the more she had laughed and sang and danced, the more the masses sang along with her—and the more they thought of her as a delightful pixie rather than a dangerous demon. The crowd had swelled with genuine excitement over her charismatic personality and she had piled it on like syrupy chocolate, until her father squelched her performance.

  Lucía’s diminutive size had always created a see-saw of emotions within her. She either frightened people or suffered their ridicule. Her parents’ reactions to the perceptions of others had been equally unpredictable, so Lucía coped by displaying an exaggerated geniality—but only for a limited time. Eventually her buoyant personality deflated and Lucía collapsed into some kind of stupor.

  In New Orleans, despite her rallying cry of “let the good times roll,” she and Zoila did not immediately set off for the fitting with the French seamstress. Instead Lucía slumped lethargically on the sofa of her room at the Charles Hotel, exhausted from projecting a non-stop cheerfulness since her arrival in the city. She wanted to lie low and just be a normal twelve-year-old girl for a change instead of a performer and a spectacle, the wage-earner for her entire family.

  Some people said that her parents used Lucía’s fame to climb up her back onto a higher rung in Veracruz society. Certainly, Lucía felt the burden of carrying the welfare of her family on her narrow shoulders. A few days back during the New Orleans press conference, everyone laughed when Lucía had offered the portly reporter a piggy-back ride. But really she was making a sarcastic comment about shouldering the responsibility of supporting the entire Zárate clan, making money for the agent, and paying Zoila for her services. But no one had comprehended the true meaning of her joke—not even Zoila.

  Now when Lucía stood up at Zoila’s request, her cheery attitude waivered. She wasn’t sure she was ready to go for her dress-fitting after all.

  Zoila shook Lucía’s shoulders gently. “Don’t be such a silly girl,” she said. “We must go to your fitting.”

  “I don’t really care about all the costumes I wear. Can’t you go and pick them up for me?” Lucía yawned.

  “You know that your audiences expect you to dress and behave like a proper young lady. Now up you go.” Zoila lifted Lucía and carried her to the washbasin. “Let’s wash your face, shall we?”

  Lucía covered her eyes with tight fists. She didn’t want to catch sight of the floating memories that plagued her. Memories such as the time the villagers living near the Totonac ruins of Cempoala accused her of causing the death of a newborn simply because Lucía had been seen by the newborn’s mother the day she gave birth. Lucía didn’t want to relive the cruel taunts of the village children, and she was definitely in no mood to tolerate the giggles from the workers at the seamstress’s workshop.

  On Lucía’s first visit there, the seamstress had oohed and aahed over her. “O la la, but she is like a Bébé Jumeau doll that has come alive!” she’d exclaimed, pinching Lucía’s cheeks.

  The milliner then brought out a dozen hats she had made for the Bébé Jumeau dolls, and tried every single one of them on Lucía’s head. “You have a teensy head, little doll,” the milliner giggled as she arranged a too-tight green felt hat on Lucía’s head. And she punctuated her words by pinching Lucía’s already red cheeks.

  The green hat’s long pheasant feather made Lucía look like a very disgruntled elf. Lucía sat glumly on a stool while another shop girl tried to squeeze a pair of boots on her delicate feet. When the seamstress picked her up and plopped her in front of a tall mirror, Lucía gasped. She did not look like an elegant French girl at all: she looked like a clownish version of a French doll. Lucía managed to scream, “Zoila, pay attention to me!” before stumbling to the floor in all the ill-fitting clothes.

  Zoila had not been paying attention to the shenanigans taking place at Lucía’s expense in the seamstress’s workshop. She’d been daydreaming about leaving Lucía with the agent and heading on her own to New York to seek employment as a translator. But observing how even well-meaning people mistreated Lucía, Zoila felt her heartstrings tugging; she reminded herself of the compassion that Felipe would have shown Lucía. Suddenly ashamed for neglecting her small charge, Zoila sprang into action.

  “These clothes are unacceptable to my client,” she snapped at the seamstress and her assistants. “You will measure Lucía correctly and then you will write down our order.”

  Zoila helped Lucía change back into her clothes behind a cloth screen in the room. “Please forgive me for not paying attention,” she said, hugging Lucía. “I promise to focus on you and only you from now on. Now tell me all your favorite colors and fabrics.”

  Lucía inhaled the scent of vanilla emanating from Zoila’s chest and she smiled serenely. Behind the screen, she and Zoila sat on a chair and conferred on styles and colors. Finally, Zoila called, “We are placing an order for fifty items.”

  There was a flurry of excitement in the workshop.

  “First,” Zoila said, “Lucía would like a pink silk dress with a coat to match. Don’t forget to add lace and pleats to the dress. She will require a parasol of pink silk and four pairs of gloves. She will need a hat of braided horsehair, decorated with flowers, and—’

  The seamstress could not write quickly enough. “Please, Mademoiselle Zoila, slow down,” she begged.

  “No, I will not,” Zoila answered in her sternest voice. “You had enough time to poke fun at my charge, and now I will not extend any courtesy to you. Keep writing the rest of my order.”

  Lucía wrapped her arms around Zoila’s neck and asked, “Can you please say the list as fast as you can?”

  Zoila did as she was told, much to the seamstress’s chagrin. “Please repeat that,” the seamstress cried. “Please slow down!”

  Lucía prodded Zoila on, peeking at the seamstress’s reaction from behind the screen. A warm glow flared up in Lucía’s gut as she saw the seamstress squirm. Revenge was a sentiment Lucía had not experienced before and she relished its warm rays. She wanted to feel its comforting fire again and again.

  By August 4, 1876, a mere eight weeks after arriving in the United States, Lucía’s magnetic presence in New York City had created newspaper madness. Papers from Philadelphia to Kansas City ran articles describing her singular proportions. On August 10th, the New York Sun described Lucía as though she were a newly discovered species:

  A large number of physicians went to Tony Pastor’s Theatre yesterday to see Lucía Zarate. They measured her and ascertained her height to be twenty-one inches, her feet three inches long, her legs below the knee four inches in circumference, and her hands and inch and a quarter broad. She was not weighed but her weight is said to be five pounds. Her features are Spanish and her complexion dark.

  These articles pointed out that all of Lucía’s measurements would be certified by a team of well-known physicians: Drs. Alexander Mott*, J.L. Little*, J.M. Merrill*, E. Hudson*, and S. Roof*. The listing of the names of the doctors in the newspaper stories gave a certain stamp of approval to the uniqueness of Lucía Zárate: it authenticated her as a bona fide human miracle, and guaranteed audiences an exclusive one-time opportunity to witness this medical sui generis.

  Newspapers nationwide couldn’t resist such a phenomenal news story and hunted down other specific details of Lucía’s appearance to supplement their coverage. On August 25, 1876, the Interior Journal of Stanford, Kentucky commented:

  These visitors said she seemed perfect in structure, healthy, and intellige
nt. She understands and talks Spanish and a few words of English.

  Despite the presence of a pack of newshounds at the Tony Pastor Theatre, there to witness the scientific process taking place in a public theatre, not a single one of the reporters present at the medical exam could detect Zoila’s nerves and deep, unsettling sense of foreboding. She stood to one side while the physicians probed and prodded Lucía, trying to keep her face as expressionless as possible. But in reality Zoila wanted to throw rocks at them, to scare them away: in their swallowtail coats they reminded her of the black crows that pecked at the juiciest pomegranates back in Paplanta. Zoila could sense something foul in the air, the feral scent of opportunists circling Lucía, like the vanilla bean hustlers that crowded the curing houses every spring to take advantage of the Totonacs and their sweet-smelling, vanilla beans.

  The more Zoila remembered the steamy negotiations inside the vanilla-curing houses in Paplanta, the more drained she felt. August in New York City was humid and hot, and the tempers of the men around her reflected the most extreme summer weather conditions. Zoila folded her arms at her bosom and hugged herself. She wanted to experience her father’s audacity once more, to hear his outrageous comments, to observe him again at his bold, sassy best.

  But in her distress, Zoila realized that she had smothered his memory. All she could do now was stand motionless against the wall, her arms dangling at her sides. Her Veracruz swagger was no match, she knew, for the chutzpah of these brash New Yorkers.

  When Zoila and Lucía had arrived in New York City, the Yankee agent had unceremoniously turned them over to Lucía’s manager.

  “This here’s the Mexican midget,” the Yankee had said, patting Lucía’s head. “And this here is Zoila, her nanny—or should I say her she-wolf!”

  He’d punched Zoila’s arm with mock-playful force, and the pain of the punch almost made her cry out. Zoila’s first instinct was to pull the dagger from her bosom and defend herself, but Lucía’s woeful look cautioned her from jumping into action. The Yankee agent gave her a condescending sneer and kept talking.

  “And Mr. Francis Uffner, here,” the Yankee agent droned, pointing to the slim man staring at Lucía, “is the boss of the midgets, you hear, Zoila?”

  Zoila opened her mouth to ask for clarification on this last-minute change of agents, but Francis Uffner lunged at her and pinched her full lips shut with his bony fingers.

  “I hear you’ve always got a mouthful to say, girlie, but I ain’t hearing any of it.” He spat out his words, and Zoila recoiled. “You’re here stateside to get the Mexican midget to do as I say. Got that?”

  The Yankee agent howled with laughter, shook hands with Francis Uffner, and left the room without any further explanation.

  Zoila’s blood rushed to her head and she felt her jugular vein throb, as if poison rather than blood coursed her veins. All she could do was nod at Francis Uffner until he released his grip on her plump swelling lips. Lucía was clamped onto Zoila’s leg, shivering at the sight of the teardrop rolling down Zoila’s cheek. From Lucía’s low vantage point, Zoila looked like a Veracruz lobster fighting to escape the boiling cauldron. She felt so scared that she started to whimper.

  Francis Uffner knelt down and pinched Lucía’s cheek, his face twisted into a smile.

  “I don’t give a hoot if she cries,” he hissed, “but I don’t ever want to see no crocodile tears from you. You’re here to entertain people. Comprende?”

  The memory of that day always made Zoila shudder. Today, in the theatre, she felt just as helpless and silenced as she did when Francis Uffner grabbed her mouth. The doctors’ methodical measurements of Lucía seemed to take ages. When they lifted her skirt to measure her hips, legs, and waist, Zoila was mortified for her tiny charge. She approached Dr. Mott, but stopped herself at the last moment, just as she was about to yank him by his black coat tails. It wasn’t the right thing to do: Zoila knew that, instinctively. With her strength and determination she could have easily dragged Dr. Mott to the ground, but at what price? She’d been humiliated by all the North Americans she had met thus far. Despite her tough armadillo exterior, a crack of vulnerability started to widen within Zoila.

  At first Zoila thought that her objection to the doctors in attendance was due to her ongoing anxiety at finally being in New York City, the city of her dreams. The doctors’ jabbered and huddled in a secret cabal, forming decisions that would dictate Lucía’s future. If they confirmed her measurements, then Lucía would be recognized as the smallest and lightest woman on earth. The other men in attendance paced the theatre, their anxious faces and twitchy gestures revealing their own apprehension at the verdict. What the doctors announced would determine whether they made or lost fortunes exhibiting Lucía throughout North America and Europe.

  As the doctors continued with the minutiae of their measurements of Lucía’s body, Zoila stood frozen in place close to her tiny ward. The doctors murmured among themselves, verbally dissecting Lucía’s body. In the far corner of the room, a coterie of men whispered about profit margins, promoting, venues, and ticket sales. Their words floated anxiously from one corner of the stuffy theater to the other, while the journalist present shuffled their feet with impatience.

  Only the theatre’s owner, Tony Pastor*, the son of Spanish immigrants, dared to interfere with the doctors. He strolled over to Lucía and greeted her in fluent Spanish.

  “Hola, muñeca,” he said, extending his right hand. “Aren’t you just a darling little doll?”

  Lucía shook his hand and began giggling and acting silly, oblivious to the throng of doctors, agents, journalists, and hangers-on. Her eyes darted from left to right as though she were following the flight of the bees that pollinated the vanilla orchids back home. In an instant Lucía was a twirling top of hyperactivity. Zoila stood quietly while Lucía ran from person to person, trying to grab hold of the doctor’s tape measure and chattering to the journalists in rapid-fire Spanish. The crowd’s laughter at her antics encouraged Lucía, and when she saw a man’s silk hat on a chair, she jumped inside, much to everyone’s amazement. The Eaton Democrat reported on the incident for their readers:

  Her activity is incessant. She played pranks with the physicians, and talked fast in Spanish. She stepped into a high silk hat, crouched down, and was out of sight, excepting her head. She squeezed one of her pliable little hands through a rather large finger ring. The hand of an adult made an ample seat for her. Standing on a chair, and holding to the back of it, her fingers stuck through the spaces in the cane work—holes that just admitted the passage of a small pen holder.

  Only when Lucía grew tired of this frenzied activity did she allow the doctors to continue measuring her. Despite her fretfulness, Zoila attempted to intercept the doctors when they unceremoniously lifted Lucía’s skirt indecently high to measure the length of her leg from the hip.

  “The circumference of her head is thirteen inches, and the circumference of her thigh is four and three quarter inches,” announced Dr. Mott, as if he were in an operating theatre. There was a collective gasp of amazement.

  Dr. Mott asked Dr. Hudson to help him measure the circumference of Lucía’s calf and then, once again, announced her measurements.

  “The circumference of the left calf is four inches. And the length of leg from hip—”

  “Sirs, is it necessary to inspect Lucía as if she were a barnyard animal?” Zoila spoke too loudly. “Can’t you can see she’s a perfectly healthy girl?”

  “How dare you direct any question about our scientific procedures?” scoffed the doctor who was writing down Lucía’s measurements.

  The second doctor, Dr. Hudson, was even more direct with Zoila. “Go back to the corner of the room and shut up. You’re just her nanny. Let her father speak.”

  At the mention of Señor Zárate’s name, Zoila’s knees buckled. She leaned against the back wall of the room feeling faint and alarmed; her heart pounded with trepidation at the thought that somehow Señor Zárate had foun
d his way to New York City. If he managed to show up in this vast metropolis, then surely the Veracruz sorcerer who could outwit Señor easily, could also be hiding behind the theatre’s velvet curtains, wanting a cut of her earnings— or worse.

  Back in Veracruz, Señor Zárate had proved to be an insensitive opportunist, ready to use his daughter’s miniscule dimensions to make a fortune for himself. His presence in New York City presaged nothing but a wave of troubles for Zoila and Lucía. He would interfere with Zoila’s tutoring of Lucía, and he would incite a groundswell of mood swings in Lucía. Perhaps Lucía had already spotted her father among the crowd in the theatre earlier, and that was why she had behaved in such a frenetic and silly way minutes before.

  Out of the shadows of the dimly lit room, Lucía’s father approached the doctors. Then he turned around and stepped back into the shadows. When he reappeared, he was dragging Señora Zárate into the limelight. Señor Zárate extended his leg, gesturing that he wanted to be measured. He raised his wife’s arm and gestured similarly. The doctors in attendance took advantage and quickly measured Lucía’s parents. The reporter from The Interior Journal wrote:

  The parents of the child are with her, and are of the usual size; the mother is about the medium height, the father is 5 feet 5 or 6 inches in height and quite fleshy.

  While her parents remained still for their measurements, Lucía hid behind Zoila’s skirt, her face blank rather than joyful at the sight of her family members. Zoila bent down to give Lucía a gentle hug.

  “Everything will be alright,” she assured Lucía.

  “Tell me about an odyssey, again, Zoila,” Lucía asked her in a soft voice.

  “As I said earlier, an odyssey is a long and adventurous journey. Do you remember?”