Dwarf: A Memoir

by Tiffanie Didonato

  I caved and blurted everything out.

  “Oh?” Mom said. Her voice had a sense of intrigue, like she hoped the scene would unfold again in her presence. “Don’t ever let anyone keep you from doing what you want to do,” she ordered me.

  Then, without instigating it herself, Mom got what she wanted. The old woman from the cookie aisle walked right up to us.

  “Little girls aren’t supposed to ride around in stores on their bikes,” the woman snapped at my mother in an exaggerated whisper. “This isn’t a circus.”

  “Not that it’s your business, but I happen to have the permission of the manager for her to ride this bike,” Mom began icily, placing a bottle of juice into our cart. Then she stepped in closer and faced the woman head-on.

  “Why don’t you pay more attention to the crap you’re putting in your cart rather than what my daughter’s doing? Because from the looks of it, honey, you could use a few miles on an exercise bike yourself.”

  I watched in awe. The lady said nothing. Her grumbling stopped and her eyes, formerly angry little slits, were now wide open. She took a look at her cart, then at me, and then back at my mother. She was silent. Only a squeaky wheel on the old woman’s cart made any sound as she turned and left.

  My mother held her ground and watched until the woman was fully out of sight. Then she went back to shopping, as if the confrontation were as ordinary as the juice boxes on the shelf. She’d delivered her words to that lady so perfectly. It amazed me.

  I sat on my bike with my head held high and my shoulders thrust back, emulating my mother’s tough, confident stance. I watched her continue to toss groceries into our cart, feeling larger than life. To hell with what anyone else thought. I wanted to be like her: loved or hated but nothing in between; fearless, independent, and strong.

  I couldn’t wait to tell my dad what she had done. But the way he looked at adapting to life’s challenges was another story entirely.

  My father wears his heart on his sleeve, and every time I suffer or struggle, I watch that sleeve get tattered and torn a little bit more. Since the day he reentered my life, he vowed to do everything in his power to keep me from feeling pain. A man of few words with his friends, and even fewer words with his family, my father has a tendency to slouch as he stands, making it appear as though the sky is pushing him closer to the ground, away from his strapping height of six feet tall. His hands are muscular and rough, the utensils of his craft as an artisan and a welder. But my father always considered his most important job to be my protector. In his perfect world, he’d place me inside a glass box on a top shelf and I’d only come down once in a while for dusting. I love him for wanting to keep me so safe, but I have no interest in staying put.

  “Let’s go to the Fair,” he’d suggest on the days that my mother went to work as a registered nurse on the open-heart surgical floor at UMass Medical Center. He loved to take me to our local toy store, and I loved it even more. We did this dozens of times, but every time felt just as special and magical as the last. It was our thing.

  But I hated that he wouldn’t let me bring my bike, insisting that I ride in the cart instead.

  “Why?” I’d whine.

  “Because you’re not supposed to ride your bike at the Fair,” he’d say with a sigh.

  “Mom says people should worry about what’s in their own basket instead of me on my bike,” I pointed out.

  “She would.”

  “She did, Daddy. She said it,” I said with a teasing grin.

  “I wish she wouldn’t.”

  “I’m going to tell her you said that,” I said playfully.

  “It won’t make a difference,” Dad replied softly.

  He was right. It wouldn’t.

  As he wheeled the shopping cart down the Fair’s aisles, he watched me waddle down the rows and rows of dolls, stopping at one in a big white dress.

  “You have that one, don’t you?” he asked, nodding to the Barbie that had captivated me.

  Her name was Wedding Day Barbie and, to me, she was perfect. Lace and ruffles were delicately draped over her long, plastic legs and her golden hair cascaded down her back underneath a beautiful, delicate veil.

  “No, Daddy, I don’t have this one. I don’t have anything like her!”

  “All right, then,” he said with a small smile.

  He reached for the doll. I could feel my heart thudding with excitement as I watched him place her in the cart. I tried to help, reaching toward her as best I could. But Dad said, “It’s easier if I do it.”

  Still smiling, I followed him down the aisle, walking slowly with my fingers poked through the cart’s plastic honeycomb.

  Other girls my age had flocked to the Barbie aisle as well. I noticed a few with pretty ribbons in their hair. These little girls came up to their parents’ waists, not their thighs, I noticed. Just as I was taking in one girl’s long, slim legs, tan from the summer and looking a whole lot like Barbie’s, she locked eyes with me. I looked back at her, wondering momentarily whether I should wave hello. Then she pointed at me.

  “Why is she so small, Mommy? Is she okay?”

  “Don’t stare,” the girl’s mother replied softly.

  My dad picked up speed when he noticed the pointing and whispering. He pushed the cart faster and faster down the aisle. It was as if he thought we could outrun the looks and the questions.

  “But, Mommy, why is she so small?” the girl persisted.

  “How about you ride in here for a while?” Dad suggested, gesturing to the cart.

  “But, Daddy, I can walk,” I said, aware of the little girl’s questioning but not overly concerned about it. Her words didn’t register with me the way they did with my father.

  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.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Everyone Has Problems

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

  THROUGHOUT 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 s
even 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.