Once in a while, I’d feel temporarily defeated, and, like clockwork, another argument would develop between my parents and the four-letter words would fly. It was my job to capture the pain and get it under control.
As I continued stretching, my eyes began to hurt from squeezing them shut and my vision blurred. My arms felt heavy as I stretched them forward. My teeth hurt from clenching my jaw and then my ears began to ring, but Mom kept coaching me.
“Don’t lose control. Breathe! Take deep breaths, nice and slow,” Mom shouted over my wailing.
From down in the basement, I could hear my dad vacuuming. The grinding of the vacuum motor was, I’m sure, his way of drowning out the crying and yelling.
This was my introduction— my training— to learning how to cope with true adult pain, and the harsh realities of diastrophic dysplasia.
“Don’t let it win. Don’t let the pain win. Toughen up. Fight!” Mom told me. “Count backwards from five and we’ll be done,” she promised.
“Five,” I choked out between carefully timed breaths.
“Fight for yourself,” Mom coached me.
“Four!”
“You’ll never get anywhere in this world unless you fight. Remember this!”
I heard her loud and clear as I considered the vast difference between the way my mom handled problems and the way my dad ran from them.
“Three!”
“Fight to reach those doorknobs! Fight to reach Daddy’s stereo! Fight to see above the dining table!”
“Two!” I wanted to help set the dining table. I wanted to see over the windowsill and reach every doorknob in the world so I’d never get stuck again.
“Fight to live your life, Tiffie.”
I meant to shout the final number at the top of my lungs, but another word came out instead.
“Fight!”
After a month or two of turning my pins day after day, I gradually began to notice that the tiny difference in my legs was becoming a big one. I no longer needed pots or cookbooks to reach the things I desired.
I could see above the dining table and help set it, too.
My shoes were no longer easy to tie, as my feet stretched farther away from my reach. I could look down into my bedside table drawer and actually take in the mess that it had become. I could even reach the top of my dresser, and I could see, just barely, the top of my forehead in the mirror.
And for the first time, I felt the shape of a rounded doorknob in my hand, as opposed to the handles my father installed at my height. It was firm and solid. It felt so good. It was a whole new world for me, and I felt that I’d earned it.
Dad may have hated her for it, but my mother made the right decision with the lengthening surgery. Soon, another operation was scheduled to take the pins out of the tibias in my shins and drill a new set into the femurs in my thighs. Altogether it was about two years of surgeries, recovery periods, and exercising until the pins came out. Then, all that remained were tiny clear bandages called Steri-Strips taped across the holes in my skin to help them close. These were my first battle wounds, and my first real sense of what it was like to be more independent.
My legs felt like feathers once they were free from all the metal, but they were also weak, and I struggled to stand and walk. Light bed linens felt like heavy down blankets and I could barely move my legs underneath them at first. The stretching continued, but now Dad turned off the vacuum. And one day, he came home and gave me a boom box of my own— with a fancy dual cassette player and removable speakers so that I could play music while I kept up with my rehab.
“I’m sorry,” Dad began. “The Fair didn’t have one in pink.” He placed a black boom box in front of me with a smile.
It was topped with an enormous pink bow.
CHAPTER 5
Too Small for Texas
At my mother’s air force swearing-in ceremony in Sudbury, Massachusetts. We moved to San Antonio shortly thereafter.
IN JANUARY 1991, the Gulf War played out like a movie on TV. I sat in my living room, transfixed by the live shots of soldiers and marines in camouflage crossing the desert with loaded rifles. Elsewhere on the dial, tanks fired and bombs exploded, and suddenly the idea of war— previously relegated to history books— felt very real.
One unseasonably warm winter afternoon, he was coming over: a recruiter from the US Air Force. Mom wanted to enlist. Not long before, she’d announced to my dad that she wanted to do her part for our country and work with the troops that we’d seen on TV.
“It’s never too late to do what you want to do in life,” I’d heard her say on many occasions.
Our front door was open, and the screen let in the breeze. I sat with my new, four-inch-longer legs stretched out in front of me, waiting. The Nintendo that Nick had let me borrow was plugged into our big, boxy TV, and I was excited to play his Top Gun game, which I’d specifically chosen for the recruiter’s visit. It was my way of showing off.
With my fingers poised on the controller, ready to hit “start,” I saw him. Dressed in a deep blue uniform with stripes and ribbons decorating his arms and chest, he was far more handsome than the camo-clad troops from TV. The recruiter’s hair was dark and cut short, and when he smiled, he flashed a set of gorgeous white teeth that were as shiny as his black dress shoes. My mouth dropped open and my controller clattered to the floor. He was Superman. No, he was better than Superman, because Superman wasn’t real, and this recruiter most certainly was.
As I stared at him, wondering whether he had flown in the jets I’d seen on commercials but feeling far too nervous to ask, he looked down at me through the screen.
“Hello,” he said in a loud but friendly voice.
Mom then appeared from around the corner.
“Say hello, honey,” she said as she welcomed him inside.
The recruiter walked in, removed his hat, and asked with a smile, “Top Gun?”
I stared at his uniform. There wasn’t a wrinkle in sight. He was like a living, breathing billboard for the United States military, and all I could do was watch him in stunned silence, managing only a weak nod. It was one thing to see the jets and the bombs on TV and the men with rifles standing their ground without so much as a flinch. It was quite another to be in the presence of a man who may have actually sat under the dome of a fighter jet or behind the sights of a rifle.
“Outstanding,” he replied, reaching into his bag and handing me a blue and white baseball cap. “Here,” he said, handing it to me. “You’ll need this.”
The cap had a fighter jet stitched onto the front with red smoke trailing behind it. I watched my reflection grow larger in the recruiter’s dark aviator sunglasses as he bent down to give me this fabulous gift.
While I got my bearings, the airman and my mom sat at our round dining room table, discussing all sorts of things I didn’t understand and rustling papers between them. Mom looked back at me and smiled. I tried not to keep staring, but he looked so crisp, clean, and official. I couldn’t understand how a person could look so handsome and so intimidating at the same time. Mom signed things, and he signed things, and throughout it all, no one asked my dad to sign anything.
“I have to do this, Gerry,” I heard her say later that night. And then she issued an ultimatum of her own. “Come with us or we go on our own.”
A couple of days later, Mom explained to me that we were going somewhere important where there were more men and women just like the recruiter, but that my dad had decided not to come with us. He didn’t want to leave my brother.
I’d repeat part of my mom’s reasoning in school when Katie asked me why we were moving. “We have to do this,” I told her, even though I didn’t understand why.
It was a confusing time for me, but I was used to feeling confused about my family— my dad’s side, anyway. No one ever talked about the DiDonatos in front of me, but I did manage to hear bits and pieces about them from my parents’ arguments. I never felt comfortable bringing up the subject myself.
What sort of houses did they live in? Did I have cousins who were little like me? Did we shop at the same grocery store? Had I seen them there before without even knowing it?
During the holidays, I would only see my mom’s side of the family. Every Thanksgiving, the Pryors would gather at Papa’s long, wooden kitchen table to celebrate. My mom and dad took separate vehicles. Armed with their best side dishes, my family members would arrive, greeting one another loudly with hugs and kisses, and pats on the head for the kids. Then the group gathered in the den for hours to watch the football game before we sat down to eat. It was always a festive, happy mood around the dinner table.
But after the pumpkin pie was sliced and served, Dad would always leave early.
“It was good to see ya, Gerry,” my aunts and uncles would say, the exact same way every year. Dad responded in kind. “Yah, yah, it was good to see you, too.” Before long, it all started to sound very rehearsed to me.
“I’m just going to the store,” Dad told me if I asked where he was going. Or, in his typical secretive fashion, sometimes he would simply say: “I’ll see you back home.”
Then he’d pull on his heavy brown coat, give me a hug without looking me in the eye, and shuffle down the narrow walkway from Papa’s front door to the driveway. From the window, I’d watch him back his truck out onto the street and then I’d pretend, like my mom, that it was no big deal to go on with our holiday without him. But inside, I wondered where he went. Eventually I figured it out: Dad was going to see his side of the family.
And I wasn’t allowed to go with him.
Once Mom finalized her decision to enlist, she went away for special training. After what felt like a lifetime without her, Dad and I drove to Logan Airport in Boston. We looked up her gate on the big arrival screens, and I held his hand as we waited for her flight to arrive.
Mom was returning from MIMSO (Military Indoctrinated Medical Service Officer) training. As people filed off the plane and greeted their families, I spotted her. She was dressed in a deep blue skirt that touched just below her knees and a button-down blue dress shirt. Her hair was different. She had chopped off her gorgeous blond locks and returned with hair so short that it practically stuck to her head. Mom had a special pin on her shoulder and ribbons across her chest. She looked like one of them. I ran with my arms spread as wide as I could to hug her. I never wanted to be without her again.
Our new home on the Medina air force base near San Antonio was sizzling, stifling, and flat. Mom and I were going to be stationed there for the next couple of years. The houses were made of brick or stucco and no one had wooden fences like so many back home in Douglas. Instead, tall stacks of gray cinder blocks outlined everyone’s property and their windows were covered with twisted, wrought-iron bars that reminded me of black licorice. The whole neighborhood was outlined with barbed wire.
The houses weren’t the only big differences from Massachusetts. Texas had snakes, fire ants, giant spiders, scorpions, torrential rainstorms, flash floods, tornadoes, and heat that didn’t feel “dry” at all— someone had lied to us about that one. These new additions were poor replacements for the many things I missed dearly, like our stereo system, Bruiser, my Papa and his favorite dish that he would always make for me when I came to visit— linguine with clam sauce. And, of course, I missed my dad.
Mom and I moved into a plain-looking brick duplex fastened to a cement slab. The nameplate attached to the small parking pad read: 1st Lt. DiDonato. That part always made me smile. In the background, rapid gunfire popped in the air. The airmen were doing training exercises, and I swore they were right in our backyard.
We walked into our new house through the kitchen door. Our moving truck took up the entire driveway and part of the street, too. Men wearing back supports hauled boxes upon boxes, each of them numbered with a neon orange tag, into our new home. While Mom stood with a clipboard in her hand, checking off each one, I took the opportunity to explore my new setting. I was disappointed to find that the kitchen was nothing special. It was cramped and stark white and it had just one tiny window above the sink— far too high for me to see out of it. The dining room was also small and opened up to the living room, which had a sliding glass door. I pressed my face up against the glass and peered out. We had the view of a dirt road, some stubby trees, and a big cactus. I wondered how many rattlesnakes might be curled up underneath.
“I can make anything look like home,” Mom said, approaching me from behind. She rested a hand on my shoulder and gave me a kiss on the top of my head. I only came up to her waist.
“Everything is bigger in Texas,” Mom had said on our last night in Douglas. “You’ll love it!”
I wasn’t so sure. Just when I had gained four inches, I was being whisked away to a place where things were even bigger than they were back home.
As I continued my tour of our new home, outfitted with a dull, cream-colored carpet throughout, I began feeling stuck between two places. I wanted to be with my mom while also wishing I were back home with Dad, and even my brother. But our house in Douglas had been rented out to strangers and Dad spent his days in the Webster apartment with Bruiser. I wanted our Bonneville back, too, because it was familiar and it was ours. But Mom had sold it and bought an electric blue Pontiac Grand Prix. There were colorful, glowing buttons splashed across the dashboard, and the car reminded me of a spaceship.
Texas may as well have been another planet.
In the living room, Mom plotted to fix the ugly carpet situation. She measured from corner to corner just before our couch and television were hauled inside. I squeezed past the movers, who barely seemed to notice me at all, and into my new room. I immediately zeroed in on the huge, floor-to-ceiling window. I’d have no problem gazing out on our sandy lawn. Things were looking up . . . until I noticed the closets. Two accordion-style doors were pulled open to reveal a single white wire shelf mounted high above my head.
How would I hang up my clothes? I thought frantically. How could I find Mom’s cookbooks in all those boxes? Did we even remember to pack them? What if we hadn’t?
Mom interrupted my panicked thoughts. “It will be easier to use this rather than looking for books and things to stack,” she said, appearing in the doorway with a smile. I turned around to find her holding a grayish-blue Rubbermaid plastic stool.
I couldn’t decide what I hated more: Mom thinking that I couldn’t help myself or the fact that I’d be forced to use yet another tool.
When the moving men finally pulled away from our new home, the sun began to set. I had hardly made a dent in unpacking my boxes, but I did manage to find my stuffed animals and Barbies. With the perfect sleeping companions selected, I began my climb up under the covers.
“Wait, no!” Mom shouted. “You can’t just get into your bed here. Always check the sheets first.”
“For what?” I asked.
“Anything,” she replied, demonstrating how to carefully check every inch of the covers. I pictured all the creepy bugs that lived in Texas and shivered at the thought of them in bed with me.
Once Mom had determined that it was safe for me to squeeze between the sheets, she kissed me good night and switched off the light. I heard her walk toward the kitchen to continue unpacking and arranging all our stuff. I stayed awake for at least another hour, staring out into the hall and thinking about all the dangers and inconveniences in Texas: the insects, the closet, the heavy doors with rusted screens. And that was only in the house. I couldn’t fathom what was waiting for me beyond our four walls.
The next morning in the bathroom, I was standing barefoot on my
ugly blue stool to brush my teeth when something small and yellow caught my eye. It moved abruptly, raised its stinger over its body, and braced itself like it wanted to fight.
“Mom! Scorpion!”
She rushed in with her combat boot raised in the air, shouting, “I got it!” She swung the boot downward and it hit the vinyl floor with a hard slap, the laces whipping at the wall.
The crunch of the bug’s skeleton made me cringe.
“I’ll call Housing,” she said calmly, scooping up the carcass with a spatula and flushing it down the toilet. “Don’t forget to check your shoes before you put them on this morning,” she added casually on her way out of the bathroom. “Things are a little different here.”
“Don’t forget to wash the spatula before you use it again!” I shouted after her. I heard her laugh from out in the living room. As I watched the remains of the scorpion swirl around the toilet bowl, I decided Mom was right: things were different here.
While we lived in Texas, Mom worked as a nurse at Wilford Hall Medical Center. On that first morning, we began what would become our routine: with her travel mug in hand and a backpack over my shoulders, we’d leave Medina, drive a few miles down the road, and then slowly roll through the gates of Lackland Air Force Base, where I went to middle school. Men armed with rifles and outfitted in head-to-toe camouflage stood at attention and saluted my mom when we drove through Lackland’s gates. I always smiled and she did, too. It was so new, so exciting, and it made me feel like we might belong in Texas after all. We were important, or at least my mom was. Maybe what we were doing was important enough to leave our home up north, too.
“Want to see it again?” she asked with a laugh. I could feel how proud and happy she felt. It was a triumph for her in some way, and I wanted to share in her joy and in her moment.
Dwarf: A Memoir Page 6