Dwarf: A Memoir

by Tiffanie Didonato

  “Yes!” I cheered.

  With a sharp U-turn, we left base and reentered the front gates again. The sentry stood at attention and saluted once more without missing a beat. My mom’s maneuver was a “butter bar” move (a slang term I’d learned for lieutenants who wore a single yellow bar on their lapels), but we felt we’d earned it. We had just uprooted our lives and left all that we knew, together. In a way, watching my mom get saluted made the day worth starting. It made us feel proud, bonded, and giddy, all at once. I wished my dad could see it and I wished I could have seen what my Papa looked like in his uniform when he served in the navy.

  As we drove away from the gates toward my school, I watched a unit formation of airmen jogging across the sidewalks and through the grassy areas of the base. They chanted loud, rhyming cadences that kept everyone in step and their spirit stretched far beyond their group. I hung my head outside the open window, just to take it all in. There were decommissioned jets on display, monuments in the fields, and enormous American flags waving high above it all. I barely knew where to look first. I wanted to be a part of it all, to jog and chant even though I knew that my legs could never keep up.

  My new school was as different as our new lifestyle. It wasn’t even a regular building. I had to walk outdoors, on covered patios, to get to my math, English, and science classrooms, which my teachers called “portables.” And when it rained, I had to struggle to use an umbrella that was bigger than I was. Worst of all, inside every classroom, waiting for me in a back corner of the room, was a Rubbermaid stool, identical to the one at home. They were following me.

  “Your mom wants you to use this under your feet so your legs don’t dangle,” my teacher Mrs. Richardson said pleasantly. It was like peering up at a skyscraper to make eye contact with her. “It will help your circulation in your legs,” she added, smiling.

  Every day, I was reminded to place my stool under my feet. And every day I loathed doing it. The stool embarrassed me. When I set it on the floor and slid it under my desk, it made a hollow, clunking sound as if to remind the other kids— who seemed to be growing taller every week while I stayed the same size— that I had to use it. I felt my cheeks grow hot each time someone swiveled around at his or her desk to look at me and my stool.

  I could reach doorknobs now, but there was a host of new things that were out of my grasp, and just as many new things that I wanted to do. I wanted to see over countertops. I wanted to use the sink without dragging my stool into the bathroom with me. I wanted to sit in a chair like everyone else and use the chalkboard when the teacher called on me for answers.

  More than anything, I wanted to be like Sarah.

  Sarah lived across the street from me on Medina and she was in every one of my classes. Her mom consistently won the Garden of the Month prize on base and I was sure she used each fifty-dollar gift certificate that she was awarded on new clothes for Sarah. Every week, Sarah came to school in a new outfit: a matching, beautiful ensemble that complemented her colorful headbands.

  My OshKosh B’gosh overalls weren’t cutting it.

  Sarah wore colored jeans and flip-flops, tank tops in the summer, sweaters and cardigans in the fall. Her short brown hair was so much neater and prettier than my messy ponytail that I couldn’t reach to adjust. My arms were too short even to fix my own hair, I thought sadly as I gazed at her stick-straight locks while she ran her fingers through her perfectly cut bangs during English class.

  I’d never seen clothes like hers when I went shopping, either— the stores where I got my wardrobe were geared toward small children, not preteens like me. I didn’t know where Sarah shopped, but I knew the stores where my mom and I went did not have long jeans with the brand name stitched on the back pocket. Instead, I was stuck with the little girls’ stores— those were the only sizes I could wear.

  No one in my classes talked about my size or teased me about my clothes, but I couldn’t ignore the difference between what I wore to school and what my classmates wore. And that made me feel different. It’s funny how something as simple as a pair of jeans can make you feel normal. And I was certain these little things were what made Joshua Blackman notice Sarah.

  Joshua and Sarah were an item, and they were the perfect fit. Joshua had blond hair, brown eyes, and a crooked smile. I was twelve and I had my very first crush. Each time he offered to sharpen my pencil for me because I couldn’t reach the sharpener on my own— something I felt newly ashamed of— I found myself wishing I had what Sarah did. I wanted him to hold my hand and walk with me back to my desk like he did for her. Joshua was nice, he was funny, and he always raised his hand in Mrs. Richardson’s class. But it didn’t diminish his cool. He was the most popular boy in our middle school and he liked to eat lunch with a boy from Guam (a far-off, exotic place that instantly made him interesting).

  I had two types of friends in middle school: those who liked to help me, carrying my things and looking out for me in the hallway so I wouldn’t get trampled, and those who genuinely wanted to come over after school. Evelyn was the only friend I had in that second category. She had bright orange hair that barely touched the tips of her shoulders and she regularly pinned half of it up with a silver clip. She came over once a week after school and on the drive back to Medina, my mom, Evelyn, and I would stop at the USMC car wash.

  In tight red T-shirts with gold bulldogs printed on their wet chests, the marines would be waiting for cars to scrub down with soapy water. They had a way of corralling even the cleanest of vehicles over to their corner in a parking lot. They chanted in unison and flexed their muscles. Every time, I swooned.

  Their haircuts were higher and tighter than those on the airmen I was used to seeing around base. The marines spoke louder, stepped prouder, smiled wider, and looked tougher. I thought back to the war I watched unfold on TV and wondered how many of them went overseas. In person, they hardly seemed human. The marines who scrubbed Mom’s car— the suds dripping off of every contour of their chiseled arms as we giggled inside— were not just handsome. They were perfection. Joshua should be a marine, I thought to myself at the car wash. He’d make a good one.

  “One, two, three, four— Marine Corps! One, two, three, four— Marine Corps!” they chanted in unison. “The Army and Navy were not for me— Marine Corps! Air Force was just too easy— Marine Corps! What I need is a little bit more— Marine Corps! I need a life that is hard-core— Marine Corps!”

  As we pulled away from the parking lot, I turned and stood on the backseat, peering out the rear windshield. “Hey! Air Force! Where’re you going? Get in your planes and follow me!” Evelyn and I chanted. “I’m a United States Marine!”

  One day at school, Evelyn told me that her dad had received orders to London. She was leaving in a month, and I was losing my best friend.

  “I hate it here. I want to go home,” I blurted out to my mom over dinner that night.

  “Where is this coming from?” She had barely had time for a bite before I made my declaration.

  “I just want to go home. I’ve always wanted to go back.”

  “We can’t yet. We’re here for a little while longer, okay?”

  “No! It’s not okay. When are we leaving? When are we done?” I demanded. “All my friends are leaving; why can’t we?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Evelyn is going to England. Her dad has orders to go there for four years.” At twelve years old, that seemed like a lifetime.

  “You’re friendly, sweetheart. You’ll make more friends, don’t worry. You always do. And you can keep in touch with Evelyn, write letters and stuff.”

  “I don’t want to make new friends!” I snapped. “I want to keep the friends I already have!”

  “I understand that, Tiffanie, but . . .”

  When Mom called me Tiffanie instead of Tiff or Tiffie, I knew that her patience was thinning, and I usually backed off of whatever I was whining about. But this time, I didn’t care. I wanted to be heard.

  “I ha
te it here and I want to go home. Now!” I shouted, slamming my hand down on the table for emphasis.

  My mom was shocked— I’d never yelled at her before. But she still wasn’t going to allow it.

  “That’s it! Get to your room right now!”

  “No! I’m not in the air force; you can’t give me orders, ma’am!”

  “Excuse me, fresh mouth?”

  It was the wrong button to push and I couldn’t meet Mom’s stare as she looked at me with her lips pursed together, eyes narrowed.

  “I said: Get to your room!”

  Fuming, I swallowed the angry lump in my throat, slid off my chair, and waddled down the narrow hallway that led to my bedroom. Before I slammed my door, I yelled back: “And I hate your hair!”

  Refusing to use my blue plastic stool to get onto the bed, I clawed my way up, hot tears streaming down my cheeks by the time I threw myself into the pillow. A few minutes later there was a knock on my door.

  “Tiffie?” Mom paused. “Tiffie, can I come in?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Quietly, she pushed the door open. She moved my stuffed animals aside and sat next to me on the bed but didn’t say a word. That’s always been the beauty of my relationship with my mom. We could fight one moment and be perfectly normal the next.

  “Why isn’t Dad here?” I asked, sobbing.

  “He has things in Massachusetts to take care of. You know that.”

  “Can I call him?” I asked.

  “Of course you can call him.” She got up and retrieved the phone for me.

  “Daddy,” I sobbed over the line, “I miss you. I want to come home.”

  A year or so later, I got what I wanted. Mom didn’t reenlist for reasons I didn’t fully understand. I still don’t (she’s incredibly private about it), though I suspect it had something to do with me. At the time, I was just happy we were leaving. But every time I hear my mother tell someone, “I’d give my right arm to go back in,” I feel a little more guilty and responsible for it all.

  Back home in Douglas, life was nothing like I’d hoped it would be. Everyone had moved on. Even though I grew up with those kids, when I returned, I felt like I didn’t know them at all, and they didn’t know me. They had shared memories and inside jokes I had no way of understanding. I wondered if Evelyn felt the same way at her new school in London. Luckily, I still had Katie, Bruiser, and my old closet with shelves that I could actually reach. But that was about to change. Again.

  For my thirteenth birthday, I wanted nothing more than new clothes. So Dad took me out on a birthday shopping spree. Inside the massive expanse of Filene’s department store, I was surrounded by more “Sarahs” who looked nothing like me. I thought back to my days with my dad at the Fair when nothing mattered but which Barbie I would pick. Now I had to look like the Sarahs of the world.

  “Are you hungry?” Dad asked me after a couple of hours of sorting through tops and skirts and dresses. Shortly thereafter, we plopped down on plastic chairs in the food court.

  “Dad, what makes a girl pretty?” I asked.

  “I suppose it’s different for everyone,” he said thoughtfully.

  “I don’t think my hips are pretty— they’re wide,” I said between bites of sweet-and-sour chicken with fried rice.

  “You ever see this expression?” Dad asked, forming the shape of an hourglass in the air with his hands. “There’s nothing wrong with wide hips.”

  “I’ve never seen that,” I told him.

  “Oh. Well, don’t worry about what someone else thinks is pretty. Worry about what makes you happy. Pretty will come through being happy.”

  This was the best piece of advice my dad had ever given me.

  As we pulled into the driveway after our shopping trip, something on the front walkway caught my eye. As I made my way up to the front door, I was shocked to see that it was a For Sale sign. Through the screen door, I watched Mom talking to a man at our dining room table, both of them signing papers. The man wore cowboy boots that poked out from beneath his stonewashed jeans. I looked at my dad, who remained stoic as he watched them.

  Not Texas, I thought wildly. Not again!

  “Tiffie,” Mom began as I walked into the house, “this is Randy Carpenter. He’s our Realtor.” Randy smiled and shook my hand.

  “Are we leaving again?” I asked, feeling frantic.

  “We’re going to stay with Papa for a while in Marlborough.”

  As I stood there trying to process the shock of a move in progress that no one had told me about— and one that Dad didn’t seem to be involved in— Mom smiled at me.

  “Did you have fun shopping, Miss Teenager?” she asked, as if nothing had just happened. “We have cake for you!”

  Soon, our house in Douglas was sold— because, I learned, Mom wanted to live closer to Papa— and I felt uprooted all over again. Along with my friends, my sense of ease in the world had vanished. I hated struggling to put in my own earrings, barely able to reach my own ears. I hated not being able to reach the perfume bottles on my dresser or the forks in the drawer. I was too stubborn to ask for help, and the process of finagling clever tricks to function during my day didn’t make me feel like MacGyver anymore. It was just frustrating. I was no longer in my house where I could find whatever I needed and make the space work for me. In Papa’s house, I didn’t feel right about rummaging through his things to find household items I could use as tools.

  On nights while Mom worked, Papa and I often made our favorite meal together: linguine with white clam sauce. As we cooked, Sinatra and Dean Martin played softly, and we shook our hips to “New York, New York.” While Papa moved about the kitchen, gathering ingredients, I dragged my stool around with me.

  One night, like an hourglass that had run out of sand, time had run out on my patience. I woke up after midnight with a mean craving for Oreos and milk. Quietly, and careful not to wake my mom and Papa, I followed the glow of the night-light down the hall to the kitchen. The Oreos were close by on the shelf, and I could reach them easily. The milk would be more of a problem.

  As softly as I could, I opened the refrigerator and placed my stool up against the shelves. The milk was on the fourth shelf. As I had done so many times before, I stepped up and felt the ribbed plastic underneath my bare feet. Closer and closer, I carefully moved my toes to the smooth edge and squeezed my butt for balance. The bright bulb felt hot on my eyes as I gazed up at the milk.

  I stretched my tiny arms up as far as I could and stood on my tiptoes until I felt the plastic gallon container against my fingertips. I squeezed hard with both hands and pulled it closer, inch by inch. I lifted my body higher with my toes. I had it.

  I almost had it.

  I would have had it if I could have held the jug tightly with my hands, but its width and weight were too much for my small arms.

  Then I lost my grip.

  The milk jug somersaulted down to the floor and hit the tile with a thud. The lid popped off and bounced under the cabinets. I was too shocked to notice that my feet had begun to slip as well. Suddenly my stool shot out from under me and I went crashing down to the floor.

  I landed hard on top of the jug and rolled over onto the cold milk still pouring out. I was drenched. The milk flowed around my head, soaking my nightgown and my hair. I lay there staring hard at the ceiling. The adrenaline coursed through my veins, and my nose tingled like I was about to cry. This was an accident that never should have happened. I wanted cookies and milk, but instead I got a harsh message, loud and clear. I was not finished with my bone-lengthening surgeries.

  “What are you doing?” Mom yelled as she barreled down the stairs. Papa swung open the door from his bedroom and met her in the kitchen. I looked up at them from the floor but didn’t answer. I was busy picturing Sarah reaching into her refrigerator and easily, effortlessly, pouring herself milk without falling and scaring her entire family.

  “You’re lucky that wasn’t glass!” Papa boomed. “Did you hurt yourself?”


  I didn’t know how to answer. I wasn’t physically hurt, but I was so frustrated by my own body. How could I start high school when I couldn’t even get my own drink? What kind of teenager was I? What kind of woman would I be? Inside, I ached. I wanted to scream and slam my fists on the floor. I was angry with the fridge, angry at the milk, and angry at whoever had placed it on the fourth shelf. But above all, I was angry with my stubby arms. I stood up slowly with the help of my Papa’s strong forearm and shot my mom a look that said it all.

  I wanted longer arms and I didn’t want to waste any time.

  We were in Dr. Shapiro’s office within days. “There’s no use crying over spilled milk,” he joked.

  But it was more than that. I had been challenged, and I had lost. And any surgery that minimized the chances of that happening again would be well worth it.

  “We could probably get two inches in your arms by lengthening the humerus,” Dr. Shapiro said encouragingly. “You will be amazed at what two inches can give you.”

  Something told me he was right, and I decided that it would be well worth it to have the surgery on my arms.

  CHAPTER 6

  You’re Obviously a Dwarf

  As a teenager, with my mother and one of her patients from UMass Memorial Medical Center (our Pontiac Grand Prix is parked in the background).

  MARLBOROUGH HIGH SCHOOL was a massive, three-story brick building. It was imposing to everyone, but especially to me at an even four feet tall. I attended eighth grade in the building due to overcrowding in the middle school. Black panther paw prints lined the outdoor walkway and two sets of double doors opened into a large, open foyer at the front of the building. Bright orange railings lined the stairs and second-and third-floor walkways, and there were rumors that the design of the school was modeled after a state penitentiary. I don’t know how true this was, but I do know that Mrs. Carlson, one of the headmasters, acted a lot like a warden as she stood out in the first-floor hallway, ordering us into our classrooms.