Dwarf: A Memoir (4 page)

For a while, I hardly knew there was a difference between me and the other children.
None of my friends could reach the bathroom sink or successfully navigate their way
through heavy doors, so there was nothing outstanding about me there. But as my friends
got older, they also grew taller and started reaching things I couldn’t, like light
switches and door handles.

Still, I never felt disabled. I never felt held back by my body,
merely challenged. Every obstacle became a game, and I always wanted to win. With
each daily challenge my mind expanded. Though my stature didn’t change, I grew more
creative. Maneuvering through my days, I manipulated chairs into ladders and used
them to reach clothes in my closet, to see out the window, and to reach the dials
on my dad’s stereo system and the Disney videos on the middle shelf of the entertainment
center.

The most important piece of weaponry in my early battles with dwarfism was a pair
of seriously versatile salad tongs. With them, I could reach, grab, and squeeze. I
could push off my socks and tug my underwear away from my ankles and up my thighs.
I could hook and pull just about anything. I could also do what many would never consider
to be a problem. With tongs, I could accomplish what average-size people understandably
take for granted.

I could grip toilet paper and wipe myself.

I had no idea what others struggled with in the bathroom, and no one in my family
pointed out that using tongs to wipe was something out of the ordinary. I simply did
as many others with dwarfism must do. Since my short arms would not allow me to reach
my private areas with my hand, I adapted. I could wait for someone to clean me (as
my mom did for the first several years of my life), find a creative way to do it myself,
or worst of all, skip wiping entirely. The choice was a no-brainer.

We all do things that we aren’t proud of in war.

An average pencil served as my lance to hit various light switches around my home.
Turning them off, however, was more difficult and required a separate device. A spatula
worked fine. If that wasn’t available, I just left them on.

A towel, if my dad was lazy enough to leave one on the bathroom floor, served as a
net. With a swing or a slap, I could trap just about anything and drag it toward me.

My mom’s cookbooks rarely stayed on the lower bookshelf in the living room where she
housed them. Instead, I stacked them in front of the sink so I could wash my hands.
Each
How to Cook
hardcover,
Chicken Made Simple
bible, and Julia Child masterpiece could be pushed across the tile floor with ease.
They piled nicely against the bottom kitchen cabinets, forming makeshift stairs.

Countertops became platforms on which I stood to reach bowls, cups, and plates. My
favorite one, a white porcelain soup bowl with an oversized flattened handle, was
always stacked on the second shelf in the upper cabinet. Like an acrobat, I perfected
the art of balancing and bending and, with careful manipulation, I could grab that
soup bowl like any other. I felt like a treasure hunter.

“Jesus Christ!” my mom once screamed when she found me atop the counter during the
hunt. “You’ll break your neck! What are you doing?”

“I want cereal,” I replied simply.

“Why didn’t you ask me to get it?”

“Because I can do it,” I said, almost offended that she felt the need to ask. She
knew me better than that.

It was during times like these that she was thinking about her father, my “Papa,”
who had very strong beliefs about the way I should be raised.

Papa— Robert Pryor— always reminded me of Popeye the Sailor, but with ice blue eyes
like his favorite singer, Frank Sinatra. Papa did not have a single tattoo, nor did
he smoke from a pipe, but he was a navy Seabee who was strong, full of pride, and
honest (sometimes too honest)— when he spoke, his voice commanded the room. My mom
followed in his footsteps. Other people’s opinions simply didn’t matter to my mom
and Papa.

Whenever he would visit, Papa always told my mother how important it was for me to
do things myself. He wanted me to be independent and to be treated like any other
kid. This, he believed, was the key for me to live my life to the fullest. Inspirational
articles about overcoming adversity arrived in the mail from him every week. My mom
remembers with particular fondness one about a baseball pitcher who had one arm.
Don’t treat her like she’s different,
Papa would write on little notes with the articles.

“Well,” Mom continued, watching me stand atop the counter, “we’re out of cereal, and
some other stuff, too. Let’s go to the grocery store.”

I hopped down with a big smile, because going to the grocery store meant doing what
none of my other friends could: riding my bike up and down the aisles. It was an activity
that made me feel very, very privileged.

My mother didn’t treat the bike like any sort of treat. It was simply a functional
choice, like many of the decisions she made so matter-of-factly for me. I couldn’t
walk long distances, so I rode.

Our local grocery store, Phillip’s Market, wasn’t nearly as big as the Harris Teeters
of today. We had the same shopping route through the small grocery store each time.
I’d pedal my pink bike past the Kool-Aid, the Coke, and the little plastic barrels
of rainbow-colored drinks, eagerly reaching for them. “They’re nothing but sugar water,”
Mom would say, guiding me away. I always hoped that she’d change her mind on our next
shopping trip.

Occasionally, as I casually steered my way through the store, I’d get an awkward look
from another shopper. I figured they were jealous of my little white basket and colorful
streamers when they had
to use rusted gray metal carts. I had a legitimate mission ahead of me: to seek out
and knock all the cookies I could reach into my basket.

“Don’t go too far,” Mom ordered as I slowly pedaled away from her side. She was busy
in the boring vegetable aisle, stuffing broccoli and carrots into clear plastic bags.

“I won’t. I want to go just over there,” I told her as I bounced on my bike seat and
pointed to the next aisle over. Mom nodded and gave me the okay sign with her fingers.

I pressed firmly on the orange wood blocks that my dad had cut and secured tightly
atop the pedals with black thick rubber bands. My legs were too short to pedal otherwise.

Perusing the aisle, I made a mental checklist of everything I liked before narrowing
down the list to Oreos, chewy oatmeal, double chocolate chunk, and ladyfingers. They
all tasted great with the milk my mom left for me on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator
in a cup with a special plastic lid. The cookies also served as delicious decorations
on the little carousel in the kitchen that Mom called a lazy Susan. Just as I was
ready to start filling up my basket, I ran into some opposition.

An older woman, an unfriendly schoolmarm type with tightly wound gray curls and an
equally stiff and curled upper lip, stood beside me. She narrowed her eyes and grumbled
something that I couldn’t make out. But I got the gist of her gripe— her tone spoke
volumes.

“Awful. Just awful,” she then said, peering down at me. I shrank away and felt scared,
worried that I might get kicked out of the store altogether. As quickly as I could,
I whipped my bike around. My training wheels wobbled back and forth off the ground
as I made the sharp turn to leave the aisle. I didn’t say a word. Instead I fell in
line by my mom’s side.

“Where are your cookies?” she asked.

“I can’t get them,” I said. I used
that
word. The word I was told by Papa never to say, but I said it anyway:
can’t.

“All right,” Mom said, skeptically studying my face. I avoided her eyes.

She kissed my forehead and twirled my ponytail with her fingers. “We’ll get some when
it’s time to pass by there again.” I could tell she didn’t believe me, but I kept
a straight face and pedaled on.

Somewhere between the milk and juice aisles, Mom and I crossed paths with the woman.
I made every excuse I could not to go forward, but my mom cornered me.

“All right, what’s the problem? Why don’t you want to go down this aisle?”

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.