Dwarf: A Memoir (10 page)

“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.

“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 hate 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!
”