Dwarf: A Memoir (13 page)

Tell her she’s wrong!
a little voice howled inside me.
Tell her you can do anything! Tiffanie, say
something!

I said nothing.

Instead, I stood up, and everyone looked away as I walked toward my backpack and then
the door. Behind me, I heard Ms. Hart putting the egg crates back on the shelf. She
had already gone back to business as usual.

I was so angry with myself for allowing everyone in the room to hear what she said
to me, and for being too stunned to respond in any way.

When Mike called me that afternoon, I told him everything through tears and heaving
sobs. Somehow I had managed to put on a fake smile for my mom as she drove me home,
but as soon as I got on the phone with my friend, it all came out. I cried and cried
and told him everything. Mike listened, quietly, until I was done. Then he had just
one request. And despite my hesitation and embarrassment, I made my way downstairs
to hand off the phone.

“Mom? Mike wants to talk to you.”

Like an angry tidal wave, my mother crashed into Marlborough High School the next
morning. Mike had told her everything that I was too embarrassed to share. Her hands
clenched into fists by her hips, my mom demanded to speak to the principal, Mr. Clemens;
the vice principals, Mr. Clancy and Mrs. Carlson; and the head of the athletic department,
Mr. Long. She did not, however, want Ms. Hart anywhere near her.

My father accompanied her on her quest for justice. I was along for the ride, too,
even though I still felt more awkward and upset than vengeful. Once everyone was ready
to meet, we all
piled into a conference room. As far as I was concerned, I was simply going to retell
what had happened and how it made me feel.

When we were all seated, Mr. Long shifted uncomfortably in his chair as he stared
at the floor. He refused to raise his eyes to me as I spoke, or to make eye contact
with my parents. He remained quiet and almost seemed threatened. But one of the vice
principals looked right at me and asked a question that left me feeling sick to my
stomach.

“Ms. Hart has been here for a while,” she began. “Do you think it’s possible that
you misunderstood her?”

“Excuse me?” my mother barked before I could respond. “How can she
misunderstand
something that has never been said to her before?”

My dad didn’t say a word at the conference table. His hands did the talking as they
shook. Gritting his teeth, he picked at his cuticles and then at a paperclip, unfolding
it with red, raw fingers. For a man who lives to fix things, this was the first time
I could remember him really wanting to break something.

“Maybe we should bring Ms. Hart in here, so we can understand her side,” Mr. Clemens
suggested.

“
Her
side?” my mom snarled. “You bring that woman in here, and I can’t promise she’ll
walk out.”

That shut everyone up, and the three administrators sat still, unsure of their next
moves. But I knew mine.

The people I was told to trust and go to when someone hurts you had pretty much turned
their backs on me. They were unwilling to make the right moves to rectify the situation.
The heaviness I felt in the sports medicine room began to fall around me again. I
could feel it closing in. I was done with their meeting. I was done being blamed.

“Can I go to class?”

After a long pause, my dad spoke up.

“You want to go to class? Go ahead.”

The grown-ups across from me, too afraid to face the issue, forced fake smiles as
I slid off my seat. Everyone waited until I was out of the room before the verbal
sparring resumed. Once in the hallway, I paused and covered my mouth with my hand.
I knew the tears were coming but I didn’t want anyone to hear me cry. I felt like
I had been called not only a diseased dwarf but also a liar.

I couldn’t fight for myself. And that made me feel even worse.

I wasn’t really going to class— I just wanted to get out of that room. I walked as
fast as my legs could carry me down the cinder-block hallways. I walked away from
the skinny gray lockers and the class I was supposed to join. I walked until my vision
became clouded with tears and I found myself alone in the girls’ bathroom.

Again.

No one was inside. Aside from the sound of a dripping faucet and my heavy breathing,
everything was calm and quiet. I entered a stall, locked the door, and slid to the
ground, my heart thudding angrily. It felt like Ms. Hart had grabbed me by the back
of the neck, forced me to my knees, and pushed me to stare at myself in a fun-house
mirror. She made me look at myself in a way that I had never considered.

Did others always see me this way? Why had they kept it from me? Did the whole school
know what had happened in the sports medicine room? The questions drove me mad. My
stomach churned, my body felt like it was on fire, and all the blood drained out of
my face as I lurched toward the toilet bowl to vomit.

I heaved until I had nothing left in me. Then I made my way over to the sink to wash
my hands. Out of habit, I used the
handicapped sink. Yet another way that I was different from everyone else, I thought,
marveling at the fact that this had never really made an impression on me before.
I didn’t even think about it previously, just like average-size people probably don’t
think about which sink they use. Just as with my pair of tongs, my bathroom habits
weren’t something I thought a lot about. I glanced back at the stall marked with a
handicapped sign, the toilet paper holder that was screwed to the wall lower than
the rest, the lowered lock on the stall door, and even the damn soap dispenser. Everything
was different, adjusted for
handicapped
people. Like me.

My stomach began to burn again with anger. And in that moment by the sink, I promised
myself I would never, ever be told I could not do something because of my handicap.
This would be the
last
time I would be singled out, excluded, pushed aside, or deemed unable to participate
in something I wanted to do. I was ready to adapt— clearly, the world wasn’t going
to do that for me. I was ready to do what it took to get the life that I wanted. I
was ready to fight and go to war against dwarfism. More surgery would be the only
way.

That night, over dinner, I told my mom what I’d decided. “I want to go through it
again,” I said simply. Everyone in my house knew what “it” was. And she agreed. My
dad was against it and he reacted as he did with anything that upset him to the core.
He just walked away, acting like it was only a fleeting idea that would run its course.
My mom and I were instantly on the same page, ready, together, to embark on the bone-lengthening
path once again.

But this time there was one major difference. I wasn’t going to settle for the conventional
amount of growth. This time I was going to make the pain worth it. The problem would
be finding a surgeon who would do the procedure on
my
terms.

No Limits

One of the “before” shots Mom insisted on taking the morning of my bone-lengthening
surgery.

“I
F I ONLY
wanted three inches, I’d go buy a pair of platform shoes,” I told Dr. Shapiro, my
voice sounding more emotional than I’d intended. My mom and I had scheduled a meeting
with him about undergoing more lengthening surgeries, and I’d been looking forward
to it for weeks. But my conservative surgeon wasn’t budging.

I sighed and looked around the room, plotting my next move. The conversation felt
like a chess game. Children’s Hospital Boston was under renovation, and it hardly
looked like the same place from my childhood. I had bigger plans now.

My efforts to persuade Dr. Shapiro for more than those measly three inches were going
nowhere, and I was frustrated. He had
been my orthopedic surgeon for all my life. I had grown to love him and trust him,
but today, he was becoming just another obstacle. Not unlike a parent concerned for
his child, Dr. Shapiro was fixated on the complications that could occur. He droned
on and on about nerve injuries, delay in or failure of bone regeneration, muscle contractions,
and premature bone consolidation. These were real concerns, of course: the hope in
bone-lengthening surgery— not the guarantee, as I was often reminded— is that after
the bone is broken and stretched apart, the body will fill in the gap. But I’d heard
this about a million times before. After a while, his words began to fade and run
together. His mouth was still moving, but it was like Charlie Brown’s teacher talking
in the cartoon, and all I could hear was unintelligible, garbled noise. I was so fixated
on the liberating possibilities that I was more than willing to gamble for what I
wanted.

Back then, bone-lengthening surgery was still considered to be radical. Not many doctors
knew about it in the mid-’90s, and if they did, they didn’t want to perform it since
the procedure had not been perfected.

I couldn’t care less. Dr. Shapiro agreed to perform another round of lengthening on
me, but he was very clear that he would not go beyond the recommended three inches.
It was that or nothing. For me, going through so much pain again for that little wasn’t
worth it. He left me with no choice. Mom and I said good-bye.

The next day, after eight hours of school and homework, she and I sat down at the
kitchen table to have a snack together and discuss other doctors who might be able
to perform the surgery the way
I
wanted it. There was Dr. Paley in Baltimore, whom we’d met with when I was little,
but since he hadn’t been the right fit for the first round of lengthening, we knew
we had to look further.

“I was talking to Linda Johnson the other day during lunch,” Mom said over our string
cheese and apple slices. Linda was her friend at UMass who was also a pediatric nurse.
“She asked me how you were doing and if we were still going forward with lengthening.”

“What did you say?” I asked eagerly.

“I told her we were looking for a new doctor. She said we have a new surgeon at UMass,
a Dr. Mortimer, and he does lengthening. He’s from Montreal. Want me to make an appointment?”

I dropped my snack and stretched my arms out toward her.

“Yes!”

A couple of weeks later, Mom and I hit the road in her Jeep Cherokee, taking in a
pink-hued sky as the sun began its slow nightly descent. As we coasted down the Massachusetts
highway, with inexplicably little traffic, toward the UMass Medical Center, I felt
like it was perfect timing for a new beginning. In my mind, we were literally driving
toward my future.

The meeting with Dr. Mortimer meant so much, and it would determine even more. If
it went well, I’d be that much closer to the sheer freedom of driving without leg
extensions wired into my dream car. To shopping in clothing stores that weren’t geared
toward little girls, to throwing away my short, frayed jeans, and to ditching that
damn stool.

“What are you thinking?” Mom asked as she drove. Her hands were steady and calm on
the wheel despite the seriousness of the meeting awaiting us. She glanced over at
me, waiting for my response, but I didn’t know how to answer. My heart was racing
as I daydreamed about what could be my new reality.

I glanced down at my feet, jutting out just barely beyond the edge of the seat in
our Jeep. Closing my eyes, I imagined the pressure under my ankles from the edge of
the car seat disappearing.
I envisioned my knees stretching over the seat edge, feeling the weight of my feet
as they dangled below me.

“Nothing much,” I told her.

By the time we were seated outside his office, the wait had become unbearable. All
sorts of scenarios danced around in my head as I imagined our meeting. What if he
said no like Dr. Shapiro? I couldn’t think of any other options. Then again, he could
say yes. . . .

“Nervous?” Mom asked.

“Anxious,” I replied. I fidgeted and shifted in my chair as she perused the pamphlets
on the wall. The hard plastic edge of the seat dug harder under my ankles and created
a throb that matched the growing beat at my temples.