Dwarf: A Memoir (22 page)

Before I knew it, that surgery was completed and I was waking up with new pins in
my thighs. The fog of anesthesia clouded my brain and I couldn’t tell where one thought
ended and another began. But I knew I was in the recovery room and I knew the recovery
room nurse holding my hand was Kathy Sheridan. Her presence automatically calmed me
and I felt safe from all the chemicals that took over my body. Instead of using a
set of metal half-moons like the ones that had been around my shins, Dr. Mortimer
had attached the same device to my thighs that Dr. Shapiro had used on my arms years
before. A black bar, the thickness of a remote control, fixed along the outside of
each of my thighs, anchored into the femurs.

“I feel heavy,” I said to Kathy through dry lips. My throat felt coarse, as if I’d
been screaming.

“How, honey?” she asked, guiding ginger ale to my mouth and helping me sip.

“I feel like . . . I’m stuck. Can’t move.”

She shifted the IV and heart monitor wires around me and adjusted the blankets. I
hated being caught in wires.

“Still?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m stuck.” I felt like my legs were being tugged deeper and deeper into something,
but I didn’t know what. I knew this sensation was real and it wasn’t my imagination.
I was definitely stuck.

Kathy gently pulled my blankets down and finally saw what I’d been feeling. The tips
of my pins had embedded themselves into the mattress. My legs were truly stuck in
the bed. That was the first sign that this phase of my bone lengthening would be entirely
different from the last. I’d have to sleep on a tough nylon air bed now. Using my
walker was also different. There wasn’t enough room to move inside of it. The pins
jutting out from my
thighs hit the bars of the walker in all the wrong places. Crutches were the other
option. This demanded a level of skill and balance that took me weeks to perfect.

“Now that you can move easier, you need to get outside. The weather is too beautiful,”
Mom insisted one sunny afternoon, afraid that I’d suffer from surgically imposed cabin
fever.

The breeze felt nice as I stepped onto our farmer’s porch. The flowers in Mom’s garden
were beginning to sprout. I wondered whether I’d grow faster than the roses.

Mom brought out some iced tea and helped me sit down and extend my legs out in front
of me. Together, we watched several cars and the occasional truck enter our street
and pull into a neighboring driveway. It was good to get out, even if it was only
to sit in our front yard. Then I heard the garage door open and Dad pulled the Grand
Prix out into the driveway for a good wash and waxing, a little ritual of his in the
warmer months.

I watched him put the car in park, then get out and feed a green hose into an orange
bucket. Soapy suds crested over the rim and spilled down to the pavement.

“I can’t wait to wash my own car,” I said between tiny sips of cold tea.

“Soon enough,” Mom said.

“I can’t wait to
drive
that car and get it dirty,” I added with a laugh.

Mom didn’t respond right away. She swiveled toward me, practically popping out of
her seat.

“Why wait?”

Confused, I watched her stand up, take four big steps to the end of the porch, and
lean over the railing.

“Gerry!” she shouted over the gushing water. “Gerry! Stop! Wait! Come up here for
a second.”

“Why?”

“Just come up here for a second, would ya?”

Reluctantly, he turned off the water and climbed the stairs up to the front door.

“What?”

Mom addressed us both. “Tiff, how would you like to try and reach the pedals now?”

“Reach the pedals of what?” Dad asked.

It was a crazy idea. But it was brilliant.

“Oh no. No, no,
no
!” Dad shook his head in disapproval. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Mom ignored his protests and picked up my walker, rushing it over to the car. I outstretched
my arms, ready to be picked up.

“You’ve lost your mind! You can’t get in the car, c’mon!” Dad shouted.

Hurry up and just grab me! I thought, waving my arms at my mom.

“Robin!” Dad shouted.

“
Gerry!
” Mom mimicked.

“She can’t get in the car— what if she breaks a leg?” He was getting more upset by
the minute. But his question was pretty hilarious.

“Hello? Have we met? Broken legs, meet my dad. Dad, meet my already broken legs,”
I said with a snort. Mom let out a hearty laugh of her own.

Dad realized this was a battle he could not win. Reluctantly, he walked by my mom
and scooped me up in his arms, carrying me to the car. Mom opened the door and I took
in the scent of Armor All on the faux leather interior. The gray fabric of the seats
felt warm from the sun beating down on them through the windshield. It was all just
spectacular. I felt as if I had never been in a car before.

“Watch out,” Mom said and she slammed the door. I had plenty of room to sit between
the door and the center console while allowing extra room for my pins. I sat staring
out the windshield and gripped the steering wheel, my breath shaky with excitement.

Mom sat down in the passenger seat and dangled her car keys in front of me. “Start
it up.”

It was more exhilarating than I ever could have imagined while watching those BMW
commercials. I didn’t waste any time— I jammed that sucker in as fast as I could and
turned. The sound was like excitement personified.

“Can you reach the pedals?”

I hesitated, scared at the thought that maybe I couldn’t reach. But I lifted my right
leg anyway and hoped for the best. My foot just barely touched. “Not yet.”

“That’s all right. It will get there.”

Week after week, Dad carried me down the cellar stairs to the Grand Prix. No longer
did I just sit on the front porch daydreaming and sipping iced tea while staring at
the roses. Instead, I turned the key to the ignition and felt the hum of my future
down the road.

I measured my progress— one millimeter at a time— until the moment arrived: I could
reach the pedals. The pulsating ache under my ankles was now a distant memory. I pushed
a button to lower the windows and then let out a scream like none other.

“I did it!”

Mom rushed down the porch steps, my old Cyndi Lauper tape in hand. It was time to
have fun. In the driveway I practiced three-point turns and fixing my mirrors. Then,
with Cyndi blaring full bore out the windows, I took off down the driveway and down
my street.

The excitement just kept coming in the days that followed. Shortly thereafter, I took
a therapeutic soak in our hot tub in the cellar after a particularly grueling exercise
session. I sat in the water, allowing it to relieve the tightness in my tired muscles.
My legs felt buoyant and my body warm as I enjoyed the knocking massage of the jets
on my muscles. My skin was numb from stretching the nerves near the surface, but the
bubbles seemed to kick those same nerve endings into gear and my legs felt alive again.

I thought back to my driving adventure days earlier and wondered what would happen
if I tried to cross my legs. It was such a simple, unconscious movement that I witnessed
others do time and time again. And it was another small but significant move that
I had long since accepted I would never be able to make.

Or could I?

As the foam churned around me, I lifted my right leg up and gently dropped it over
my left. It worked. Laughing wildly, I yelled at the top of my lungs.

“Mom!”

She rushed into the cellar with her eyes wide, sighing dramatically when she saw that
I was okay.

“You
have
to stop doing this,” she said as sternly as she could through a smile. “I think there’s
something wrong when you scream like that!”

“Look!” I shouted, pointing into the water.

Mom tapped a button for the bubbles to cease and she peered into the water as the
surface settled. “Oh my God!” she screamed.

“I know!”

“You’re crossing your legs!”

“I know!”

“You couldn’t do that before!” She had tears in her eyes.

“I know,
I know
!” I shouted, gesturing for the phone. “I have to call Mike! He has to know about
this!”

He sounded tired and sapped of energy from the moment he picked up.

“Can you come over?” I asked. He told me he had just woken up.

“It’s seven at night. Were you already sleeping?” I prodded.

“Long night,” he replied.

“Are you all right?” I lost track of why I had originally called. Something was wrong
with him and it worried me.

“Babes, you worry too much. I’ll be over tomorrow. Promise. And congratulations.”

It was a full week before Mike made good on that promise. I heard his pickup truck
in our driveway. Then I heard him cut the engine and slam the door behind him and
walk across the lawn, stopping below my bedroom.

“Babes!” he called up to my window, pelting it with mulch chips. “Open the garage!”

“No!”

He paused, shocked, before yelling back.

“Why the hell not?”

“I’m mad at you!”

“Why?”

“You missed some of the best moments of my life that I worked hard for!” I screamed
from my bed. “And the worst thing is, you don’t even care.”

“I told you I’d come over.”

“That was over a week ago!”

More mulch chips smacked against the glass. “I’m here now. I obviously care— open
the garage!”

I gave in. I needed to see him. I missed him and couldn’t deny it.

I clicked the garage door opener and waited excitedly for him to appear in my doorway.
With the garage door still rolling shut, he appeared. I had positioned myself on the
edge of the bed in shorts and a T-shirt, legs dangling over the side to reveal my
progress. I was planning to walk over to the blue chair at the other end of the room
with my walker to further show off, but the look on Mike’s face stopped me. We’d been
talking on the phone, but we hadn’t seen each other in person since my sixteenth birthday
party in my full-length dress. That was eight months ago.

The sight of me now was too much for him to handle. He’d changed a lot since my party,
too: Mike had gotten his license and another new girlfriend, but he seemed to lose
interest in his beloved dirt bikes and he decided he wasn’t going to college right
away. There were new changes all around, but my body wasn’t a good one, as far as
he was concerned.

“Why won’t you look at me?” I asked, inching my way to the chair, lifting one heavy
leg at a time and pushing my body forward.

His gaze was fixed on the floor. He wouldn’t watch me walk.

“Can you cover your thighs?” he asked, still not looking away.

“Why?”

“I don’t want to see this.”

“See what?”

“
That
. You, struggling and everything. Cover them. Please?”

“
This
is what I wanted to show you, though. I can reach things now.” I made sure to make
my tone upbeat and light to show him I wasn’t suffering. I wanted to show him the
pain had mostly faded, replaced by feelings of independence and accomplishment.

“That’s great. You’re a real live girl now,” he said, still refusing to look at my
legs.

“What’s with the attitude, Geppetto?”

“I wish you’d accept yourself for who you are.”

“This surgery has nothing to do with accepting myself. It has to do with living my
life.”

“You were living your life.”

“Oh my God! I feel like I’m arguing with my dad!”

“I don’t want to argue. It’s not why I came over.”

“If you didn’t want to see this, then why did you come over?” I demanded, fighting
back tears. I wanted to do more than show him some examples of the independence I
had gained. I wanted to share my goals with him, like attending the prom. And I wanted
him to be my date.

He didn’t let me get that far. He just hugged me, said, “I love you,” and left.

As the holiday season of 1997 approached, I was a full fourteen inches taller. After
the four inches I’d gained in my legs as a kid, I’d added another six inches in my
shins on the second go-round, and four more inches in my thighs. At four feet, ten
inches, I could reach just about everything in the house (and on my body). For about
three months, the pins stayed in my thighs in order to allow the new bone to develop
in the space I’d created. During this time, I took my SATs from the blue recliner—
a first for the test proctor. “This has to be the most comfortable setting I’ve ever
seen a student take the SATs,” he told me. Clearly, he had no clue. During my sessions
with Sandy, we perfected my college essays and applications.

Once the new bone had filled in, the surgery to remove the pins in my femurs went
by in the blink of an eye. In the recovery room I felt weightless, almost like I was
floating above my bed. The blankets fell over the sides of my legs and for the first
time in years,
I could feel the scratchy fabric against the thin skin of my entire legs. As a souvenir,
Errol handed me a hazardous materials bag filled with the stainless steel pins that
had been inside my legs. I felt compelled to roll over on my side and sleep, to enjoy
the sensation of dozing off in a position other than on my back. With an audible giggle,
I rolled over and enjoyed the sweetest sleep in years. I did my best to ignore the
fact that I felt a slight pop in my left leg.