FRESH YARN PRESENTS:

From Your Lips to God's Ears
By Elaine Soloway

PAGE TWO:
I lift myself on my elbows the better to hear the rest of their conversation. Surprisingly, I am rooting for Mother. If a doctor can fix me up, give me a pill to make me taller, like the rest of my classmates, maybe then people would stop patting me on the head as if I were a pet. I want so much to be normal size, not this midget who gets lost in a crowd. Not this baby who has to sit on the Yellow Pages to reach the kitchen table. Not this dwarf perched at a classroom desk, feet never touching the floor. I fall asleep before I know who wins the evening's skirmish, but by morning I learn Mom is victorious.

The day before our appointment with the doctor, Mother says to me, "I think we should do something with your hair. It could use some body." She is holding a box of Toni Home Permanent, and her blue eyes glisten, like those of a mad scientist. Mother has prepped her laboratory: a Pyrex mixing bowl, a pair of cruddy towels, rubber gloves, and the ingredients contained in the Toni kit.

"Sit," she orders, and places the larger of the blighted towels around my shoulders.

"It smells terrible," I say, coughing and pulling the towel up to cover my nose.

"Don't breathe," Mother suggests, as she steadily rolls strands of my hair on plastic curlers, clasps them shut with their elastic bands, then slathers the magic potion on each completed curl.

"Ouch," I complain when she tightens the rolls.

"It hurts to be beautiful," she says.

On Saturday morning as Mother and I are dressing for our trip downtown to see the doctor, I stare at my image in the bathroom mirror and say, "I look like Orphan Annie."

"I probably wound the rollers too tight," Mother admits. "In a few days, the curls will loosen and you'll be gorgeous."

"From your lips to God's ears," I say, making my mother laugh.

In the doctor's office, I gaze at Mother as she fills out a form handed to her by the receptionist. My mother looks as beautiful to me as Hedy Lamarr in the Ziegfeld Girl movie. For the doctor visit, Mother wears plastic Shasta daisies clipped to her small ears and her shirtwaist dress is sky-blue like her eyes and eye shadow. I am dressed in the hated green skirt, black pullover, lumpy shoes, and ankle socks. I rise from my chair and stroll to a mirror that hangs near the coat rack. Standing on tiptoes, I steady myself with my right hand on the back of a chair, then lift my left above my Orphan Annie head. In the illusion, I see myself stretched to average height. Just average, I think, no higher. I suspect Mother concurs and believes if I was taller, I will have better luck in life than she. Maybe Mother thinks a handful of inches will win me a doctor or lawyer, and spare me a grocer and a cramped flat above a store.

A nurse, with a clipboard clasped to her chest, enters the waiting room and says to Mother and me, "The doctor will see you now." She opens the door wide to indicate the path. Mother takes my hand, nervously squeezing my fingers, as if she was the one learning her fate, and not her nine-year-old daughter.

In the examining room, I climb aboard a padded table and squint at the diplomas that line the walls.
Calligraphy and gold seals confirm the medicine man's standing. The nurse leads me to a scale where she raises the bar to gauge my height and moves a balance to find my weight. I return to my place on the cushioned table and stare at a chart that hangs on the wall opposite the doctor's diplomas. Drawings of children, lined up like Russian nesting dolls, hop across the poster. Where do I fit in, I wonder.

"Let's take a look," the doctor says, as he enters the room and closes the door behind him. He studies the clipboard the nurse has handed him, and speaks to Mother in a slow voice, as if she were the fourth grader and not I. "Well," he says, "she is shorter than her age group, but her weight is just right. According to the intake sheet, I see you and your husband are short people. It's unlikely your daughter will grow much taller than either one of you. I don't recommend hormone injections at this time."

"Thank you, doctor," Mother says, "we just wanted to make sure."

As I jump off the examining table, I feel a mixture of disappointment and relief. I am short, like my parents; but not a midget, nor a dwarf, nor a freak. And the doctor says my weight is just right. Mother turns to me, takes my face in her two hands, kisses my forehead, and says loud enough for the departing physician to hear, "I knew you were perfect just the way you were."

I am happy to get her kiss and hear her sugary words. But in my heart, the one beating beneath red satin roses, I know Mother's efforts to transform her only daughter are far from over -- just temporarily stalled.

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