There
was once a woman who wanted a little girl. Her desires were specific; she did
not want a child who would grow up, or require a great deal of care. She wanted
someone dainty, a girl with silky blonde hair, a child
she could keep and never have to share with anyone else.
This woman was a widow. Her late husband had been a scientist who was not
afraid to sell his research to drug companies; this was not in the interest of
money, but to satisfy his endless curiosity. He worked day and night, until his
heart finally gave out. His one distraction was his wife. In her youth, she'd
been lovelier than the most delicate flora or fauna. Her eyes were slate-blue, her skin like heavy cream, and her hair was as fine
and slippery as silk. She had little interest in science. She liked fashion
magazines and fairy tales. Before he died, the scientist left his wife a gift.
What she wanted, more than anything, she told him, was a miniature of herself. A little girl as beautiful as she was the day she
met her husband at the Botanical Gardens. She wanted her very own Thumbelina.
Little Tina had her beginnings in a petri dish. The
mechanics of her creation were a mystery to her mother. But oh, what a gift she
was! What a magnificent inheritance! She came tightly wound in bubble wrap,
slumbering as sweetly as Sleeping Beauty. The widow woke her with three pale
droplets of a chemical compound her husband had left her. The tiny creature's
eyes fluttered for a few minutes, and then she stretched her slender arms and
yawned. She was a beautiful creation. The widow marveled at the sweet purple
shading of her eyelids, the soft waves of her cornsilk
hair, the tiny pink lips, daintier than miniature rose
petals. She was more beautiful than any porcelain doll. She was the widow's
perfect likeness, in every way but one, of course.
She was not as small as Thumbelina. She was not thumb-sized, but doll-sized.
Large enough for doll clothes, large enough to be combed and coddled without
getting battered and bruised. But still, she was small enough to bathe in a
soap dish and drink from a thimble. In her hands the thimble was a goblet. The
widow would have preferred a perfect Thumbelina but she understood her
husband's choice. He was a practical man.
At night, Little Tina slept tucked away in her mother's bedroom, inside a
powder blue Victorian dollhouse. Her first bed was a walnut canopy, but she
soon discovered that a large kitchen matchbox, lined with cotton balls, was
much more comfortable. During the day, she played on the kitchen table. Her mother
created a miniature world for her there, a duplication of the pretty table in
the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. The woman placed a Wedgwood plateful of
water in the center of the table. Around this plate were wreaths of fresh
flowers with their stems in the water. Tiny Tina's mother changed the flowers
almost daily. When she didn't have time to buy daisies or tulips at the
florist, she brought in milkweeds from the wildflower garden outside the
window. Tiny Tina loved the milkweed's purple flowers most of all; when she
waded through their forest, she imagined herself outside the window, in the
field below.
There was a television directly across the table, on the kitchen countertop.
Sometimes, Tina's mother left it on for her to watch. Tina was not strong
enough to press the remote control buttons herself, so she couldn't select the
shows. She preferred it that way; life just seemed to happen and she watched
it. She learned that men sounded deeper than women, and that they did not cry
as often. When they loved, they were sometimes foolish and violent. There were
game shows, talk shows, and cartoons. Tina's favorite shows were the ones about
love and intrigue. Her mother told her these were called soap operas. She
practiced talking to the characters. "I love you, can't you see that
Stefano?" She told the tall dark man who stole gold cubes from a plane in
Tina practiced kissing a flower. Thumbelina's love had been a flower-prince.
Tina imagined herself with Stefano, the dark prince, but he was flat. He was
only dots and lights, a man reduced in size because of the television. In life,
he would be more gargantuan than her mother.
The people on the screen were larger than Tina, but small enough for her to
take in at one glance. Tina liked their vivid colors, their many voices. They
moved in and out of landscapes she'd never seen - deserts, beaches, snow-capped
mountains. Soon, the television people began to seem more real to her than her
own mother, who often asked Tina to be silent as she dressed her in doll
clothes and plastic shoes. Her mother told her the people were fictional; that
meant they were not real. But they argued, they kissed, they teased one
another, and came back to do it all over again every week.
Tina's mother loved her, but she did not talk to her the way the fictional
characters spoke to one another. Her mother was more like the pretty women in
the shorter stories, selling lemon wax cleaners, bubbling drinks, and Sales.
"I would like a puppy," Little Tina told her mother. She'd seen one
on television. He carried a squeaking blue ball in his mouth.
"Puppies are much too large," her mother told her, "A puppy
would crush your tiny bones. He wouldn't know any better."
"Why am I Tiny Tina? I would rather be called
Tina," she told her mother.
"You are Tiny Tina because you're so small. You will always be my Tiny
Tina," her mother said. She combed out Tina's pretty yellow hair and
pulled it back with a scrap of lace. If Tina was still, she might give her a
button from the sewing box to use as a plate or a Frisbee.
When the television was left off, Tina watched the milkweeds blowing in the
field. The window world began to interest her more than the stories on the
television. This world outside changed almost every day. Sometimes, the sun
burned down on the tall grass, and light green insects, yellow-eyed lizards, or
shiny brown roaches climbed the screen outside the glass. Once, a red squirrel
with a swirling tail stood upright in the window, staring at Tina with eyes as
warm and brown as the nut in his hands. His hands were small, almost as small
as Tina's, although he was much longer and fatter than Tina. Thumbelina could talk
to animals, to sparrows, frogs, moles and insects. But Tina's mother told her
that was fictional. Tina would never speak to animals. She did not come from a
flower, she came from a scientist.
One day, Tina's mother brought a man home with her. He wore a long white coat,
and his beard was so long, Tina could have waded in its fur. He was fascinated
with Tina. He called her a beautiful specimen, and asked her mother if he could
inspect her. Then he undressed Tina. He put her inside her matchbox and took her
outside. Tina shivered. She was frightened of the man. She did not ask him for
her cotton balls. Then he took her to a long white room. The room was filled
with glass cages, and inside the cages were what Tina recognized from pictures
as white rats.
"Is this my new home?" Tina asked the man. He looked down at Tina and
cleared his throat. Long red hairs sprouted from his nose.
"I will take you back to Marla soon," he said. "I'm just going
to run some tests on you."
He ran a flat metal stick over her body, then spent a
long time looking at glass slides through the giant metal machine he told her
was a microscope. After he was done, he fed Tina something sweet from a
medicine dropper. She felt it slide down her throat; it tasted a bit like the
honey her mother gave her sometimes with the silver baby spoon. Tina fell into
a deep, dark sleep. When she awoke she was back in her dollhouse, tucked inside
the matchbox. She could hear her mother snoring in the giant canopy outside her
dollhouse windows. But there was another sound, a deeper, rumbling snore. Tina
knew it must be the man with the red beard and long nose hairs. She shuddered.
He, too, must have been a scientist.
The next morning Tina's mother did not open the dollhouse to wake Tina and
bathe her in the porcelain soap dish. Thunderous sounds came from her mother's
bed; the man grunted and groaned, and a sweet, heavy smell filled the room.
After awhile, Tina heard their murmurs. Poor damaged darling, her mother
said. It would seem cruel though....would make sense if she even had the life
span of a dog...
"You should have settled for a Bichon Frise," the scientist said.
"Don't joke, Harold, " Tina's mother
whispered. Her voice was husky and clotted as the honey droplets that still
clung to Tina's dry throat.
Tina stayed in the dark dollhouse for what felt like years. She did not know
how long she had lived. Perhaps her life span was that of an insect's; she'd
read about insects in the Encyclopedia her mother had left open for her on the
table.
Finally, Tina's mother lifted her from the house and carried her into the
kitchen. "I'm very sad," she told Tina, "you will disappear
soon. I will miss you so much, little one. You were my prettiest pet."
They watched the sunset through the glass together. Her mother took out a box
of satin ball gowns. She dressed and undressed, dressed and undressed Tina.
Tina balled her small hands into fists.
"I would like to watch the rain, Mother," she said, "I'd like to
look through my window. I'm tired of dressing."
Tina's mother snapped a fuschia ballgown
across the table as if it were a rubber band.
"This is hard for me too, Little Tina. Now be a good girl and let me see
you in your silver Cinderella dress. I had this made especially for you. Make
me happy for a little while."
Tina didn't answer. She scrambled, naked, to the windowsill and pressed her
pale body against the chilly windowpane. It made her shiver, but it was not an
unpleasant sensation.
She knew this woman was not her mother. As the widow spoke, her voice began to
change. Soon, it was only a light buzzing inside Tina's ear. The widow
blurred into smeary shapes and colors, then seemed to
float away. The rain pelted, and water droplets grew into giant glass globes.
Then, they were sparkling planets. Tina felt her whole body tingle, felt
herself slipping into and through the glass. She heard the sweet hum of
the spinning raindrop planets, and soon, more dancing shapes surrounded her.
She felt herself lifted as if on the wings of Thumbelina's kind sparrow.
She wasn't disappearing. She was only growing smaller.
CLAUDIA SMITH lives and writes in
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