Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 9, 1993 TAG: 9307090045
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
She straightens her postcard display, tucks a stray hair under her hairnet and leans on her cane.
"Some people laugh at me, because I am so small," Tasha says "Sometimes it bothers me, because I like everybody."
Tasha was born in Haiti 39 years ago. At age 2, she stopped growing, and now measures about 28 inches.
She is billed as "The World's Smallest Woman" at the Salem Fair, but looks nothing like the buxom beauty painted on the show's facade.
For $1, fairgoers can see the real Tasha - a little person, dark black skin, eyes that shine like onyx and a generous smile that reveals her crooked buck teeth.
People file by. They stare, they fidget, they are speechless. Tasha waves, smiles and asks if they want to buy a postcard.
It seems to break the spell of disbelief and discomfort, and most people respond either by dropping money in her donation box or asking her questions.
Some people are rude, and ask obscene questions about her sex life. "I cry," Tasha says. But sometimes she gets angry, and smacks her cane against the wall of her display area to scare them, she says.
"When you're mean, go - " she says, jerking her thumb toward the exit. The bigger-than-average ticket taker doubles as a bouncer in such circumstances.
Tasha has been working carnival sideshows in the U.S. for 20 years because she could not find work in her native country. "Everything is too tall for me," she explains. She has five brothers and two sisters, all 6-foot-something. "Me?" she says, and lowers her hand almost to the floor. And shrugs. "God made everybody different."
First she joined a traveling troupe called the Little People Minstrel Show. For the past four years she has worked with Four C Productions, says manager Billy Thomas.
She is one of their top attractions, he says, because she is real - unlike the Headless Woman and Gorilla Girl, two other Four C Production shows at the fair this year. ("It's show business," Thomas says. "It's like going to the movies. You lie a little." He does admit that the Headless Woman, whose job can be all-out boring, trades places with Gorilla Girl sometimes.)
Thomas would not say how much Tasha is paid, but that "She goes home very rich - for her country." Most of her earnings come from selling postcards of herself, donations and from people taking pictures of her, for which she charges.
Tasha is saving up for an electric wheelchair that costs $5,000 new, or $4,000 used. So far, she has a few hundred dollars, she says.
Nerves in her lower back have tangled, causing paralysis in her legs. She gets around with the help of her husband, Renet Pierre Antoine, 25, an average-sized and quiet man, also from Haiti.
Together, they live in a cramped trailer behind the stage. On a recent afternoon, before the fair opened, Tasha took time out to do some grocery shopping and wash dishes.
If she gets too tired to work, they close the show temporarily while she rests, she says.
She is happy with her life, she says, and is not bothered by people paying money to look at her. "You white, I'm black. Same blood, same God," she says, gesturing toward the sky.
"God made everybody different."
by CNB