By August 4, 1876, a mere eight weeks after arriving in the United States, Lucía’s magnetic presence in New York City had created newspaper madness. Papers from Philadelphia to Kansas City ran articles describing her singular proportions. On August 10th, the New York Sun described Lucía as though she were a newly discovered species:
A large number of physicians went to Tony Pastor’s Theatre yesterday to see Lucía Zarate. They measured her and ascertained her height to be twenty-one inches, her feet three inches long, her legs below the knee four inches in circumference, and her hands and inch and a quarter broad. She was not weighed but her weight is said to be five pounds. Her features are Spanish and her complexion dark.
These articles pointed out that all of Lucía’s measurements would be certified by a team of well-known physicians: Drs. Alexander Mott*, J.L. Little*, J.M. Merrill*, E. Hudson*, and S. Roof*. The listing of the names of the doctors in the newspaper stories gave a certain stamp of approval to the uniqueness of Lucía Zárate: it authenticated her as a bona fide human miracle, and guaranteed audiences an exclusive one-time opportunity to witness this medical sui generis.
Newspapers nationwide couldn’t resist such a phenomenal news story and hunted down other specific details of Lucía’s appearance to supplement their coverage. On August 25, 1876, the Interior Journal of Stanford, Kentucky commented:
These visitors said she seemed perfect in structure, healthy, and intelligent. She understands and talks Spanish and a few words of English.
Despite the presence of a pack of newshounds at the Tony Pastor Theatre, there to witness the scientific process taking place in a public theatre, not a single one of the reporters present at the medical exam could detect Zoila’s nerves and deep, unsettling sense of foreboding. She stood to one side while the physicians probed and prodded Lucía, trying to keep her face as expressionless as possible. But in reality Zoila wanted to throw rocks at them, to scare them away: in their swallowtail coats they reminded her of the black crows that pecked at the juiciest pomegranates back in Paplanta. Zoila could sense something foul in the air, the feral scent of opportunists circling Lucía, like the vanilla bean hustlers that crowded the curing houses every spring to take advantage of the Totonacs and their sweet-smelling, vanilla beans.
The more Zoila remembered the steamy negotiations inside the vanilla-curing houses in Paplanta, the more drained she felt. August in New York City was humid and hot, and the tempers of the men around her reflected the most extreme summer weather conditions. Zoila folded her arms at her bosom and hugged herself. She wanted to experience her father’s audacity once more, to hear his outrageous comments, to observe him again at his bold, sassy best.
But in her distress, Zoila realized that she had smothered his memory. All she could do now was stand motionless against the wall, her arms dangling at her sides. Her Veracruz swagger was no match, she knew, for the chutzpah of these brash New Yorkers.
When Zoila and Lucía had arrived in New York City, the Yankee agent had unceremoniously turned them over to Lucía’s manager.
“This here’s the Mexican midget,” the Yankee had said, patting Lucía’s head. “And this here is Zoila, her nanny—or should I say her she-wolf!”
He’d punched Zoila’s arm with mock-playful force, and the pain of the punch almost made her cry out. Zoila’s first instinct was to pull the dagger from her bosom and defend herself, but Lucía’s woeful look cautioned her from jumping into action. The Yankee agent gave her a condescending sneer and kept talking.
“And Mr. Francis Uffner, here,” the Yankee agent droned, pointing to the slim man staring at Lucía, “is the boss of the midgets, you hear, Zoila?”
Zoila opened her mouth to ask for clarification on this last-minute change of agents, but Francis Uffner lunged at her and pinched her full lips shut with his bony fingers.
“I hear you’ve always got a mouthful to say, girlie, but I ain’t hearing any of it.” He spat out his words, and Zoila recoiled. “You’re here stateside to get the Mexican midget to do as I say. Got that?”
The Yankee agent howled with laughter, shook hands with Francis Uffner, and left the room without any further explanation.
Zoila’s blood rushed to her head and she felt her jugular vein throb, as if poison rather than blood coursed her veins. All she could do was nod at Francis Uffner until he released his grip on her plump swelling lips. Lucía was clamped onto Zoila’s leg, shivering at the sight of the teardrop rolling down Zoila’s cheek. From Lucía’s low vantage point, Zoila looked like a Veracruz lobster fighting to escape the boiling cauldron. She felt so scared that she started to whimper.
Francis Uffner knelt down and pinched Lucía’s cheek, his face twisted into a smile.
“I don’t give a hoot if she cries,” he hissed, “but I don’t ever want to see no crocodile tears from you. You’re here to entertain people. Comprende?”
The memory of that day always made Zoila shudder. Today, in the theatre, she felt just as helpless and silenced as she did when Francis Uffner grabbed her mouth. The doctors’ methodical measurements of Lucía seemed to take ages. When they lifted her skirt to measure her hips, legs, and waist, Zoila was mortified for her tiny charge. She approached Dr. Mott, but stopped herself at the last moment, just as she was about to yank him by his black coat tails. It wasn’t the right thing to do: Zoila knew that, instinctively. With her strength and determination she could have easily dragged Dr. Mott to the ground, but at what price? She’d been humiliated by all the North Americans she had met thus far. Despite her tough armadillo exterior, a crack of vulnerability started to widen within Zoila.
At first Zoila thought that her objection to the doctors in attendance was due to her ongoing anxiety at finally being in New York City, the city of her dreams. The doctors’ jabbered and huddled in a secret cabal, forming decisions that would dictate Lucía’s future. If they confirmed her measurements, then Lucía would be recognized as the smallest and lightest woman on earth. The other men in attendance paced the theatre, their anxious faces and twitchy gestures revealing their own apprehension at the verdict. What the doctors announced would determine whether they made or lost fortunes exhibiting Lucía throughout North America and Europe.
As the doctors continued with the minutiae of their measurements of Lucía’s body, Zoila stood frozen in place close to her tiny ward. The doctors murmured among themselves, verbally dissecting Lucía’s body. In the far corner of the room, a coterie of men whispered about profit margins, promoting, venues, and ticket sales. Their words floated anxiously from one corner of the stuffy theater to the other, while the journalist present shuffled their feet with impatience.
Only the theatre’s owner, Tony Pastor*, the son of Spanish immigrants, dared to interfere with the doctors. He strolled over to Lucía and greeted her in fluent Spanish.
“Hola, muñeca,” he said, extending his right hand. “Aren’t you just a darling little doll?”
Lucía shook his hand and began giggling and acting silly, oblivious to the throng of doctors, agents, journalists, and hangers-on. Her eyes darted from left to right as though she were following the flight of the bees that pollinated the vanilla orchids back home. In an instant Lucía was a twirling top of hyperactivity. Zoila stood quietly while Lucía ran from person to person, trying to grab hold of the doctor’s tape measure and chattering to the journalists in rapid-fire Spanish. The crowd’s laughter at her antics encouraged Lucía, and when she saw a man’s silk hat on a chair, she jumped inside, much to everyone’s amazement. The Eaton Democrat reported on the incident for their readers:
Her activity is incessant. She played pranks with the physicians, and talked fast in Spanish. She stepped into a high silk hat, crouched down, and was out of sight, excepting her head. She squeezed one of her pliable little hands through a rather large finger ring. The hand of an adult made an ample seat for her. Standing on a chair, and holding to the back of it, her fingers stuck through the spaces in the cane work—holes that just admitted the passage of a small pen holder.
Only when Lucía grew tired of this frenzied activity did she allow the doctors to continue measuring her. Despite her fretfulness, Zoila attempted to intercept the doctors when they unceremoniously lifted Lucía’s skirt indecently high to measure the length of her leg from the hip.
“The circumference of her head is thirteen inches, and the circumference of her thigh is four and three quarter inches,” announced Dr. Mott, as if he were in an operating theatre. There was a collective gasp of amazement.
Dr. Mott asked Dr. Hudson to help him measure the circumference of Lucía’s calf and then, once again, announced her measurements.
“The circumference of the left calf is four inches. And the length of leg from hip—”
“Sirs, is it necessary to inspect Lucía as if she were a barnyard animal?” Zoila spoke too loudly. “Can’t you can see she’s a perfectly healthy girl?”
“How dare you direct any question about our scientific procedures?” scoffed the doctor who was writing down Lucía’s measurements.
The second doctor, Dr. Hudson, was even more direct with Zoila. “Go back to the corner of the room and shut up. You’re just her nanny. Let her father speak.”
At the mention of Señor Zárate’s name, Zoila’s knees buckled. She leaned against the back wall of the room feeling faint and alarmed; her heart pounded with trepidation at the thought that somehow Señor Zárate had found his way to New York City. If he managed to show up in this vast metropolis, then surely the Veracruz sorcerer who could outwit Señor easily, could also be hiding behind the theatre’s velvet curtains, wanting a cut of her earnings— or worse.
Back in Veracruz, Señor Zárate had proved to be an insensitive opportunist, ready to use his daughter’s miniscule dimensions to make a fortune for himself. His presence in New York City presaged nothing but a wave of troubles for Zoila and Lucía. He would interfere with Zoila’s tutoring of Lucía, and he would incite a groundswell of mood swings in Lucía. Perhaps Lucía had already spotted her father among the crowd in the theatre earlier, and that was why she had behaved in such a frenetic and silly way minutes before.
Out of the shadows of the dimly lit room, Lucía’s father approached the doctors. Then he turned around and stepped back into the shadows. When he reappeared, he was dragging Señora Zárate into the limelight. Señor Zárate extended his leg, gesturing that he wanted to be measured. He raised his wife’s arm and gestured similarly. The doctors in attendance took advantage and quickly measured Lucía’s parents. The reporter from The Interior Journal wrote:
The parents of the child are with her, and are of the usual size; the mother is about the medium height, the father is 5 feet 5 or 6 inches in height and quite fleshy.
While her parents remained still for their measurements, Lucía hid behind Zoila’s skirt, her face blank rather than joyful at the sight of her family members. Zoila bent down to give Lucía a gentle hug.
“Everything will be alright,” she assured Lucía.
“Tell me about an odyssey, again, Zoila,” Lucía asked her in a soft voice.
“As I said earlier, an odyssey is a long and adventurous journey. Do you remember?”
Lucía sighed. “Yes,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “But you also said that during an odyssey one faces both adventure and hardships. And I’ve had enough hardships, don’t you think?”