“THIS IS THE SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR. How may I connect your call?”
“Hello!” Coletta said tensely, trying to keep her dress from falling down. “Could you connect me to the Fruit of the Vine Grape Concentrate Company in Schenectady, New York?”
“Yes ma’am, please remain on the line.”
There was banging on the bedroom door. “Coletta, what’s going on in there?”
“Nothing, Mrs. Taranto!” Coletta put the candlestick phone on the bed and grabbed a chair. Her dress was slipping down around her shoulders and the hem of her skirt was sinking down to her ankles, but she hobbled over to the door and wedged the chair under the doorknob. Suddenly, her wedding ring slipped off.
“Madonna!” She picked up the tiny band of gold and found that it fit like a bracelet. She stuck it back on and clenched her tiny fist.
Mrs. Taranto shouted, “I need to get ready for the christening. What’s gotten into you?”
“I just need to make a telephone call.” Coletta pulled her dress back up over her shoulders. The polka-dotted fabric seemed billow around her. She felt like a child trying to slip into her mother’s clothes. Her feet were rattling around in her worn out leather shoes, and her apron was sagging.
The bedroom now seemed like a cavern. Shrinking might have made Coletta’s own tiny apartment more livable, if only it would stop.
The shrinking started after Coletta drank some of the wine she’d made. After Prohibition had passed, the only way to get some was to make it yourself. Lots of men in the neighborhood made their own, but Coletta decided to get in on racket herself when she was shopping one day and found grape concentrate on the general store shelves.
It was made by the Fruit of the Vine Grape Concentrate Company in Schenectady, New York, and on the side, in tiny print, it read, “Do not add water to grape concentrate and leave in a dark place, or it will ferment and turn into wine.”
A few months later, Coletta had a few dozen jugs of fresh wine. She tasted it once and found that it lacked a certain kick, but after adding a few pints of paint thinner to the mix, it tasted just fine. She even had a buyer who wanted it for a christening party, but then the shrinking started.
Suddenly, she heard a man on the line. “Hello? Hello?”
Coletta could barely wrap her hand around the big black candlestick rod. She held the can-sized receiver to her ear. “Hello?”
“Well, hello there! This is Chet Basehart of the Fruit of the Vine Grape Concentrate Company of Schenectady, New York. How you doing, sweetheart?”
“Hello! My name is—actually, never mind. I have a question about your grape juice concentrate.”
“Fire away.”
“Well, I was making some grape juice...”
She shrank down another inch. The phone became heavier in her shrinking arms.
“...and I might have mixed some up and left it sitting around for a little while—I wasn’t trying to make wine or anything—”
“Did you mix up a batch of our grape concentrate and leave it in a dark place?”
“Well,” Coletta shrank another inch. “Yes.”
“Criminy,” Chet sighed. “Not again.”
“What do you mean, ‘not again’?”
“Sweetheart, are you shrinking?”
“Well, yes.”
“That’s what I thought. Happens all the time, really. That’s why we put the shrinking powder in the concentrate.”
“What?” Coletta exclaimed. “Why the hell would you put that in the grape concentrate?”
“Ever heard of the 18th Amendment? It’s illegal to sell alcohol in this country, sweetie. We knew that someone would try to turn our grape concentrate into booze, so we added that shrinking powder.”
“But I don’t want to shrink!” Coletta exclaimed.
“Well, of course people don’t want to shrink. That’s why we put that warning on the back of the box.” Chet cleared his throat. “It says, and I quote, ’Do not add water to grape concentrate and leave in a dark place, or it will ferment and turn into wine.’ It’s all right there in black and white—clear as crystal.”
“Figlio di puttana!”
“I mean, it was the sensible thing to do, in my humble opinion. The government asked us to put ethanol in the grape juice concentrate too. You’re lucky that we were able to talk them down and put the shrinking stuff in instead. Personally, I’d be grateful.”
Mrs. Taranto was tugging on the phone wire under the door. Coletta yanked it back. The cable was as thick as a rope in her shrinking hands. Her dress slipped off her shoulders again, this time siding all the way down her arm and exposing her breasts.
“I mean, it sure makes catching bootleggers easier. You can’t run away when you’re a pipsqueak. Can’t even wear a boot,” Chet laughed.
“Listen!” Coletta begged. “Everything’s getting so big around me. I’m stuck inside my neighbors’ bedroom. I can’t let them see me like this.” Coletta pulled her dress back up over her shoulders. “I’m so small I can barely keep my clothes on!”
“You don’t say,” Chet replied. “Alright, alright, let me talk to the boys down in the lab. They’ll sort this out.”
“Hurry!” The phone and the receiver were getting heavier. Coletta put the phone back on the bed to rest her tiny arms.
The pounding on the door continued. Coletta pulled her dress back over her shoulders a dozen times as she was talking to Chet, but she had shrunk half a foot since the phone call started. Her shoulders were too narrow for the collar. The dress was already piling up around her feet. She got smaller and smaller, trying to gather up her dress in her arms so that she could move, but her arms were getting smaller. Even as she bundled up fabric, the cloth just got bigger and bigger in her arms.
“Coletta!” There was more pounding at the door: Mr. Taranto.
“Open the door!”
The chair wouldn’t hold for long. Coletta rushed towards the door to hold it shut. It seemed that the trip from the bed to the door was twice as long. The collar of her dress slipped down around her shoulders, sliding down until the dress was nothing but a growing ring of cloth around Coletta’s waist.
She let it go. The dress fell on the floor, and Coletta was naked. She was barely three feet tall, and still shrinking.
“Hey, sweetheart, still on the line?”
Coletta ran back and grabbed the receiver with both hands. “I’m here,” she squeaked.
“I’ve got some good news. I talked to the boys and they said that you should only shrink down to about one foot tall. After that, you’ll eventually get back to normal.”
Coletta wrapped her arm around the phone. “How long?”
He paused. “I forgot what they said. Hold on...”
Figlio di putanna!
“Oh wait, I remember! They said about a day or two...”
Coletta sighed.
“...as long as you didn’t add paint thinner to the mix.”
Coletta’s heart stopped.
“Yeah, you never add paint thinner to the mix. You never know what’ll happen. You’re really lucky you didn’t do that, otherwise, you’d be nothing but a bug. There’s no telling when you’d grow back to normal—if you get back to normal, that is.”
The phone receiver was like a barrel in Coletta’s hands.
“Anyway, thanks for buying our product. Call again!” The line went dead.
“No, wait!” She was only twice as tall as the telephone. She dropped the barrel-sized receiver and pushed down on the receiver hook. “Operator, operator! Reconnect us, please!”
“What’s that?” asked the operator. “I can’t hear you. There must be something wrong with the line.
“Call them back!” Coletta squeaked. Her voice was getting higher and higher.
“I can’t understand. Would you like to make a call?”
“Yes, per favore! Sto diventando più piccola!”
She shrank another inch, and another. Soon, was only as tall as the candlestick telephone itself, grabbing onto the bell of the mouthpiece and shouting in Italian, but soon, even that was too tall for her.
“I have to tell them not to drink the wine!” Coletta picked up her wedding ring, which was the size of a barrel hoop, and ran for the door.
It was like sprinting across a vacant lot. Coletta streaked naked across the wavy, wooden floor. If she could get to the chair and push it away, then the Tarantos could get in and she could warn them before she shrank down to nothing. She just had to stand behind one of the chair legs and push.
Coletta was only eight inches tall, but she could reach the front legs of the chair, lifting off the ground since the chair was tilted under the door knob. She picked the front legs because if the chair fell, it wouldn’t crush her.
She reached up with her tiny arms, putting her ring around her neck for safe keeping, and pushed with all her might. The pounding on the door was getting louder. The room was getting larger. Coletta felt her shoulders getting narrower. Her hands were sliding down the length of the chair leg.
The chair budged.
I’m doing it! Just keep pushing!
She had to stretch to push the chair. Coletta’s grunts and groans were like the squeaking of a mouse. The pounding on the other side of the door was like a subway car barreling through a station.
“I can’t!” she squeaked. The chair leg was too high. There was only one thing to do, push on the back legs of the chair. They were still on the floor, so no matter how small she got, she would still be able to reach them.
Her wedding ring was about to slip down over her shoulders. Only four inches tall, Coletta felt like she was wearing a truck tire around her neck, but she hauled it the whole way. The back chair legs, which seemed like they were only a few yards away, now seemed like they were on the other side of the block. Coletta ran as fast as she could, knowing that the longer she took to get to the chair legs, the smaller she would get.
She reached the chair leg. It looked like a big oak tree. The whole chair was like an office building. Coletta let the wedding ring fall on the ground and started pushing. She threw her tiny body into every shove.The leg was getting larger, swelling and climbing higher like a tree. She pressed her tiny hands against the chair and put her head down. She closed her eyes so that she wouldn’t see the ground getting closer and closer.
“Merda!” she peeped.
It was like pushing down a marble pillar in front of City Hall. Soon, it was like trying to knock over a redwood. Coletta felt something touch her leg. She opened her eyes. Her thighs were resting on the edge of her gold engagement ring.
She looked up. The chair was a leaning skyscraper, the top of it obscured by haze, almost too distant to see. The pounding on the door was like thunder pealing through the air. She could barely see anything else anymore. The bed was a hazy cliff off in the distance. The ceiling was as distant as the sky.
Coletta’s wedding ring surrounded her like a swimming pool. She thought about climbing over and hurtling her half-inch body against the water-tower-sized chair leg. She thought about shouting for help as the ring around her kept growing around her, circling her like a wall.
Soon, all of those thoughts disappeared. The entire world disappeared behind the rising wall of gold. The ring blotted out the sun as Coletta grew even smaller, disappearing into the floor.