by Amy Alexander
When it comes to terrible things that adults imagine happening to children – drownings, kidnappings, being burnt on stoves, toppling headlong into Rubbermaid tubs and not being able to escape, crashing into semis in forward-facing, failing child seats, falling off of cliffs at The Grand Canyon, being sucked into the ocean by riptides, placing dry cleaning bags over minds like ghosts, sniffing glue, downing enough Tylenol to treat an entire gymnastics squad, driving off of bridges into roaring rivers, dropping blow dryers into bathtubs – lice doesn’t pack enough of a punch to be considered.
And yet, the first time a parent spots those wriggly, translucent bodies, size of mustard seeds, atop Junior’s head, madly scratched at by twin claws, the panic is enough to put even the most cocky mom or dad into the fetal position. For me, it was and is no different.
But see, I am strangely grateful to lice.
During my mother’s last invincible summer – before the failed attempts to kill enough cells to triumph over cancer and the painful knowing, slow to set in, that she would throw her flesh jacket onto certain fire, and we had to help her do this – we learned from lice how to love.
My small family was three long months into a repeated battle with lice that, it seemed, would never, ever end. First, my daughter, then five, had them, and then my six-year-old son and then me, while my husband was forever spared. Just when we thought we had the bugs conquered, the struggle would start all over again. And again. And again, through April and May, into June, and across July.
The lice followed us to the beach, to camp, to movie theaters, to date nights, to hungover mornings, darting across crisp, clean pillows, hiding in my boy’s nape, irritating my daughter at the library, to the carnival, on the airplane and, finally, out to Utah, home of half of my ancestors. This was the place where my parents decided to summer during their retirement: A small university town in the Northern corner of the state, nestled in a valley on the way to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, birthplace of my grandmother, great grandparents and many other relatives from polygamist arrangements.
There wasn’t, by that point, a lice treatment we hadn’t tried. We’d sampled every single box the drug store offered on its shelves, a section which seemed to be the most restocked in the entire store. We hired lice experts who showed up at our house in surgical garb and wielded giant machines that looked like vacuum cleaners. They charged us $200 to fry the little buggers on contact. We ponied up, twice. We Googled coconut oil, lemon juice, rosemary, mayonnaise, olive oil, vinegar, Vaseline, and tried them all. I became a connoisseur of combs, rating them by tooth spacing the way sommeliers judge the latest Beaujolais Nouvelles.
We arrived at Brigham Young’s pastoral paradise in time for Independence Day and sat, near my parent’s summer lawn, on quilts alongside the entire town, it seemed. Each family placed their stamp of cotton and stitches on the hilly university expanse beside a football stadium, where the fireworks would go off. People in this region claimed spots a full 24 hours before the fireworks, with no worry, whatsoever, of having their heirloom patchworks stolen, pissed on, or tossed into sad bundles to make room for other, more cunning people and their cloth. Spread across the lawn, the family quilts made a second, giant quilt, and, on seeing this, I always felt my spirit soar.
No part of this scenario, I should add, would be possible in Baton Rouge, my adopted home, where I eventually landed, so far away from my roots, after falling in love with a Cajun.
Thunderstorms and dew would sabotage any version of cloth tossed on a Deep South lawn within a couple of hours. A beach towel, let alone a beloved antique stitching, would not be safe from marauders in my city, either, a place that avoided four-way stops and traffic circles, because people could not be trusted to take turns. Moreover, your typical, South Louisiana resident would never place a blanket by itself on the ground without also adding a cooler the size of a boulder, a barbeque pit and a widescreen television for watching football. Actually, forget the blanket and the ground. Because fire ants.
As we tracked yellow willows, orange comets, red spirals and frozen blue snowflakes exploding across the sky, I was sure that the lice were behind us, and I was having my own, silent Independence Day celebration. It felt good to be here, at a place that could count for home, Dad stirring thick, sugared beans on the stove-top, watered down, shameful beer in our cups, mounds of hot dogs and hamburgers, Lay’s potato chips and plenty of ice cream, the unofficial state food of Utah.
I awoke the next morning in a happy mood, bent over the sink to wash my face, and then – the horror. A small, wriggling louse landed on the clean porcelain. With my smartphone, I zoomed in on its characteristic shape, praying it would be nothing more than a bit of undigested lint, only to see, once again, the familiar, symmetrical segments, the dark spot on the back, and the jagged jaws that always seemed to be laughing at me.
I doubled over and wept, mostly because I was embarrassed, and also, I’d hoped this visit would be perfect. We didn’t go to see my parents very often, and, adding up the cost of the flight, the rental car, and two weeks of missed work, I didn’t know when we would make it back out to see them together again.
Until that point, I had not mentioned our summer campaign against lice to my mother. A former nurse, she was the most fastidious person I knew. Mountain people are not comfortable with any type of creepy crawlies, of which we have a vast and year-round catalog in the Deep South. Still, I knew I had to tell her that we had brought a little bit more of home than spices and good coffee with us to her immaculate summer abode. I dragged my feet as I walked down the hallway to the kitchen to confess my microscopic crime.
She didn’t flinch or recoil. Actually, she leaned in, with great interest.
“We will handle this, together,” she said, her voice conspiratorial and musical. Within a few minutes, we were on our way to the drugstore, and were home before breakfast.
When the kids awoke, Mom lined them up in the kitchen and gave each of us, my dad, my husband and me, a fine-toothed comb, a large bowl of water mixed with conditioner, and a second, empty bowl. Then, on her command, each of us taking half of a kid’s head, we systematically dipped, combed, and tapped the bodies of lice in every stage of life and their eggs into the empty bowl. And so it went on, for two hours, three times a day, all four of us, and the children, dip, comb, tap, release, repeat. Dip, comb, tap, release, repeat. Eventually, my aunt joined us in the ritual, as I was also combing through my own hair. The children watched old movies that my mother loved and listened to her vast collection of stories. We laughed and remembered funny things that had happened to us when my brother and I were little, lice not being among them. I marveled that Mom was so competent at dealing with them, since we had never entertained the little jerks during my own childhood.
Later, after the kids were in bed, Mom and I sat in the quiet dark. I felt, somehow, satisfied. My shame and dread had been met by her willingness to go straight to the center of my personal pain. Mom did not walk away or tell me this was my problem or that I was a flawed example of motherhood because I couldn’t figure it all out. She put her hands on us and bent, for hours, working to make things a little bit better, one tiny bug at a time.
“You know,” she said, finally, “If you think of all of the things that a person faces in a lifetime – illness, loss, violence, hopelessness – a few little bugs are something that can be handled easily. Just remember, when you feel overwhelmed by the day-to-day problems, they don’t last forever, and they are usually things that can be fixed with some effort.”
Those words echoed in me two years later, when she lay, dying, in that same room, and I poured every cell in my body into loving her fully, the best I could, as her body fell apart in my hands.
We spent the rest of our vacation, and another two weeks, once we got home, repeating the practice Mom had taught us. By that time, we were well versed in the rhythm of dip, comb, tap, release, repeat, but we also understood that some challenges require the strength, time, and mind of an entire family. You have to be willing to face possible shame, sometimes, to gain enough help to make it through.
I have read, many times in my life, that when you really love people, you can count every hair on their heads. It’s something that, supposedly, only God can really do. But Mom knew better. And she showed us her secret at exactly the right time.
Amy Alexander is a writer, poet, and visual artist who lives in Baton Rouge. She received a Master’s in Folklore at the University of Louisiana, which included in-depth training on how to use a tape recorder during an interview, a skill that quickly became obsolete. Her work has appeared, most recently in Cease, Cows, Mojave Heart Review, Dirty Paws Poetry Review, and many others. She created the creepy cover and has a poem in “Mansion,” a poetry anthology forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. Follow her on Twitter @iriemom.