Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(20)

BUGS

I discovered them in a Cracker Barrel bathroom. The bugs, that is. Ruthie Mitchell’s mom took us to a Cracker Barrel off the Sawgrass Expressway for a real-life experience, for a change of scenery, and we like this. The triangle peg game, the slopping grits, the rocking chairs, Dolly Parton singing through a tinny speaker. We could be other people in this place—adults on a highway in the cool bruise of night, taking shifts to drive a million miles north to find Jesus, or husbands, or any other world outside our middle school.

But in the bathroom light, in the mirror, I see it. Something moving on my head. Just a fleck, really. No fatter than a poppy seed. I lean in closer to the mirror. Dolly is singing about her coat of many colors, and I move both palms to either side of the part in my hair. I push down with my hands to flatten the hair like a sponge, and I see them, bugs, skittering away from the light, away from my part, running down to my ears.

I don’t mention my bugs to Ruthie Mitchell or her mother for the rest of dinner. I don’t want to ruin our adventure; I don’t want to be a bad guest. Instead, I eat my chicken-fried steak and I nod to everything they both say and I am quiet, very quiet, in the car ride home to Ruthie Mitchell’s house situated right on a cemetery. I wait until we turn on Airplane!, until the two girl scouts beat each other to heaven, swinging each other by the pigtails, and then I say, Your house, Ruthie. Do you think it’s haunted, seeing that people are buried in your yard?

Maybe, she says. I mean, probably.

I think my head is haunted by some critters, I say.

Mrs. Mitchell calls my mother immediately. She checks Ruthie in the guest bathroom, their bodies bent over the sink. Bugs, she says. Bugs everywhere.

Who has more bugs? I ask.

Why should it matter? You’ve both got them.

I think Ruthie must’ve given them to me, I say. Because I don’t live dirty.

Really, I’d had a feeling about the bugs for months. I’d never seen them, but one day, in art class, Gleb Ankari screamed Lice! pointing right at my head. I scratched at the scabs already hardening on my scalp, and started crying. Lucky for me, I could tell our art teacher also hated Gleb, who always drew cartoon tits and ass—It’s ART!—and gave him a Saturday detention for harassing me, the shy girl with a chronic itching problem.

We’ll call you Alligator Girl, my father once nicknamed me, like a superhero name, or a freak show star!—I got the head-to-toe eczema from him.

When my mother arrives at the Mitchells’ house, Ruthie warms a baby bottle in the microwave. She curls up in a beanbag chair in the living room, sucking milk from the bottle. She’s worked up, Ruthie Mitchell, my thirteen-year-old friend; she barely wants to say hello. Ruthie’s got the bugs, too, I say, and she’s pretty upset. Mrs. Mitchell tells my mother I’ve got a pretty bad case, the worst she’s ever seen. You didn’t notice until now?

I don’t live up my daughter’s ass, my mother says in the car, How would I notice? My mother shakes her head. Has she noticed that her daughter sucks on a bottle? We both laugh so hard our car swerves off and edges into the thick, Florida grass.

Day One: My mother brings home a Publix bag of stinky chemicals from the drugstore. She sits on a lawn chair in our backyard and has me sit on a towel between her legs. She uses a nit-pick to ease out the bugs and eggs. The worst occasion for Chinese hair, she says. We should be done with you by Christmas. She soaks the comb in a bowl of rubbing alcohol. She kisses me on the shoulder. I’ve got you, she says. If I see one more, I’ll nuke ’em.

Day Two: She buys a box of neon shower caps. Wear these around the house, she says, and when you sleep. I can’t stop crying when I see myself looking like a Mario Kart Mushroom in the mirror. I feel like a dumb kid, like someone filthy. Your dad and I will wear them, too, she says, so you won’t be the only one looking like a stupid shit! She snaps a yellow cap on her head. The elastic digs a red line into her forehead, and I feel like I have never loved anyone more.

Day Three: My mother tries to suffocate the bugs with mayonnaise. She spoons it out with her hands, piles it on my hair. She twists the black and white mound until it looks like ice cream, and snaps a new cap over it. I gag into the kitchen sink, dry heaving.

So there’s a nymph, a nit, and a louse, she says, on day four. We need to kill every one. She’s been reading about it, highlighting pages she’s printed from the library. She tells me to sit in our bathtub, and I wear a ruffled bathing suit that fits too tight. She pours vinegar, vegetable oil, apple cider, then Listerine. My eyes prickle. She smothers my head in Vaseline before snapping on a new cap.

Day Five: We scald them. I sit in the bathtub again, knees to my chest, my bathing suit warm, just out of the dryer. My mother’s cap is green today. She holds the shower head right to my scalp, turns the knob. Bite me if you have to.

Day Six: A straightening iron to every separated strip of hair. We listen to the bugs sizzle-pop inside the clamp.

Each morning, my mother takes me back into the yard. I sit on my towel; I yank off my cap. She combs through every section of hair, picking at movement. She tells me, for the first time, stories about growing up in Hawai?i. The old banyan trees in her backyard. The feeling of the Nu‘uanu Pali winds on her shoulders. The places where she still misses her father, her ‘ohana, makuakāne, Here and here and here, she says, touching every corner of her body. Honey girl, there are so many people I’ve never quit missing.