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.
Each night, my mother boils the combs and tools in pots of water. She tumbles my clothes and blankets on high. She places my stuffed animals in the freezer. She drops my jewelry into tiny plastic bags, seals them tight. She stays at my bedside kissing every knuckle of my hands until I fall asleep.
They chose you because you’re the sweetest, she says.
When I wake in the middle of the night, it’s not because my mother and father are throwing ashtrays and glasses at each other. There are no crashing sounds. No cries. No smells of burning plastic or voices belonging to people who are neither my mother nor my father. Instead, this week, I wake to the hum of my mother’s vacuum. She is covering every inch of the house—checking, cleaning, protecting every pillow—as if, by this simple act of cleaning, she is making the promise of a new life for me, a life in which two parents take care of a child. A life as simple as that.
By the following week, the bugs are gone. My mother checks the tender spots behind my ears. The warm places behind my neck.
Nothing, she says. All good to go.
Are you sure? I ask. I still itch.
You’re good, she says. Nothing. She tears off her cap. Kisses me on the forehead.
I’m sure you’re thrilled to go back to school. She winks.
Later that night, in the bathroom mirror, I move my palms back to my part. I press down on the hair again; again; I wait. This time, I don’t see anything. I don’t see anything moving at all. My hair is just my hair. My scabs have peeled. There’s nothing alive on any inch of my head—no nymphs, no nits, no lice.
But they were right here, I say.
THE LIZARD
Here’s another early memory: I’m chewing up a grilled cheese sandwich on the floor of my living room when I see it, the lizard, dashing out from behind the TV unit. It skitters across our white tiles on its lizard legs. Its head twitches around and around, looking for something in lizard motion, unpredictable in a way that makes me feel sick. I don’t trust it.
My father is asleep on the couch, a sports game blaring, the remote still gripped in his hand. His chapped mouth hangs open; he’s zonked but balanced, almost poised, on an elbow.
I pick up one of his empty glasses off the coffee table, a thick layer of extra crystal on the bottom of it. I’m clumsy with the glass; my hand can’t even wrap the circumference. I sniff the inside. Gag, dramatically. I decide I must capture the lizard, show it who’s boss. I decide that I must take control, for once, of a situation.
The lizard is unmoving beneath the kitchen counter. I take off crawling toward it, and it runs. I stand up, chase the lizard into the kitchen. I rush it up and down the wall, cupping my glass against the paint. My bare feet slap-slap the tile as I chase the lizard through the hallway, and down one step, until it slides beneath the mildewed crack of the garage door. This isn’t enough. Now that I’m chasing it, now that my chest is pumping, now that the lizard is scared, I don’t want to stop. I open the door and let my eyes adjust. Sunlight leaks around the garage door like a glowing picture frame. I look under paint buckets, around the oily car stains, I will find it, and then I do: the lizard, motionless, in the far right corner of the garage.
You can trust me, I say, Shhhhhh.
I move slowly, carefully. I make my voice sound high and coddling.
This time, when I approach it, the lizard does not run. It stares at me, breathing, its little red lizard balloon pumping at its throat.