Blood on my face and hands, I struck him with both balled-up fists, shouting curses. I had never punched someone and did not know how, so I hit him the way you beat a drum.
Mevrou Huisveldt yelled at me to stop and then urged Rachel to back away from me, as if I carried the worst contagion.
“Probably got them from you in the first place,” I yelled at her.
Moeder pulled me off Willem, who had ducked to miss the blows but never struck back in defense.
“We can’t do anything until light,” Moeder said. “Just sit there by the tent flap . . . and don’t scratch.”
“I can’t stop.”
“Sit on your hands. . . . Close your eyes and don’t think about it. . . . Pray.”
God, make me strong. God, make me strong. God, stop this itching. God, destroy lice. God, make me strong. Don’t think about it, Moeder said. Yes, you tell someone to sit in the dark and close her eyes, and you expect her not to think about vermin crawling on her scalp. You try not thinking about them. How many are up there? Like an army. I imagined their little pinched faces, marching in formation, each in a little khaki uniform, digging into my flesh with tiny picks and shovels. I couldn’t help clawing at them.
“Lettie . . . stop. . . . That only makes it worse. . . . Pray.”
God, make me strong. God, bring the daylight. God made two great lights, the greater one to rule the day. And as if accompanied by a chorus of angels, he answered my prayer. A lightness seeped through the tent flap.
“Moeder . . . it’s getting light.”
“Get up, then.”
“What now? Reservoir?”
“Lye soap . . . if we can find any. . . . Let’s look, first.”
Even though I knew the lice were there, I could not stop scratching, and when I pulled away my hands, the blood was flecked with them. I shivered, looked away, shivered again.
“Lettie . . .”
“What?”
“I need you not to argue about this . . .”
“What?
“The hair has to come off.”
“No . . .”
“Has to.”
“All of it?”
“All of it . . . now.”
Yes. God, help me to be strong . . . right now. I quieted. But my hair? It was the only thing about myself that I liked.
“Are you certain?”
“No other way.”
“No other way?”
“No.”
Her face was calm.
“Fine . . . do it, Moeder . . . all of it.”
She retrieved shears from the tent. In the middle of the row, with women passing in first light, I stood in just my nightclothes . . . exposed to ridicule and to such cold that my lungs burned with each breath.
“What is it?” a woman with a bucket asked.
“Must be lice,” her companion answered.
“Ugh.”
“She’s filthy with them.”
“Move on,” I said. “I’ll be beautiful, anyway. I’m young. . . . It will all grow back. Watch. Watch and see.”
The snipping was so loud. Bits of hair caught the breeze and fluttered as they fell, landing like starlings. The women backed away as Moeder tried to pluck the lice and nits from the comb and shears.
I hummed one of Bina’s songs: I am water. . . . I am the river. My hair will grow back thicker, with more waves, I told myself.
“Willem, stomp on them,” Moeder said. “Then wipe your shoes and pull out her bedding. . . . We’ll have to be rid of it.”
Children pointed at me. I responded with laughs, although sometimes it sounded like crying.
“Still beautiful,” I said to Moeder. I was proud; I was strong.
“Good girl . . . yes, you are,” Moeder said. “Still beautiful.”
Willem took the cue and hid his disgust, but he felt his head with both hands.
Moeder washed my bare head and struck matches to kill the most stubborn. They popped and gave off a stale smell.
“I hate lice, Ma,” I said.
“I know, they’re gone now.”
“I remember when they were on the sheep and you hurt your back that day.”
“I hurt my back?”
“When we tried to dip them to kill the lice . . . you hurt your back.”
“Yes . . . my back. . . . Willem, get my mirror,” she said as if it were urgent. “It’s on the cot.”
“No, Ma . . . I don’t want to see.”
“It doesn’t look bad. It will grow back.”
“Willem, get my mirror, and the brush from my bag, too.”
“No . . . Moeder . . .”
Willem handed them to her.
“Lettie, here, take them.”
“I don’t want to look.”
“Then don’t. . . . It’s not for now. . . . You can have them for when it grows back. It won’t take that long. And you can have this to brush every day.”
“Mine to keep?”
“Yes . . . to keep. Just keep thinking about them and how beautiful it will be when the hair comes back.” Moeder took my face in her hands and looked closely. She leaned in slowly. I had no idea what sort of treatment she was trying now. She kissed me exactly in the middle of my forehead, barely touching, and for the length of a single heartbeat. She then did the same on each cheek. She was so gentle and loving in that moment that I was convinced the lice were worth having.
But it detonated Willem.
“She gets a present for this?” Willem asked.
Moeder, going from silk to steel in an instant, stared with such force it drove him backward. “But . . . ,” he said. Moeder closed in on him, and he ran back to the tent.
Cee-Cee watched the commotion without comment or fearful look.
“Well,” I asked, “what do you think?”
“I will brush it for you,” she said. “When it grows back.”
I HOLLOWED OUT A hole in the ground . . . cleft for me . . . and climbed inside, pulling the dirt over me like a blanket. Seclusion was impossible in the tent, making solitude a mental exercise. But thinking myself in a trench started to feel like death. A better imaginary escape was submerging myself in water. I could hear sounds, but they were muffled and unclear. Minutes floated past my face, one at a time, drifting to the bottom, where they gathered into hours. When no ripples disturbed my private river for a time, I surfaced to reality. If others were asleep or distracted, I used Moeder’s mirror—my new mirror—to reassess my baldness and submerge again.
Sometimes I didn’t rise to eat, and no one bothered me. Moeder might ask me a question, but the words were absorbed by the water surrounding me. Once the hours had stacked into days, I crawled out again and studied the crop of stubble that pioneered the white landscape and darkened over the red blotches. Within two more days, it was thick and softening.
I breathed deeply and tipped my head to Moeder for an examination. She approved. I went first to Ouma van Zyl’s out of guilt over not having fetched water for several days. She had heard of my public shearing, so she understood. All three children were sickly. She was worn and smaller still. She looked at my kappie pulled down tight but did not comment.
I avoided Maples for another week after my shame, each of those days feeling like three. When I finally saw him on my way for water, he noticed immediately.
“What happened . . . lice?”