by Liz Murray
She grabbed my hair into rigorous twists, sending the tiny bugs into a frenzy. I cringed and watched the clock drag its hands along. Earlier, Ma and Daddy had promised groceries, but they had stayed away for hours. Embarrassed over what they might say if they walked in and this turned out to be another one of Lisa’s pranks, I hoped she would finish quickly.
After what felt like three hours, when my legs had grown sore from kneeling on the thin carpet and I’d fidgeted in every direction in search of comfort, Lisa finally lifted her hands away from my head.
“Okay . . . Done! Now, listen carefully to me, Lizzy. Next we need to find anything red that we can stick in your hair. They’re terrified of red. Let’s get something, and then you’ll see how this works. But you have to move fast, or they’ll catch on.”
“Anything red?”
Lisa slid one of Daddy’s garbage treasure-hunt finds, a red Barbie dress, over my largest braid at the very front of my head. The empty sleeves pointed outward, and the open collar presented a barrette-pinched puff of hair.
“Is that it? Is it working?”
“More! We need more. Hurry, they’re all going to run to one side. That makes it harder. Go!”
With nothing useful in sight, I raced across the apartment and threw open my drawers, tossing trinkets and all kinds of junk around my room. I searched feverishly, but it seemed there was nothing red to be found—until I remembered Ma’s dresser. With one wide sweep of my arm, I grabbed Ma’s bouquet of red plastic roses from her green vase and crashed onto the bed, Lisa cheering me on at my side.
“Hurry, Lizzy! Put them anywhere there’s room, fast!”
One by one, I ripped the heads from the stems’ sockets and began working them into my hair, around the base of each braid. I tried my hardest to cover every last available spot. In the tight zigzags of my braids, they clung nicely. When I was done, my head sported a helmet of bright, red roses and a small red dress emerging from the front, like a unicorn’s horn. I looked at Lisa for confirmation.
She explained that it would take at least twenty minutes for there to be any noticeable difference. The most important part now was to remain as still as possible. So I shut the bathroom door behind me and took a seat in the bathtub. I figured it might be good to send every last horrible bug streaming down the drain as soon as they began to retreat from this red they feared so much.
I decided to remove all of my clothing in case they tried to survive in some fold along my shirt or in one of my pockets. I stripped completely, crouched in the tub, and waited.
Time passed and nothing happened. Lisa knocked and asked to see how things were coming along, but I sent her away. The empty tub became icy under my feet. I began to shiver. Then, without warning, a bug dropped.
A small thrill ran through my body. I shook my head, and another dropped. Time passed, but that was all. The bugs wriggled, dwarfed in the white basin, just the way they did when they had recently caused me trouble in school.
As far back as last year, I’d felt different. The kindergarten teacher assigned us to walk with a buddy then, but I always cried when it was time to pair up because I didn’t want anyone to be close enough to get a good look at my spiky bangs. I knew the kids couldn’t help but stare. Soon I became the crybaby with the weird haircut. With all the name-calling, I’d kept to myself, and that had made me something of an outcast. Now, in the first grade, when I had told and retold myself I would be a perfectly “normal” kid, the lice had ruined everything all over again.
It happened during Mrs. McAdams’s spelling test, when I was seated across from a boy named David at table three. Mrs. Reynolds, the teaching assistant, a heavy, turkey-necked woman with gray tufts of worn-out Velcro for hair, walked around the classroom to make sure we behaved during Mrs. McAdams’s reading aloud of the week’s spelling words.
Pencils scratching paper and Mrs. Reynolds’s penny loafers dragging along the tiles were the only sounds. I spread my sloppy handwriting across the handout page, struggling to spell Sunday.
From her desk, Mrs. McAdams called out the next word, time. Just as I leaned in to give it a try, I caught a deep itch on my scalp. When I scratched, a tiny gray bug landed with a light click in the center of my worksheet. My heart raced with a sharp pang of fear that shook off my drowsiness. I quickly swatted the insect off my desk. My eyes darted in all directions in search of a witness, but no one had seen.
I would have been in the clear had the itch not persisted. Another scratch, and two more bugs came clicking down. I swatted again. One landed on the ground; the other shot across my desk and landed on David’s side of the table that we shared. Mrs. McAdams called out another word, but I missed it. I was too busy pretending not to notice the bug struggling for firm footing right under David’s nose as he looked up to Mrs. McAdams for further instruction.
My itch persisted and grew, demanding attention. It took all of my will not to scratch again. Suddenly, David raised his hand, bringing the test and the entire class to a dead halt.
“Mrs. Reynolds? There’s a weird bug on my desk.” The creature had stopped for a rest at the top of David’s page, right where he’d spelled out time in neat little letters.
A girl beside him cried out, “Ewwww, that’s disgusting! David, you’re disgusting!”
“I didn’t—it wasn’t me. I don’t know where it came from.” The class broke into whispers. David turned bright red and folded his arms across his chest, holding in tears.
Mrs. Reynolds hurried over to investigate, mistakenly searching for food in all the desks. She was in the middle of delivering a quivery-pitched speech about how sneaking food into the classroom brought roaches, when I had to scratch my head and another bug fell, click, against my page. There was no hiding from the girl seated to the right of me the fact that that creature had fallen from my hair onto my nearly blank, white test sheet.
“Oh my God. They’re coming from her hair,” Tamieka called out.
Shrieks and noises of disgust exploded throughout the room.
Mrs. Reynolds’s cold, bony hand took me by the wrist, through the whooping and hollering, out of the room, and down the hallway. As the secretary watched, she ordered me to sit in an office chair that had been dragged to the center of the room, away from everything else. She ripped two thick Popsicle sticks from a thin package, parted my hair with the tips, and immediately found the lice. But instead of backing away, she dug around and remarked on how my head was “infested,” moving over to allow the secretary a look as she used the popsicle sticks to shake loose a few more lice, which dropped onto the green tiles, both women watching.
Mrs. Reynolds dragged me back into the classroom and ordered me to remain in the doorway. She went to the teacher’s cabinet and rummaged around in search of something.
Looking over at me, Tamieka whispered into another girl’s ear. They giggled, pointed, and stared. Mrs. McAdams slammed her palm down hard on her desk and shouted for them to “be nice,” inadvertently calling the rest of the class’s attention to me. Just then, Mrs. Reynolds lifted a bottle of vinegar into the air and called through the silence, “I’ve got it. Let’s go. Walk ahead of me—those suckers jump.” The children roared behind us. But as much as I was humiliated, I was more worried about what the vinegar was for.
She took me to the front of the school building, where two teachers stood, sharing a cigarette. The street was busy; cars whizzed by and a train rumbled overhead. For a moment, I considered escape.
But hope for freedom vanished with Mrs. Reynolds’s grip on my shoulder. She pushed me into a bent-over position, with my hands pressed against the rough brick wall. She rolled up her sleeves, readying herself.
“Now, this is a home remedy passed down in my family. Don’t fret, it won’t hurt you one bit. All you need to do is close your eyes. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Cold liquid splashed over my head, stinging the spots where I’d scratched. Mrs. Reynolds rubbed my scalp in harsh circles that tangled my hair. I inha
led deep whiffs of vinegar until I felt sick and woozy.
From where I stood, only the splashing of vinegar against cement and our four feet—my sneakers and Mrs. Reynolds’s penny loafers—remained visible. Soon, a small crowd of new feet gathered nearby—the teachers on break.
There was no way I’d ever enter that classroom again. How could I look into their faces, much less reclaim my seat between David and Tamieka? I wished I would die from the fumes, and that Mrs. Reynolds would be blamed for killing me.
When Mrs. Reynolds finally allowed me to stand, she commented, “That’s enough. You don’t want anyone to mistake you for a salad, do ya, kid?” She let out a quick snort of laughter. Then, just as quickly as her smile had come, it was gone. “Let’s go, you. Back to class.”
Crouching in the tub back at home, I watched the bugs float away, helpless in the stream of water I released from the faucet. My scalp throbbed in the grip of the tight braids. I thought of how Mrs. Reynolds’s “home remedy” had done nothing, the way Lisa’s “cure” seemed to be doing the same.
I stood to get a look at myself in the mirror. The image that stared back was startling. When my effort to evenly arrange the roses had failed, Lisa volunteered to help fix it. A perfect headdress of roses was spread all around my hair—a symmetrical sort of bouquet.
A single bug crawled on the hem of Barbie’s dress, walking leisurely along the red cloth. Had Lisa lied? Or was there something she’d forgotten? I slipped my clothing back on, exited the bathroom, and called out for my sister.
“It’s not working. What do I do?”
Lisa tried to muffle her laughter. Then, before I could think to do anything, our parents’ voices sounded in the stairwell. Lisa quaked with laughter, holding her sides, savoring my horror. In that one awful moment, I realized that it had all been a joke at my expense. She’d completely tricked me, again.
Lisa grabbed my arms to prevent me from undoing her work. Her laughter followed me as I broke free and slammed the door to my room. I clamped my hand over the fake petals and tore every last one from my head.
I pulled the doll’s dress off, ran over to the window, and threw it out angrily. The barrettes followed behind, falling noiselessly down to the street. In the next room, my parents rustled in with plastic bags. I slammed my body into my bedroom door to hold it shut. On the other side, Lisa used her weight to combat my resistance. With one hand, I unraveled the braids, while holding the door shut at the same time. Then I moved out of the way at just the right moment so that she fell through the door and flat on her face. I stood, looking down at the bright red roses spilled around my bare feet.
“What’s going on?” Ma poked her head through the door. I burst into tears.
“What happened? Lisa, what did you do?”
“Nothing. I didn’t do anything! Lizzy said she wanted me to do her hair. Now she’s crying. I don’t know why.”
“Get out!” I screamed.
“Lisa, tell me—” Ma started.
“Get out! Idiot!” I snapped even louder.
Lisa picked herself up and left without another effort to torment me.
Crouching down, Ma opened her arms and engulfed me. I dissolved in her warmth.
“What’s wrong with my baby? Tell Mommy what happened.”
She combed her fingers through my hair and wiped my tears away with her thumbs. Ma kissed my cheeks and forehead, her eyes so sympathetic I thought she was going to cry, too. In her arms, my anger evaporated.
“Talk to me. Shhhh. Don’t cry, pumpkin.”
But the crying was what kept her close to me; there was no stopping it.
The world was filled with people who were repulsed by me. Only my mother knew that I deserved to be held. So I let her embrace me and demand over and over to know what was wrong, just so I could hear her voice, feel it vibrating in her chest and humming against my whole body, lulling me into a sense of safety. I buried my face against Ma’s neck, trembling and gripping her shirt each time I suspected she might pull away.
I tried to be a good student. I really did. I wanted to be one of those kids who raised her hand in class, knew the answers, and handed in all my work. Like Michelle—during story time she was the best at reading out loud to the class. Or like Marco, who knew the right answers to math problems. I tried to be a good student like them; tried to get good grades. It just didn’t work out that way. There was too much going on.
Maybe getting more sleep on school nights would have helped. But I wasn’t getting sleep; no one made me. Nearly seven days a week, I bore witness to the endless traffic streaming through our apartment. Ma and Daddy flowed in and out of the house like tireless joggers, all night long. Their need for drugs had become more urgent and out-of-control than ever, and their habits played out in a routine that took up all the space in our apartment. If I wanted to, I could have taken out a calendar, pointed directly at a given day, and guessed ahead of time exactly what would happen, and when. They became that predictable.
Six or seven days into each month, Ma and Daddy blew the SSI check and ran us broke. Then, if there was no money because the check was spent—and it always was—Ma would shake down regulars at the bar for a few dollars, over at the Aqueduct or McGovern’s. There was an assortment of older men from whom she’d get one dollar here, two dollars there, loose change from a broken five or ten spread out across the bar. Sometimes she’d beg for a couple of quarters to play the jukebox and instead she’d pocket them. Other times Ma took the men to the bathroom or out in a back alley, and after a few minutes alone with them she could earn even more.
Ma did this until she gathered just enough for a hit. The minimum was five dollars for a “nick’s worth” of coke, though this was a cheap high, a junkie’s high. Returning from the bars, Ma reported straight to Daddy: “Peter, I got five dollars. Petie, I got five.” Then he’d quietly slip on his coat in their room, before trying to sneak away, in case Lisa was still awake.
Daddy knew he’d never hear the end of it if Lisa caught him leaving to buy drugs while we went hungry. There’d be no way to avoid the insults, curses, tears, and shouting.
“You can’t spend the money! We need food! I’m starving, my stomach burns. We didn’t eat dinner, and you’re going to get high?” she’d scream.
Listening to Lisa fight Daddy and Ma, I knew she made perfect sense. There was no excuse for them to spend our last few dollars on drugs when the fridge contained only a jar of rotten mayonnaise and an old, watery head of lettuce. Lisa had every right to be angry.
But things weren’t always so clear for me, not like they were for Lisa. Ma said she needed drugs to help her forget the bad memories that haunted her, the thoughts of her mom and dad that caused her to suffer all day long. And even though I wasn’t sure what exactly in his past Daddy got high to forget, I knew it must be something very painful, because if Daddy didn’t get high, then he would spend days collapsed on the couch in a withdrawal-induced depression. In that state, he became unrecognizable to me.
Lisa’s request of our parents was simple—all she wanted was a hot meal and for them to do better by us. I wanted the same. Still, I couldn’t help noticing that if we hadn’t eaten a hot meal for the entire day, Ma and Daddy hadn’t eaten a hot meal in two or three days, either. And when I needed a new winter coat, my eyes kept finding Daddy’s sneakers, which were cracked and held together with duct tape. One way or another, Ma and Daddy were always making it clear that they simply couldn’t give me what they didn’t have.
They had no intention to hurt us. It wasn’t as if they were running off during the daytime to be better parents to some other kids and then returning home at night to be awful to us. They simply did not have it in them to be the parents I wanted them to be. So how could I blame them?
I remember one time when Ma stole five dollars from me on my birthday. It had been a gift from my father’s mother, mailed from Long Island. The crisp bill had arrived in the mail taped neatly inside a glittery card right above my gr
andmother’s signature and her handwritten birthday wishes. I tucked the bill away in my dresser and planned a trip to the candy store. But that never happened. Instead, Ma waited for me to leave my room and then took the money to buy drugs.
When she returned home half an hour later with a nickel bag, I was furious with her. I demanded that she give me my money, and I shouted mean words at her that are hard for me to think about now. Ma said nothing back. She snatched up her works—syringe and cocaine—from the kitchen table and stormed to the bathroom. I trailed behind her, shouting harsh things. I assumed that she was running away from me to get high in privacy, but I was wrong. Instead, from the bathroom doorway, I saw Ma throw something into the toilet. Then I realized she was crying, and what she had flushed down the toilet was her coke. She’d thrown away the entire hit—despite her desperation.
She looked at me with tears in her eyes, “I’m not a monster, Lizzy,” she said. “I can’t stop. Forgive me, pumpkin?”
Then I was crying too; we both were. We ended up on the bathroom floor together, hugging each other, her syringe resting on the surface of the sink, directly in my view, my mother’s arms riddled up and down with aging needle marks. In the softest voice, she kept asking me for that same simple thing: “Forgive me, Lizzy.”
So I did.
She didn’t mean to do it; she would have stopped if she could have. “It’s okay, Ma, I forgive you,” I assured her. I forgave her in that moment, and I forgave her again two months later when she went into the freezer and took the Thanksgiving turkey we’d gotten from the church and sold it to a neighbor so that she could buy another hit. Forgiving her didn’t mean that I wasn’t devastated. I was heartbroken and deeply hurt whenever they left us hungry. I just didn’t blame Ma or Daddy for my hurt. I wasn’t angry at them. If I hated anything at all, I hated drugs and addiction itself, but I did not hate my parents. I loved my parents, and I knew they loved me. I was sure of it.