Lice!

When I first discovered I had lice, the urge to find the culprit
who’d passed them on to me was strong. I came to believe that the
girl who sat in front of me in class was the culprit. My friends
didn’t have lice. It had to be the girl who was always dirty and
smelled of urine. Only people like that, I figured, had lice. Her
hair was such a mess that I couldn’t tell, but that didn’t stop me
from lashing out at her during a recess.

“You always smell bad. Don’t you wash?”

My friend Else pulled me away before I could proceed with the
attack.“Don’t say mean things to her. Don’t you know she comes
from a very poor family? She has to sleep with a younger sister
who wets the bed. Leave her alone.”

It made me feel sorry for the girl, but I didn’t apologize. She
could still wash, was my thinking. I also didn’t reveal my own
problem, which was getting worse despite my efforts. I begged
Mama to help me. Her response was curt. “You’re big enough to
take care of it.”

I was positive my friends couldn’t help, even if I had the courage
to tell them about it. I was certain that they would shun me. No
mother would allow her daughter to associate with a person who had
lice. I took pains to make sure that no one stood behind me for
long. Lice are not plainly visible, but their eggs are. Being in
the back row helped, but one day our new teacher Frau Christman
called on me, and asked me to the blackboard for a math problem.
I went to the board and wrote out the calculation under her
direction. She stepped behind me, saying I should solve it. The
very idea of her eyes on the back of my head made me uneasy and
I froze. The figures on the board suddenly meant nothing. All I
could feel were eyes inspecting my head. I just knew she was
going to order me from the room.

“I have to sit down. I can’t finish it.” The words exploded
from me as I turned without permission to rush back to my desk
embarrassed and near tears.

At the end of the day, Frau Christman asked me to stay for a minute.

“Annchen, what happened at the board? You could have done the
problem. I wouldn’t have asked you otherwise.”

I wanted to spill my insides out to the woman in front of me, to
tell her everything and ask her help. The fear of a shaved head and
shame kept me from it. I could only manage a weak excuse. “I’m sorry,
Frau Christman. I don’t know what came over me.”

My rapport with her hadn’t been the same as with Herr Lawaldt
— nothing terrible, but after this incident, it never really
improved. To the uninitiated, having head lice may sound like a
simple hygiene problem, easily cured with a special shampoo or
medicine. In 1944, that was definitely not the case. We had a
few quack remedies, but other than shaving the hair, kerosene was
the only method, and only if done right. Even then, the treatment
might have to be repeated. I bought some kerosene at old Bender’s
shop down on the Langstraße. I must not have applied it right.
I found no relief, but worse still, Mama and Peter got the lice
from me.

I managed to rid Peter of them, but had no success with Mama.
Her scalp had been scratched open, making the use of kerosene too
painful. She had stopped washing and brushing her hair. What had
once been long, beautiful braids became a tangled, matted mess
constantly scratched at, and a scalp with open sores and dried
blood that emitted a bad smell. I was getting more frantic by
the day, pleading with her to get up, to wash herself, to wash
and brush her hair. It was not as if Mama never got out of bed.
She did, usually when I was in school. I could tell that she had
been up, though not to dress and clean up. I would have helped to
wash and brush her hair, but she wouldn’t let me.

By late summer, the pressure of school and our lice problem had
reached the breaking point. Papa hadn’t been home for some time,
and our contact was limited to the mail. I had previously
hesitated to bother him with a situation easily remedied by Mama.
I finally realized that it wouldn’t happen, and wrote to Papa. He
came through the door two days later. I stood before him in the
kitchen, just feet away, my body trembling and tears flowing from
grief and shame,relief and joy. I wanted to hug him, but feared he’d
shove me away because of the lice.

“Where’s your mother?”

I pointed to the bedroom. He left me standing there, but returned
shortly,very angry.

“Why have you kept this from me? Mein Gott! What has become of this
family? Come here. I want to look at your head.”

I’d never seen my father in such a rage, and I began to shake harder.
All joy and relief that he had come were gone. He inspected my well-
brushed hair and scalp with a brutal touch. When he was through, I
felt a terrible guilt in having let him down.

“It’s too late, much too late. I have to cut the hair off both of
you!”

“Nay!” I’d jumped to my feet, screaming and bawling. “You can’t do
that to me. Please! Please, Papa, say you won’t cut my hair! The
shame, Papa. Don’t make it so I can’t go to school again! Please,
I’ll do anything to get rid of them, but don’t cut off my hair.
Papa, please don’t.”

I collapsed back into the chair and buried my face in my hands. For a
moment my father said nothing, then left to go back into the bedroom.
I cried and continued to plead aloud despite his absence, and after
a while, he returned and walked over to me. Again he inspected my
bowed head, more gently than before.

“Ach, my Annchen, what have we come to.” His voice was gentle as he
softly massaged my shoulders and back, helping me regain control
of myself. “Your mother’s hair is a lost cause. There’s no way to even
wash and brush it. Nay, it can’t be saved. I’ll have to cut it off.”

I shivered at the thought, which probably made Papa think I was going
to start up again.

“Nay, Märe, don’t worry. Your head is in much better shape.
We’ll try a treatment first. You said in your letter about trying
kerosene. That should have worked. You must have done it wrong. Is
there any left to use?”

“I emptied the bottle, and Herr Bender probably won’t give us more.
He wasn’t happy to part with the liter I got.”

“So, Bender has kerosene. Isn’t it amazing what he has stashed in
that old musty shop. Get me an empty wine bottle. I haven’t talked
to bachelor Bender in far too long a time."

I was sure Papa hadn’t spoken more than a few words with the
shopkeeper in years, still they must have had a good visit. My
father came back with the bottle filled all the way to the cork
with kerosene. I knew that what Papa was about to do saddened
and angered him. He always loved Mama’s hair — her beautiful,
beautiful hair. To cut it off hurt him deeply. He couldn’t
understand how his wife, once so proud and meticulous,
had let herself go down so completely.

He brought Mama into the kitchen and placed her on a chair.
I checked on Peter and returned to watch. My mother gave no
argument — she said nothing at all. I couldn’t stop the tears
that came and ran down my cheeks, dropping tothe floor as
silently as the hair piling up at Papa’s feet. He had decided
not to cut her hair at the scalp, and he explained. “I’m just
going to get it to where a comb will go through. Then you and
I will wash and dry it before I put some kerosene on and wrap
her head.”

“Papa! You’ll hurt her with kerosene. Don’t you see all the open
sores?”

“It’s either that, or all the hair has to come off. Don’t worry.
We must at least try.”

When it came time for the kerosene, I knew it must have hurt.
She bit her lip, but made no sound. He wrapped her head with
brown paper, also soaked with the smelly liquid, then put on
more paper to seal it. I swept up the hair on the floor and threw
the whole pile into the stove to burn. Mama was told to sit still
while he took care of me.

Everything was done with the window wide open. Kerosene isn’t as
explosive as gasoline, but it would have been foolhardy to take
chances. Papa didn’t want me to take apart my braids, saying that
long loose hair would turn into a hopeless mass of tangles. He
started by saturating my scalp, then pinning each braid on top of
my head. He put extra kerosene at the base of each braid before
soaking the rest on top.

“That should do it,” he said, starting to wrap and seal his
handiwork. “It would have been better to put each braid right in
the bottle, but they’re too thick."

Mama didn’t move from the table. She’d fixed her gaze on a spot
near the stove and stared at it for more than two hours. Papa had
fixed some tea and sandwiches for us, but she’d only sip at the tea.
I stayed close to fresh air by the window, and away from the stove.
Peter began to fuss, and Papa brought him to the kitchen and spooned
creamed wheat cereal into his mouth. He didn’t like the kerosene
aroma or the two strange creatures with the wrapped heads. The
little guy was also not accustomed to Papa, who must have seemed
a stranger. He didn’t cry, but looked mighty uncomfortable.

My father had given up trying to make conversation with Mama — she
wouldn’t answer. He and I talked, mostly about Peter and how I
should find a carriage to take him for walks in the fresh air. “He
needs to see other people and learn there’s something besides walls
of a bedroom.” I agreed, but silently wondered how I’d find the time.

Nearly three hours had passed when Papa and I took Mama to the wash
kitchen to shampoo her head. He rinsed and lathered her hair a
second time. Now cut short, it was quickly towel dried and combed.
I didn’t know what to say as I looked at her. There was no doubt
that Papa had to trim and make her hair more presentable, which he
did the next day before a third wash. I could only think that the
transformation of my mother was complete. In both her behavior and
appearance, she had become a person I didn’t know.

While I waited for my own hair to dry, Papa stripped all the linens
from the beds, and he and I boiled everything in the big wash kettles
late into the night. Mama and Peter were then settled in a clean
bed. It was late when we finally turned in, but the next morning,
promptly after breakfast, another hair wash was ordered, and a new
close inspection of our heads.

“I can’t find any evidence of lice,” he said to me. “But you will
have to work at scraping the dead eggs from your long hair. They
stick like glue.”

I worked like mad to do just that over the next several days and it
worked. Neither Mama nor I had further evidence of lice. I thanked
God and Papa.