Lice

Elise was sitting in the rear passenger seat of her parent's car, and her mother was driving. She was small enough that she was not allowed to sit in the front passenger seat. Her gaze turned from her mother’s right shoulder to the window to her left, where an endless field of emerald corn stalks cooked in the haze of a brilliant sun.

"We'll go home in a little bit. We just have to stop somewhere first," Elise's mother said reassuringly. Elise realized that she must have asked where they were going, although she had no memory of it and didn't hear herself do it.

The back seat was bestrewn with clutter in a way that always made Elise feel cozy. There were different work papers, pens, dog leashes, window scrapers, empty soda bottles, CD cases, McDonald’s bags, and many other items fighting for space against Elise. Next to her, a paper bag was sitting neatly folded at the top. Her consciousness moved a hand, her hand, although she couldn’t feel herself moving it, and she opened the bag to find a bottle of lice shampoo.

She was dreaming. Once she understood that, she remembered where she was and desperately wanted to wake up.

When Elise was seven years old, she got lice. The little bugs had begun a society on top of her head without consulting her. Her elementary school offered free checks throughout the year, and Elise had always scoffed at the other kids who were plagued by the infestation. She thought someone would have to be pretty weird to not know they had bugs in their hair.

An hour earlier, latex gloves located the white devils running amok through the forest of her scalp, and her mother was called. Elise told them her head had been feeling itchy but no more than usual. That made the medical staff give her a distant look as though they didn't believe her. They said something to her mother about eggs. There was no way of knowing if the lice had babies, and they were worried that their eggs would hatch and there would be a lot more than there already were. The medical staff told her to go to the store promptly, get the proper shampoo, and go straight home to begin the extermination process.

She itched her head and felt like she scratched off three or four of the retched little biters, along with a line of poor skin scraped into the shovel of her fingernail. She wiped them off her shoulder and held back her disgust. The idea of an entire generation of lice finding their first moments in this world, those crucial first few seconds of life to get the process moving, on her head sent a wave of goosebumps over her body. Creatures were living out their childhoods in her hair. Why weren’t they driving straight home like the doctors said? She wanted to go home. She heard herself say, “There are bugs in my hair,” although she couldn’t feel herself do it.

“Yes, there are bugs in your hair, but they aren’t bad bugs. They’re fine. Plenty of kids have them. Sometimes you just get bugs in your hair,” her mother laughed, “You probably got it from a boy at school. Do you have a boyfriend I don’t know about?”

There was a boy that Elise liked, but her innocence found the word "boyfriend" to be highly inappropriate. She was too young for that, and she remembered thinking he "isn't even that cute," although she did find him to be that cute. She desperately wanted to yell "no" and ask her mother why they weren't going home, but she could not find the strength to push the air out of her chest. Her gaze was fixed out the window at the passing, highly saturated green and gold agricultural wonders, and itched her head. Just looking at the sun’s heat was worsening it. Her mother continued trying to distract her by asking about boys, but it wasn’t working. There were bugs in her hair.

The car turned down a narrow driveway that led to a small house tucked away behind a tree line near the rural road. They came to a gradual stop, the tires slowly muscling and crunching the gravel driveway out from underneath them until they parked. The sun stopped shining through the window. It dotted here and there but was mostly blocked by the canopy cover. The car was dark and chilled, which lessened her discomfort. However, the sliver of relief was short-lived. Elise felt like she could barely see her mother.

“Hey,” her mother said, “I just need to run inside real quick. I'll leave the car running so you can listen to whatever music you want and stuff. Does that sound good? The air conditioner can stay on unless you want windows. Do you want windows or air conditioner? You can do whatever you feel like. You are welcome to draw something on the papers back there. I don't need them anymore. I don't know, do you like drawing? Could be something fun.”

Her mother struggled to reach into the back seat with her arm bent at an unnatural angle and grabbed at different items until she crumpled a few pieces of scrap paper in her hand. She tossed them at Elise and then reached into her purse to pull out a blue pen she got from a bank. She tossed it into the seat next to Elise and collapsed the paper bag containing the lice shampoo.

“That’s my favorite pen, so be careful with it. Don’t chew on it. Don’t get bug guts on it,” she laughed. Elise, again, felt offended and annoyed by her mother’s attempts at warmth. But she knew her mother loved her and was taking care of her in her own way. She had gotten to leave school early, so at least there was that. Her mother would be back soon. If she said it was going to be okay, then it was true.

Elise could tell by the look on her mother's face that she was saying something, but she didn’t know what it was. Her mother smiled at her in the rearview mirror and playfully grabbed at her with her arm, which was now bending at an even more alarming angle. Elise reached out and caught her hand, holding it close to her chest. Her mother brought her hands forward and kissed them before letting her go and slamming the door shut behind her.

She watched her mother walk around the back of the small house and disappear around the corner. It was like a cabin. It was nice. There appeared to be a large, rainbow-dotted prairie and more trees in the back, all radiating and hyper-naturally saturated in their fabulously heightened preservation in Elise's memory.