The lice fall onto Samantha’s lap in music class. Engorged on the blood they have sucked from her scalp, they wriggle on her blue plaid uniform skirt. She squishes one between her right thumb and index finger. In her left hand she grips her Yamaha recorder under the mouthpiece. She stares at the sheet music but can’t concentrate on the notes. What if Heather or Stephanie sees one jump out of her head? This would certainly mean more merciless teasing like that time they took their thin black markers and drew dots on their faces, right below their lips, where her mole is. “We want to look like you, you are so pretty,” they snickered as she looked down to hide her reddening face. “Tell them it’s a beauty mark,” her mother comforted that afternoon, offering another in a string of what Samantha will much later recognize as failed maternal advice. Samantha came home the next day with her new gray wool tights torn and bloody at the knees after they knocked her down on the asphalt playground, tiny pebbles encrusted in her wounded skin.
Samantha follows each itch with her finger, digging into her flesh to pull the squirming life forms from her head. She feels some satisfaction when she roots one out. Last week, the principal sent notes home with students in grades three to six notifying parents of the lice outbreak and directing them to scrub their children’s scalp with Lindane shampoo and use a fine-toothed comb to get the remaining nits out. Samantha didn’t know what a nit was. Samantha’s mother was sitting in the tan leather armchair in the den, weeping softly and steadily, like a faucet that had been leaking for days. The skin around her eyes was swollen and pink. She had a moist tissue wadded in her left hand which propped up her drooping head. “This is for you.” Samantha’s mother stared blankly at the piece of paper between them. “I’m sorry, honey, I just don’t have the energy.” She was in this same chair when Samantha and her brother Kevin left that morning, how could she still be so tired? Samantha went to her room and tore the note into tiny pieces.
Mrs. Cokinos is a self-described “Beatles fanatic,” no Hot Cross Buns or London Bridge for her pupils. She prefers songs with lyrics, usually choosing Kirsten, the blondest and palest and thus understood prettiest, as vocalist. Kirsten warbles in her too high voice. The class plays in tune but meekly. “Don’t just blow! You need to learn to control your breath,” Mrs. Cokinos scolds. “Do any of you even know the meaning of this song?” She fixes her eyes on Samantha’s dark tangled hair. No one answers. “It’s about a man who everyone takes for a fool,” she says. “But his silence is actually a sign of his wisdom.” The students fidget. Samantha knows that this doesn’t describe her. She recently got an F on her math test, after all. She sat on the edge of the bed her mother hadn’t left all day, holding the test in her hand. “Has anyone in our family ever failed at anything?” Samantha asked. Her mother needed to sign the evidence, an official acknowledgment of her daughter’s shortcomings. Her father forbade her from having sleepovers until her grades improved, as if that would make the numbers that dissolved the moment they entered her head any clearer.
“Of course, Mrs. Cokinos, I knew that,” Stephanie says, a prim smile on her face. Mrs. Cokinos slams her hand on the desk. “Did you? Did you really?” Now it’s Stephanie’s face that reddens. She usually does the shaming, so this reversal breaks the tacit social order among the inmates. They are slightly unmoored without the hierarchy that makes their days fraught but scrutable. “Because sometimes, the quietest person is the smartest. The one who says the least.” Words do stick in Samantha’s head, becoming sharper as she turns them over, considers them from all sides. She vows to say less, confusing the relationship Mrs. Cokinos described. Maybe if she doesn’t talk, she will do better in math. Maybe her mother will be happier if she is quiet, her father kinder. After some moments of silence, Mrs. Cokinos tells the class that they will try again. Harder this time. They will be better; she knows they have it in them. Samantha takes her recorder from her lap into her hand. When she looks down, she sees the blood of a louse smeared on its white plastic.
