who we is, part 12

“Gobbline* me, Peewee! Ever time I letye go down to dat camp ye come back wif a fresh stock o’ the nits!”

Mizz Moorehead had her youngest, Penny, sprawled across the cupped floorboards of their tiny living room, Penny’s head in an old, chipped porcelain washbowl full of steamy water and lye suds.


“MAMA, IT HURTS!”


“Hesh, chile. It’s yer own doin’s.”


Mizz Moorehead shifted Peewee’s head for a new angle, then got back to work. She was raking Peewee’s hair and scalp with an ancient ivory haircomb; a small, fine-toothed girl’s comb with strange scrimshaw lettering on the handle. I figured it was old as Cap’n Ahab.


“MAMA!! OWWWW!!”


Mizz Moorehead’s side of the family were Gypsies, mostly based out of a trailer camp just outside Texarkana. Every summer the Mooreheads would pack one or two of the youngest kids off there for a month or two for a visit. And every fall they would come home with head lice or bedbugs or somesuch critter. I’m not saying that the Gypsies were particularly dirty peoples – I’d met Uncle Hambone and family many times and they acted and lived no different than most rural Arkansas folk – I’m just saying that it was a regular event.


“By God, Virginia, I ain’t seen ye bent over on the floor like that fer many a moon.” Mr. Moorehead generally sat around on a cane chair by the screen door, chain-huffing Pall Mall filterless, spouting jewels like...


“Go ‘head and break the goddam thing, Ernest. It’s finally paid fer.”


and


“What ye bringin me fer Christmas, Santy Claus? You sumbitch.”


...when he wasn’t working a week or three at the pallet mill and Mizz Moorehead was out of the nuthouse down to Benton.


‘Shesh, Leeroy!” Mizz Moorehead was never amused at him. “You won’t do nothin’ about this OR that. Yer sucker’s good but yer pecker’s dry!”


“Heeheeee look at the far in her eyes, boys!” Mr. Moorehead was always amused at her.


“MAMAAAA!!”


“Hesh.”






Mizz Tipton was on one of her rants, directly from textbook. I was always in trouble in Mizz Tipton’s class; mainly because I didn’t mind arguing with her over ‘Civics’. I reckon my freak hair and thuginess might have had something to do with it, too.


“So, you see, the reconstruction period, although harsh, was directly manifested by Southern insurgencies aimed at Federal.....”


I was already gearing up to interrupt her, but the school nurse beat me to it. The classroom door opened. Nobody EVER opened Mizz Tipton’s door in mid-rant.


“....protection forces.....umm...” Mizz Tipton turned her head to the door and glared. “...yes, Mizz Jordan?”


Mizz Jordan almost curtsied at the door. I always thought she looked cute in her little white outfit. She blushed at all the quiet eyes turned to her.


“I’m sorry, Mizz Tipton, ma’am. May I have a word with you outside?”


Mizz Tipton took a deep breath. She turned her glare to us.


“Why...yes, Mizz Jordan.” Her whole tone said: ‘This better be good, Nurse Rude. And you little miscreants best behave. Begin reading chapter.....’


“Students, begin reading chapter 16. I will continue in a moment.”


When she came back in, crossed her arms, then pointed at me, it wasn’t a new experience.






“See here,” Mizz Jordan said. She plucked a hair from the back of my head and held it up to her desk light. “See the little clusters of white clinging there, next to the root?”


“Yes’m.”


“Those are head lice eggs. They’re called nits.”


“Oh.”


She reached into her desk drawer. “This is medicated shampoo. You and all your family must use it for a week. I’m writing my telephone number on the label. Please have your mother call me. We have to clean your entire house.”


“Yes’m.”


“You and your brothers and sister will be out of school until you all check clean of lice. Do you understand?”


***Hell YEAH!!!!!***


“Yes’m. Mizz Jordan?”


“Yes, Steve?”


“What caused you to think I had head lice?”


She paused and looked away from me.


“Honestly, because rumor about town has it that you have been associating with the Moorehead family. They have all been removed from the school system until further notice.”


“Oh.” I reached for the shampoo. “Can I go now?”


“Yes.........Steve?”


I stopped at the door.


“Yes’m?”


“It’s not a shame to get lice. It’s only a shame to keep them.”


I nodded and walked out.


“Naw,” I thought. “It’s a shame nobody writes funny stories about this shit.”


I tucked the shampoo into the back pocket of my jeans and pushed the long stainless steel bar on the main entrance door. A quick puff of new September air touched my face. I could smell the first of the fall pecan leaves burning in somebody’s yard as I walked down to Main Street. I stopped and looked both ways. I grinned. I turned toward the Moorehead’s place.

*God blind.