AS SOON AS I started school in Ocopilla in April 1974, the lice arrived. I tried to draw in my notebook while lice fell from my hair onto the page and crawled around in circles, as if they were trying to get my attention. I thought maybe they were falling off my head because it was so crowded there was not enough room for them all. I imagined bloody fistfights as the tiny monsters fought over the land, a white landscape of thousands of tiny eggs.
At first I was startled, but the falling lice became so routine, I barely noticed them. I would have been embarrassed, but many other kids at school had their own personal colonies of piojos.
My mother spent many a late-evening hour patiently combing the eggs out of my hair with a special fine-tooth comb, the affectionate grooming routine reminiscent of monkeys picking insects off each other. We tried everything, special soaps and shampoos, even resorted to kerosene, leaving an awful smell in my hair that lasted for days. But nothing worked.
My mother probably spent more time combing lice eggs out of my hair than she did cooking. Even if she had wanted to cook it would have been much too difficult. All we had was that single-burner hot plate and no fridge. So a meal at home usually meant crusty bread and jelly for breakfast, along with tea or coffee. After school, my mother and Raul were often at a political event. My mother paid a neighbor to feed me those nights. The meals were better than at home, but still pretty basic—typically a bowl of rice or noodle soup, a piece of bread, and a main course consisting of a mix of rice, potatoes, and meat.
Esteban, his wife, Julia, and their two daughters treated me like family. Esteban was especially nice to me when he was sober, but he always smelled like sweated alcohol. One night, Esteban announced that he had a cure for my lice problem. It had worked on his kids. Did I want to try it?
His two girls giggled but wouldn’t say what it was. “It works,” they promised.
After dinner, he took me out back to the muddy, fenced yard where the family kept their goats, chickens, and ducks.
“Lower your head,” he instructed. “I need to douse your hair. Stay still; don’t move.” I did as he said, bending over as far as I could in the dark. A lukewarm shower of sticky salt water landed on my head, and my senses swarmed in the unmistakable smell. Nothing stinks quite like urine, and there is nothing quite like having a pot of pee dumped on your head. “Now, rub it in real good,” he said. Tentatively, I reached up and massaged the urine into my lice-infested scalp. “Harder! Use both hands.” So I wouldn’t offend him, I rubbed the pee into my head with gusto.
I began to stand up, but he stopped me. “You need just a bit more,” he said. There was no pee left in the chamber pot, so he unzipped his pants, pulled out his penis, and released a hot stream right on my head, taking care not to miss any spots. I was so drenched that even my ears were full. “There, that should do it.”
Gagging, I desperately wanted to rinse my hair and wash off my salty face. But he stopped me again. “Now, let it set there for a little while,” he said. “It has to soak in.” And so I sat patiently, pee drying on my eyelids, waiting for the minutes to tick by.
It worked exactly as promised. It turned out that the lice living on my head were even more disgusted than I was. A few weeks later, though, they were back in full force—perhaps because the other kids at school still had lice—procreating and laying eggs more enthusiastically than ever. But I didn’t ask Esteban for another “treatment.”