31: The Good Mother
Originally emailed on Jan. 27, 2000
In early November, both of my boys came home from school with head lice. Fine, I said. We shampooed them with special shampoo and combed them with special nit-picking combs and sealed all their hats in plastic bags for ten days so the lice would all die, and after many days of unrelenting effort, they were free from lice and ready to return to school.
Two weeks later, they came home with lice again. Fine, I said. Shampoo. Comb. Plastic bags. Lice gone. Kids in school.
Three weeks later: head lice again. By this time, I had begun to suspect that my angel Mark was deliberately infesting himself in order to be allowed to stay home from school, and was infesting Sammy as well just so he'd have someone around to pick on during those long, empty days. I was less gentle when I combed this time around. I was perhaps a fraction slower grabbing a towel when Mark said I'd gotten shampoo in his eyes. And every day I gave him the same lecture: if you come home with head lice one more time, I'm shaving your head.
Apparently, that wasn't the threat I thought it was. It took him only five days to find a kid with lice and cozy up to him. With deliberate obviousness disguised as an effort to be secretive, he scratched his head all through dinner. "Oh, no, Mom," he said. "I think I have lice again! How could this have happened? I've been so careful! I haven't traded hats, I haven't shared my comb. I just don't understand! Please don't shave my head, Mom! I know it's a big pain to have to comb me and shampoo me, and I don't want to miss school, but there's nothing stupider-looking than a shaved head! I can't go to school like that! Please, Mom! Anything but that!"
I looked at Ed across the table. "Br'er Rabbit has head lice again," I said.
Ed grinned. "Let's shave his head! That'll show him!"
So we did. I cut Mark's hair very short with scissors, and then Ed shaved him. We collected all the hair (with lice eggs firmly attached) in a plastic bag and put it at the curb. Mark tried to carry on his pretense that a shaved head wasn't the very thing he wanted, but I kept catching him admiring himself in the mirror and running his hand happily over his bald head.
"What's so cool about a shaved head, Mark?" I asked him.
"It's not cool, Mom! Everyone will laugh at me!" he protested.
"You don't have to pretend you don't like it," I said. "It's fine with me if you want a shaved head."
Mark looked at me warily for a moment, considering whether I was baiting a trap. "Really?" he asked.
"Really," I said. "I can't see that it will do you any harm, as long as you wear a hat out in the cold."
Mark rolled his eyes. "Sure, Mom, I'll wear a hat, whatever you say." He thought again for a moment. "I don't think I can explain why it's cool. It just is. It's like, lots of cool guys on TV have their head shaved, but nobody I know does, right?"
"What cool guys on TV?" I asked. "I can't think of one on any of the shows I watch."
"Well, you don't watch wrestling," Mark said contemptuously.
"Ah," I said. "I always mean to, but somehow I can never find the time."
"Right," Mark said. "Anyway, so now I'm the first guy at school with my head shaved. It's cool. Everybody will think I'm like, really daring and stuff."
"I see," I said.
"So, can I keep it shaved?" he asked.
"I think so," I said. "I can't think of any good reason why not. But I'll let you know for sure in a few days, OK?"
"OK," he said.
"By the way," I said. "Thanks for not infesting Sammy this last time."
"I never infested Sammy!" Mark said. "Like I'd want to get that close to the little geek."
"Mark--" I said warningly.
"Oh, you're welcome," he said.
So now my oldest son, bald, husky, and wearing an earring, bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Mr. Clean, if Mr. Clean had a suburban white boy pseudo-hip-hop taste in clothes. The funniest thing about the shaved head (which Mark is religious about re-shaving every two days, tops, to avoid stubble) is that he still wears a cap morning, noon, and night. "Does anyone at school know you shaved your head?" I asked him once, but he just rolled his eyes again, meaning: "Mothers! They don't understand anything!"
You are probably wondering how Harriet's little brother Ron is doing. Well, he had lunch with us on Sunday, as he has been doing almost every week. He has been hoist by his own petard: he told his foster-parents that he could not go to church with them because he always goes to church with Ed. Ron was confident that Ed would back him up in this assertion, and that he (Ron) would then get to enjoy Sunday mornings lounging around our house playing Nintendo with the boys, exerting himself no farther than to remember the contents of some church sign-board passed on the way home, so that he could report it as the topic of the sermon he had heard. When asked, Ed told the foster parents that Ron did, indeed, attend church with him. The next Sunday he picked Ron up at 9:45 a.m. sharp, and took him, protesting, to church. Ron was a bit put out, but Ed just told him mildly that lies are bad, but can sometimes be improved by being made good on.
"It's not fair, Louella," Ron told me as he helped me wash the lunch dishes. "I can put up with all their rules except the going-to-church rule, and here I am going to church anyway."
"That's what you get for implicating Ed in a falsehood," I told him. "Ed is a very honest man. Besides, you don't have to go to church with Ed. You could decide to stop."
Ron signed. "Yeah, and then I'd have to go with The Family That Love Built: Mr. and Mrs. Self-Sacrificing, followed by their six foster children in assorted flavors and colors, all filing into a pew, taking up their hymnals, and fixing their righteous gazes on Our Lord as He suffers on the cross. No, thanks. I'd rather go to church as Ed's friend than as their latest holy project."
"So you don't like your foster parents much," I said. "Have you thought about talking to Harriet again about whether you could live with her?"
"I've thought about it a lot," Ron said. "And if I tell you something, will you keep it to yourself? I don't want to hurt Harriet's feelings or anything."
"Sure," I said. "I won't tell Harriet."
"I'm not crazy about the foster parents, it's true. I'm especially not crazy about sharing my home with an 8-year-old bed-wetter and a 12-year-old who wakes up screaming at precisely 2:07 a.m. every night because he still has nightmares about things I don't even want to know about. I don't like having a chore-list as long as my arm, which includes things like it's my job to put the bed-wetter's sheets in the washing machine every morning before I leave for school. I don't like having my own money doled out to me in George Washington increments, and that only if they think I spent the last batch on wholesome and worthwhile things. I don't like saying grace before meals, or being asked to do the reading at Wednesday night family Bible study. I don't like not being allowed to go out on weeknights, and having a 10:00 -- Ten O-Clock, Louella -- curfew on weekends. I don't like living in a house with no television.
"But when I think about going back to my parents, if they'd have me, or to Harriet's, it just seems worse. And I wonder why -- why would I prefer life in the Lansing Bible Belt Annex to life with my parents, who let me get away with anything in exchange for making me listen to the daily lecture on what an ungrateful loser I am, or with my older sister, who disapproves of me but has treated me like a grown-up since I was fourteen years old?"
"Well, why is it?" I asked.
"I've thought about that question a lot," Ron said. "And I've figured it out. It's because the foster parents don't really care about me."
"They must care about you!" I protested.
"Oh, sure, in the same abstract way they care about all troubled youth and starving children. I'm not saying they don't like me. I mean, they're not invested in me, you know? Take my parents: everything I or my lovely brother Al Junior do, they act like it's about them. Al makes the dean's list, it's because they're such great parents. I get in trouble at school, it's 'how could you do this to us?' And Harriet! When I used to get along with my mom, Harriet felt betrayed, and then when I cooled on my mom, Harriet felt vindicated. But my relationship with my mom has nothing to do with Harriet! You see?"
"I think so," I said.
"But the foster parents -- they make rules, and if I follow them I get 'privileges,' and if I don't I get in trouble, but it's never emotional. It's never 'we took you in when nobody else would, and this is how you thank us?' It's just, 'Ron, you broke curfew, which you know means no going out next weekend,' or 'Ron, thanks for doing the dishes like we asked you, how'd you like to pick this week's ice cream flavor? We'll get a half-gallon of any kind you want.' I always know exactly where I stand with them. It's kind of relaxing."
"Well, that sound fine, Ron," I said.
"Besides, I do kind of like the kids," he said. "Even the bedwetter, poor little guy. I was gonna ask you if I could bring him along sometimes when Sammy and I hang out on Saturdays. He doesn't have visits with his real parents."
"It's fine with me if Sammy thinks it's OK," I said. "And if the foster parents agree."
"I'll ask them," Ron said. "This pan is pretty crusty. Can we just put it to soak and wash it later?"
"Later, when you're not here anymore and I'm the one who has to plunge my hand into cold, greasy water to dig the thing out? No, we cannot put it to soak," I said. "But you can use a new Chore-Boy if you want! See how the copper shines?"
Ron flicked dishwater at me, but he took the Chore-Boy and attacked the pan. "You're a good mom, Louella," he said.
"Mark would disagree with you," I said.
"Mark should consider the alternatives," Ron answered. "There's your pan, clean as a whistle. I'm getting pretty good at dishes over at the orphanage. They probably consider it career training." He sighed. "Can you drive me home?"
"Sure," I said. "Whenever you're ready."
"I'm as ready as I'll ever be," he answered. And then he hugged me.
© Copyright 1997-2001 Su Penn. Design by David Dierauer.
