from Hair in the Mousetrap

Once, in a sandbox, by a hill, where a train went by, a little boy I was playing with threw handfuls of wet sand at me. Misplaced affection. I blamed the lice I got on the sand and not on him. My mother knew better. She bought this delousing shampoo that smelled like varsol and stung like soap in your eyes. Every night for the next two weeks, we played out a ritual where repentance was wreaked on my flesh.

She would drag me, kicking and screaming to the bath tub. She then trapped me in mother stocks: one large hand grasping both my wrists behind my back, while the other hand poured the bug killing juice all over my cringing scalp. I begged and begged for forgiveness, for mercy, but the expurgation continued until I was pure again, and contrite.

I never went back to that sandbox, and I never played with that little boy again. I wasn't allowed. I never even told her he¹d kissed me.