Anchor - Lice

Anchor
By Mark Anderson

I often wake from naps
with an anchor

tied to my heart
and my bed,

that lonely ship,
keeps me from sinking

Lice
By Michael Herman

The very first thing we did was remove the sheets from the mattresses. We were wearing rubber dishwashing gloves so we were protected from the lice and still I did my best to make sure the fabric didn’t touch me or my clothing. I’d worn a few things which were worn out in the case I needed to throw away or even burn them. It was a pair of pants with a hole in the pocket and a t-shirt I received for working on a spring break mission trip when I was in college. There was no sentimental value to either but still I swung my hips aside like a matador as the sheet followed my guide. These were going to be burned. We couldn’t even risk someone else taking them out of the dumpster and reusing them.

“Did you hear anything about this family?” another member of my church service group asked me.

“No, I didn’t” I said lying.

“Man, these people are lucky to be here. They’re from somewhere in Asia originally and they were just farmers there. One of their uncles lived in the city though and he had gone to college for something like engineering or something like that. Well, one of his friends took him to this party one time and there are a few Communists there. He doesn’t talk to them, say hello to them or anything. They just happened to be in the same room as him. Then when the military overthrew the President last year, someone puts word in the right person’s ear that their uncle had been at this party and that it. They had to move away or die.”

I knew the circumstances of their immigration weren’t ideal. I knew they’d come from a refugee camp in South Vietnam. It was one year ago our church elected to host a refugee family and we’d received bulletin updates about their progress coming here to Arizona to be a part of our community. When they’d finally arrived and were introduced at both the eight o’clock and ten-thirty services, our congregation rose to their feet and applauded for these people. They had persevered where we perhaps could’ve not. We settled them into a basement apartment in a square brick-building and some of the older women in the congregation took up the cause of obtaining them furniture. They looked high and low in the community and it was in a Salvation Army store across town they found a couch which we later found out was infested with lice. The children were the first to complain of itchiness and then the adults did as well.

Now here we were throwing out all of their bed linens and scrubbing what else we could before the exterminators came tomorrow. In another room, two other parishioners on the service committee were putting the secondhand cups and china into plastic yard bags. After we’d folded the sheets and put them in their own bags in the back of Pastor’s truck, my compatriot and unloaded the bureaus and dressers of their contents. The family had four children, all under the age of six, so these were hand-me-downs from the congregation. I recognized some of the clothing from when my friends and I wore them as children twenty five years before. They belonged to this family now.

There was only once I took a break and sat down in the middle of the carpet. The mother was sitting in one of the chairs across the room. She couldn’t see me observing her or perhaps she didn’t care. Her eyes were fixed on a spot just in front of the pile. I could see how they carried the burden and wear of the years, even before they’d been nephews and nieces to trouble and risked their lives to be here. It was formed in her frown the misery and hardship she’d seen in her life and now, in America the land of prosperity, continued to happen.

As we left them with a reminder the exterminator would be by at ten o’clock the next morning and they would have to leave for four hours, I wondered if they knew. All of what was left was still theirs. It was protected in these trash bags and wasn’t being thrown out. When they came back tomorrow, they would be able to put their dishes away and re-hang their clothes. They would be allowed to sleep in their new beds scheduled to arrive the day after and raise their children here without worry of someone knocking on your door in the middle of the night. I was humbled knowing I’d been concerned enough of lice to wear gloves and how foolish I’d been to think things as small as lice were worth being concerned.