A Ladybug Takes On the Lice;Professional Nit-Picker
Has More Business Than She Can Handle
Published: December 4, 1995
She is the professional nit-picker of Borough Park. And
no one is complaining.
Almost every day, they trek to Dalya H.'s house in Brooklyn -- distraught, exhausted
parents, hands wrinkled from loads of laundry; children with slightly shamed
faces and scalps afire with itching.
The legions of the afflicted are the children of surgeons and scientists, teachers
and day care workers. They often want to remain as anonymous as possible -- embarrassment
is one of the chief side effects -- but most of all they want relief.
They find it in the kitchen of an Orthodox Jewish nurse, who sits at a folding
chair with nothing more than a pencil and a wet paper towel, her seven children
doing their homework and dinner cooking in the oven. "My nickname is the
Ladybug," Dalya H. said.
The malady is head lice -- the scourge that knows no class distinctions, the
annual pest that defies as many prescription treatments as it does standard stereotypes.
For the Ladybug, the decision to identify herself only as Dalya H. results from
her fear of generating more business. As it is, her telephone, ringing nonstop
with the awkward weepings of the desperate, has to be left off the hook just
after 11 every night.
"It's one of the 10 plagues that didn't go away," Dalya's husband,
a garment manufacturer, said. "But God works in strange ways: with this
plague, he has given us a family industry."
Dalya H. has sat in her kitchen picking nits, the individual louse nests attached
to the hairs, for a decade -- the actual and complete removal of the egg sacs
is the only way to rid a child of the problem -- but she says she has never seen
an outbreak as great as this year's. The lice, she says, have become resistant;
the schools have become besieged; the waiting room that is also her living room
has been packed since September.
"I've been here on and off since Rosh ha-Shanah," said one mother,
who spoke last week on the condition of smiling anonymity. "The woman is
a savior."
Not to mention a living lesson in entomology, too.
Dr. Dennis White, an official with the State Health Department, said no hard
data are kept on head lice cases, since they do not have to be reported. But
across the state, he said, the department's telephones start to ring with questions
and complaints every school year when the weather gets cold and the children
start wearing hats and scarves.
Francine Goldstein, executive director of student support services for New York
City's Board of Education, said recent reports of widespread problems in the
schools in the city and across the region had moved her to order formal instructions
to be sent out to all school districts. But Dr. Gary Krigsman, medical director
for the City Health Department's Bureau of School Health, said there is no sense
that a formal epidemic is going on.
"The problem of head lice, though, does often produce some degree of hysteria," Dr.
Krigsman said.
The Fort Lee, N.J., school district had a brief bout with the hysteria last month.
One routine check at a middle school with 450 students turned up 60 cases of
head lice.
"We had television reporters, radio teams, newspapers here," said Dr.
Alan W. Sugarman, the district's Superintendent. "But honestly, I don't
entirely know what the fascination was. There are 65 million cases of head lice
a year in the country."
Actually, the number of cases is closer to six million. The problem with head
lice is not novel or a great threat. Any household hit with the invasion, though,
is traumatized -- vacuum cleaners are put to previously unimagined use, linen
is heaved, the dry-cleaning bill can exceed the mortgage payment. Children are
ordered home from school, parents miss work.
And Dalya H.'s kitchen starts to, well, buzz.
"I have a lot to say," Dalya said. "But the first thing I tell
people is this: It is not the end of the world."
Dalya H., who moved to Brooklyn from Israel 10 years ago, said that she had no
formal training in her line of work, and that she is not the latest in any long
line of folk oddities. She just has a way with kids, works hair with her hands
as efficiently as some automated loom and has a superior set of eyes.
A half-hour in her chair under the kitchen's fluorescent lights costs $15 and
can result in 150 nits being picked from a child's head. Her preferred remedy
for killing the bugs and their offspring involves encasing children's heads in
margarine and plastic wrap and having them sleep in the bizarre bonnets.
"There's no way in the world a normal person can do this," she said
of her calling. "But I'm only human. I can miss one or two. People want
to believe this is the end. But they have to come back to be checked."
Word of the Ladybug's prowess is widely enough known -- through an underground
network of pediatricians, principals and converts of her cure -- that dozens
of the local yeshivas in Brooklyn have hired her and a partner, Shayna B., to
monitor the heads of their schoolchildren. Over two days last week at the Yeshiva
of Prospect Park, the two women checked more than 600 heads.
"Parents were crying, asking me to give them another chance," Dalya
H. said of the men and women whose children were sent from school to the yeshiva
to be treated. "And the parents who come here are crying. It can be a headache.
I go to bed seeing nits."
In the Ladybug's kitchen, one woman whose child was examined, picked and cleared
by Dalya H. recently said she figured she might actually get her first sleep
in a week. "The nightmare is over," she said.
For another woman, Johanna Conneally, the parameters of a real-life bad dream
were these: A licensed day care worker, she saw her after-school group of six
kids -- from all different kinds of schools and backgrounds -- turn up with head
lice. Her answer was the Ladybug.
"A pretty unique resource for Brooklyn," Ms. Conneally said.
Dalya H.'s children take the routine in stride, although they wish their mother
would say "no" more often. She often works long after they have gone
to bed, and the crying of children and parents can wake them. As well, preparing
for the high holy days with the borough's worst head cases in your kitchen can
be trying.
"But I see what it means to people," Dalya H. said. "I am thinking
of writing a book. I am going to call it 'Lice Buster.' What do you think?"
Who wants to argue with a nit-picker's chosen title?
Child Magazine:
Lice Aren’t Nice
November, 1999
I am writing this on the back of a piece of paper upon
which is printed the precious name and number of Dalia,
the Lice Lady. Though our predicament is a little embarrassing,
it is increasingly familiar to parents everywhere.
Week One - Monday, 11:35 P.M. - My husband,
Ron, and I are slumped in front of the T.V. watching a
Cheers rerun. The phone rings. We glance at each other,
perplexed. As the parents of a high energy sixteen month
old girl, we have trained our family and friends not to
call after 10 pm. It is Katie, our daycare provider, calling
to tell us that Emily, Ariel’s best friend at daycare,
has lice. I am aghast. “I thought we were safe until
she was in first grade!” I protest. The top of my
head begins to itch. Katie advises us to look carefully
through Ariel’s hair for both lice and nits (lice
eggs) and to pay special attention to the area around her
ears and at the nap of her neck, which are favorite nesting
spots. We’ll know they’re not dandruff because
nits cling stubbornly to the hair shaft and dandruff flakes
off. Furthermore, Katie tells us, the center will be closed
tomorrow.
I tell Ron the news. “Don’t freak out,” he says. “Mary
(his coworker) has gone through it a million times with her kids. You just wash
everyone’s hair with special shampoo, comb it out, and change the sheets.
No big deal.” No big deal if you’ve got a ten year old, but I tried
to envision my little perpetual motion machine sitting still while I comb out
her long curls. Fat chance.
“Look at my head,” I command. Ron paws through my hair. “Nothing”,
he concludes. “Now look at mine.” I spread his black curls and looked
down at his scalp. Despite Katie’s description, I’m not sure what
nits look like. I decide to phone Ariel’s doctor in the morning.
Tuesday, 8:00 A.M. - Ariel is awake. I go into her room. There is
my golden haired baby, bouncing in her crib demanding. “Down! Down!” I
lift her out, resisting the urge to rest my head against hers. We eat breakfast
and wave goodbye to Dada who will come home in the afternoon to help me deal
with this. While Ariel watches Barney sing, “John Jacob Jingleheimer
Schmidt,” I surreptitiously lift the hair at the back of her neck. Nothing.
She still has some traces of cradle cap, and it sticks stubbornly to her hair.
I snip off a few strands with flakes clinging to them and put them in a small
plastic bag. Is it cradle cap? I will let the doctor decide.
11:15 A.M.-“Yes, that’s just cradle cap,” the doctor says when
I hand over the bag to him. “Those are much too big to be nits. Here is
what nits would look like.” He makes a drawing that looks sort of like
a pussy willow. “And they would be impossible to flicker off. Also, they
would be much smaller than these.” He puts his hands into Ariel’s
hair. “There, that’s the right size.” He points out a white
dot on a hair shaft. “But it flakes off, so that ones just dandruff.” So
now I know that the things I am looking for in Ariel’s very full head of
hair are practically microscopic.
1:00 P.M. - We are at the playground. It’s packed with happy, squealing
toddlers. Ariel heads for the swings. I left her in and as I push her, I notice
a familiar looking baby three swings down waving at Ariel. “Is this Emily?” I
know the man pushing the swing. I do not add. “Emily, who brought lice
into our lives?” What I do say is, “I’m Ariel’s mother.
Does Emily have nits or actual….?””
“Oh, yeah, she’s got critters,” replies her father. I am indignant.
He doesn’t look remotely remorseful or ashamed. “We just came from
the doctor. He told us about this shampoo….” “I
know, “he says, nodding. “We’re on our way to get some.” On
your way to get some?! You bought your daughter who has lice, to a playground?
What’s the matter with you?
2:30 P.M. - Ron has come home. I put on a Teletubbies video, rendering Ariel
in mobile. Armed with a flashlight, we divide her hair into eight sections with
long hairclips, bought especially for this purpose. We begin to go through her
hair, fearful of what we may find.
And what we find is…nothing! We celebrate by taking Ariel back to the
park. When we returned, there is a message from Katie saying that little Jared
has nits and that she had an exterminator fumigate the daycare center, so she’ll
be closed tomorrow as well.
Friday, Saturday- I can’t help but fear we miss something. There was a
story in The New York Times a few months ago about the Brooklyn Lice Lady. I
wish I knew how to find her. I looked in the Brooklyn Yellow Pages under “Lice”,
but nothing was listed.
Week 2, Monday 8:45 am.- I am dropping Ariel off at daycare. Katie looks steamed. “Emily’s
mother just called,” she says. “She found more lice in her hair this
morning.” I tell her about the Lice Lady and that I’m trying to get
her number by calling friends those kids already have had lice.
11:00 A.M. – Eurika! I finally found the Lice Lady’s name and number.
I pass the information along to Katie.
2:00 P.M.-Katie calls me at work. She tells me that Dalia, the Lice Lady, recommends
the following: before going to bed, coat the hair and scalp with margarine, wrap
with plastic or a shower cap, and go to sleep. This smothers the lice and nits
and makes them easier to comb out the next morning, when you wash and them comb
through the hair with a fine toothed metal lice comb. This is amazing. I make
an appointment with the Lice Lady.
7:30 P.M.-Dalia leads us into her kitchen and pulls up two chairs. By now, Ariel
is heartedly tired of having people pawing through her hair, and she begins to
wail. Luckily, Dalia’s check under a bright lamp takes no more than ten
minutes.
“She’s clean,” she announces. A great weight is lifted off
my chest. I ask Dalia about the shampoos. “They don’t always work,” she
says. “The margarine works. And you don’t have to go crazy with the
cleaning unless you’re infested. Do a good vacuuming around the house,
wash her sheets, clothes, and stuffed animals, and if she has any hair accessories
that would be ruined in the wash, put them in a sealable bag in the freezer for
two weeks.
Thursday- 8:45 A.M. - Emily is at daycare this morning, her hair in ponytails.
It looks wet. “Dalia found two more nits in her hair, so she gave her
the margarine treatment,” says Katie, clearly relieved.
Three weeks later- Our ordeal appears to be at an end- no one at Ariel’s
daycare has had lice for three weeks. I don’t have to view Ariel’s
Big Bird with suspicion anymore, but I am left with an unsettled feeling. Every
time Ariel touches her head, I’m compelled to lift the hair at the back
of her neck.
We were lucky this time. I pray I never have to go through
this again. But if I do, at least I’ll have a clue.
Ritzy Scarsdale Schools Battle Head Lice
The player will show in this paragraph
By
JOE SEXTON
