My despair over being different took on tangible form whenever I observed the women and children of our village spend lazy afternoons probing one another’s scalps for lice, settling on sets of stairs in groups of three or four, including my cousins and aunts. I was excluded from this activity because my eyes were too poor to pick out those tiny brown creatures in people’s heads, so I never got the pleasure of crushing a louse against one thumbnail using the edge of another, the satisfying crack of its tiny body. It was such a simple wish to be part of this ritual, yet its simplicity made it all the more heartbreaking, even when I convinced myself it was fine, that I could just watch TV or read a book instead.

Even worse, it took so little time for me to get deloused compared to other kids, because the dark lice were so easy to spot against my hair. Nanay Coro must have noticed my annoyance when my Tita Nanette—who often felt more like a sibling to me than an aunt—took more than twice as much time to get cleaned of lice, and my grandmother started checking me for those insects more often, directing me to sit below her on the wooden steps outside our house door.

She seemed to take a really long time one afternoon when I was six, the summer before first grade, which I looked forward to because I loved the prospect of learning English better, but also felt sad because it would mean not being able to spend nearly as much time with Nanay Coro. My grandmother took out a fine comb and worked it through my hair a half dozen times, to rid it of louse eggs. Then she began to examine my scalp, inch by inch from top to bottom in rows, like a farmer pulling out weeds in a field.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said as she worked. “We want you to start elementary school in Manila.”

“But I like it better here.”

“Your mama misses you.”

Though I felt sad when Mama sent me away, the fact that she never visited made me question how much she wanted me back. I also knew she couldn’t take care of me the way Nanay Coro did. But I did long to have a mother who was devoted to me the way other mothers in our village were, who nursed their babies until they were toddlers and seemed to keep an invisible cord between them and their children at all times, a second sense about their well-being because they thought about their children more than they did themselves.

I wanted to face Nanay, but her hand was on my head, and I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was sad in a way she didn’t want me to see.