Gamma, as you know, is eight years old. She reads various princess magazines and wears the glittery costume jewelery that comes vacuum-wrapped on their covers. Her hair goes down to her waist. The hair in fact is a bit of a problem as it is very fine and she being eight rarely brushes it and it tends to dreadlock in the back. But we have detangling spray and she and her mother manage to get the rats’ nests out after I threaten to cut it off.

Gamma has wanted earrings for ages. When we were in the United States, against her mother’s wishes we had her ears pierced at this stand in the aisle of a mall. Her mother wasn’t there with us, having stayed behind in Austria for that trip; and we didn’t ask her permission, figuring it would be easier to be forgiven for getting the ears done than to get her to agree to it.

Alpha, you see, thought Gamma was too young for it. She thought she tended to fester and infect. She thought, since Gamma’s big sister Beta had such problems when she got her ears pierced at that age (they somehow got ingrown and we had to take her to the doctor to have them removed, after which she waited until she was a teenager to get them pierced again), we ought to wait longer with Gamma.

I told this all to Gamma, in a solemn voice. I said, we’ll have to disinfect them twice a day and rotate them daily. She swore on god’s grave she would do all that was necessary. I said, tendency to get infected, we’ll have to be careful. She swore she would be. I made her pay for it with her own money, to make it seem that much more serious. She had a ton of money from somewhere and everyone was buying everything else for her anyway, it was a symbolic thing. It’s not like I’m cheap or anything.

She sat bravely and seriously for the piercing. The lady got the gun out and put one in each lobe.

We disinfected them twice a day at the beginning, until it looked like they were healed. I asked her daily if she had rotated them. She said she had. Somedays I rotated them myself just to be sure.

She bought extra earrings and looked forward to the day she could switch them. To be safe, she asked me to do it. That day was yesterday, the day before school restarted.

I looked at them first. They weren’t ingrown. I popped them out. One hurt just a little. The other she screamed bloody murder. And it bled like a, well, like a headwound.

I disinfected them and tried to put new earrings back in. More bloody murder screaming. I started with the painful one just to get it over with. The post went in okay, but I couldn’t find the exit hole. I feared it was badly infected inside.

Around that time, she decided to let them grow back shut. The hell with earrings. She’ll give it another try when she’s older, she said. Just don’t come near me with those earrings!

Alpha is taking her to the doctor today to have her ears looked at. If she’s lucky, maybe she’ll be able to re-insert earrings. Or at least save her earlobes.