The lice lady.(Abigail F. Rosenfield)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 28-JAN-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Although she declines to use the title, Abigail F. Rosenfeld, a thirty-five-year-old Borough Park mother of ten, is a nitpicker of extreme, if secret, renown. Her business card puts it bluntly:

Lice Consultant Heads Checked & Cleaned Total Clean-outs, usually in less than an hour Satisfaction Guaranteed

Mrs. Rosenfeld is well known to the city's public- and private-school nurses, who, after sending lice-ridden children home, pass her phone number on to the shocked, enraged, or embarrassed parents of the infested.She always takes them in.

"People get desperate and do crazy things," Mrs. Rosenfeld explained one recent Sunday afternoon at her home. Wearing a floor-length black velour housecoat with gold-trimmed sleeves, she cut a benevolent, slightly Merlin-like figure. "I had one father of a two-year-old and a four-year-old...

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