Year of the Goose

by Carly J. Hallman

So perhaps you could say I was a news-maker from the very start. This first display of bravery earned me an article in the city newspaper: “Local Boy Wields Scissors Atop Hair Salon, Attempts, Fails to Disrupt Socialist Society.” My mother used her dull meat-fat scissors to cut out that headline, but never again did she use them on anyone’s hair.

  LIVE YOUR BELIEFS OR DIE A HYPOCRITE

  AWARE FROM A YOUNG AGE OF TRADITIONAL EDUCATION’S POINTLESSNESS, I utilized class time to monitor and record the hair growth of my fellow students. I theorized that boys’ hair seemed to grow more quickly than girls’, and that the shiniest hair seemed to belong to the most active students, regardless of gender. I made notes about my classmates’ strand density, split end occurrences, and variations in natural color. I made diagrams and charts. In the evenings, after I’d completed my obligatory homework and as my grandma watched TV soaps in the other room, I did not join the children in my community in their foolish prancing-and-skipping games. I sat at my desk and studied plucked and fallen strands under a toy-store microscope.

  I began to consider what made things grow as well: our parents all constantly pestered us children to drink water, and also often stated that they wanted us to grow up to be big and strong and earn lots of money to fund their retirement activities, such as criticizing others’ life choices and taking budget tours of Italy. I therefore surmised that water played a critical role in growth, and to test this hypothesis, I myself began drinking massive quantities of water, filling bottle after bottle from the cooler in the school corridor. The resulting spike in urgent bathrooms breaks led one of my teachers, concerned that I might have developed childhood diabetes, to contact my mother, who, upon her typically late return home from work one evening, confronted me.

  “Diabetes!” I scoffed. “No, no, no. Diabetes doesn’t cause my pee. Water does. And water is good for hair.” I pulled out my hair notebook to show her my latest findings, to fill her in on the intricacies of my life’s work, but she wasn’t interested. With weary eyes, she shook her head, called the teacher back and told him to mind his business. She fell asleep with the phone against her ear; she fell asleep before she finished talking, before my teacher apologized and hung up.

  ALL THE MAKINGS OF A MIDDLE SCHOOL MOGUL

  AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY, EXTENSIONS WERE GAINING MOMENTUM, and from the age of nine, I’d made a good living growing and selling my own carefully maintained hair to salons across the city. Occasionally, I’d be out shopping with my grandma and I’d spy a glamorous middle-aged woman or a sexy bargirl sporting my locks, and my lungs would surge with pride—like all of my classmates, I wore the red Young Pioneer scarf at school, but who among them could say they were so patriotic?! I wasn’t just reading stories about Lei Feng, hoping that I might someday have the chance to prove myself a worthy comrade by helping a hunchbacked old woman cross the street. I was actually out there in the trenches, improving our nation, making it a more beautiful place! And in doing so, I was also improving my own life. I opened a bank account, which ballooned with each passing year. I was suddenly the kid who, no longer at the mercy of parents’ generosity or lack thereof, always had the hottest new sneakers, the latest toys, the newest gadgets. If I wasn’t satisfied with what my grandmother cooked for dinner (though I usually was!), I could just order pizza—and not from lousy Pizza Coming, but from Pizza Hut, where the crust was so thick, it’d constipate you for a week. Life was good, but when my thirteenth birthday rolled around, I knew it wasn’t yet the time for contentment—rather, it was the time for expansion. It became my new mission to farm massive crops of the world’s most perfect hair for extensions and wigs. Naturally, I worked with the resources available to me, enlisting the help of my aforementioned directionless classmates. I gave them direction. I scoured the halls. I recruited only the students with the finest heads of hair and, more particularly, those with a willingness to invest time and care into their cranial farms and, most particularly of all, those with an awareness of the fleeting nature of the universe—I needed, above all else, to seek out those capable of letting go.

  Under my supervision, the Number Seven Middle School became a breeding ground for long, beautiful locks. Each and every day was a new, real-life shampoo commercial. The students not under my care grew jealous all too quickly and improved their lifestyles so as to be permitted to join ranks. Soon, the student body was devouring vitamins as though tablets of fresh mountain air. Desks were streaked with oil from intensive hair treatments and leave-in conditioners. Combs became a form of currency. The cafeteria was forced to adapt to the marketplace and cater to the student body’s changing tastes and nutritional requirements—more vegetable oil, less meat fat; more lean protein, fewer sugary carbs. A utopia was established, and at its forefront, there I stood.

  But this paradise, like all paradises, wasn’t to be eternal. One autumn afternoon, I was sitting in math class, ignoring the lesson in favor of updating meticulous records of each student’s hair growth down to the millimeter, when an eerie hush fell over the room. I looked up from my notebook. The teacher, Mr. Deng, a wiry man with thick glasses, stood frozen before a blackboard of scrawled equations, staring in terror at the doorway, where Principal Li stood, his shadow casting its unique brand of darkness over the room. He boomed just three words, my full name, before he turned around and marched out. My classmates gasped. Mr. Deng gasped. A janitor in the hallway gasped. I stood up, shaking, my gaze cast downward, goose bumps rising on my skin, and followed the sound of his footsteps to his office.

  I sat down. He sat down. He stared at me for a long moment, not breaking face. He took off his glasses and set them on the desk. “What,” he blurted out, and pointed accusingly at my head, “is the meaning of this?”

  Behind him, on the wall, I noticed dancing shadows—shadows that looked like those of people, thin people with almond-shaped heads, dancing, dancing; I couldn’t look away.

  “Meaning of what?” I heard my own voice say. I came back to myself quickly, startled to discover that I sounded brave, and then suddenly I felt brave. I straightened my spine. I looked behind him—the shadows had vanished—and then directly into his eyes, at those expanding and retracting pupils, as he shouted.

  “Don’t play dumb with me! Of your hair. Of everyone’s hair. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. I’ve called other students into my office, and they’ve been obtuse too, but I’m no idiot. All roads lead back to you.”

  “All roads lead to Rome,” I quoted from an imaginative comic book I’d been reading in my self-prescribed thirty minutes of “leisure time,” a book in which gladiators went to war against cats dressed as Japanese samurai. It was an odd response, yes, but the situation called for absurdity.

  Principal Li’s face flushed red. He sputtered, and little drops of saliva flew from his mouth, landing on his cluttered desk. His sputter gave way to a low chuckle. “No, son, that was the past. This is the future. Now all roads lead to Beijing.”

  I wanted to chuckle too. I wanted to say, “I know, I am the most patriotic of them all. I am the one who will someday lead this great nation forward, who will inspire millions to forge their own paths.” Instead I said, “You know what they say about blind nationalism: an eye for an eye makes the whole nation blind. And what can blind people do? In our China, they make excellent massage therapists! It is said that though they lack the ability to see, their sense of touch is stronger than anyone’s. So, what then, we all become massage therapists? We all go around rubbing each other’s shoulders and feet, and what else? Diagnosing illnesses and maladies based solely on feeling? Is that the future of our great nation?”

  To be frank, I had no idea what I was going on about, but it felt right and I kept right on yammering, because what else was I supposed to do? As I veered further into this twisting and turning rant, Principal Li appeared progressively more confused, rolling his eyes back, turning my speech gems over and over again in his head, but despite his best efforts, he remained unenlightened. “Sorry,” he
finally confessed, interrupting me in the middle of a particularly good metaphor comparing the deteriorating ozone layer to a damaged cornea. “I don’t follow.”

  I smiled smugly and offered no further explanation.

  His anger—while hardly subtle before—was now crystalline, unabashed, volcanic, spewing. He spat on the ground and slammed his fist on the desk. “Stop messing with me, you godforsaken bamboozler! Just tell me what’s going on here.”

  I took a deep breath. If I told him the truth, he’d demand a cut of my profits to allow me to continue, and, looking into his corrupt eyes, I swore then and there that I would never run a dirty business. But perhaps there was still a chance, I thought, that he would let me off, view me as an ally, as a patriot. I believed in myself, and above that, I believed in my potential. Whatever was going to happen could happen. Let it be.

  I opened my mouth. I told him the truth.

  His eyebrows shot up his forehead. “Private enterprise in a public institution!” he bellowed. “The nerve! The audacity! The gall!”

  I slouched into the chair, not ashamed but relieved—at least now I knew. And was that really all he had to say?

  I cleared my throat. “I happen to know for a fact that you accept bribes from many of my classmates’ parents so that they can attend this ‘public institution.’ Money, dinners, gifts. That gut of yours isn’t doing much to hide the evidence. Can’t exactly afford to drink Moutai’s finest rice wine and munch on sea cucumbers every night on a principal’s salary, can you? I’d say you yourself are running your own successful little enterprise here.”

  His face flushed beet red. He opened his mouth, then clamped it shut, saying nothing.

  My chair legs screeched on the floor as I stood up. “Well, then, sir, from one businessman to another, I wish you all the best. May your roads be smooth, may your women be naked, and may our unfortunate political and social climates remain conducive to supporting your terrible, immoral way of life!” I sunk into one step and the next and the next. For flourish’s sake, I added a high-pitched “Bye-bye” as I strutted out the door.

  News traveled quickly of my encounter with Principal Li. Via QQ messenger and text message, rumors spread and worsened like sexually transmitted diseases. Word on the street was I’d done everything from perform kung fu on the old bastard to curse his ancestors for eighteen generations to threaten an S&M-filled affair with his dog-faced wife. But among these falsehoods, one truth remained evident: my days of farming hair at Number Seven Middle School were over.

  That night, I called an emergency meeting at Confucius Temple Park, near my family’s new home in a sleek high-rise apartment complex (I’d lent my dad some money for the down payment). I stood barefoot on a large stone, channeling the energy of the ancients. Dozens of my long-locked classmates sat before me on the grass, much to the chagrin of the senior citizens practicing their tai chi, and in direct violation of the “green grass makes a happy world, do not step” signs. We were young, we were rebellious, we were free.

  I cleared my throat, summoning spirits. Solemn eyes stared back at me. Worried eyes.

  “Friends,” I began, “as you’ve probably heard, Principal Li is onto us. Today I was called into his office, where he delivered an ultimatum.”

  The Heads, as I’d begun to call them, nodded gravely. Their black hair glistened in the moonlight—what masterpieces, what works of art!

  “But before I tell you what Principal Li told me, I first want to thank each of you for your loyalty to me and to your hair and to our great China.” I sucked in a shallow, shaky breath. “Unfortunately, Principal Li was able, despite your overwhelming courage and loyalty, to piece things together for himself. He may be a stupid egg, but even a stupid egg finds its way into the frying pan every once in a while, becoming a building block for a wholesome breakfast, chock-full of omega fatty acids.”

  There was silence, utter silence, until Head Seventy-Two snapped to and elbowed Head Thirty-Three, who forced a weak laugh. Many others followed suit, and uncomfortable, forced laughter rang through the park, apparently disrupting the chi of some of the tai chi participants, causing more than one to fall to the ground. They stood, dusted themselves off, got back to it. I nodded. I continued.

  “I am then forced to leave each of you to make a great decision that may well affect the rest of your life. Principal Li has decreed that there shall be no more hair farming on his watch. All students who wish to remain at Number Seven Middle School must cut their hair”—I paused for effect—“and keep it cut.”

  There was a gasp and then a titter in the crowd, followed by a low hush of whispering.

  “While piety is important, my comrades, so is commerce. And although the decision was a difficult one to make, I have decided to quit school and to start farming hair full-time.”

  I spoke these fateful words with many sets of eyes staring back at me. In those eyes, I saw fear and I saw indecision and I saw uncertainty and I saw determination and I saw hope.

  “My friends!” I leaped from the stone onto a bench, and as I did, I raised my fist in the air and I felt like I was flying. “You’re either with me, or you’re back to school!”

  We all know that education is of utmost importance in our China, so it came as no surprise that many of my Heads’ parents did not support any such hopes for a prodigious career. It was with heavy hearts and red-rimmed, weepy eyes that these Heads came to me, asking me to reap their final harvest. I cut with steady hands, delivered the hair to local salons, and returned only to distribute payouts at our old after-school haunt, the Yogurt Room. Over cups of unsweetened cultured dairy product, I thanked every Head individually for his or her contributions, handed over an envelope, and wished each one all the best.

  My relationships with three very special Heads, however, did not end in the Yogurt Room—they did not end at all. These three made the courageous choice to quit school and accompany me on my path toward greatness. Within a week, I’d found a location for our new full-time farm—a storefront on the first and second floors of an apartment complex, between a small plastic surgery clinic and a shop that exclusively sold blueberry products. I paid the landlord a deposit and the first three months’ rent in cash.

  The next evening, in my family’s living room, I broke it to my parents that I was moving out of their home. My father’s face was stern. My mother’s didn’t move a muscle. I explained about Principal Li’s corruption, about wanting to supervise every aspect of my crops, ensuring the organic quality of my product; I explained about my dreams and ambitions and need for a higher profit margin.

  At once, both of their steely expressions broke and my stoic parents burst into sobs. I lowered myself to sit on the uncomfortable IKEA sofa I’d paid for, stunned, unsure of how to proceed. I’d never before seen them display any kind of emotion. To be perfectly frank, since I’d started middle school, I’d not really seen my parents at all. Just to talk with them on this evening, I’d had to schedule a meeting via e-mail, and even then we’d gone back and forth quite a few times before we were able to find a time that was convenient for us all.

  They sobbed. They wailed.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry” was all I could manage. And I was. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that quitting school and moving out would trouble my parents so immensely, would cause them such heartache. A tinge of pity plucked at my gut.

  Five minutes passed. Five long minutes of wailing and crying. Five minutes with no words to comfort me—my grandmother, I thought, would have known what to say, but she’d died the year before after a thankfully short battle with cancer.

  I stood up, and my father snorted what sounded to be a rather juicy load of snot back up his nose. He dabbed his eyes with a tissue. At last, he spoke. “We’re just so… so… so proud.”

  “What?” I shook my head, uncomprehending. “Sorry, what?”

  My mother wiped a trail of mucus on her sleeve. “Yes, our son—a successful entrepreneur! This is why we�
�ve worked so hard, why we’ve sacrificed so much! This is what we’ve always dreamed of!” She burst into tears again, and the both of them knelt down and kowtowed before me. Snot hung in strings from their noses. Tears streaked their faces. I backed away slowly, wary of this mess; I was wearing brand-new Nikes.

  YOUTH IS THE SEASON OF HOPE

  WITH MY PARENTS’ BLESSING, A SMALL SUITCASE, AND MY THREE SPECIAL Heads—Twin One, Twin Two, and Kai—in tow, I set off across town on the Number Sixty-Three bus and set up shop in our new location.

  On the first floor was a kitchen, where I stored and prepared only the healthiest of meals; a line of barber chairs and mirrors for inspections, trims, and harvests; a mirrored wall and an open space for exercise; a private bathroom where I had a state-of-the-art showerhead installed; and a laundry/sun/vitamin-D absorption room. Upstairs was a small loft where the four of us slept on two identical bunk beds. As Chairman Mao said, great leaders must live with their followers, exist among their ranks. And in that headquarters, we slept, and shat, and shared our dreams for the future—the twins hoped to buy their parents a seaside villa, pay a nationally known matchmaker to find them a set of blond twins for wives, and eventually retire with said twins to Switzerland. Kai hoped to use his savings to emigrate to America, where he’d buy an Olympic-sized swimming pool; as a child, he’d loved diving, but since he’d started farming hair, he hadn’t so much as dipped a toe in a pool—chlorine is a dangerous, growth-and quality-inhibiting substance. As for me, I dreamed simply of being rich—of villas made of money bricks, of being matched with more money, of skiing atop mountains of money, of swimming in pools of money, of money, money, money. I wanted only to have so much money that I’d never want for anything.

  But dreams were dreams; dreams are like the sky, ever present but untouchable, and dreams remained a distant horizon toward which we continued to run. We lived now in reality. Reality was vitamins; morning, afternoon, and evening calisthenics; boiled free-range chicken and steamed vegetables. Reality was plastic containers of imported yogurt…