The voice of nineteen

Turn 14 of 26

You all march to the real hair room and the officers yell for one to sit down. She does as the officers grabs a handful of gel and slathers it all over her now straight black hair. They then slick it back with no part at all into an insanely tight ponytail that causes her forehead to pull back. You all just watch this knowing that your hair is about to be like this forever just like the uniform.

The column marches deeper into the standards hall, past the stools and mirrors of the color station, into a second room where the light is whiter and the smell of the solution hangs thicker. Here the chairs are higher, fitted with headrests, and the tables hold combs, brushes, and open tubs of clear gel. 'STYLE STATION!' the Lead Instructor bellows. 'The final standard is the shape of the head. NUMBER ONE — SIT!' One sits, her body folding into it with the drilled economy of everything she now does, and an officer steps behind her with both hands already full of gel.

The officer slathers it on without ceremony — a heavy handful worked straight into the black hair, crown to ends, palms dragging the whole slick mass back off the face. There is no part. The comb comes next, raking everything backward in long hard strokes until the scalp shows clean lines running in one direction only, forehead to crown, nothing left loose, nothing left to fall forward, ever. One sits at attention through it, eyes front, and in the mirror her face begins to change before a single hair is tied: the gel pulls at it.

'TIGHT,' the officer says, and gathers the whole foot of hair at the back of the head, high, and begins winding it into a tail. She pulls. One's forehead draws back under the tension, the skin at her temples lifting, her eyebrows riding up into the fixed angry line, her whole face pulled taut and smooth like a flag stretched on its pole. The officer keeps winding and pulling, wrapping the tie, cinching it down until the ponytail stands off the back of the head like something issued rather than grown. Not one strand escapes. 'SHAPE: CORRECT,' she announces, and steps back.

One rises and falls back into line, and the line receives her without a flicker, because twenty fixed faces cannot flicker. But the twenty of you watched every second of it, and you know what the watching was for: that is your hair now. Forever, the way the uniform is forever, the way the stance is forever. The gel tubs stand open along the tables, one chair per number, and the officer behind the first empty chair is already loading her hands for Two. 'NUMBER TWO — SIT!' the Lead Instructor yells, and the line begins to shorten again, one slicked and cinched head at a time, marching toward yours.