The voice of nineteen

Turn 16 of 26

One sits as the officers grab the same size donut bun size they have and slide it through the center of the ponytail. The officers then cover the donut bun with the hair and secure it with a tight elastic band. They grab the leftover hair, braid it and wrap it around the donut bun. They grab one of the one hairspray bottles and spary her whole head with it to make the donut bun permanent and shiny

The officer behind One holds up a donut form, smooth and black and exactly the size of the one shining on the Lead Instructor's head, and slides it up the length of the ponytail through the center. The whole foot of hair is drawn through and fanned out over the form, covering it completely, and a tight elastic band snaps down around the base to lock it. What was a tail is now a rounded crown of hair, and the officer's fingers smooth every strand flat over the mesh of it, tucking, pressing, shaping it into the exact geometry twenty officers in this compound wear.

The leftover hair comes next. The officer braids it in fast, hard strokes — three strands, over and under, cinched at the end — and wraps the braid around the base of the bun until nothing of it remains visible, pinning it down with the long pin driven through the whole structure. Then the hairspray: a bottle from the table, and she coats the entire head, crown to pulled forehead, sweeping clouds of it over the bun until it shines like lacquered furniture. Not one strand will ever move again. 'DRESS SHAPE: CORRECT,' the officer announces, and steps back.

One rises. The mirror holds her for a moment as she faces front — and the woman in the glass is the officer who styled her. Same bun, same shine, same pulled taut forehead, same fixed angry face, same slate-navy uniform with no name tape. She falls back into line and the line absorbs her without a seam. 'NUMBER TWO — SIT!' The queue resumes, one lacquered crown at a time, the spray hissing down the room in regular bursts like something breathing.

Six goes ahead of you. You watch from your mark as the form slides up her tail, as her hair fans and locks, as the braid wraps and the pin drives through, and the spray clouds settle on her and she rises shining, identical, and takes her place. 'NINETEEN — SIT!' Your body folds into the high chair. The form slides through the center of your ponytail, your hair fans over it, the elastic snaps down at the base, and the officer's hands smooth and tuck and shape your last foot of hair into the crown. The braid wraps. The pin goes through — you feel it seat against your scalp and stop. Then the hiss, the sweep of cold lacquer over your whole head, again and again, until your bun is as shiny and permanent as hers.

'DRESS SHAPE: CORRECT,' she announces. In the mirror the reflection is the officer. You rise and fall in, and Twenty goes into the chair behind you, and when she comes out the line holds twenty women with twenty donut buns, and there is nothing left on any of you that the officers do not also have. The Lead Instructor walks the completed line slowly. 'Intake,' she says, 'is finished.'