Year of the Goose

by Carly J. Hallman

  “Village Witch told my father and me when we brought her food the next day that Witch Daughter had suffered a miscarriage and that as soon as she was well again, they were planning to set out to a different village where no one would know them, where they could be strangers, where they could start again. ‘We are just two women,’ she said sadly. ‘Surely someone somewhere will take pity as you have.’ I knew she was lying. There was no miscarriage. I had seen the baby with my own two eyes, heard its cry with my own two ears. But I was afraid and it wasn’t my business, so I spoke nothing of this to my father.

  “Not more than a week later, Dragon Mountain Village got its own strange visit. I was in our garden picking herbs when I saw an unfamiliar man, maybe twenty or so years old, amble up. He didn’t look like a wanderer, the type who sometimes happened across our village; he didn’t at all resemble these holy men with their scraggly beards and raggedy clothes. No, this was a regular farmer, and he sat down at the gate of the witches’ home, stared forward for a moment, and then released a scream. Oh, he sobbed, he wept, he wailed, and I jumped up, shaking the dirt from my hands, to get a better view of the scene. As I positioned myself front and center, I caught a glimpse of Village Witch’s face peering out the window at the peculiar sight. Dozens of villagers poured from their homes, from their gardens, and down from the mountains to watch this grown man cry—he’d dry up soon, like a pickled radish, they said, if he carried on like that. The crowd swelled, and the man finally calmed himself down enough to call out Witch Daughter’s name, and then he just started crying again. ‘Those evil women!’ the villagers shouted. ‘What harm have they done now?!’ Villagers climbed over the gate and pounded on the witch family door, demanding that Witch Daughter show herself to this poor, sobbing soul.

  “I imagined the two witches inside, trembling, terrified by this man, by this mob. How sorry I felt, and how confused too.

  “Some time later, after the villagers had nearly pounded the door in, Witch Daughter emerged, frail and pale, her mother by her side, and opened the gate. At the sight of her, the man stopped crying. He said, ‘You killed me.’

  “Witch Daughter’s eyes were wild as she looked around—who was this man talking to? Answering her unspoken question, he looked directly into her eyes and said it again.

  “‘What are you talking about?’ Her voice shook.

  “‘I would have lived to be nineteen years old,’ he said. ‘If you’d let me live.’ He then turned to the village chief, who was now at the front of the crowd. ‘Look in the chimney,’ the man said. ‘You will find me in the chimney!’

  “At the angry villagers’ demands, the village chief, though confused by exactly what it was he was looking for in the chimney, ordered the village men to break it open. They demolished the structure with their axes, and then held a tiny corpse up by its ankles for all to see.

  “At the sight of this dead baby boy, the villagers went mad, shouting and cursing, wielding those axes as weapons now, driving Village Witch and Witch Daughter back into their home, ordering them never to come out again. As this chaos continued—threats soared through the air like sparrows—my father just shook his head and asked the red-eyed stranger if he’d join us in our home for a cup of tea. The man obliged, leaving the scene behind, and followed us home, where my mother boiled water. My father and the man sat down at the table, and they sipped tea, and immediately, something changed behind the man’s eyes. ‘Where am I?’ he asked. He stood up, knocking the cup over, spilling tea. ‘Who are you?’

  “My father looked up at him. It was as if he was looking at someone entirely different from the man who’d been crying in front of the gates.

  “My father explained to the man about the crying and about the witches and about the chimney, and he poured the man a new cup of tea, and eventually, the man calmed down, telling my father that his name was Old Wood Boy and he lived in Purple Moon Village, about fifty kilometers away, and that he couldn’t remember any of what my father had told him, nor how he got here to Dragon Mountain Village—that the last thing he could remember was chopping wood and then spotting a weasel. He wondered aloud what had happened to the wood.

  “To us, hearing this came as a surprise but not a shock; we villagers all believed that the weasel was a fairy that worked on behalf of dead or lost babies, helping them find their parents. This spirit, we knew, must have possessed the man. My father explained all this. Stunned, the man politely finished his tea, thanked us for our generosity, and set out to begin his long journey home.”

  My hand pulling open the door, I suddenly have so many new questions about this story I haven’t thought of in years: Why was the girl singled out when it was her mother who killed the baby? Why hadn’t this man’s family sent out search parties to find him? How could a fairy spirit possibly possess a man’s body? How did a weasel from fifty kilometers away know of this baby’s death? But the only question I asked all those years ago was: “What happened to Witch Daughter?”

  My great-grandmother nodded gravely and replied that the witches, shunned in Dragon Mountain Village, fled in the night after the crying man incident. They found a new village, and there, Witch Daughter married a kind man, and her mother died the same year, and the only time Witch Daughter ever returned to Dragon Mountain Village was many years later, for the wedding of one of her childhood friends—to which she hadn’t even been invited! Witch Daughter was radiant, my great-grandmother said, and had two beautiful young children in tow, but with the exception of my great-grandmother’s family, the villagers all ignored Witch Daughter and her children, as though they were but a tiny tribe of ghosts.

  I take all this now to mean that nature and spirits are reactionary. They get their revenge, and they move on. Oh, but people, people do not.

  I am remembering this story and my great-grandmother’s leathery face and the way her home smelled—like incense and Shaanxi vinegar—as I look down at my doorstep. There is something there. It is a book. I pick it up. My book. Published one year ago, a memoir that I wrote at the height of my success. I brought a copy of it with me here, I don’t know why, maybe as a reminder—but of what? I’d been using it as a tray to collect toenail clippings, but last week I shoved it under the too-short leg of my bed to remedy the unevenness. I look over there now. The bed is crooked again, sloping in that one corner. I look at this book’s cover, and sure enough there is the circular imprint of a bed leg. Someone—presumably this black-clad figure—has entered my home, stolen my own book from under my bed, knocked on my door, left it on my step, and fled.

  I pinch myself. This is pain. I am awake. This is real. I shut the door and peer out the window again: kicked-up dirt swirling in the air, definite fresh tire tracks in the drive. I hold the book open by its covers, the pages facing the floor, and I shake it, hoping for a clue to fall out. There is nothing. I open the book to the first page to see if there is a note. There isn’t. It is only just afternoon, but it feels very dark. Gray clouds have rolled in. It looks like it will rain. I am not afraid, just puzzled, so I turn on the light and I turn the page.

  2.

  MEMOIRS OF A CHINESE HAIR TYCOON, THE BIRTH OF A CAPITALIST

  TRY EXPLAINING THE CONCEPT OF CAPITALISM TO A TYPICAL SIX-YEAR-OLD, and odds are that if he’s kind, he’ll stomp on your foot and tell you to shut your stupid trap, or, if he’s a rascal, he’ll run off mid-speech and light a cherry bomb in your toilet to teach you a much-deserved lesson about rattling on. But whittle the same lecture down to a discussion of wants and needs, and suddenly you will find that same little brat very attentively on your page.

  You see, prior to my sixth birthday, every two months or so, each member of my family (me, my father, my grandmother) would take our dreaded turn on a rickety kitchen chair as my mother went to town on our hair with the same dull pair of scissors she used to trim the fat from meat and clip from the newspaper articles worth saving (“Girl, 8, Grows Beard after Eating Soviet-Made Candy!” and “Local Grandfather Crowned Interna
tional Champion of Ring Toss!”).

  But this routine was broken when a salon opened up near our community. On the day after my sixth birthday, my grandmother allowed me to accompany her there for her very first professional treatment.

  A twisting candy cane pole, windows that allowed a clear view of the styling stations, a pink neon sign that read beauty salon, piles of hair forming miniature mountain ranges on the tiled floor, men with well-formed spikes, girls with impossible spiral curls. I felt as though I’d been punched in the back of the knee; I wanted to fall, I wanted to scream, I was so instantly struck by this place’s wonder. I didn’t fall or scream. I spun in place. I inhaled deeply, savoring the exotic aroma of chemicals, of sprays, of creams.

  A stylish man with bleached hair and thin wrists sauntered toward us and, after a few words, led my grandmother to the washing station. I watched intently as he shampooed and conditioned, wrapped a towel turban around her head, and then pushed her down on a swivel chair, snapping a cloak around her neck. I sat in an identical chair at the empty styling station beside them, swiveling back and forth ever so subtly so as not to cause the intimidating man to shout at me. But perhaps I needn’t have worried about this; he paid me no mind. Like a wrathful hair-dyed god, he hovered above my grandmother, combing and hemming and hawing and single-handedly determining her fate.

  And then he picked up his scissors.

  The light caught the silver blades, shooting a glint into my eyes, and I couldn’t help myself—my fingers, possessing a life of their own, reached out for them. The stylist, not just a god of appearances, but one of reflexes too, slapped my hand away. “No!” he shrieked. “What, you want me to cut this old bag’s ear off?!”

  To all of this, my grandma offered no reaction. She, gentle creature she was, never scolded me, never tore me down, never hit me as my cranky parents often did. She sat peacefully, her eyes shut, her head rising from her cloak like a potato uprooted from the earth.

  I retracted my hand, placed it in my lap, and resigned myself once again to spectating. But as I watched him snipping and styling, a black screen cloaked my vision, a pollution before pollution, and I couldn’t help myself. My hand once again reached out.

  The stylist squealed like a pissed-off pig, and my screen dissipated, and he slapped my hand away. “Stop, you devil! These aren’t for you!”

  Now, this struck a chord. At the time, in the late nineties, when our nation was still emerging from its stagnancy and many of us still lagged far behind, my family lived in a modest home in a Commie block; my parents, a technical school teacher and an HR manager respectively, worked long hours but earned modest incomes. Therefore, the coolest toys weren’t for me. Computers weren’t for me. Cell phones weren’t for me. Taxis weren’t for me. Nothing in this city, in this country, in this world was for me. So this effeminate, bleached-blond, black-clad man with his shiny watch and beautifully capped teeth did have a valid point: Why would the scissors be?

  Because I fucking wanted them, that’s why.

  I slipped my hand under the man’s sassy slap and grabbed the scissors by their blades. He lunged at me, but I dodged him and charged the door, slamming into its glass with the full weight of my small body. It flew open, greeting bells jangling (“Welcome, welcome!” the receptionist automatically cried out), and I darted outside.

  “Come back here, you turtle-egg bastard,” the stylist called, hot on my heels, “Give me those—”

  I spun around, my eyes wide and crazed, and pointed the scissors at him like a weapon. I heard my grandmother, who’d followed us outside in her cloak, gasp, but all I saw was the metal point before me and the “important” man in front of that, royally irked but also clearly terrified that he might fall victim to one of those killer kids you read about in the papers—the ones who seem like sweet and studious little angels until the day they snap and gouge their mother’s eyes out with chopsticks after being told to eat one last piece of broccoli, or “accidentally” electrocute their father with a hair dryer while he’s in the bathtub after being ordered to spend less time watching anime and more time training to be an Olympic Ping-Pong champ.

  I lowered the scissors. I wasn’t one of those kids.

  The stylist seized this opportunity. He lunged. Faced with the possibility of being overtaken, my humanness slipped away and I became pure animal. I threw back my head and released a banshee wail. I grabbed on to the candy cane pole and shimmied my way up. With monkey-like stealth I didn’t know I possessed, I latched on to the awning above the beauty salon and swung onto a narrow ledge, never once losing my grip on the scissors.

  “My baby!” my grandmother cried. “It’s not safe up there!” She turned to the stylist, as though all of this were his fault, as though I could do no wrong, as though she understood and accepted the desire that drove me. “What if he falls?!”

  He ignored her. “Come down, you useless beast!” he shouted, stomping his studded black boots on the sidewalk. “Those are my best scissors!”

  As the two of them shouted and carried on, my grandmother posing questions about my safety and the stylist cursing my ancestors, a small crowd comprised mostly of hair salon patrons and employees swelled to a larger crowd consisting of passersby, street sweepers, restaurateurs, and children in school uniforms. Before this crowd, feeling powerful for the first time in my short life, I swung the scissors in the air—they were my sword and I was a mighty warrior.

  As I bravely maneuvered, twisting and turning on that narrow ledge, I heard speculative voices from below.

  “What’s he protesting?”

  “Who is he?”

  “What are his demands?”

  But all I saw was a shadow coming from above. I looked up and into this darkness.

  To try to describe what I saw here, no matter how many words or languages I possessed and used, would be to say too little, but nevertheless, I will try: a disc, it was, the circumference the length of perhaps five soccer fields. Hovering. Matte white. And from it radiated a warmth, a warmth not unlike that of what I’d imagine a mother’s loving hug to be (I wouldn’t know—my mother’s hugs had always been brief, cold).

  Flooded with disbelief, I ripped my gaze away and looked down at the crowd, their weathered faces, their drab clothes, and I knew almost instantly that no one else had seen it, felt it—I knew I was special; this was a secret that had been revealed only to me. I didn’t know what the secret was or what it meant, but I understood its specialness at my very core.

  When I looked up again, the disc was gone.

  I didn’t mourn. I knew it’d be back for me. I turned my attention back to earth.

  Not missing a beat and in response to the crowd’s questions about my demands, about my intent, I shouted, “I’m just one small child!” But was it really the crowd I was talking to?

  Police motorbikes and station wagons screeched to a halt in front of the salon, and uniformed officers charged the pavement. Armed with hokey plastic guns, they shot little beanbags up at me, all of which I easily dodged. I was above animal now, above human, above being; I was chosen. I collected the beanbags that landed on the awning and used the scissors to cut them open. I tossed the beans grandly, like confetti, scattering them upon the gaping crowd below.

  “Please come down, baby!” my grandmother shouted. The stylist stomped his foot. The clock on the bank building across the street struck five, national dinnertime, and as though being called to prayer, the hungry crowds, stomachs audibly growling, dispersed. The police retreated—no crowd, no show—slamming shut their car doors and speeding off.

  Now my grandmother and the stylist stood alone on the sidewalk.

  “Please just tell me what you want!” the stylist shouted up at me, his hoarse, shaky voice bordering on a sob.

  I bit my lip. To be honest, I was now growing hungry too, thinking longingly about the chicken wings my grandma had promised to prepare for dinner. Aware now of a greater force within the world, aware of my own power, of my chosen stat
us, I was ready to relinquish control of these dinky scissors. I knew that bigger things awaited me.

  “Please, anything!” the stylist cried, and peering down at him and his visible-from-up-here bald spot and his scuffed boots and his dye-stained fingertips, I pitied him. I truly did.

  I thought for a moment and then spoke my demand.

  My grandma shrugged, muttered something along the lines of “Why didn’t you just say so?,” tore off her cloak, and shimmied up the pole. She collapsed, out of breath, onto the awning and held out a lock of her hair. I leaned over from the landing, opened the scissors and then closed them, taking a slow, careful cut—ah, the music of a man-made metal device slicing through that which is human, pure! In the palm of my other hand, I caught and then clasped the falling black and gray pieces. Tiny motions in the grand scheme of the universe, I know, but with them I became a part of a greater machine, a cog in a ticking clock, a critical circuit in a matte white robot of wants and needs…