LILI BÙI
'Are you so very sure?' I nervously asked Linh, who had been my closest friend since kindergarten.
It was a sweltering Hanoi summer day. Linh had invited me over to her house for a sleepover. It was that kind of summer when you feel like everything is possible. The results for the high school entrance exam hadn't even come out yet, but everyone in our year had collectively decided to do everything we weren't allowed to when we were still in school. Things like piercing your ears (and noses!), getting your nails done at salons filled with that specific chemical smell, staying out past eight o'clock at night instead of huddling in a tiny makeshift classroom for an extra tutoring session. But most importantly: bleaching and dyeing your hair.
Standing in Linh's tiny bathroom wearing those thin, rustly plastic gloves, the bowl of hair bleach in one hand and a stiff, skinny brush in the other, I felt like we were about to do something irreversible, and it would definitely be a bad idea.
Which was silly, really. It was just hair. We'd talked about this and had both found consolation in the fact that if anything were to happen, it would still grow back. Besides, there was always the hair salon a few blocks down the street.
The smell of bleach wasn't helping my anxiety. It was punching straight up my nose, and I instinctively held the bowl a little further away.
'Yes!' Linh snapped impatiently, looking at my reflection in the oval mirror in front of us. She reached up and repositioned the black towel draped over her shoulders. 'Gosh, Li, don't look so worried, you're making me worried!'
'I know! But…'
'Look, it's my hair. Whatever happens, I take full responsibility, okay? Just put it on!'
I pressed my lips together, accepting that Linh was already set on doing this. I started putting the bleach on her hair, bit by bit, gradually covering the black colour underneath.
Something weird lurched in my stomach.
I had been fascinated by Linh's hair ever since I first met her. Linh had just moved into my class then, and everyone was amazed by her hair. I still remember how my teachers fussed over it, the deep shade of it, the way it caught the light and flowed down her back. It reminded me of how the Red River looked at night, its deep shade of black flowing through the bustling city.
Tóc mây, she was lovingly nicknamed. With tóc meaning hair and mây meaning cloud, in Vietnamese, the word is used to call someone who has hair that is long, thick, and silky soft. Usually that of a woman, more specifically a little girl. I remember thinking it made no sense at all. Clouds were white and fluffy, and Linh’s hair was just black. But hair like that, for the adults at least, was something to be proud of, something worth growing out and protecting.
And that was what Linh had. I couldn't think of anyone who would suit that nickname more. So me being the one who’s then destroying – no, altering – it stirred up a strange feeling.
'Does it burn?' I winced, asking when I saw her flinch.
'Not really.' Linh immediately waved it away. 'Beauty really is pain, I guess.'
Afterwards, I left the bathroom so Linh could wash it off. I was both excited and nervous when I heard the shower turn off.
'How is it?' I called out.
'Um!' Her chuckle echoed out the door. 'Li, I think we might need a trip to the salon.'
The door creaked open, and Linh walked out. I stared at the yellowish-orange patches on her head.
'Oh!'
Linh slowly nodded, pursing her lips. 'Yeah…'
We stood like that for what felt like ten minutes before both of us burst out laughing.
Eventually, the salon fixed it. Linh's hair turned into an even, pale, slightly warm blonde that looked surprisingly good on her.
Linh was more than happy with it. She stayed blonde for the rest of the summer, occasionally going to the salon to touch up her roots. After a while, it was almost like the black-haired girl had never been her. We would look at old photos and giggle about how she looked like a completely different person.
During that period, Linh's phone was full of screenshots. She would show me pictures of those American influencers with colourful hair, celebrities rocking radiant colours. Black was no longer the default but only an option among many. When the first day of high school started, she had to dye her hair back to a dark shade of brown to get past the teachers. Still, she would always talk to me about which colour she would do next as soon as the school year was over. I would look at them with her and think, maybe. Maybe next summer.
*
The end of the school year came. It was barely even a week before I got a text from Linh.
Just dyed my hair!! Wanna go grab coffee this weekend?
That weekend, she showed up with her hair dyed a deep violet shade.
'Wait, it looks so nice!' I exclaimed in the coffee shop.
'Really?' Linh laughed.
'Yeah! But why purple, though? I thought you said you were going to do one of those pinkish colours?'
'I don't know, really.' She shrugged and took a sip of her matcha. 'One of my new friends, remember Nhi? Yeah, she suggested we go dye our hair together, and the salon didn't have the pink that I wanted. Nhi said purple was a safe choice, so…'
She twirled a strand between her fingers, looking down at it.
'And this shade will fade beautifully! Or so I've heard.'
It actually did. The purple softened into a dusty lavender by the next time we saw each other, then into a strange, clouded grey, the colour the sky turns before it rains.
Her hair went back to brown when school started again. She chose a lighter shade this year, however.
*
When graduation came two years later, Linh's hair had already turned blue.
Blue had always been her favourite colour. She kept it on for quite some time and eventually stopped touching up her roots, so her hair was just half black and half blue for a while. She had just finished her first semester of her art degree when I left for my study abroad program.
I had spent forever debating this decision. There was an interesting Creative Writing course at a university in Australia that I liked, but it was a big commitment, and the thought of leaving home kept lingering in my head. The application tab sat open on my computer for almost the entirety of grade twelve. I kept filling it in, deleting it, then filling it in again. I only submitted it five days before the deadline.
We texted and called constantly at first. Then less often. Until eventually most of our conversations were squeezed between classes and work breaks due to the different time zones and our busier schedules.
At some point, every time we would call, Linh's hair seemed to be a different colour.
First it was blue, then red, then silver, then a stark orange that made her skin look dull, so she dyed it pink after three days. One time, she called me and said she wasn’t sure if graphic design was her thing. Then, by the next phone call, she was still studying the same course, but her hair turned half blue, half silver. And when the colour didn't change, the cut did. She had gone through a mullet, something called a wolf cut, bangs, all sorts of styles.
'Oh my God, calling you feels like opening a blind box. You are so quick to decide.'
I would joke and we would laugh. But sometimes I wondered if I envied her. Not her hair, but the certainty. She could wake up one morning and decide that she wanted to be blue, then she would make herself blue. I, on the other hand, had been debating dyeing my hair since Linh first did it. I spent an embarrassing amount of time wondering if I should try something new, but almost never had the courage to do so.
Linh didn't seem to be so unsure. At least she knew what colour her hair would be and never thought twice about changing it.
*
After my second year abroad, I came back to Vietnam for the break. Linh and I were both busy, and we hadn't called for a while. So when I told her I was coming home, she invited me out for coffee.
On the way to the coffee shop, I kept wondering which colour her hair would be, whether she still had the purple from the last time I saw her.
When Linh arrived, the strangest thing happened.
For a moment, I almost didn't recognise her walking through the door. Not because she looked different. Because she looked familiar.
Her hair was cut short to her shoulders, not styled. Not dyed.
We started to fuss about all the stories we had kept to be able to tell the other in person. When we sat down, Linh kept asking me about the book I was working on, but I found myself staring at her hair.
'Do I look weird? Be honest,' she asked finally, running a hand through her hair.
'No!' I said immediately. 'Not at all!'
Linh laughed.
'It's so weird going back to my natural hair, you know. It's like, who am I without my coloured hair?'
I didn't know what to say.
'It was the one thing I could decide on.'
She looked down at her hands on the table.
'Everything else, I'm never sure. Whether studying graphic design was the right choice, if I want to take on a new position in the volunteer club, or whether I should move out. But whenever I feel stuck between those decisions, I can just dye my hair.'
It occurred to me then that all those years the colours had been the opposite of certainty. They were what she reached for when she wasn't.
'Then I realized that the hair was just something I turned to when my life started to get confusing and I didn’t know what the right thing to do was. Because the decision to dye my hair is an easy one to make, I did it every time things got too hard. But then I learned that I can’t keep doing that forever, and I need to just try to take control over my actual life and not my hair. So, my hair's been untouched ever since. Oh! Did I tell you I registered for a sculpting class? I wanted to give it a try first before switching to that course entirely.’
‘Really?! That’s amazing!’
‘Yeah! I just thought changing courses two years in would be too risky, but it’s life, right? And my hair has been through enough, it’s time for me to change something else,’ she chuckled.
We were sitting next to a big window in the cafe. Outside was that white, flat sky Hanoi gets in the cold days of December. It's like all of the clouds have merged together to form a little dome over the city. When I was five, I thought clouds could only be white and fluffy. But they turn grey before the rain, nearly black when a storm comes, and burn under the evening sun. They gather and scatter and come together again in all kinds of different shapes.
Whatever they look like, however they may change, we still call them clouds.
'But ugh, look.' Linh scrunched her nose and held up a strand of hair. 'All this dye and bleach has damaged my hair so badly. Might take a while for them to turn back to how it was before.'
LiLi is a Vietnamese writer who finds inspiration in human connections and her hometown, Hanoi. She writes most days in her A5 notebook, usually short fiction drawn from her own experience, often about love, and not only the romantic kind.
