"You're not born in the year of the dog — you're born in the year of the rooster. And you're not seven, you're eight. Got it?" Was that when the practice of hiding something about myself began. My mother would stand me in front of her and make me promise, over and over, now that I was entering elementary school a year early. Sometimes my aunts would join in too. My mother and aunts seemed to find it somewhat amusing, this business of training me to conceal something about mys