because I stood there, stunned, staring at her as if she were an apparition, she came forward to ask:
‘Do you need help, Señora?’
She smiled effortlessly, as if expressing her gratitude at being alive. I was surprised no one else seemed to perceive her beauty. It was as if the finest orchid had fallen at random into a mud puddle. All around her were women in heels sporting fake smiles. The receptionist was a monstrosity of cherry lips and caked-on blusher. Not her. She seemed to rise above it all, to be the reason for the name of the edifice.
‘Yes, thank you. I’d like a wax,’ I said, as if I hadn’t done my own waxing since I’d had the ability to reason.
‘We’re not too busy at the moment. Would you like an appointment now?’
‘Now’s fine,’ I said, mesmerised.
‘Excuse me, your name?’
‘Claire. Claire Dalvard.’
‘Please follow me,’ she said. And so I followed.
‘From a young age, black women straighten their hair with creams, with straighteners, with hairdryers; we chew pills, wrap it up, pin it down, apply hair masks, sleep with stocking caps in place, use a silicone sealer. Having straight hair is as important as wearing a bra, it’s an essential part of femininity. A woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do, she has to pluck up her courage, use as many clips as it takes. She has to be prepared to endure painful tugging, sometimes for hours on end. It’s wasteful and uncomfortable, but there’s no getting away from it if you want to achieve the silky straight look,’ said Karen in her low, rhythmic cadence.
‘And little girls, do they have to do it too?’
‘If they’re really little, no, but young ladies – eight, nine – then sure, they all straighten their hair, of course,’ she said as she removed the wraps.
Karen told me that when she arrived here, she liked the city. And yes. Many find it beautiful. Many are drawn to the mild sadness that distinguishes it, a sadness that is occasionally interrupted by a bright Sunday morning as radiant as it is unexpected.
She left her four-year-old with her mother in Cartagena and came to Bogotá. A former colleague had started up a beauty treatment centre in the Quirigua district, and she offered her a job. She promised her mamá she would send money for Emiliano each month, which she does. Her mamá lives in a house in the San Isidro neighbourhood with Uncle Juan, a confirmed bachelor who is in poor health. They live mainly on her uncle’s pension, his due for the thirty years he worked in the post office, and on the money Karen sends.
Karen grew up listening to vallenato, bachata and, when she was old enough, champeta. Her mother, barely sixteen years older than Karen, was crowned Miss San Isidro once, which she thought was a sign she would escape poverty. Instead, she ended up pregnant by a blond guy – a sailor, she assumed – who spoke little Spanish. After love paid Karen’s mother that furtive visit, the honey-coloured girl was born, and she shared not only her mother’s surname, but her beauty and her poverty too.
Doña Yolanda Valdés sold lottery tickets, sold fried fare, was a domestic worker, bartended in the city. Finally, she devoted herself to her grandson, resigned to her arthritis and to the fact that she gave birth to a girl instead of a boy. At forty years of age she was practically an old woman.
Doña Yolanda’s love affairs resulted in two more pregnancies, boys both times, but her luck was such that one was born dead and the other died after just a few days. Yolanda Valdés said the women in her family were cursed. An evil spell fell over them when they least expected it, and condemned them to inescapable solitude.
Karen remembers the seven o’clock Mass on Sundays and waking to the sound of canaries singing. She remembers fish stew at Los Morros beach and taut skin and the dizzying white lights that speckled her field of vision when she floated for a long stretch.
In time, our ritual of shutting ourselves away in that cubicle, sheltered by her youth, the cadence of the sea and the force of her soft, firm hands, became for me a need as ferocious as hunger.
From the moment I first set eyes on her, I wanted to know her. Gently, tenderly, I asked her questions while she moved her fingertips over my back. That’s how I found out that she arrived in Bogotá in January 2013, the sunny time of year. First she stayed in Suba, in the Corinto neighbourhood, where a family rented her a small apartment with a bathroom and kitchenette for 300,000 pesos, including utilities. She earned the minimum wage. At the end of the month she didn’t have two pesos to rub together, so couldn’t send anything home. On top of that, the neighbourhood was unsafe and she lived in constant fear. On the same morning that a drunk man shot two people for blocking a public road during a family get-together, Karen made up her mind to find another place to live.
She moved to Santa Lucía, to the south, near Avenida Caracas, but now had to cross the entire city to reach the salon where she worked.
When a colleague mentioned that an exclusive beauty salon in the north was looking for someone, Karen secured an interview. It was the beginning of April. The city was waterlogged from downpours. Karen had been in the new house barely a couple of weeks and took the deluge as a sign of abundance.
House of Beauty is in Zona Rosa, Bogotá’s premier shopping, dining and entertainment district. From the outside, the white edifice suggests an air of cleanliness and sobriety: part dental clinic, part fashionable boutique. Once through the glass doors, you are transported to a land of women. The receptionist behind the counter greets you with her best smile. Several uniformed employees, polished and smiling, are in the display room offering creams, perfumes, eyeshadow and masks in the best brands. On the coffee table in the waiting room are piles of magazines.
Karen remembers arriving on the fifth of April at around 11.30 in the morning. As soon as she crossed the threshold, she breathed deep an aroma of vanilla, almonds, rosewater, polish, shampoo and lavender.
The receptionist, whom she would soon have the chance to get to know better, looked like a porcelain doll. An upturned nose, large eyes and those full, cherry-coloured lips. As she headed past her for the waiting room, Karen wondered what lipstick she used.
At the back, there was a large mirror and two salon chairs where a couple of women did eyebrow waxing, make-up and product testing. They were all wearing light-blue slacks and short-sleeved blouses in the same colour. They looked like nurses, but well-groomed and made up, with impeccably manicured hands and waspish waists. The name badge on one perfectly bronzed woman told Karen her name was Susana.
The cleaner also wore a blue uniform, but in a darker hue. She came over to offer Karen a herbal tea, which Karen accepted. She saw the tropipop singer known as Rika come in. She was dark and voluptuous with an enviable tan, possibly older than she looked. She wore sunglasses like a tiara, had a gold ring on each finger and lots of bracelets. Like Karen, she announced herself at the reception desk and then took a seat beside her with a magazine.
‘Doña Fina is expecting you, you can go in,’ said the receptionist.
‘Thank you,’ said Karen, making sure to pronounce all her consonants to hide her Caribbean accent.
She went up a spiral staircase, passing by the second floor to reach the third. To her right, three manicure stations, four for eyelashes. In the middle, four cubicles and, at the back, to the left, Doña Josefina de Brigard’s office. Karen approached the half-open door and heard a voice beyond it telling her to come in. In the middle of an inviting room, with skylights that revealed a bright morning, stood a woman of uncertain age. She was dressed in low-heeled shoes, khaki pants, a beige blouse and a pearl necklace, with an impeccable blow-dry and subtle make-up.
‘Take a seat,’ she said in a low voice.
Doña Josefina watched Karen walk to the chair on the other side of the only desk in