face in the mirror surprises me. My naked legs are an unlikely map, discoloured and forgotten.
It was on one of these strolls around the neighbourhood that, after browsing along Avenida 82, I ended up having a cappuccino and a chocolate soufflé in Michel’s Patisserie. I felt guilty, and decided to walk as far as Carrera 15 and then head home, again on foot. After a few blocks, on that clear May afternoon, I paused in front of a white building with glass doors I’d never stepped through. LA CASA DE LA BELLEZA was written in silver lettering. I peeped inside out of simple curiosity. I think it was the name that attracted me. House of Beauty. I was running my eye over the expensive products, for wrinkles, hydration, slimming, stretchmarks and cellulite, when I saw her by the reception desk. She was wearing white tennis shoes and a light-blue uniform and she had her hair pulled up in a ponytail. A long, black tress fell down her back. The rings under her eyes didn’t matter, nor did her tired expression: her beauty was forceful, almost indecently so. The young woman oozed life. There was something savage and raw in her that made her seem – how to say it? – real. I’m still not sure if it was the result of discipline and vanity, or simply an inherited gift. I’ll never know. Karen is a great mystery. Even more so in a city like this, where everyone’s appearance reflects who they are; where their attire, speech and the place they live announce how they will act. The codes of behaviour are as predictable as they are repetitive. I was captivated by her gazelle-like figure, but above all by a certain serenity in her expression. I’d bet she did absolutely nothing to look like that. If I knew anything simply by looking at her, it was that tranquillity has nested in her soul.
Perhaps 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
