Melba Escobar - House of Beauty

As Karen was leaving, Doña Josefina stopped her.

‘And one more thing. Who doesn’t like a Caribbean accent? Don’t try to hide it. No one, not one single soul in this country or any other, likes the way we Bogotans speak.’

A week later, Karen was part of House of Beauty. ‘If I had been put in the eyebrow, make-up and eyelashes section, I’d have had trouble competing with Susana,’ she told me. Each woman had her strengths, and soon Karen was queen of the second floor. She was assigned cubicle number 3 for facials, massages and waxing. Her beauty, care and professionalism made her a favourite, especially for waxing. She discovered that when Bogotan women came for a Brazilian, it was almost never on their own initiative but because their husband, boyfriend or lover had asked. She told me about her clients and her colleagues at House of Beauty. That was how the name Sabrina Guzmán came up.

Karen knows who has a birthmark on her hip, who suffers from varicose veins, whose breast implants give her trouble, who is about to split up, who has a lover, who is cheating, who is travelling to Miami for the long weekend, who was diagnosed with cancer last week, and who has daily waist-slimming massages without telling her husband.

What’s confessed in the cubicle stays in the cubicle, same as happens on the couch. Like the therapist or confessor, the beautician takes a vow of silence. Of course, she would later come to tell me things she’d been told in the cubicle. But that was different.

On the treatment table, as on the couch in my line of work, a woman can stretch out in surrender. She obeys the SWITCH OFF YOUR PHONE sign and enters the cubicle ready to disconnect. For fifteen minutes, half an hour, maybe more, she is isolated from the world. She tunes out everything but her body, the silence or the intimate conversation. Often the confidences shared in the cubicle have never been told to anyone before.

Sabrina Guzmán arrived one Thursday in the middle of a downpour, barely half an hour before closing. She reeked of brandy, her hair was soaking wet, and she was in her school uniform. She said her boyfriend was taking her to a romantic dinner and the night would conclude in a five-star hotel. As far as Karen understood, it was the same boyfriend who had wanted to sleep with her on two previous occasions, but hadn’t done the honours because, in Sabrina’s words, she wasn’t as smooth as an apple.

He was coming to Bogotá for two days, so he had to make the most of it. Sabrina didn’t explain what he’d be making the most of, but Karen assumed she meant deflowering her. The waxing was torture for them both. Sabrina complained too much, and when Karen saw a few drops of blood, she felt suddenly cold.

When the girl left, Karen stared at that sprinkle of blood on the treatment table cover and wondered how to get rid of it. She tried water, soap and ammonia, but only managed to smudge the stain to a pale rose. That stain would have to accompany her for the rest of her days working at House of Beauty.

A few days later, when Sabrina Guzmán’s lifeless body was discovered, the name of Sabrina’s lover came back to Karen. The brief write-up said only that the seventeen-year-old, a student at the girls’ grammar Gimnasio Feminino, died from an aneurism, and the funeral service would take place at midday the same day, 24 July, at the Church of the Immaculate Conception.

Despite knowing that leaving House of Beauty during work hours was forbidden, Karen felt an urgent need to go. She went into the lavatory, stripped off her uniform, pulled on her skinny jeans and white top, and asked Susana if she could borrow the black blazer she had worn to work that morning.

She went out into the rain with her cheap 5,000-peso umbrella. She forged ahead to the sound of car horns, jumping puddles until she reached Carrera 11, where she boarded a rundown bus. Inside, she folded the umbrella, opened her purse, paid the fare and made her way towards the back, squished between men’s warm backsides and the smell of patchouli emanating from women with long hair and dye jobs gone wrong. When she grasped the rail, she thought the same thing she did every time she hopped on a bus: there was nothing more repulsive than the feel of that greasy, sticky metal.

People were still getting on. A fat man’s chest pressed against her own. He was so tall she saw his dark double chin above her head when she lifted her gaze.

A child of about eleven hopped on selling mints. He said he had escaped the armed conflict in Tolima. He said he had four siblings. That he was ‘head of household’. Karen rummaged in her purse and handed him a 500-peso coin before ringing the bell. The driver stopped abruptly and she leapt to the pavement.

Before going into the church, she stepped inside a department store. She wanted to get rid of the stench from the bus. She applied a test perfume, Chanel No. 5, checked her reflection in a small mirror between rows of blusher pots, fixed her hair, pulled a lipstick from her handbag, applied it carefully and went on her way.

When she got to the church, she moved through the crowd to the front, as if borne along a conveyor belt. In the fourth or fifth pew, she found a free space. Before her was the closed coffin. Very few people would be able to remember the body as she did. Her long, slim toes. Veins showing at the calves. She recalled the freckles on the narrow shoulders, her straight nose, her huge eyes and thin lips, and she suddenly realised Sabrina was beautiful. Her beauty might have been grey, like this city, but at the same time it was subtle, full of secrets.

Sadness washed over her, like a wave in the middle of a calm sea. She clenched her fist to keep from crying, imagined mascara running down her cheeks, and people wondering who the interloper crying her eyes out could be. She thought of the effort the two of them went to just a few days earlier to leave Sabrina as smooth as an apple. Remembering she was in a church, she squirmed. Only then did she glance at the man beside her. She was sure she had seen him before. He was a celebrity. For a moment, she thought she’d seen him on TV presenting celebrity news, but she realised he was too old for that. Then she recognised him. He was the author of the self-help classics Happiness Is You and I Love Myself .

Karen smiled. Four years ago, before the arrival of her son Emiliano changed her life completely, Karen was in her first semester at the University of Cartagena, studying social work.

What happened to her happened because she was a fool, she knew, though she was not all that less of a fool now; it happened because she was straight-laced, which she still was. And the thing was, the Thinking Skills professor talked so nicely. Yes, he was old, much older than she was – she’d just turned eighteen – but in her eyes, he was learned, enlightened. Professor Nixon Barros had the swagger of Caribbean men. And he talked nicely and had a belly laugh. All that seduced her; whenever she watched him speak, she was hypnotised. Nixon wasn’t afraid of tenderness. To Karen, he seemed like a real man. She liked his kinky hair. She liked the sweat that covered his forehead and didn’t bother him in the least. She liked his Guayabera shirts, always too big for him, and his cologne.

With Professor Nixon, she explored the Bazurto Market and got drunk for the first time in El Goce Pagano. For almost a year, she skipped classes and kept a secret that made her blush. Karen knew he was married, for the second time, that he lived with a younger wife and a child. But the day he leaned over to kiss her, Karen didn’t stop to think about the Prince Charming her mamá had in mind for her, or that Professor Nixon was old, and married – she just closed her eyes and parted her lips.