Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

When Bird arrives, she shows Anju how to take inventory, counting bottle by bottle of product with a clipboard in her arm. “Go slow to fill up time,” Bird suggests. This, finally, feels to Anju like a job of some substance, something that Ghafoor will notice. But when he walks in, he barely looks at her and instead goes directly to the back of the room, where he hangs his coat on his reserved peg. By this time, the others have already arrived. Nandi is pouring Lipi a cup of chai from her gray thermos while Powder and Surya argue over which radio station to settle on. Nandi demands the morning weather report.

Ghafoor looks around the salon, rubbing his hands together for no apparent reason. It seems that he has something to announce, though only Anju notices. She has developed the premonition of knowing when she has been singled out, when hers will be the name that is called, her hands sniffed, her hind quarters paddled. So when Ghafoor says her name, she raises her head with more dread than surprise.

“Anju? Bird? In my office, please.”

“YOU WANT HER TO WAX?” Bird asks. “Are you crazy?”

Bird is standing across from Ghafoor’s desk. Anju is sitting in the corner beneath the poster of Aishwarya the bad girl, who shoots a look over her shoulder, clearly aware that her rear seems nearly edible in shiny leather pants. This is exactly the sustenance, Anju decides, that must get Ghafoor through a meeting with a disgruntled employee.

“She is a child!” Bird says.

“You said she was older than a child,” Ghafoor says. “If she is a child, then she should not be working here at all.”

“But what if she does something wrong? What if someone tries to sue her? Everyone suing everyone in this country, you know that, and if they find out she is not licensed—”

“Powder is a certified beautician, and whatever her brain has retained from beauty school, she will teach it to Anju.”

“At least let Powder do all the bikini ones.”

“Powder is already busy, and Surya is leaving. I want Anju to fill Surya’s shoes.”

On and on they fight like a couple that has known each other too long. From Powder, Anju has learned the definition of bikini wax (“When they take off all the hair. Down there”) . Now she weighs the pros and cons of administering the bikini wax, and while the cons are cringeworthy, they are the sorts of cons that will most likely fade with repetition. And besides, pros or cons, all will go into the Folgers canister in the end.

She has been waiting for a window in which to speak, but finding none, she interrupts with a loud question. “Do you have a lab coat, sir?”

“Why?” Ghafoor asks.

“Maybe it would make me look older. Maybe people will think I am expert in the field. Their field.” Anju smiles at her own joke, then clears her throat and falls quiet.

THE WAX WARMING POT looks like an artifact of scuffed metal, centuries old, rimmed with dried, gummy sap. It sits on a hot plate that Powder has plugged into the wall, near the beige cushioned bench. While waiting for the wax to warm, Powder lists the weaponry needed to de-hair a body part and Anju takes notes: wax, wax warming pot, muslin strips, flat wooden sticks, latex gloves, postepilating soothing cream, antiseptic toner, cotton towel, paper towel, and cotton.

Powder holds up a paper diaper. “Disposable knicker. I got it at the supply store, a box of hundred.”

Disposable knicker , Anju writes in her notes. She takes the knicker, folds it in half, and tucks it into her notebook.

“What are you doing?” asks Powder. “You put that on.”

“Me?”

“How else will I show you? First I will do the waxing to you. Then you will do it to me.”

Anju watches as Powder stirs a stick in the pot of wax. When she pulls the stick out, a long, luminous band of honey clings to the end.

“Keep your top on,” Powder says. And before Anju can protest, Powder has left the room to give her some privacy.

Anju removes the paper knicker from her notebook and opens it.

And so it has come to this.

AT FIRST, lying back on the cushioned bench, Anju almost forgets her sous-navel ensemble, soothed as Powder smooths a cotton ball soaked with antiseptic toner around the area in question, keeping clear of the paper knicker. This is followed by a sprinkling of talcum. “Puts a barrier between wax and skin,” Powder says.

Not barrier enough. Pain streaks across her mind like a color, a lurid splash of red across a white wall. The red flares, then fades like an echo, softening, subsiding, and just as she begins to breathe again — another rip . Through gritted teeth, Anju repeats the mechanics to herself: spackle the wax, smooth the strip, pull taut the skin, and yank. But it is nearly impossible to ignore the fact that she has never looked so closely at this region of her own body, let alone anyone else’s.

Of course, there are more ways of waxing wrong than waxing right. Powder suffers most from this truth, trying to direct while keeping her knee hitched. “Never ever hesitate while pulling off a strip,” Powder manages to say. “Do that again and I’ll kill you.”

When finished, Powder tells Anju to wait in the room while she convinces Surya of Anju’s good work. Surya remains unconvinced but agrees to let Anju wax her anyway. “I’m doing this so that girl won’t get fired,” Surya says. “But I can tell just how good she is from the way you limped in here.”

By the time Anju does Surya, her technique has much relaxed and improved. She keeps her mind focused on the details — the thinness of the honey, the rhythm of the rip — rather than the larger concept of her task. If she lets her mind wander, Ammachi might invade her thoughts, shaking her head and covering her eyes as if no hell could contain the depths to which Anju has fallen.

“Never write to your father about this,” Bird warns. “He would never forgive me.”

Anju agrees. Even if she were in contact with her father, she wouldn’t know the words to describe this latest development. Perhaps she would call it a “promotion” and leave it at that.

STILL, ANJU CAN APPRECIATE those rare days of fleeting warmth, softening the snow along the sidewalks, shedding hope for a shortened winter. An old Rafi song is billowing from the open door of the music store, and passing by, she feels herself diving through a gentle wave, the tune still in her ears as she rounds the corner.

Over the past week, Anju had two clients seeking a bikini wax, and next week, upon Surya’s departure, she will be promoted to the leg and arm waxes as well. The bikini clients were Powder’s friends, one white and one Filipino, whom Powder had lured with a 25 percent discount. The first girl, a wispy blonde with a navel ring, knew exactly what to lift and how. She chatted through the entire process without even a wince, talking about the boyfriend into whose house she had recently moved. “He’s all like, ‘I thought Jackson Heights would be more diverse, but I feel like I’m in New Delhi or something’”— rip —“but I said, ‘Eff you, I just found a salon that’ll get me a bikini wax”— rip —“for ten bucks and I’m not going anywhere.’” This was the type of blessed woman, Anju decided, who would shoot her babies right out, one after another, with hardly a stretch mark to show for it.

“Done,” Anju said, pulling off her gloves.

“Done?” The girl looked down. “Cool.”

The Filipino girl was not as lucky; she might have left claw marks in the bench had she any nails. But even with the Filipino girl, Anju felt a new certainty about her work, and no longer absorbed the pain that she inflicted. She felt instead like some sort of authority, midwifing each woman into a state of groomed well-being. Once finished, the Filipino girl even smiled at the results.