Yolanda Valdés had no choice but to clean the shit off her brother, spoon-feed him his mash and bathe him like a child. There was no money to put him in an old people’s home, or to pay a nurse or a maid. She ended up becoming the maid herself, waiting on her brother hand and foot like a slave in exchange for a place to live and food to eat. And the old man, despite his dementia, every now and then reminded her that the house was his, that it was his money covering their expenses.
Karen knew – her mamá had told her – that her mother’s greatest misfortune was giving birth to a girl because ‘men do whatever they like, while we women do what falls to us’. Karen was thirteen when she first heard that. From then on, with every woman she knew or met, Karen would ask herself whether she did what she wanted, or what had fallen to her. She also asked herself whether taking care of Uncle Juan fell to her mother or was a cross she chose to bear. She couldn’t imagine what her mother would do if she didn’t have so many things to complain about. Her mother personified unhappiness, was unhappiness itself.
Since Emiliano was born, Karen had the feeling her mother loved the boy more than she loved her. Perhaps because she saw in him the chance to turn the tide, to change things. Her mother, like her grandmother before her, had the frustration of not having a son to stick up for the Valdés family. But there was something else: her mother was disappointed in her. First for not capitalising on her beauty, and then for getting pregnant by a ‘black nobody’, as she described Nixon. Yolanda Valdés was a grandmother at thirty-six years of age and felt better prepared to be a mother than when she had Karen at sixteen. No doubt she didn’t feel like a grandmother, or at least didn’t want to be one.
The bus was now nearing Profamilia, the family planning centre. Someone had told her they performed abortions there, that it was a good clinic, where medical practitioners did everything to the highest standard of hygiene. But wasn’t that illegal? Karen asked herself. It was, she answered her own question, but that’s where they did them, should she ever need one. Could she be going crazy? Like Uncle Juan? Maybe it was the conversations she caught snippets of throughout the day, on the bus, in the station, in the street, at House of Beauty. Maybe she’d heard one girl say it to another, maybe when they were passing by here, who knew. This area was nice, too. The houses down from the Avenida Caracas and Calle 39 intersection were some of the nicest she’d seen in this city. There were some in the English style, with moss on the walls and little square windows that evoked a warm fire, hot chocolate heated over a low flame, even melted marshmallows. Sadly, most of them were no longer family homes. Now they were businesses, foundations. And people didn’t live in them, for safety reasons. In this city, you couldn’t have a house with nothing between it and the street. You had to put up obstacles, limits, protective barriers. A guard or two, a fence, preferably electrified, a menacing dog. Only an idiot would leave himself unprotected like that, he’d be fair game. So no one lit the fire in the fireplace behind those little square windows, the moss-covered walls, not any more. What if in Cartagena there’d been a Profamilia and a girlfriend had told her about it? If she hadn’t been so silly about Nixon? And if she hadn’t had the fear of God ingrained in her? If she’d told someone? Wasn’t taking contraceptives almost the same as having an abortion? Weren’t they both ways of avoiding a life before it was a life? Why keep a life when no one wants it? She felt embarrassed for thinking this way. It’s God who giveth and God who taketh away, no one else, she reminded herself, repeating the phrase she’d heard hundreds of times. Next to her the portly bearded man got off and a young, pregnant woman, sixteen at most and at least seven months along, moved into the space where he’d been. She made as if to sit down but stopped, hovering in the air, her backside about twenty centimetres above the seat. This habit was widespread in Bogotá, Karen had noticed. In fact, whoever didn’t let the seat cool after the previous person had left it was considered impolite. Hovering above the seat for seven, ten seconds, the young woman waited for the heat from the bearded man’s backside to dissipate. Susana had explained that people did this so as not to be invaded by others’ moods.
The young woman sat down. Karen looked at her out of the corner of her eye, but wasn’t brave enough to turn towards her. Out of nowhere, she thought about me. She thought about how I was different from her other clients. I seemed like a free woman, at peace with life. She wanted to be like me when she was my age, she told me later. If she were rich, she would like to be rich like me, not like Doña Rosario Trujillo. If she were rich, it wouldn’t have mattered that she’d been born a girl, ‘because all rich people do well for themselves, men or women. They’re not exactly equal, but almost,’ she said.
The pregnant young woman bit at a hangnail. Her fingernails were so gnawed down they were almost gone. Her hair was greasy and her expression was fearful. Karen wanted to talk to her, even if just to distract her from whatever was worrying her so much.
‘How far along are you?’
‘Seven months.’
‘So, October, then?’
‘Yes, Señora, the beginning of October.’
‘And the father’s happy?’
‘Yes, Señora, he was.’
‘He isn’t now?’
‘Not any more, he’s dead.’
The young woman’s eyes welled with tears. Karen didn’t say anything, but was now looking at her directly, as if she wanted to hypnotise her, or tell her something, but couldn’t find the words. The girl moved her fingers towards her mouth again; gently but firmly, Karen took her hand and placed it onto her lap. She left it there, still, her own hand resting on it. That’s how they reached the stop on Calle 22, not far from where the street of sin started. On that street prostitutes came in and out of tiled houses like enormous bathrooms, steeped with the smell of detergent, semen, urine and alcohol; nearby was the neon sign for La Piscina, where women stripped and danced under flickering white lights, rubbing their backsides against the jaws of young executives on stag parties until they slipped them a few notes to fondle their nipples.
The streets with the mariachis, where Karen had never set foot, were now behind them. She’d never once been to a bar or club anywhere in this city.
Here there were houses with broken windows; dealers; down-and-outs; transvestites; prostitutes. Many of the prostitutes were old, or fat, or young girls, or sick. But only the wealthy went to La Piscina. Karen had heard that a bottle of whisky cost half a million pesos. Surely the girls were treated well, and didn’t let anyone hit them or infect them with one of those disgusting diseases. Her eyelids were drooping with weariness, but since the bus stopped, she craned her neck to see where some girls were going. The pregnant girl had got off and an elderly man was in her place. Karen’s stomach grumbled and she tried to remember what she had for lunch. She tried to recall if there was anything to eat at home. She had to go shopping. Maybe on Sunday. It was late now, she just wanted to snuggle under the covers. Her calves, arms, and the tendons in her hands were aching. Only nine stops to go. When the man got off, a woman around the same age as Karen got on. She was attractive, and talked anxiously into her phone. ‘But mamá, she’s my girl – she’s my girl – she’s my girl,’ she kept saying, like a mantra. Karen closed her eyes. The bus smelled dirty. A mixture of sweat, hair, patchouli, packaged food and cigarettes. Karen wanted to zone out the woman beside her. She wanted to do her calculations. She tried to concentrate. She had started sending her mamá about three hundred pesos each month. It wasn’t much. But she had to budget better, it wasn’t possible that whole families lived on the minimum wage and she, earning a third more, couldn’t make ends meet. Soon after she arrived in Bogotá, her new colleague Maryuri had said: ‘You’re no good at being poor. You have to make each cent count.’ And maybe she was right. Karen felt that she wasn’t just bad at being poor, but bad at life in general. Her mamá mocked her, said she thought she was from a better family. It wasn’t that. It was that melancholy had holed up inside her since she was smal
l, and she couldn’t rid herself of it. Maybe she got that from her papá. She thought she must take after her papá, because she didn’t take after her mamá. She’d inherited her mother’s sinewy body, long neck, plump lips, and big eyes, but she wasn’t outgoing, or loud, or a talker, and she hadn’t inherited her love of dance, brandy or rum, either. Her mother often told Karen that she lacked a certain fire. Like when the rice or spaghetti was still a bit hard, ‘maybe because you came out of the oven before you were properly done,’ said Doña Yolanda, ‘maybe that’s why you came out bland, like the soul of a mountain person.’
She looked again. They were only at Fucha station. The head of the old man next to her was lolling from one side to the other, like that of a nodding dog. When his head stopped lolling, he found Karen’s shoulder particularly comfortable. The cheek! Who does he think he is? she thought, annoyed. She sneezed and soon after they arrived at Restrepo station, where there was always noise and movement. Due to one or the other, the old man woke, made a silly face, rubbed his eyes and, while he didn’t say sorry, he did straighten his head and keep it still until Olaya station. She went back to her calculations. She had to check how much money was tucked under her mattress. It was better there than in a bank account. Maybe one of her colleagues could explain the school system and help her find someone to look after Emiliano. The public schools were terrible. Deisy’s nine-year-old daughter went to one, and she didn’t know how to read or write yet. What a sin, Karen thought. But paying for a private school was another story. She could never afford one.
Perhaps she could bring Emiliano here for Christmas. She’d heard talk of the lights in Parque Nacional. There were some colourful buses that took people to see them. She would have to get a fan for Emiliano, ideally a ceiling fan, like the white one they had at Uncle Juan’s that she was sometimes afraid would come flying off and squash them in the middle of the night. Karen remembered her first nights in Bogotá. The cold ground into her bones, and she couldn’t sleep; she missed the ceiling fan, its lulling sound, the breeze it made.
It felt like the bus journey would never end. She wanted to get home, count her money, jot down her expenses and the next day do the necessary calculations; she wanted it to be Christmas, to bring Emiliano here, to feel the heat of his little hands, to hold him tight, to sleep curled around him like old times, to wake him with a freshly cooked egg arepa and a veal sausage, cultured buttermilk and steamed corn bollos. She wanted to see his face when he boarded the Transmilenio bus, when he gazed down on the city from Monserrate. She hadn’t been up there yet, but she’d heard it was beautiful.
She looked at her watch; almost nine. Could she have made a mistake? Instead of taking the express she’d hopped on the bus that stops everywhere. No wonder it wasn’t packed. Egg arepa, she thought with her stomach more than her mind. She had no idea what people saw in the almojábana bun. A dry, bland bread that made your tongue claggy. Pale and sweet like the Bogotan people, she thought. Her stomach responded with such a thunderous grumble that the young man beside her raised his eyebrows.
‘Would you like some roscón?’
‘Sorry?’
‘I have half a sweet bread in a bag, if you’d like some.’
‘Thank you,’ she replied, embarrassed.
He had a Valluno accent. He took out the paper bag, opened it carefully and passed it to her. A roscón is better than an almojábana bun, Karen thought.
‘Yes, this week I was able to buy a belt. Not yet, but a colleague lent me two ties. Yes, Señora. Yes, of course. Don’t trouble yourself, I was looking at some. Next payday I’ll buy my own and give back the one I borrowed,’ the young man was saying into his phone.
Karen was so absorbed in the conversation she almost missed her stop. The roscón had guava paste inside and she devoured it in two bites. She wondered if Emiliano had ever tried roscón. Maybe if he started eating almojábana buns as a child, he’d grow up liking them. Having to buy him almojábana buns for his breakfast would be funny, she thought, smiling on the inside. He was growing up on fried arepas, coconut water and peto. How she missed having a fresh peto at dusk. It was the perfect rocking-chair drink. Out on the patio, nice and fresh, in a plastic cup. Oh, and tamarind balls, the ones her mother made were always so tasty.
At Uncle Juan’s, there were only plastic plates and glasses, and they never bought serviettes. ‘What for?’ Doña Yolanda said. In the sink was some El Rey soap to get the grease off after each meal. Karen thought maybe that was why her hands were so dry. Here, what woke her wasn’t the voice of a seller pushing a peto cart, but the loudspeaker from a motorbike loaded with tamales: ‘Tamales, tamales, yes, we have tamales, only two thousand pesos, come get your tamales, come through, come through.’ Karen would wake up annoyed because it was seven on Sunday morning, the one day people could sleep in, and the street vendors were already out megaphoning their goods. Come through? Karen would wonder, half-asleep. But he’s selling from a motorbike. Where could anyone come through to? And she would put the pillow over her head. The bus had already braked when she saw the Santa Lucía stop sign. She jumped off and shot the young man a smile he didn’t see.
One of the upsides of living where she did was that it was only three blocks from the station. Apart from a few broken or blown bulbs, the street was well lit. Electricity cables hung down like the entrails of a gutted animal. She walked calmly for the first block, but then she heard police sirens and, after turning down Carrera 19, she came across a commotion next to the Brisas del Sur hostel. About fifteen taxis were blocking the street, and the area had been cordoned off around one of them. On the other side of the street, a body was being lifted into an ambulance. A few bystanders were watching the scene. The taxi drivers were shouting, ‘Kill him! Kill him!’ and were hurling rocks at a house window while the police tried to contain them. Here in Bogotá, Karen had noticed, people only milled in the streets when there was a death, a terrorist attack, an accident. Anything else, they stayed shut away in their homes. On the coast on the other hand, people put Rimax chairs out in the street, set up their picó sound systems, put on a good vallenato or bachata and raised a nice and cold Costeñita or Águila to their neighbours, whiling away the afternoon.
‘What happened?’ she asked an old man in pyjamas.
‘Someone shot a taxi driver, trying to rob him. Now they want to lynch the thief, he’s hiding in that house.’
When she crossed to go down Carrera 20, she saw an armoured riot-control truck approaching. In less than three minutes she was trying to open the door of her building, her pulse speeding and hands shaking. The tear-gas canisters reverberated in her ears. She looked up and thought she saw a light on in her apartment. When she looked down to push open the door, a black cat brushed against her legs. She was watching it go on its way when a press on her shoulder made her turn around. It was a junkie, with sagging jeans and stuck-up hair.
‘Neighbour, how are you tonight, other than being as beautiful as a star?’ he said with a toothless smile and bad breath.
Karen looked at him a second, gave him a paltry smile and went back to the door knob.
‘What’s the hurry, princess?’ he said, drawing out the final syllable. Karen noticed him glance upwards, just as the light in her apartment turned on and off intermittently.
‘What’s going on up there?’ she said. Her voice trembled. Now she was scared. Then he got out a knife and put it to her throat:
‘Nothing we need to report. If you behave yourself, this will have a happy ending for everyone.’
Karen was stunned. Someone was in her apartment, or had just left it. The man held her there, glancing up to the window every few seconds. Karen was too scared to speak. Then there was a noise – was it the building’s back door banging shut? – and he gave her a light push and moved away in the shadows. Before he disappeared, she noticed a duffle bag slung over his shoulder, and wondered if her things were in it.
Plucking up her courage, she went inside. On the first fl
oor, there was no sound. The lights were off. The landlord and landlady, who rented out three apartments, lived behind an iron grille with three padlocks. Their dog, Muñeco, was in the central patio. In the first part of the house lived a woman with a girl about ten years old. On the second floor, in the apartment across from Karen’s, lived a police officer, his wife and their baby. She went up the stairs as fast as she could, and found the door knob broken, the door open, her clothes on the floor, the mirror cracked in two, the photo of Emiliano thrown on the floor and her statue of the Virgin Mary headless. The TV and radio were gone, as were the gold chain her Uncle Juan had given her as a graduation gift and her Divine Child medal. But she hardly noticed these details because she was only thinking about her bed. She rushed to it. Everything looked in order. The mattress was in place, the bed was made. If it weren’t for the mirror, the Virgin and her clothes, she would think nothing had happened. The half-full cup of coffee was in the sink, as she had left it that morning. Breadcrumbs were on the kitchen bench. Her towel was draped on the head of the bed. And yet, on lifting the mattress she discovered that the only thing she couldn’t afford to find missing – the only thing that mattered to her, the only thing that made a difference to her life and her son’s life, the only thing that justified her living here in this city – was gone.
Karen looked for it all over the apartment, as if it might have switched hiding spots. She searched the bathroom drawer, the saucepans, the drawers of her bedside table, her wardrobe, even the waste basket. She searched the same places again and again, as if her brain had ordered her to repeat the same actions for as long as necessary, anything not to have to accept that the money had gone forever, and there was nothing she could do about it.
House of Beauty Page 6