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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Finding the centre

by

20131222

In a tiny hair­dress­ing sa­lon in St James, a strik­ing woman, An­gel­i­ca (not her re­al name) with girl­ish dim­ples and vel­vety skin (like the in­side of a sapodil­la), was blow-dry­ing my hair.There was the sound of run­ning wa­ter, women's low voic­es, the cu­ri­ous­ly aro­mat­ic, min­gling smells of cof­fee and chem­i­cals. For an hour or two, the women in here were buffered from the harsh­ness of re­al­i­ty. Some closed their eyes un­der the dry­er, al­low­ing them­selves to suc­cumb to waves of so­porif­ic dream­ing.

My phone, then An­gel­i­ca's, rang in quick suc­ces­sion. She paused the dry­er. We over­heard one an­oth­er's con­ver­sa­tion with our off­spring, ex­hort­ing them to be safe on the road, en­cour­ag­ing them to study.As women do, we be­came in­ti­mate strangers.It was her birth­day. Look­ing at her, I pic­tured her in a cheeky dress, del­i­cate heels in a cock­tail bar with friends, or hav­ing din­ner with her hus­band. But if there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that noth­ing is as it seems.

She was cook­ing pelau, she said, and sal­ad for 50 peo­ple. Ah, "a do­mes­tic di­va," I thought, in the way we like to pin­ion peo­ple with stereo­types.That was not what she meant at all.Bit by bit, as she put rollers in my hair, she told me her sto­ry.

An­gel­i­ca's sto­ry:

"I am the el­dest of four chil­dren. I nev­er knew my fa­ther. My moth­er was not a sta­ble per­son. She would leave at night. I didn't know what she did. I would see her get­ting big­ger, ly­ing down and a ba­by came. She would be qui­et for a bit and go out again un­til an­oth­er ba­by came un­til there were four of us.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers


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