Beauty School

by Dorothea Lange

The older woman wrapped in a pink gown is starting to weep, “I’m so sorry,” she says, “it’s just that.... well, you’re the first person to touch me like that... so gently I mean.... since the.... since my mastectomy.... in the hospital they handled me so indifferently... carefully, but indifferently... I don’t know... like it was moving day and they were moving boxes of packed-up glassware... and... and the reason I decided to get this facial was because everyone kept saying that I needed to indulge myself a little... to try to relax a little... to try to reduce the stress... that it would help with the healing...” and the younger woman who is massaging the older woman’s face with a creamy, cucumber-scented cleanser replies soothingly, “It’s all right, I understand completely, I really do—so please don’t worry about it and just try to lie back and see if you can enjoy it a little....” and then beautician does the only thing she has ever been able to come up for situations like this: sends a desperate message to her fingers to make her touch feel like love, feel like love, feel like love, feel like love, and she wonders again why in beauty school—where she had learned all about facials, waxing, and eyelash tinting—they had taught her nothing at all about the woman who is caring for her sick, elderly mother and fighting with her sister, the obese woman whom no else has touched in years, and the woman who tells you in great detail about how terrible it is to get old.

by Nina Zolotow

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