Beauty Mark
At seventeen, there’s my dark hair. There’s the way it turns an iridescent red in the sun—and grows long long, a chestnut river waving tides down my back. To a certain eye, it’s exotic. To mine, it’s an Alfaro inheritance. There’s the way I learn to knit what’s been given to me into two ribbed braids that dangle over my shoulders when it’s damp and heavy at night. Pocahontas, the man at the gas station names me while scanning my sweating summer Coke and melting bag of ice, and there I am in front of him, smiling, giggling, flattered, remembering that I hate gas stations. There’s the green-eyed cheerleader at school with my same hair, but curlier and more Mexican. There are dozens of people who mistake me for her in the hallways, calling, Hey, gorgeous! at my back. There are their faces falling when I turn and am just myself. There’s the weight of that hair and the way, after I leave home for college, people will say, A Ciara style when I do anything with it: twist it into a high bun, finger out ropey braids, tame a ponytail coiled near my neck.
Or, my smooth teeth, plaque free and diamond white. Now, at twenty seven, they’re ghost teeth, turned translucent under whitening strips from the nights I turn so many pages I forget I’m becoming beautiful. There’s the shadow of my tongue behind those teeth, alive like a body through a clotheslined sheet, and there’s the way performing teeth tasks like holding ice or tearing steak or biting lips sends migraines hammering through my temples. There’s the dream that leaks into my bed where every tooth falls from my head, pink shells spit into my palm, and no one ever loves me again. At work, at the grocery store, at family reunions, there are strangers staring at me and agreeing: That smile could end wars.
I’m becoming beautiful. This is the story my family places on our dining table like a crystal vase: my girl-next-door mother, my disco-dancing grandmother, my Old-Hollywood great-grandmother, pulled from the world’s audience by the magician men who thought they were beautiful. In this story, the women go from unnoticed to named. Beautiful pulls these women onto the stage. Beautiful makes story happen.
In this story, at seventeen, there are my thick, wide eyebrows, brushed with darkhorse eyeshadow, eyebrows that shimmer purple magic in the light, eyebrows like lowrider handlebars, the only way I know how to shape them. There is the full face of makeup painted on every morning while dancing to CMT or MTV, phone by my side, awaiting good morning texts. You are so beautiful from half the aisle of men, and You don’t need all that makeup, why so much makeup? from the other. There’s the message and the manual in my mom’s face, gorgeous and lipsticked, even while sleeping. There’s my face, open for comments all the time, a 24-hour free exhibit. Give us your feedback, the makeup invites. Tell us how we can improve your experience.
There’s my waist, smaller than it’s ever going to be again and still not small enough. My hill-rolled hips and thighs, made into shapes I can’t straighten no matter how hard I try. There’s the sin of owning them. At work and at school, I am handed pressure in the form of raises and attention. Hard work gets me nothing but Caesar-salad-smelling clothes and lines like, you’re such a nice girl. I am leaving hard work behind. I am becoming noticed and named.
On TV, there are tough, gritty, muscle-carved men performing feats on American Ninja Warrior, skinny, doe-eyed, aura-gleaming women kissing their grown man teachers on Pretty Little Liars. In front of the TV, there’s me, calorie counting, fitness app documenting everything I’ve eaten today, beat from biking until the sun burned me back home, fighting over which of these bodies I want to be.
At Grandma’s Texas salon, there’s my future. There are waiting rooms filled with wrinkle-cheeked women, passing around advice. Chin exercises to avoid turkey neck, five times a day. Sugar scrubs against the backs of thighs to send cottage cheese cellulite running. Kegels to keep a lover loving. In the salon bathroom, there’s me, in the mirror, turning, finding neck creases and thigh dimples and betrayals hickeying my olive skin. I will carry the magic tricks of beauty these women give me into my future. I will see that beauty is a game of look-alikes. It is a game of making an enemy out of time. I will watch these women relearn the rules of the game, again and again and again and again. I don’t want to make an enemy out of time.
But always, there are the problems only I can see: my big pores, my sunken, tired eyes, my round cheeks and chin softness, my too-big shoulders and too small head, my bitten fingernails and yellow big toes, my stretch marks and terrifying boobs, my cactus-needle belly hair, my back aches and bad posture, my red gums stained white from bleach as if I’m dying. There are my teeth, made too pretty to bite. My nails, chewed down too short to claw. There’s the waiting to be looked at and found out. There’s the yearning and terror of it. There’s the problem of being a body and not a daydream.
And there are the boys—the first boy I ever adored, pounding a basketball into the pavement, fifth grade, telling me I’d be beautiful if I wasn’t fat. The seventh-grade boy staring at me in the hallways, stars in his eyes, and me running from him, sure he was planning to spit in my face. There’s the first boyfriend who I really loved, dumping me for the Vanessa Hudgens look-alike after begging his dick into my hand. The popular boy asking me to be his girlfriend in Spanish class, and me, laughing, thinking it’s another prank. There’s my prom date’s bed, with gunshot holes blown through the wall overhead, and his bedroom door locked, or the hunger and force in his father’s eyes as he takes our prom pictures, watching my dress. There are the Applebee’s men sending me free shots after high school football games and the shadows following me out of parking lots alone—watching me, ignoring me, kicking me, hitting on me, kissing me, churching me, introducing me to their mothers, and—finally, mercifully—pretending that I never even existed.
Ciara Alfaro (@ciaraalfaro) is a Chicana writer and descendant of magicians from Lubbock, Texas. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays, Swamp Pink, Passages North, Southeast Review, The Tampa Review, Witness, and more. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota and currently serves as the 2024-25 Olive B. O’Connor Fellow at Colgate University.