HUMBLE BEAUTY
Ysabel Hilario never thought of herself as beautiful.
Pretty, maybe — in the way a summer flower is pretty, the kind you pass by without stopping — but not beautiful. Beautiful was for girls like Yadira. Yadira could walk into a room and have men turn their heads like sunflowers to the sun. Her hair was always glossy, her nails manicured, her perfume sweet but sharp. Yadira’s voice was the kind that left trails in the air, confident and melodic, the kind that made people listen before they even registered her words.
They had been friends since they were nine years old, two girls in San Juan with different homes but the same restless hunger. Ysabel came from a small apartment above a hardware shop her uncle ran. Yadira’s family was slightly better off — her father drove a taxi but had bought a small house in Bayamón, and her mother worked as a seamstress for a high-end boutique.
Yadira had a way of talking about the future that was contagious. She spoke of it as if it were already waiting for her — money, power, a life of marble floors and city views. “Medicine, Ysabel,” she’d say, lying on her stomach on Ysabel’s bed, legs swinging. “Doctors aren’t just respected. They’re untouchable. Everyone has to listen to you. You get to wear beautiful coats, have people call you ‘Doctora.’ It’s not about blood and surgeries — it’s about what it gives you.”
Ysabel would listen, chin propped in her palm, she was not the type who dreamt, all she could picture was all that stood in front of her. Seamstresses, cooks, cleaners and sometimes nurses. But as Yadira painted pictures of champagne dinners and holidays in Dubai. She didn’t know if she wanted all that, but she wanted the feeling of mattering. She wanted to walk into a room and not feel like she had to apologize for existing.
By the time they finished high school, Yadira already had a plan — pre-med in Miami, internships, then med school. She convinced Ysabel to follow her. “We’ll take the city together,” Yadira had grinned.
ARRIVAL
Miami felt like another planet when Ysabel arrived for college.
The campus was sprawling and glossy, palm trees perfectly trimmed, buildings so white they hurt her eyes in the sun. She clutched the strap of her second-hand leather bag as she walked past groups of laughing students who already seemed to know one another. She noticed their easy clothes — shorts, sandals, branded caps — and how casually they threw their heads back when they laughed. The pictures and videos she had seen of the city were exaggerated she felt. The school was great but wasn’t Heaven.
She kept her head down in lectures. Her English was good, but her accent clung to her vowels like a stubborn shadow, and she hated the way professors sometimes tilted their heads when she spoke, as if translating her in their minds. She became the girl who took notes quietly and left before anyone could stop her.
Yadira, of course, was thriving. She was already on a first-name basis with professors, had a tight circle of friends from the Caribbean Students Association, and was dating a third-year who drove a cherry-red Mustang. She wore crop tops to campus, carried herself like the air bent for her. Yadira was on the way up…so she always said and Ysabel was there to watch her all the way.
One night in their dorm room, Yadira glanced at Ysabel over her makeup mirror. “You can’t hide forever, Isa,” she said, blending highlighter onto her cheekbones. “You’re pretty. You just don’t know it yet.”
“I’m fine the way I am.”
“You’re not fine, you’re invisible. And invisible doesn’t win. You are LATINA! We mulatos are spices, special rare......” she looked up like wondering on the thought on how rare they were.
Ysabel didn’t answer, but the words stayed with her.
