When Albeiro took her to a party at Don Chalo’s mansion, she saw Ximena in person. The famous woman’s smile was a crack in a porcelain mask. Her eyes had the flat look of a hostage. Ximena pulled Catalina into a bathroom tiled entirely in gold.
“I want a way out,” Catalina replied. Sin Senos no hay Paraiso
Her best friend, Paola, who already wore a bra with padding, laughed at her. “You’re crazy, Cata. You want a drug trafficker?” When Albeiro took her to a party at
She took a deep breath, turned away from the mirror, and opened a textbook. Biology. She had decided to become a nurse. It was not paradise. It was not the cover of a magazine. But when she walked down the street now, men did not turn their heads, and for the first time in her life, Catalina Santana felt completely, terrifyingly, wonderfully free. Ximena pulled Catalina into a bathroom tiled entirely
Albeiro laughed, but he kept watching. A week later, he sent her a gift: a voucher for a clinic in Bogotá. The procedure was called breast augmentation. Silicone. Four hundred cubic centimeters.
But Albeiro bought her. He moved her out of the village into a beige apartment with a jacuzzi that never worked. He gave her a white purse with gold buckles. He gave her a cell phone that rang only with his voice, always asking where she was, who she was with, why she had taken five minutes longer than expected to buy milk.
The village of Pereira clung to the side of a mountain like a secret. For Catalina Santana, a girl of fourteen with ink-black hair and eyes too old for her face, the village was a cage. The only window to the world was a cracked television set in her mother’s kitchen, and through that window, Catalina saw paradise.
