In Waterville, Maine, Maya visits Venus Day Spa & Bistro to have a spa facial. She brings "tropical brown skin to the table" and also a "bliss-resistant body." Suzanne, the salon's owner, puts her at ease, first by massaging away nerves and then by sharing confidences about her mother who abandoned her as a child.
Such candid revelations prompt Maya to trace parallels with her own hardscrabble childhood in a foreign land. Soon she is looking back and opening up, telling Suzanne how she coped when her mother left her behind in their hut on a muddy riverbank to earn money as a housemaid elsewhere. As Maya talks, she throws light on the girl she was and the woman she became.
"Beauty Treatments" is one of 11 tales that make up "Sleeping Alone," Ru Freeman's first short story collection. Though unnamed, Maya's "island home" is presumably Freeman's native land, Sri Lanka. It provided the setting for her two novels. However, it serves as the backdrop for only a couple of stories here. Freeman bases her miniature dramas in several locations and homes in on a variety of sharply drawn characters, many of them outside their comfort zones and trying to adapt and connect.
