Tough as Nails: A Profile of Kelly Nguyen

“Nails by Porter, how may I help you?” Kelly Nguyen answers with the phone propped up against her fine black hair. She speaks in a thick Vietnamese accent, her English words slurring together in one long sigh from the exhaustion of a foreign language. When Kelly arrived in Everett, Massachusetts, thirty-two years ago, she couldn’t speak a word of English.

“Eleven o’clock?” she scribbles in a planner. “Sure, sure. Ok, see you then.”

Six framed diplomas from Blaine Beauty School hang centered behind the granite countertop where Kelly waits patiently. She returns the phone to its cradle beside a bowl of lollipops and a plastic cat, welcoming each customer with a waving golden paw.

Sunday is the salon’s busiest day of the week. Every five minutes, a new face appears in Kelly’s store in need of cosmetic services. The heavy wooden door swings open to reveal a spacious room made larger by its white floors illuminated with bright overhead lights and sunlight streaming through the front windows. Four editions of People Magazine lay sprawled over the laps of impatient customers who tap their feet on the tiles of the makeshift waiting area.

The clanging of chimes announces the arrival of a young woman in dark-wash skinny jeans and a fur vest.

“Can I have a regular manicure?” she asks. Kelly glances up from her planner reluctantly, eyeing the woman through wispy bangs. “Please?” she adds after a moment of awkward silence.

“You wait ten minute.” Kelly points to the last empty chair next to an overflowing magazine rack. She rises from behind the counter to a towering five-foot-two, her petite build accentuated by slim-fitting jeans and a blue-and-white striped shirt. Tiny black sneakers peek out from under her unhemmed pants as she strides across the room.

Kelly motions for a tall blonde woman from the waiting area to sit in the seat across from her. “Seven dollar for this color. You have cash?” she holds the silver nail polish bottle inches from the customer’s face. The woman nods and Kelly mutters something in Vietnamese to a short, middle-aged man typing on a computer at the front desk.

She rips a piece of cotton from an open drawer that overflows with brushes, files, clippers and bottles in various shapes and sizes, and douses it in acetone. Its pungent, acidic stench fills the room as Kelly methodically removes the beige polish from each nail by rubbing the cotton in small, firm circles. She peers through emerald green reading glasses, inspecting each finger. “You want shape round or square?” Kelly pulls out a nail file, the skin on her pale hands is loose and freckled from twenty years of perfecting the hands of others. Her face, on the contrary, shows few signs of aging; at fifty years old, the only wrinkles are two frown lines stretching from the corners of her mouth to the edges of her jaw.

The pair sits in silence as Kelly rounds each nail to the same length, buffs each tip to the same shine, and cuts each cuticle to the same scale. The woman watches her work, her eyes darting from one nail to the next. Kelly’s plump lips purse slightly; she moves systematically from the right-hand pinky to the left, leaving the right thumb to paint last before beginning a second coat of silver polish. She guides the brush from the base to the tip of each nail, adding brilliance with each stroke. Kelly stops only to clean bits of paint that have strayed beyond the bounds of the nail, flaws that would go unnoticed by the casual observer.

As Kelly shifts to the opposite hand, the customer attempts to strike up a conversation, “How’s your day been?”

“Can’t talk right now, not good,” she responds curtly.

One-time client Amber Adams warns against enlisting Kelly for a pedicure due to her unfriendly demeanor, she shared on her way out of the store.

“I was sharply greeted when I arrived and told to pick a color, waited ten minutes for someone to assist me to a chair, then sat down to be ignored for another twenty minutes,” she scoffed, the chimes above the door signaling her exit. “Don't waste your time at this salon.”

For someone who devotes their life to cosmetology, a profession that requires customer courtesy and sociability, Kelly generally avoids small-talk with clients and especially dislikes personal questions; in discussing her past, she often contradicts her own immigration and family stories. When asked about her children, she mumbles something in Vietnamese to a coworker, a paper-thin woman in her mid-twenties painting a young girl’s nails strawberry red. Kelly responds that she has three kids—two girls and one boy. “One of my daughters is a pharmacist and the other works in business management,” she says, concealing their names. Kelly fails to mention that the business her oldest daughter manages is, in fact, the nail salon. Anna is sitting right next to her—a bottle of strawberry red nail polish in her hand.

Pausing, Kelly raises each wet nail dangerously close to the lens of her glasses, inspecting her work finger by finger. Her drawn-in black eyebrows furrow as she squints to ensure perfection. “You go over there let them dry, okay?” she points to the row of six nail dryers facing the front windowed wall. The glass reads: “NAILS, FACIAL, WAXING, EYELASH EXTENSION” backwards in bold red font—legible from the street outside. Inside, ten desks are arranged in three rows, each with a worn, cushioned chair on one side, and a small black stool on the other. Small lamps crane over trimmed cuticles and brittle nails made weak from years of devotion to the colorful lacquer.

On the other side of the room, women dip their calloused feet in hot water, distracted by their phones while they wait for one of Kelly’s seven employees to scrub their heels. The young Vietnamese workers sit silently at the feet of each customer on child-sized stools, their knees bent awkwardly over the seats. Above each chair, square canvases advertise smooth round stones, pink lilies, and soft white fingers with baby pink polish. 

Between the pedicure and manicure stations, three rotating shelves house hundreds of nail polish bottles organized by color and brand. Royal blue transitions to turquoise to periwinkle to glitter to gold, and fake tree trunks run from the floor to the high ceilings on either side, decorated by plastic leaves and outdated Christmas lights in the shape of nail polish bottles. Two rice cookers steam towels on a nearby shelf.

Maintaining a successful nail salon business is Kelly’s main priority. She spends the majority of her free time cleaning, organizing, and upgrading the modest property from morning until evening, seven days a week.

It wasn’t until her first daughter turned three that Kelly enrolled in Blaine Beauty School. Then, as a certified manicurist, Kelly began working at Unique Nails in Newton. Six years of experience in the nail salon industry inspired Kelly to open her own business in Porter Square in 2007. “V.I.P. Nails,” was the name she chose for the small room beneath a Dunkin’ Donuts. “I like this job a lot,” Kelly says without smiling. “I like to do the beauty for the people.”

One year ago, Kelly moved her business across the street to a larger, above-ground location, and changed the name to “Nails by Porter” to distinguish her salon from the nearby competition. The new-and-improved, two-story building has attracted significantly more business than the previous location, allowing Kelly to make frequent updates to tools, furniture and store design. “There are a lot of nail salons in Cambridge but we try to do the best,” Kelly says, glancing at the six new pedicure chairs lined up against the far wall. “They see it, they like it, they come to my business.”

Emely Viera agrees that Nails by Porter is the best salon in the area. She has been a regular customer since 2011 and commends Anna and Kelly for their cooperation skills.

“In plain sight they have great partner collab,” she says with the tips of her fingers emerged in a dish of warm water—unaware of their true, mother-daughter, relationship. “No wonder they have had such a rise in clientele—so much so, calling in advance is extremely necessary.”

To keep up with popular beauty trends, Kelly must listen to clients’ requests or risk losing customers to neighboring nail salons such as Beauty Spa, Cambridge Nails, Skin Spa or T&J Nail Design, which are also located in Porter Square. Recently, Kelly began offering dip powder, a pigmented powder that hardens on the nail in a matter of minutes and can last up to four-weeks. This brand-new manicure technique offers a longer-lasting alternative to regular or gel manicures and doesn’t require harmful ultra violet (UV) light—a service not provided by many salons.

Years ago, as a child living in a communist country, Kelly couldn’t begin to imagine the luxury of painting her own nails, let alone visiting a salon. At twenty years old, she left her mother, two older siblings, and a modest life in Southern Vietnam.

“For brighter future,” Kelly whispers as she dries Emely’s hands with a washcloth. “Everyone leave because the communist.” She followed the lead of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the persecution and violence of the communist regime established shortly after U.S. military forces withdrew from Vietnam in 1975. 

 “They cut people, we go to jail, and I cannot go to school because they say we work with American,” Kelly recounts with eyes plastered to the floor below. “They treat people not well.”

Kelly quickly refocuses and continues to rub cuticle oil on Emely’s nail beds. “Go wash hands,” Kelly says to the young woman when the topic of her father is introduced. In the sixty seconds Emely is away, Kelly reveals that she fled from the country that took her father’s life before her first birthday—a man whom she simply refers to as Tsi. As a soldier in the Vietnamese-American war, Tsi conspired with U.S. military forces, ultimately leading to his death by northern communist Viet Cong insurgents. Kelly eyes Emely as she returns to her seat.

“I don’t want to talk too much about my father.”

Little did Kelly know that the United States would become her home following a grueling immigration process. After being smuggled out of her home in Saigon, she and her forty-year-old cousin, Lam, crammed onto a boat with thirty-five other displaced persons to the famed Pulau Bidong refugee camp located on an island outside of Malaysia.

“I feel safe there,” she says after Emely moves to the nail drying station. “I never felt safe before.” Kelly places herself at the pedicure chair in the back corner of the salon and folds her arms across her chest.

“I like America and I want more freedom,” she states. “For my future.”  

Minutes later, Kelly holds a foot in one hand and a callus file in the other, shaving dead skin from her client’s heels. She washes each foot in a tub of hot water as humbly as Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, but with none of the compassion. While the young woman tests various settings on the massage chair, Kelly adjusts herself to fit on the tiny stool below. She uses a lavender polish to coat the customer’s stubby toenails, moving outward from the big toe to the littlest. Kelly’s delicate, diamond-studded silver earrings sway from side to side as she spreads pink lotion evenly across the woman’s shins and calf muscles with hot, round stones. A sweet aroma fills the nose like a bouquet of fresh roses.

But throughout Kelly’s childhood, she describes the streets of her hometown that emanated the stench of rotting flesh and army tanks. Her family faced constant persecution by northern communist forces due to her father’s conspiracy with the U.S. military and their southern nationality. She could not attend school, her mother could not keep a job, and her family could not eat. “A lot of people dying and starving,” Kelly says of Saigon as she applies a coat of lilac polish to the customer’s big toe. “That’s why I escape.”

The seven-day trip to Pulau Bidong was only the beginning of Kelly’s year-long stay on the island that housed over 250,000 Vietnamese refugees before its closure in 1991. There, she applied for a Green Card which she received because of her father’s involvement with the U.S. She was scared without her mother who encouraged Kelly to leave without her, “To give me a chance,” Kelly says as she carries her customer’s purse from the pedicure chair to the drying station. “I was very young so my mom told me ‘just go first’ because it was very hard for families to go together. We have to escape.”

Her mother died in Vietnam soon after Kelly arrived in the U.S., and despite their desperation to follow Kelly’s lead, her older brother, Vinh, and sister, Quang, stayed behind for their children and other reasons she refused to discuss. “Right now, life okay for them, better than thirty years ago.”

When Kelly returns to Vietnam every seven years, it feels like a vacation; she doesn’t remember the last time Saigon felt like “home.”

“Everything changed. I can’t remember. Everything changed a long time,” she pauses. “Everything change.”

“I don’t miss it because I live in Massachusetts more than I live in Vietnam.” Kelly pushes her reading glasses up to the bridge of her nose. “My family come here, everybody come here.”

“Everybody” must not include her older brother and sister, because according to Kelly, they still reside in Saigon. When asked to comment on her siblings’ current ages and whereabouts, she changes the subject, repeating that she traveled to the United States only with her cousin, Lam. In Everett, she joined her aunt who had immigrated ten years earlier. Her brother and sister were not with her, she repeats, they never left Vietnam.

“I can’t talk no more,” she shakes her head. “I run business.”

“Let’s go,” Kelly waves to a short, curvy woman in an oversized t-shirt and silver hoops the size of bracelets. “I can do eyebrow for you now.” Each carpeted step squeaks as she leads her customer down a narrow staircase to an unfinished basement, save for a small, furnished room with wooden floor paneling. The woman lies down on a bed covered by a sheet of paper as Kelly stirs a pot filled with hot wax. She uses a popsicle stick to guide the honey-colored goo in line with each brow bone, creating a subtle arch to accentuate her customer’s almond-shaped eyes. The woman squeezes her eyes shut and braces herself as Kelly smooths paper over the wax. “You ok?” Shhhhp! Kelly tears the hair from her upper eyelid before she has the chance to answer.

“Mmhmm,” the woman whimpers.

Two identical eyebrows emerge from what used to be a set of fuzzy caterpillars, and a delighted customer giggles at her reflection in a hand-held mirror. “Thank you, thank you!”

“Sure, sure,” Kelly nods. “That ten dollar, you have cash?”

Forty years ago, ten dollars would have fed Kelly’s family for a week, but earning the money was nearly impossible under an oppressive regime. “I couldn’t stay in my country. The communist not let me own business,” she says, walking toward the cash register. “I need to make money.”

Kelly fled before she had the chance to attend a Vietnamese university, a dream she fulfilled at Bunker Hill Community College immediately after her arrival in the United States. There, Kelly took accounting and English classes where she met another Vietnamese refugee whom she married two years later. “We talked, we fell in love, that’s it,” she places the crisp bill into a metal box and slams it shut. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

Kelly’s nameless husband, however, is the short, middle-aged man typing on the computer—the man hidden behind the front desk with a pair of rectangular lenses sitting on the end of his flat nose and a gold dog chain hanging around his neck. The two rarely speak to each other in the salon, giving passersby little reason to believe they are more than coworkers. Still, she keeps a watchful eye on him. When a customer asks her husband a question, Kelly shoots him a scornful look. “He’s not interested in answering your questions,” she responds for him before he realizes that he is the one being prompted. “I tell you before, I run business. Can’t talk no more.” The man returns to his work without protest, lowering his head from above the countertop. Like her mother, Anna avoids eye contact with her father and minimizes conversation with clientele.

Education is what Kelly values the most for her three children, a necessity to achieving the American Dream. “If you don’t have education you cannot do nothing in America. You have to be smart, you have to go to school, you have to finish college. Then you have a good life, good job, brighter future,” she says from her post behind the counter, still refusing to acknowledge Anna. “I like my children do that.”

Her youngest son is a sophomore at Pope John High School in Everett and will be attending college after graduation. “Finish high school, go to college, finish college, and after that, have a good job, and a brighter future,” Kelly advises once again. “Then your parent will be very proud of you.”

“I escaped from my country Vietnam to come here,” she repeats. “For a brighter future.”

Kelly zips her knee-length coat and swings a pink Prada bag over her left shoulder. On Sundays, the salon closes at 5:00 P.M., two hours earlier than weekdays. One customer still sits with her flip-flopped feet beneath a whirring fan and purple UV light. “Your nail dry now,” Kelly assures her. “Time to go.” The woman’s cheeks turn red as she fumbles to unroll her socks. “Wait,” Kelly bends down to cover the customer’s freshly painted toes in Saran Wrap, pausing to ensure perfection before she slips on the woman’s Ugg boots.

“Thank you,” she says, handing Kelly a ten-dollar tip for a twenty-five-dollar pedicure.

“Thank you,” Kelly replies, the edges of her mouth still fixed downward.

As the last customer leaves, the employees finish their evening cleaning routine and place their mops, brooms, and rags back into an overflowing supply closet. Kelly storms around the room, closing drawers and instructing her employees in short, Vietnamese phrases before securing the cash register with a combination lock.

She shuts the lights off, and each employee files out of the front door one by one. Anna and the man behind the counter linger on the corner of the street—out of sight of the salon. Kelly turns her key in the lock, a faint smile begging at her lips as she rounds the bend to meet her family.