My Mother Discovered My Secret and I Discovered Hers

I already told you before that I was going to keep sharing my life here, and since everything I write is true, today it’s time for the story of how my mother found out about my boyfriend —a man almost thirty years older than me— and how, without meaning to, I ended up discovering what she actually did for a living.

Before I started university, I had planned to study two degrees. My dad paid for one in full, but when I told him about the second, he said I should finish the first one and then we’d see. The problem was that I didn’t want to wait. And that, without thinking about the consequences, I told my boyfriend.

He offered to pay for the other degree. It was about two thousand five hundred dollars, with a discount the university gave for early enrollment. I accepted without thinking too much, and that was exactly the detail that would later betray me in front of my mother.

A few days before classes started, I went to visit her. In the middle of a random conversation, I let it slip that I had already paid the two thousand five hundred for enrollment. She looked up and fixed me with her eyes.

—What do you mean you paid that amount? Where did you get that money? —she asked me.

It wasn’t that we couldn’t afford it; money was never lacking at home. What was strange to her was where I had gotten such a sum by myself without asking anyone.

Obviously the idea was to tell her about my boyfriend, but I was nervous. I didn’t know how she’d take the age difference between him and me. I trust my mother, though I had no idea how she’d react, or whether it was the right time.

—I got it somehow. Someone helped me —I answered, acting mysterious.

—Who? —she insisted.

—Someone —I told her with a smile.

—Come on, seriously. Who gave you that money? —now she was speaking seriously.

—A businessman —I blurted out, and lowered my head.

She laughed in my face. “A businessman? If you barely step out of your room,” she told me. And she was right: people who know me know I’m pretty shy, that I’m embarrassed by almost everything, that my circle of friends is small. I do go out, of course, but always with the same people.

Then I told her the version I had decided to tell her. That I’d met someone at a party, that we talked, that he was a good person. I swore nothing had happened, that he hadn’t paid me to sleep with him, that we were just friends and that he had given me the money because I told him I wanted to study and had no way to pay for it.

The truth is that I had slept with him the very same night I met him, but I was never going to admit that to her.

—Yeah, sure, Mariana —she said with sarcasm—. Men just give away money like that.

—Mom, he knows the director of that program, he told me he was going to get me in as if it were a scholarship. It really wasn’t in exchange for anything.

—Don’t lie to me. Tell me the truth.

***

I have to go back a little here. Before going to her house, I came up with an idea to “prove” my innocence: I went to the gynecologist and asked him to examine me, to confirm that I didn’t have any disease, and, incidentally, to put in writing that I was a virgin.

The doctor examined me, asked me the usual questions —since when I’d been sexually active, how many men— and I answered as best I could. When I asked him to write that I was a virgin, he said absolutely not, that would be lying, and that in that clinic everything went into the medical record. That said, the results came back clean: no disease, no pregnancy.

With that paper in my hand, I thought I’d convince her. Big mistake. My mother read it twice and looked at me the way you look at a little girl trying to act clever.

—Here it says everything is negative, the tests and the exams. So, you’re not a virgin anymore? —she said—. It makes no sense for a virgin to go to a gynecologist to ask for pregnancy and disease tests.

—I am a virgin, Mom.

—You think you can fool me? Tell me, did you have sex with that businessman?

—No, Mom. If it came out like that it’s because… because when I was a teenager I touched myself a couple of times, put my fingers in, maybe that’s why. But I didn’t sleep with anyone. You never believe anything I say.

I remember getting angry like a little kid. I couldn’t convince her and locked myself in my room. Later she called me to dinner; we went, and I kept scowling the whole time.

When we got back, I was about to lock myself in again without speaking to her. She stopped me cold.

—Mariana, come here. Sit down. Either you tell me right now what happened, or I call your dad and he really will punish you. I’m all ears.

That’s when I broke down and told her almost everything. That at a Halloween party I had met a man in his forties, that we talked, that he seemed like a nice guy, that he asked for my number and I gave it to him.

—Are you stupid? You give your number to just anyone? —she scolded me.

—I gave it to him because he was the owner of a company —I told her, and even showed it to her on my phone.

I explained that we talked every day, that he topped up my credit, that he invited me to lunch at a restaurant near my aunt’s house and there he showed me the receipt for the two thousand five hundred he had paid. That later he invited me and two friends to dinner, and that out of pure gratitude I gave him a kiss. Nothing more. That was what I admitted.

My mother got even angrier. I got angry too, went to my room, and from sheer rage I started crying. Then I apologized, though without telling her what had really happened. She took my phone away for a few weeks, wouldn’t let me go out, watched my every step.

I even had my boyfriend come over to introduce himself. At first she was stiff, but she saw he was a respectful man. We both swore, with incredibly blank expressions, that nothing had ever happened between us. A lie, of course, and I think deep down she knew it, but she acted like she believed it. She asked him straight out if he liked me, and he answered that her daughter was as beautiful as she was, a proper young lady, but that we were only friends.

She gave me my phone back on one condition: she was going to call me by video at any time and I had to answer and show her what I was doing. And she did. She called me in class, while I was doing homework, at night. Almost never on weekends or very late, because at those hours she would go “to the club to work.” Yes: my mother is a sex worker. I’ll tell that story better later, because it has a story of its own.

***

For a week she kept calling me frequently. It was Thursday, around nine at night. I was at my boyfriend’s house, the two of us in bed, spooning, just finishing having sex. The phone rang and I didn’t answer. She called four more times.

—Answer it, your mom’s going to get angry —he told me.

I answered. She was already upset because I hadn’t picked up the first time.

—Turn on the camera —she ordered.

—Mom, I’m busy.

—Turn on the camera.

I had no choice. I appeared with my hair a mess, covered with a sheet up to my chest, and it was obvious from a mile away that I was naked.

—I knew, idiot, that you were having sex —she told me, but no longer seriously: dying of laughter—. You can’t fool me. Are you two dating now?

I started laughing. “It is what it is,” I answered. She made me show her my boyfriend, who was holding me —and still inside me— and the poor guy could only say “sorry, ma’am.”

—Mariana, I’ll call you later, you’re busy. I need you to do me a favor —she said.

—No, we’re done already —I answered.

—Oh, please. Be careful, I still don’t want to be a grandmother —she laughed, and hung up.

I put the phone down and asked my boyfriend to finish what we had started. He settled over my chest and put it in my mouth. “Swallow it, your mom doesn’t want to be a grandmother anyway,” he said between laughs while I sucked him off. He came in my mouth and I, like a good girl, swallowed every last drop. Then I told him I loved him, called my mother back, and told her I had already done the famous favor.

***

A few weeks passed, maybe a couple of months. I went to visit her in the city where she lives. One morning we went out for breakfast; there’s a famous place for empanadas that we always go to. It was around eight. While we were looking for parking, she answered a call and said, “Okay, I’ll be right there.”

—Before breakfast, we’re stopping by a house —she told me.

We changed course. I don’t know the city well; she does, so I let her drive. On the way we stopped to pick up a friend of hers, a woman in her thirties who got into the car carrying several bags. She talked with my mother, greeted me, and found out I was her daughter.

We arrived at a house, parked, and she asked me to wait inside the car. “I’ll be right back, Fer,” she said. I stayed glued to my phone watching videos. Thirty minutes passed and nothing. I was starving, so I called her. She came out, told me we still weren’t leaving, and that if I was hungry, I should come in.

It was an ordinary house. A wall in front, a door in the middle, and on the side, the garage entrance. Once you went in, there was a little path of a couple of meters to the main door, painted white.

Inside, on the right, a living room with sofas, a television, and some speakers. On the left, a kind of reception area, like a minibar, with fridges and drink counters. Next to it there was a small room with boxes and pharmacy alcohol. A hallway led to several rooms, and at the back, next to the bathroom, a staircase went up to more rooms.

I sat down in the living room. There were fries, nachos, and fruit juice. Since I was hungry, my mother told me to eat there, that she’d be back soon. There was another woman inside, the same one who had called her on the phone.

I ate calmly, but curiosity got the better of me. I got up to snoop around. At the reception there was a cellphone, a notebook, and a computer. I went into the small room and opened the boxes: condoms, loads of condoms, lubricants, alcohol, cotton, rapid disease tests, pills. Just as I was coming out, I nearly got caught by the other woman, who was coming back from a phone call.

—Where’s my mom? —I asked, pretending innocence.

—She’s in her room. Check, her name is on the door. Knock and she’ll open it for you.

I went looking at the doors. Each one had a name written on it: Alexa, Abril, Bella, and above, Catalina, Yoselin, Camila, Andrea. I couldn’t find my mother’s. I went back down and told the woman.

My mother’s name is Carla, in case I hadn’t mentioned it before. The woman laughed.

—She’s in room two. It says “Bella.” That’s her.

That’s when I realized: the girls don’t work under their real names, they use a stage name. I knocked on room two and went in. My mother was making the bed. She had the air conditioning on, which is why the door was closed.

The room was nice, honestly. A round bed, a mirror on the ceiling and another on the wall, a television, one of those sofas you see in motels. The sheets immaculate, a small wardrobe with lingerie, and a suitcase that was hers.

—We’re leaving now, Fer. Give me a minute to finish making the bed and we’ll go.

***

I went out to wait for her and a while later we finally went to breakfast. After that she told me we had to stop by a public office. She took some papers out of the car, handled some paperwork, and picked up an ID card. She put it in the glove compartment and we kept going.

On the way, out of pure curiosity —you know me— I took out the yellow folder she had left there. It was medical tests: STI tests, from several clinics, one a month, all negative. The card was proof that she was registered as a sex worker and that she was healthy.

—Mom —I asked her—, do you have any disease?

—Thank God, no. There are the results, everything negative —she answered calmly.

We got home and I said it to her flat out:

—Mom, are you a whore?

She laughed her head off.

—Put that way it sounds horrible. It’s prettier to say companion, sex worker. Anyway, you can call me a whore too; after all, when you’re with your man, you probably tell him you’re a whore.

—Mom! —I said, dying of laughter.

—We all like hearing it in private. “I’m your little whore,” right? —and she kept laughing.

She ended up telling me everything. That yes, she was an escort, that thanks to that she had quit her other job because she earned much more, that with that money she paid for the house, was finishing paying off the car, and did what she liked. That she had been with countless men. And she gave me the piece of advice she repeated to me the most: always use condoms, because of diseases.

I’ll admit here that in the encounters I had, I almost never used them. I trusted because they were acquaintances, married men, men with children. I thought they were clean and that if they were, I was too. To this day that I’m writing this I’m still healthy, with nothing, but I’ve already learned to take care of myself.

She explained how she works. A man hires her and pays by the hour, or for whatever he wants. If he wants to take her to a motel, she goes; if not, she sees him at the house. The client says what service he wants, she does a quick test, and always, always, with a condom, whether he’s someone she knows or not. She only does it without a condom with clients she deeply trusts, and even then she doesn’t relax: she makes them bring a recent clinic test with everything negative and, on top of that, she still does the rapid test.

That day she left for work and I stayed at the house. And yes, I snooped around again: in her room she had everything, toys, vibrators, plugs, dildos of every size. I laughed to myself.

The truth is that instead of being scandalized, I ended up feeling proud of her. And that’s all I can tell you for now. Sorry if this time there were almost no sex scenes; sometimes real life is stranger than any fantasy.