I Unbuttoned Her Nightgown While Her Mother Slept

Years have passed, and I still remember the heat pressed against my back that night, the air trapped against the wall, and the constant hum of the hallway fan. It was the middle of January in the south of the country, and the wood of the house creaked whenever the thermometer dropped a degree. That weekend house smelled of salt, jasmine, and something else that night I learned to recognize.

There was Mariela, lying on her side on the sheet, wearing her white nightgown patterned with lavender flowers. The fabric barely came past her hips, and the hem had ridden up slightly when she bent her leg. Beneath it, a mint-green cotton panty showed, with a design so innocent that it contrasted with the shadow of the hair hinted at behind it. Her legs were long, browned by the summer, with a fine sheen of perspiration that gave them the glow of wet bronze.

Above the panty, her belly moved to the rhythm of a breath that she couldn’t calm. It rose and fell too quickly, as if she had been waiting for me for a while without saying anything. Higher up, two large breasts pushed against the cotton, spread by her position, and her nipples showed as two hardened points through the pattern. Her eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling, shining; her lips pressed together as if holding back any sound. In the adjoining room, her mother was asleep, and the shared wall was barely a sheet of drywall that let through even the click of a light switch.

“Are you sure?” I asked in a whisper.

She nodded without looking at me. That was all the answer I needed.

I ran my thumb over the first button of the nightgown and undid it. The second. She closed her eyes. The third. The tops of her breasts were exposed, the skin of a sun-browned mestiza, with a couple of the finest drops of sweat nestled in the cleavage. I paused. I brought my hand close over the fabric and rested it on one of her breasts; it was firm and at the same time yielded beneath my palm, as though the cotton had been pressing it and my hand had come to free it.

“Keep going,” she asked, almost voicelessly.

I pinched her left nipple through the cotton and felt it grow between my fingers. I lowered my head to confirm with my mouth what my hands already knew. The fourth button, the fifth. The areola appeared first, darker than the rest of her breast, and then the nipple itself, a brown so deep it looked black in the yellow lamplight. It must have been the size of an olive pit, I thought, and I made no effort to hide my stare.

They won’t believe me if I tell them.

I lowered my head and kissed it. Then I opened my mouth and took it all in, sucking it as if I wanted to pull something out of her. Her hand seized my hair with a strength I hadn’t expected. She bit the pillow to keep from making a sound. I moved to the other breast and repeated it; I wanted to commit the texture of each one to memory, the way my tongue tangled around the hard nipple, the heat that rose through her chest every time she drew breath.

I undid the last button without taking my mouth away. The nightgown lay open from side to side, two panels of fabric fallen at the sides of her body like curtains. I straightened up for a second to look at her. She was there in her entirety, exposed to the waist, her breathing broken and her eyes glassy, and I still hadn’t reached the best part.

***

I lowered myself until I was kneeling between her legs. The mint-green panty was now a map of my next move. The outline of her lips showed through the cotton so clearly that the center looked wet. There was a darker, round stain right in the middle. I brought my nose close and pressed it against the fabric.

The smell struck me like a slap. It wasn’t perfume or soap. It was her, pure, fermented through hours of waiting and desire. My eyes closed on their own. My tongue raced ahead of my brain and I licked the fabric. I tasted her through the cotton, salty and alive. By reflex, Mariela arched her hips and let out a moan that was far too long. I covered her mouth with my free hand.

“Your mother,” I whispered.

She pressed her lips together and nodded, her eyes full of a conspiratorial panic.

I traced the outline of her lips with my index finger, still over the fabric. With my other hand, I squeezed the bulge through my pajama pants, not for pleasure but so my body would understand that it had to hold on. I knew it was going to be difficult.

“Should I take it off?” I asked.

She nodded again. Her chest was flushed in patches, as when she laughed too much. I took hold of the elastic at her hips and began lowering her panty with a slowness that surprised even me. I wanted it to last. I knew that night would never happen the same way again, and I preferred to spend a century undressing her rather than strip her in one pull.

Her belly. The first hairs, sparse and dark, like the beginning of a drawing. I lowered it a little more and her pubis opened before me, thick and neat, in that inverted-heart shape belonging to skin that had only recently become a woman’s. The fabric continued yielding. When I reached the upper edge of her lips, she drew a sudden breath and held it. I stopped. Her sex was glistening. A crystalline thread stretched from the center to the mint-green cotton, as if the fabric were reluctant to let her go.

I lowered the panty a little farther. Another pause. Then to her knees, to her ankles, and at last she kicked it away gently so it wouldn’t scrape against the wall.

“Open up,” I asked.

“I’m embarrassed.”

“No one’s looking at you except me.”

It took her a while to obey. She began separating her legs by a couple of inches, then another couple. When they reached about forty-five degrees, she stopped and covered her face with her forearm, red to the neck. I settled between her legs. The sight was exactly what I had imagined and, at the same time, nothing like it. Her lips were thick and dark, almost violet at the edges, closing over a deep pink that gleamed with its own moisture.

***

I brought my mouth close and kissed her as if it were one of the other kinds of kisses, on the lips, slowly, with as much contact as I could. I heard her choke back a cry against her arm. I tasted her. She had a flavor that was difficult to describe, a mixture of something metallic and something sweet, with a bitter undertone that made me want more. I ran my tongue along her, from bottom to top, and slipped it inside where she opened wider, where she was hottest. I circled it with the tip. Her hand closed in my hair. The other remained over her mouth.

I moved up to her clitoris. I searched for it with the flat of my tongue first, found it, and left it alone for a second. Then I pressed it with the tip. Then I sucked it. Each thing made her suffer a different jolt. Mariela breathed through her nose, agitated, trying to contain everything, and I felt her body beginning to cramp from the concentration required not to scream.

Meanwhile, I raised one hand and took hold of one breast. I squeezed it. I pinched her nipple without asking permission. She came against my face before I could prepare myself. I felt her lips pulsing against my mouth. Then a hot gush came out, far too much, as if she had been holding that response in for years. I swallowed what I could. The rest soaked my chin and neck.

She pulsed twice more, three, four times. I didn’t take my mouth away. I didn’t want it to end, and at the same time I felt a foolish pride at having brought her to that state. When she finally relaxed, I kissed the inside of her thigh and moved slowly upward without wiping my face, tracing her belly, avoiding her breasts so I wouldn’t arouse her again right away, until I lay down on top of her.

“I’ll never forget this,” I said.

“There’s more,” she replied.

***

She was right. The bulge in my pants had been begging for air for a while, and I had ignored it because she had been the priority. I pulled my pajama bottoms down to my knees and freed it. It was too hard already, with a thick drop of clear fluid hanging from the tip. Mariela propped herself up on her elbows and looked at me. Then she reached out and took hold of me.

“Come here,” she said.

She guided me. The tip barely touched her entrance and I was already trembling. The heat was unreal. The next step was to push and let the body do the rest. I began to push.

I didn’t make it.

Her hand gave me two strokes up and down, I suppose to get me into position, and that was all my body needed after so much buildup. I felt that dry tug from the waist upward that tells you there’s no turning back. I tried to think of something else. There was no point. I came in her hand, on her belly, on the already wrinkled cotton of the nightgown, everywhere except where I should have come.

I squeezed my eyes shut. My face felt hot, not from pleasure but from shame.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured.

She laughed without a sound, a soft vibration in her chest, and pulled me by the shoulders so I would hug her. I sank against her neck. She smelled of sweat and her own body, all mixed together.

“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered in my ear. “You’re still going to be my first time. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

I stayed resting on her for a while without saying anything, listening as her mother turned over in bed on the other side of the wall. The lamplight made the open nightgown look like a giant lavender flower spread across the sheet, with her at its center. Tomorrow, she had said. Tomorrow there would be a second night, and a third. But none of them would be this one.