What I Didn’t Understand About Mom and Her Best Friend

I’m twenty-two years old and I’ve spent months turning these scenes over in my head. Not because they haunt me or make me uncomfortable, but because every time they come back, they bring more detail than they had when I lived them. As if my brain had filed them away somewhere and now, with more years and more context, it decided to show them in high definition.

There are three moments. Unconnected, separated by weeks or months. Loose, each on its own. But when I put them side by side, the story they tell is pretty clear.

My mom is called Susana, though everyone calls her Susi. She’s forty-eight, teaches language at a high school, and has that kind of quiet beauty that doesn’t need effort: dark eyes, brown curls, skin that’s always a little tanned even in winter. Marcela has been her best friend since before I was born. They met in college, shared an apartment for three years, and since then they’ve been inseparable. Marcela is taller, with straight dark hair and a smile that always seems to be hiding something she won’t say. I’ve always liked her. I love her like an aunt.

I’m starting to write this without really knowing why. I guess to sort it out. To understand it better. To have someone read it and tell me whether I’m reading too much into it, or whether what I saw is exactly what I think it was.

***

The first time was on a Tuesday in October, when I was fifteen.

They had canceled the last period because the history teacher was on leave. I walked the eight blocks home alone, listening to music, in no hurry. When I got there, the front door was ajar, which happened when Mom was home and expecting someone. The living room was empty, but I could hear muffled voices from the back of the hall, mixed with the sweet smell of the almond oil Mom sometimes used for massages.

I walked quietly, out of habit. My parents’ bedroom door was half open.

I peeked in.

Marcela was lying face down on the double bed, her head resting on her crossed arms. She was only wearing a black lace bra, unfastened in the back, and her skin was shining with oil. Mom was sitting on her hips, her hands spread over her friend’s shoulder blades. Her fingers moved slowly, kneading the muscles in her shoulders with a pressure that made Marcela let out a soft sound every time Mom’s thumbs found the exact spot.

—Oh, Susi… there, right there —Marcela murmured, her voice rough and slow.

Mom leaned a little forward. Her cotton blouse was unbuttoned halfway down and the neckline opened with the movement. Her curls fell over her face and she brushed them aside with her forearm without taking her hands off Marcela’s skin.

That’s when they saw me.

—Caro! —Mom exclaimed, without getting up or moving her hands from where they were—. What are you doing here? Is something wrong?

—No, nothing —I said—. History got canceled.

Marcela lifted her head just slightly. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair was tousled over the pillow.

—Hi, sweetheart. You got released early? —she asked, in that soft voice she always used with me.

—Only for today. —I shrugged—. What are you doing?

—Marcela wrecked her back over the weekend —Mom explained naturally, starting to move her hands down toward the lower back—. She was carrying boxes while helping her sister move. Want a snack? We’ll finish in a bit and have tea, all three of us.

I said yes and went to the kitchen to grab something. It didn’t seem strange to me. I’d seen them a thousand times in bras or in towels after the club pool, and Mom always gave Marcela massages when she came over. It was part of how they were together, something that had always been there.

But now, writing this at twenty-two, I remember some details I didn’t register then:

The way Mom’s thumbs lingered exactly where Marcela’s back dipped before reaching her waist.

Marcela’s sigh that lasted three seconds, four, as if she didn’t want it to end.

The way Mom briefly rested her forehead against her friend’s nape, just for an instant, before straightening up when she saw me.

I grabbed a piece of fruit and went to my room. From there I heard the two of them laughing softly for a while longer. A calm, conspiratorial laugh that wasn’t for me.

***

The second situation was in July of the following year.

Dad was away on a work trip and my sister Romina had stayed over at a friend’s house. Mom invited Marcela over to watch movies, as they often did when they had the house to themselves. I joined them at first, stretched out on the big sofa under a blanket, but after forty minutes I’d already lost interest. It was one of those slow romantic movies, with lots of dialogue and piano music, the kind they loved and that made me sleepy.

—I’m going to bed —I said, yawning.

Mom kissed my forehead. Marcela ruffled my hair.

—Get some rest, kiddo.

I went up to my room and fell asleep almost immediately.

I woke up around three in the morning needing to use the bathroom. The house was silent, but the bluish light of the still-on TV was coming from downstairs. I went down barefoot, quietly so I wouldn’t startle them if they were asleep, and peeked from the last step.

There they were.

They were sleeping on the big sofa, covered with the same thick wool blanket we use in winter. Marcela was on her side, facing the back of the couch, and Mom had settled in behind her, spooning her. Mom’s arm wrapped around Marcela’s waist under the blanket, tight, pressed against her back as if it were the most natural position in the world. Mom’s head rested in the curve of Marcela’s neck, and their hair blended together on the cushion.

I didn’t think anything of it. They were the best friends in the world, it was miserably cold that night, and they’d fallen asleep during the movie. It was completely logical.

I went down to turn off the TV before heading upstairs to the bathroom. But before pressing the button, I looked at them one more second. The blanket had slipped a little off Marcela’s shoulder and exposed the thin strap of her bra. Mom’s hand was open on her friend’s stomach, fingers spread and relaxed, as if even asleep she wanted to cover her completely.

I turned off the TV, went to the bathroom, and went back to sleep without giving it any importance at all.

Today I wonder how long they’d been like that before I came downstairs. I wonder whether they were truly asleep or whether they heard my footsteps on the stairs. I wonder whether Mom cared that I saw them or whether she simply trusted that I wouldn’t understand what I was looking at.

She was right. I didn’t understand anything.

***

The third situation is the one I find hardest to write. Not because it’s more explicit, but because it’s the one I can least explain any other way.

It was a November afternoon. Another teacher was absent again, and again I came home early. This time the living room door was open and soft music was coming from inside, something without lyrics, with acoustic guitar.

I saw them before they saw me.

Mom was stretched out along the sofa, her back against the armrest and her legs extended over the cushions. She was wearing a loose cotton T-shirt and short shorts. Her bare feet rested in Marcela’s lap, and Marcela was sitting at the other end of the couch with her legs crossed.

And Marcela was massaging her feet.

That alone wasn’t strange. What was strange was how she did it.

Her thumbs traced the arch of Mom’s right foot with deliberate slowness, from bottom to top, then down again, starting over. Every time she reached the instep, she spread her fingers and slid them between Mom’s toes, separating them one by one before bringing them back together. The oil made everything gleam in the afternoon light. Mom’s feet had always been pretty, with a pronounced arch and nails painted a dark red that day, almost black in the light.

Mom’s eyes were half closed. Every so often she let out a little sound, a sigh that didn’t quite come all the way out, that cut off before becoming too obvious.

—Oh, Marcela… there, don’t stop —she murmured, with a voice she didn’t use for ordinary things.

Marcela didn’t answer with words. She just smiled. A slow smile, her eyes half closed and a mischievous glint I’d never seen in her before, or maybe I had and just never knew how to read it. Her hands moved a little higher, to the ankle, massaging in circular motions that sent the oil sliding to the sides. Mom let out a longer, deeper sigh, one that wasn’t relief.

That’s when Mom opened her eyes and saw me standing in the doorway.

—Caro! —she said, not startled at all, not moving her feet from Marcela’s lap—. You’re home already, love?

Marcela looked up. She kept holding Mom’s foot in her hands, not letting go.

—Hi, sweetheart —she said with her usual calm—. Your mom bought new sandals and wore them all day. I’m loosening her up a bit so she won’t swell up tomorrow.

The excuse was perfect, and I accepted it without hesitation.

—Want me to make mate? —I offered, setting my backpack on the small sofa.

—Yes, please —Mom replied, closing her eyes again when Marcela’s thumbs returned to the arch—. And bring me some cold water too, okay? I’m dying of thirst.

I went to the kitchen and started heating the water. I took longer than necessary looking for the mate gourd and thermos. From there I could still hear it: Mom’s short sighs, Marcela’s soft little laugh. A language between them that I listened to without understanding.

***

That’s all I saw at the time. But there’s a fourth scene I never told anyone about, because I didn’t really watch it: I heard the whole thing, and with time it assembled itself in my head as if I had seen it.

It was months later. Dad was away again, Romina was at Grandma’s, and I was supposedly asleep upstairs with headphones on. But at some point in the night the headphones fell off, and I woke up with a dry mouth. The house was dark except for a line of yellow light under Mom’s bedroom door.

I got up to get some water, and as I passed the hallway I heard something that wasn’t a movie.

It was Mom’s voice. Low, broken, pressed against something. And over it, Marcela’s voice, deeper than usual, murmuring things I had never heard come out of that mouth.

—Shut up, Susi, shut up or they’ll hear you…

—I can’t, I can’t, keep going, please…

I stood there in the hallway with the empty glass in my hand. I know I should have gone back to my room. I didn’t. I leaned against the wall, on the other side of the door, and listened.

I listened to the creak of the mattress springs. A slow rhythm at first, two, three creaks, a pause, then again. I listened to Mom’s breathing, chopped into little pieces, as if she were biting the pillow between breaths. I listened to Marcela whispering things to her, and though I didn’t understand everything, I understood enough.

—Look at me, Susi, look at me when I fuck you… like this, open your legs more, let me see how your pussy is dripping…

—Oh, Marce, deeper, more, don’t stop…

The rhythm sped up. The mattress began to creak in a steady beat, a hard repeated thud that made the picture frame glass in the hall tremble slightly. I was sixteen years old and listening to my mother ask to be fucked harder. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t move. The glass in my hand felt heavy, as if it were full of stones.

Later, over time, I connected that with what I had seen before and built the scene in my head, as if I’d spied on it through a crack. Marcela naked, kneeling between Mom’s legs, with that same smile of hers pushed to the limit. Marcela’s breasts swaying over Mom’s breasts every time she drove her hips forward. And something I didn’t know how to name then but now know was a harness, or Marcela’s fingers buried to the hilt, or both taking turns, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Mom was coming. I heard her come. I heard the long moan, the one that runs out of air at the end, followed by “I love you, Marce, fuck, I love you” said in a thread of voice that had nothing to do with my mother’s voice.

And then I heard Marcela laugh softly, that same conspiratorial laugh I’d already heard from the kitchen that November afternoon, and say:

—Turn over, Susi. Get on all fours, I want to eat your ass for a while before dawn.

—Marce, no…

—Yes, Marce. Come on, up, with your ass held high like you like it.

Another creak from the mattress, a movement, and then the gasping again, now more muffled, with Mom’s face against the pillow, surely, because her voice could barely be heard. Just a long, guttural “ahhh” when Marcela’s tongue got where it had to go. And the slaps. Short, wet slaps on Mom’s ass, followed by Marcela’s voice telling her things I memorized without meaning to:

—This ass is mine, Susi. Say it. Tell me whose ass this is.

—Yours, it’s yours, all yours…

—And this soaked pussy? Whose is it?

—Yours, Marce, yours, yours…

They came twice more, I think. Or three times. I lost count. At some point I realized I was trembling from head to toe, pressed against the wall, the empty glass in my hand, and that down below, between my legs, there was a wetness I had not been asked permission to feel. I went back to my room on tiptoe, slipped under the sheet, closed my eyes, and pretended to be asleep even though my heart was pounding in my ears.

The next day Mom made me toast like any other day. Marcela had already left early. Mom smiled as she handed me my cup, her eyes a little puffy from too little sleep, and stroked the back of my neck as she passed, and I thought: she doesn’t know that I know. And that certainty stayed with me for years.

***

Now I’m twenty-two and I think about those scenes often.

Not with discomfort. I think about them with a kind of late admiration, as if I’d been looking at a painting too closely for years and only now stepped back far enough to see the whole image.

I know what I feel when someone massages my feet. I know what happens to the body when someone touches you that way, with that specific slowness, with that attention that isn’t just kindness. It’s not only relaxation. It’s something else that climbs up your legs and settles higher, deeper, and that’s hard to hide when you’re with someone who knows you well.

Marcela knew exactly what she was doing. And Mom, with her eyes closed and that voice she didn’t use for anything else, knew it too.

The back massage I could explain differently if I try hard enough. The spooning on the sofa too, if I go looking for the right justification. It’s cold, they’ve been friends for thirty years, they fell asleep watching a movie. It’s possible.

But Marcela’s smile that November afternoon, that smile I saw before they saw me, before there was any reason to act normally, I can’t explain that any other way. It was the smile of someone who has exactly what she wants. Who knows she has it. Who enjoys knowing it. And Mom’s voice that night, on the other side of the door, saying “I love you, Marce” with a throat broken by moaning, neither can I.

I don’t know whether I’m ever going to talk to Mom about this. I don’t know if I should. They’re adults, they have their lives and their history that goes back long before I existed. Whatever happened between them is none of my business.

I only know that there are things you can’t unsee once you’ve seen them with the right eyes, or unhear once you’ve heard them with your ears open. And that sometimes teenage memories keep a density that only age lets you read properly.

If someone else recognizes some of this in their own story, I’m glad there’s a place to tell it.