Party

She stood beside the bronze sculpture in a black dress that seemed in love with her body, and she looked at me without shame, as if she already knew what we would do that night.

I hesitated for a couple of seconds, but the drinks had already made the decision for me. I took off my dress, sat on the sofa, and let the others settle on the floor to watch.

I arrived shattered by my parents’ death. Verónica promised that in Brazil I’d learn to forget, but I never imagined how my own sister meant to comfort me.

When I got out of the car dressed as a little sailor girl, my brothers’ six friends whistled, not yet knowing my secret or what I was about to do for the guest of honor.

They were paid double if they adapted the act to something more adult. Marisol thought of the debts; Camila, of the way the host looked at them.

I heard the lock click behind me. When I turned around, she was smiling with the calm of someone who has planned every step from the very first glance at the table.

When she twisted her ankle, my aunt didn’t look for another chair: she sat right on my lap, in front of the whole family, and started moving slowly.

Bruno had spent the whole night staring at his friend’s mother’s neckline. What he didn’t know was that the two women had worked out every detail of the game long before they did.

At three in the morning I found him in the dark on my bed, waiting for me. The fury with which he dragged me out of the bathroom wasn’t just brotherly concern.

Hidden among the trees, they heard them gasping, and back at the table the woman whispered an idea to her son that he never imagined he’d dare to carry out.

I’d spent years looking after her, paying for everything, putting up with her screaming. That dawn, in front of the empty alleyway, I decided that for once she was going to give me something in return.