Taboo

I dressed to provoke him, certain that this time I would be in control. I never imagined one look from him would be enough to bring all my confidence crashing down.

Carmen explained the rules: bathe twice a day, obey every bell, and never ask questions. That night, I understood what kind of niece my uncle wanted.

I didn’t turn on the light. I only felt her hands pulling at my clothes and her mouth seeking me in the dark, without a single word, as if she knew by heart what she had come to do.

We danced until the house fell silent. When she opened my bedroom door and said she needed a favor, I knew that Christmas would change everything.

My aunt had dried up over the years. When my body began changing on that remote farm, my uncle looked at me as if he had finally found a replacement.

The door was barely shut and inside someone kept saying yes, yes. I shouldn’t have looked, but I stayed frozen in the hallway, holding my breath.

I ran back at my grandfather’s request, and halfway up the stairs, a half-open window showed me what I never imagined seeing my mother do.

Each strike against her skin aroused her more, and Renata didn’t know whether the worst part was surrendering or discovering someone was watching from the top of the stairs.

The noise was coming from the gym. Samanta thought thieves were inside; what she saw through the half-open door left her breathless and changed how she felt about her mother.

When the lights went out and we were left suspended at the very top, my cousin stopped pretending to be innocent and told me exactly what she wanted to do to me.

It was July, I was ruined and desperate. I crossed my sister’s garden looking for help; my nephew was waiting by the pool with a smile I didn’t know how to read in time.

I sat between them in the car and, when my friend got out at her house, I was left alone with her father and a tension neither of us dared name.

I walked through his doorway expecting to find him asleep. What I saw brought back memories I thought were buried, and I couldn’t bring myself to turn away.

I invited him to teach me how to defend myself. By the time my father came back, my uncle would already have learned that one gesture from me was enough to put him on his knees.

I went downstairs dressed to serve them drinks, but everyone in that room knew the real prize of the game wasn’t on the table—it was in their hands.

Amid the smoke and the crowd’s screams, Soledad no longer knew where she ended and her daughter began. She only knew she didn’t want the night to end.