My Daughter Showed Me She Was No Longer a Girl

My name is Andrés, and I’ve just turned fifty-two. I’ve been married for more than two decades, we have three children, and for some time now what my wife and I had in bed had completely died out. We argued more than we touched each other, and when we did touch it was out of habit, not desire. I’m saying this because without that emptiness none of what happened later would have made sense. Or excuse it.

It all started on a spring afternoon. I got home early from work and, as I crossed the living room, I caught my daughter Lucía on the sofa with her boyfriend. She had just turned nineteen, was in her first year at university, and until that day I still saw her as the little girl who played with dolls on the rug. What I saw froze me in place: she wasn’t a girl. She was a woman, and the boy knew it better than I did.

When he left and we were alone, I tore into her like thunder. I shouted that she was too young, that that wasn’t how you behaved in a house, all those empty phrases a father says when in truth he has no idea what’s going on inside him.

A few days later her friend Natalia came by to pick her up, a girl her own age. She sat there waiting for her in the living room with her legs crossed, and I couldn’t look away. I don’t know if it was months of drought or what, but I found myself staring at her longer than I should have. Lucía noticed. And when her friend left, she came over to me with her arms crossed.

—So I can’t do anything with my boyfriend because I’m a girl —she said, voice taut—, but you’re drooling looking at Natalia, who’s my age. Either we’re both girls, Dad, or we’re both women. Make up your mind.

Her words left me speechless. Several days went by with us barely speaking. One night I got home from work after another brutal fight with my wife, opened the door, and the house seemed empty. I went upstairs to the bedrooms and, when I reached the top, I heard moans coming from Lucía’s room.

I thought she was with her boyfriend again. The built-up rage, the exhaustion, the frustration of months, all of it came together in a second. I flung the door open, ready to kick up a scene.

And then I froze in the doorway.

She was alone. Lying on the bed, with an old T-shirt on top and nothing below, her eyes fixed on the laptop screen and one hand between her legs. It took her a while to notice I was there. And instead of backing out, I just stood there watching. I felt my body react in a way that had nothing fatherly about it, and I hated myself for it in that same instant.

When she finally saw me, she screamed.

—Dad! What are you doing here? Get out of my room right now.

I turned to obey, ashamed, but her voice changed all at once. Calmer. Almost calculated.

—Wait. Don’t go. We need to talk.

I moved closer without really knowing why. She didn’t cover herself. She sat up a little against the headboard and looked me straight in the eye.

—I know things are going terribly with Mom, and I’m sorry, because I love you —she said—. But now that you’ve seen me like this, tell me the truth. Do you really think this is a little girl’s body?

It wasn’t. I had it right in front of me and I couldn’t lie, not to her or to myself. I told her so. She laughed, a low laugh, and lowered her gaze to my trousers.

—I’m glad you admit it. But it’s not just your mouth saying it.

She nodded toward the evidence. I didn’t know what to say. The silence grew thick, charged with something neither of us dared name.

—Come on, come here —she said, patting the edge of the bed—. Let’s talk like adults, since it seems like we both are now.

She closed the laptop and set it on the dresser, but I managed to see what had been on it: a video of a young girl with a much older man. My stomach knotted. A mix of alarm and, to my shame, excitement.

—I’m going to show you how much I love you —she murmured, with a smile that was anything but innocent.

She slid off the bed and knelt in front of me before I could react. Her hands shook just enough to make it seem real, not rehearsed. She pulled my pants down slowly.

—You should have told me sooner that Mom doesn’t know what she’s got at home —she said softly.

I should have stopped her. I thought it. I thought about my wife, her brothers, everything that was about to be torn apart. But I didn’t. I let her do it, and with that I said everything.

What came next dragged me under completely. She handled the situation with a confidence that threw me, that didn’t fit the image I had of her. I tried to hold on, to control myself, but no one had touched me with that kind of intent in years, and I finished sooner than I would have wanted.

—Much better than guys my age —she said afterward, wiping the corner of her mouth with her thumb.

That comment put me on guard. How many guys? She guessed the question on my face and smiled.

—Trust me, Dad. I make sure you enjoy yourself to the fullest. But you have to accept that I enjoy myself too. On my own. Deal?

I didn’t answer, and my silence was a yes. I wanted to give her something back, to even the score, so when she stood up I was the one who knelt down. I hadn’t done that with anyone in years, but instinct was stronger than awkwardness. She clutched the headboard and started moaning, my name turning into “Dad” between each broken breath.

—No one my age does this to me —she gasped—. Keep going, please, don’t stop.

For a while I stopped thinking. She wasn’t my daughter, I kept telling myself, she was a beautiful woman with whom I could forget the arguments, the dead marriage, the fifty-two years weighing me down. When she came, gripping my hair, I felt younger than I had in a decade.

—Lie down —I told her, my voice rough.

She let herself fall back onto the bed and lifted her legs. Before continuing I looked for something in the drawer of her nightstand; she pointed me to her backpack, where she had condoms half-hidden. I knew she was on the pill, her mother had told me without thinking that one day I’d use that information like this. Even so, I put one on. It was the only responsible thing left in that room.

What followed was slow at first, then it wasn’t anymore. She set the pace with her hips, with her voice, with her hands on my nape. At one point she asked to be on top, and I let her. Seeing her like that, in control, with the kind of passion my wife had forgotten years ago, overwhelmed me.

—I want you to finish on my face —she said when she felt I was close—. I want to feel it.

She was once again my spoiled little girl asking for a treat, only this treat was different. And, as always, I gave her what she asked for.

***

After that first time, the way I looked at her changed forever. She stopped being the kid I helped with her homework and became something I didn’t dare name out loud. A few days later I got home and found her in the living room, bent over her laptop, working on a college assignment. She didn’t get up. She only gave me that smile.

—Hi, Dad —she said—. Mom and the boys won’t be back until late.

The hint hung in the air. And it became total when, as she bent down to pick up the phone she’d dropped, I realized she wasn’t wearing anything from the waist down.

—Do you like what you see? —she asked, glancing sideways at me.

I came up behind her and finished undressing her. She was laughing softly, that laugh I was already beginning to recognize as the prelude to everything.

—Want to play with your girl? —she said, folding herself over the table.

No answer was needed. I took her there, against the edge of the table, with an urgency I’d been holding in for months. She had trouble staying still; she moved her hips looking for me, and between moans she said things I should not have enjoyed nearly as much as I did.

—You do it better than they do —she panted—. Much better.

I turned her around, sat her on my lap in the chair, we tried positions as if we’d known each other all our lives, which in a way was true. When I finished, once again she was the one who decided how and where. I was beginning to understand that in that game the rules were set by Lucía, and that I, delighted, followed them.

***

The last time we crossed a line was different. I got home and, before opening the door, heard voices inside. I went in quietly. In the living room Lucía was with her boyfriend. She had her dress hiked up to her waist, he was behind her, fully dressed, his hands under my daughter’s underwear. She was moaning in a way I recognized immediately.

I stood in the hallway, paralyzed, not knowing whether to back away or explode. Then Lucía turned her head and saw me. She didn’t panic. She held my gaze and, with the smallest tilt of her chin, asked me to stay. To watch. It was her way of closing the pact between us.

And I stayed. Hidden in the dimness of the hallway, watching as the boy laid her on the sofa and spread her legs, I saw my daughter give herself to another while a sick part of me enjoyed it as though the pleasure were mine. She took the lead, guided him, rode him with a shamelessness that left me breathless. I, who at first had hated that young man, now looked at him almost with gratitude for making her so happy.

They tried several positions. At one point he whispered something in her ear and she laughed, propping herself on all fours on the sofa.

—You know I love that —she told him—. Go ahead, I’m waiting.

I witnessed everything from my corner, my heart hammering against my chest and the certainty that I had put my sanity in my own daughter’s hands. When they were done, and while they kissed on the sofa, I took off my shoes and slipped to my room without making a sound. I sat on the bed, in the dark, waiting.

I heard the front door. The boy had gone. Then Lucía’s footsteps coming down the hall toward me. When she opened my door, naked, with that smile that was already my undoing, I knew there was no going back.

—I’m proud of you, Dad —she said, kneeling before me—. You saw me with him and you respected it. You’ve earned a reward.

I let her do it again, while in my head the image of her with her boyfriend mixed with the reality of having her there, with me. And I understood, with a mixture of vertigo and surrender, that from that day on my life would move to the rhythm she decided. That the game had already begun, and that the rules, all of them, were written by Lucía.