Taboo

When I went barefoot into the kitchen that morning and saw my father sitting there in his underwear, I knew something was going to break before the first coffee.

When she told me her mother was an idiot for leaving me, I still thought it was an innocent compliment. Five minutes later I was kissing her.

I went for water at two in the morning and the blue TV light stopped me cold. My son was on the sofa, and I couldn’t look away.

That first night, Vega crossed the hall barefoot, entered the master bedroom, and sat on the king-size bed. What they did in the neighborhood cot no longer had to be hidden.

I opened the door to his apartment wearing the shortest miniskirt I owned and saw his expression crack as his gaze climbed up my legs.

I went down to the bathroom at three in the morning and heard my aunt’s laugh behind the curtain. My father appeared behind me with the same conspiratorial smile.

When she called me from her room that afternoon, I still didn’t know the exam she was about to ask for would change what we felt for each other forever.

For two weeks, I'd been reliving that threesome with my sister and my husband. That morning I called her out, never imagining how the day would end.

My father had been away for two days. The girls were asleep upstairs. And Elena, barefoot on the sofa, looked at me as if she’d been waiting for this moment all night.

I came back sunburned and my aunt called me to her room to soothe me with cream. When her hands reached my hips, I knew something between us had changed.

When she took off her dress in the middle of the clearing, her huge belly under the sun and her son’s three friends staring at her, I knew that afternoon wasn’t going to be a bike ride.

When I offered to shower together to wash off the sweat, I thought it would be an innocent gesture. The way she looked at me from the bathroom door said otherwise.

When I opened my eyes in that white room, my mother was standing naked in front of me, and nothing we had been taught about good and evil ever made sense again.

The tide brought me notebooks and pencils the same day everything I thought was solid between Tomás and me began to crumble. I had no idea what I would use them for.

When I learned I had only a few years left, I decided to live them without rules, starting with the person who slept three meters from my door every night.

My daughter set down her glass, took off her tights on the sofa, and looked at me with a smile I hadn’t seen in ten years. Outside, the first snowfall of winter settled over the attic.

I tied him up so he wouldn’t bite me. I washed him among the ruins. What I discovered that night between the empty shelves changed who I was forever.

When I put my hand on his chest and didn’t take it away, I knew that afternoon wouldn’t end like the others. He was twice my age and smelled of cold beer.

The door had been left ajar. When I sat up on the table, I saw my little brother staring from the hallway. He didn’t dare come in.