Taboo

We were having a perfect day when she came to sit on my lap. I never imagined that one touch, one curiosity, and one mistake of mine would erase the line between father and daughter.

I told her she could bathe on her own now. She lowered her head and whispered she was still scared. I never imagined how far that shower would go.

I set the cup on the bedside table, knelt beside the bed, and understood that that morning nothing in this house would ever be the same again.

When I came out of the bathroom that afternoon, I saw him pull his hand out from between his pants. And the TV was lower than usual. It wasn’t a coincidence.

Lucía never told that part. That Thursday she dressed the only way she knew how and made sure that virgin nephew wouldn’t leave without leaving something inside her.

At twenty, my world was diapers and silence. Then my boss left me a note with the coffee and started looking at me like I was another woman.

I was still dripping from the shower when she walked into the bathroom without knocking, wearing that crooked smile she’d been avoiding me with for weeks.

We were alone that March siesta, and she was still in her uniform. I don’t know how we went from tickling on the sofa to something else.

I came back from months in Patagonia and found her sitting in the kitchen at one in the morning, glass in hand, with that look that promised a fight.

When I went up to the library to fetch some files, I didn’t expect my stepbrother’s hands on my waist as if he had every right to touch me.

When I went barefoot to the kitchen at three in the morning, my son was already there shirtless, looking at me like a man, not a boy, and I knew I’d give in that night.

No one expected me to come back so soon. What I saw in that garage—my mother, shirtless, with her fists wrapped—could never be unseen.

When she asked me to find her men during the summer, I knew the trip to the coast would change us forever.

Marina had spent months being invisible to her husband. Her nephew looked at her the only way she needed to be looked at. That night, the cards made a decision.

When the door opened, I was still pressing his briefs against my face. He looked at me with a smile that wasn’t angry, but something much worse.

Four days remained until my father returned. Four nights to decide how to tell him his wife was sleeping in my arms in his own bed.

Andrés had spent years asking for more than she could give. That night, Lucía set the knife on the counter, looked at her son, and proposed something none of them would forget.

When Joaquín introduced us to his new partner, a blonde ten years older, I never imagined we’d end up breaking every limit in our family that very night.

While Lucía prepared to receive her lover, her sister had another plan for the nephew: the attic boxes were only an excuse to begin.

I thought it was just first aid. Until her fingers slid over my skin and stopped feeling like any mother’s should.