Taboo

The mattress creak in her parents’ room wasn’t sex: it was theft. Sabina padded down the hall barefoot until she pressed her eye to the crack in the door.

When she asked me for coffee on my knees, I knew something between us had changed forever and there was no going back.

One lie was enough to make my father stop looking at us with rage. My sister saw it before I did, and signaled me to keep going.

My uncle was driving in a rage, lost for the umpteenth time, and she used every bump and sharp turn to drive me crazy without him noticing a thing.

For years I had hidden the woman who screamed beneath my hands. That night, a widow and her maid discovered who really ruled that house.

A little too much to drink and an empty apartment were enough for my sister-in-law’s daughter to stop being the little girl I remembered. What happened that night should not be told.

For six months we had the house to ourselves, and the contract binding us became a routine neither of us wanted to escape.

I waited at the bus stop with my heart racing, knowing that the moment his car appeared we’d stop being mother and son and become something else.

He served dinner as usual, but this time she knelt beside the sofa. In that house, after the bankruptcy, their son imposed a new order.

I thought the worst part of the trip would be sharing a room with my parents like they were on a honeymoon. I had no idea that in the dark, I’d be the one who couldn’t keep still.

I thought it would be a fifteen-minute scolding. I didn’t count on the bag Bárbara brought, or on the woman that furious mother would become.

She came downstairs expecting a cake and a chorus of congratulations. Instead she found twelve candles, two silent men, and a long-planned revenge.

She leaned over the railing to watch my uncle’s car disappear, and I came up barefoot behind her. I’d been looking at her like that for years. That morning I stopped just looking.

I closed my eyes to imagine him watching me. When hands grabbed my waist from behind, I thought I knew whose they were. I was completely wrong.

That afternoon in the hospital, my mother took my hand and whispered a favor I never imagined hearing from her lips.

I was half asleep, touching myself, when I felt a hand that wasn’t mine. What came next shattered every boundary I thought I had.

I went up to change into something more daring while they showered. By then I already knew that if I went downstairs to the kitchen, I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back.

We asked for two singles and split the beds without thinking. By eleven everyone was asleep; in ours, Mom started asking questions no mother should ask.

Her mother saw us playing around in bed and, instead of yelling, smiled at me. That same night I understood that nothing in that house was innocent—and I didn’t want to be innocent either.