Taboo

I crossed half of Spain with a fever to take shelter at my grandmother’s house. I never imagined that country woman would look at me naked the way she did that first night.

The silence at the table said it all before the words did: my father had a debt, and this time it wouldn’t be paid with money.

I turned off the TV when she went upstairs to sleep, but the scene kept replaying in my head with my sister’s face instead of the actress’s.

I slept in his bed when I was scared. The night I found him crying over me, I understood what I felt for my brother was beyond return.

Sharing a room with her in that house by the sea seemed harmless, until the heat, the mezcal, and her body pressed against mine changed everything.

That first week under her roof changed everything: a hug that lasted too long, one drink too many, and the certainty that she felt the same thing I was hiding.

She used to tan topless by the pool, sure no one could see her. Until she felt his gaze fixed on her naked skin.

The elevator was old and narrow, and she was right in front of me. I only had to slide my hand around behind her and pray her husband kept his eyes on his phone.

She lowered her forehead onto the oak desk, between the son and his mother, and understood that her title as a respectable mother-in-law had just died in that office.

Ever since I returned to his life, every shower was our ritual. But that afternoon I offered him something no mother should offer, and he didn’t hesitate.

At three in the morning I found him in the dark on my bed, waiting for me. The fury with which he dragged me out of the bathroom wasn’t just brotherly concern.

For years she’d looked down on me, but that afternoon, bent over in front of the freezer, Marisol made the mistake of putting her ass at eye level.

Three days in the same suit, broken in the armchair. I was the only woman in the house now, and I decided life had to go on, even if I had to start by undressing him.

We had been fleeing for four days when they caught us. My grandmother stripped naked in the mud and the night, and I knew that madness was our only way out alive.

The night she offered me a test to see if she was worth it, my mother took off her robe and I understood there was no going back between us.

Hidden among the trees, they heard them gasping, and back at the table the woman whispered an idea to her son that he never imagined he’d dare to carry out.

My friend couldn’t take his eyes off her. I pretended to be annoyed, but the truth is I understood perfectly what he felt when he looked at her.

I live naked in this apartment where no one knows us, waiting for my son to come back each night. After him there will be no other man, and I knew it from day one.

I cornered her on the sofa amid drunken laughter, and when my fingers slipped beneath her kitten pajamas, the ice woman finally gave in.

I had begged her a thousand times and she always stopped me with the same excuse. Until that night, in the dim bedroom, she said yes.