Taboo

The first thing I remember about that summer is the caretaker’s cracked hands and the girl with the bangs. The last, what I saw among the trees before dawn.

I got off the train with one idea in my head, and when I crossed the door of his apartment I knew neither of us was going to pretend this was a family visit.

The key was still warming my pocket from the night before. I knew she’d be awake, waiting for me, with her robe open and the coffee maker on the stove.

When the apartment was empty, I opened my mother’s drawer and became someone else. That afternoon, a shadow in the window changed everything.

When the doors jammed between two floors, I knew rescue was hours away. I never imagined my sister already had other plans for that wait.

Every time he looked at my face he remembered my mother. And I learned to use that resemblance, a short skirt, and a too-close greeting to erase the line between us.

Two hours before the vows, I wanted to steal one last kiss as fiancés and crossed the woods to his cabin. The back window showed me something I would never forget.

I still felt the echo of the night before between my legs when I entered their room. My daughter slept like an angel and all I could think about was doing it again.

I’d been watching her for years when no one was looking. That night, with the house empty and a bottle of wine between us, I stopped pretending I was only her daughter’s husband.

I’d spent years looking after her, paying for everything, putting up with her screaming. That dawn, in front of the empty alleyway, I decided that for once she was going to give me something in return.

After twenty-eight years of quiet marriage, one secret bathroom photo was enough for Carmen to fixate on what her little brother was hiding.

I thought I knew my son until that night, when his confession forced me to choose between outrage and something far darker that had slept for years.

When my aunt asked if I already had a girlfriend, everyone laughed. My cousin Camila didn’t. Beneath the tablecloth, her bare foot slid up my leg and I knew the night was only beginning.

He came back from the club with that crooked smile and a story about my brother he shouldn’t have told me. That night, I understood how far he was willing to push me.

When she opened the door in a rush, with smeared mascara and a wrinkled dress, I knew something had happened that would change everything between us.

When I looked up and saw her sweeping the living room, I knew my cousin was the only one who could save me. I never imagined how far we’d go that afternoon.

She had made me eat in a hurry, and now she was straddling me, wet, whispering in my ear that she wasn’t going to leave me alone until nightfall.

For my whole life I’d seen her in heels and stockings, but until that night on the sofa I never imagined what her feet could make me feel.

I never thought a late-night talk with my grandmother, half-finished drinks, and the TV on in the background would uncover what happened every Saturday in the other house in town.

At the first traffic light, she hiked up her dress and I understood that this car ride wasn’t about shopping. My mother had other plans for us both.