The Burn That Changed Everything Between My Mother and Me

It was almost noon when I shoved the front door open with my shoulder and dropped my backpack in the entryway. I’d spent the whole morning on the court with Damián and Rafa, and I was so hungry I could hear my stomach’s footsteps against my ribs. The smell drifting down the hall was unmistakable: sauce with garlic, toasted basil, cheese melting in the pan. My mother was making pasta again, and any other Saturday I would have walked in shouting for her to save a plate for me. But that afternoon I had come up with something worse.

I saw her from behind, at the sink, holding the steaming pot to drain the noodles into the colander. She was wearing a thin cream-colored cotton dress, almost translucent against the light coming in through the window, and her hair was tied up in a loose bun. I crept up without making a sound and dug my fingers into her ribs, right where I knew she was ticklish.

It was the worst idea of my life.

She screamed and spun on instinct, still holding the pot. The boiling water and the noodles came down over me like a wave, from my chest to my thighs. I felt the heat go through my clothes before I could even understand what was happening. I yelled something even I didn’t hear and bolted down the hall, leaving a trail of noodles and steaming water on the hardwood floor.

—Bruno, son, for God’s sake! —I heard my mother behind me, barefoot, chasing me.

I jumped into the bathroom and yanked the cold shower on with a slap. I tore off my T-shirt and pants with such force that the drawstring snapped. I was so desperate to feel the cold water against my skin that I didn’t even close the door. When I was under the stream, my mother rushed in like a bullet, not thinking, only worried about seeing me.

—Are you okay? Let me see, let me see…

And that was when she stopped. I saw her standing at the edge of the shower enclosure, dress splattered, eyes fixed on me. I was completely naked under the water, my body red from my chest downward, and for a second — a second that lasted too long — she looked between my legs. Then she lifted her gaze, went red to the ears, and muttered something I couldn’t make out. I stayed under the shower a good while, until the sting became bearable.

***

My father got home half an hour later with two bags of food from the restaurant on the corner. When they told him the whole scene — the sneak attack, the pot, the pasta flying everywhere — he laughed so hard he had to sit down on the sofa. He made crude jokes about how they were going to have to amputate me and replace my dick with a sausage, until my mother, in that sharp voice she used when she was serious, told him to shut the hell up. I ate in my bed, on her orders. She didn’t want me moving around. She said I needed rest, even though the burn was mild: a pink patch running from my navel to halfway down my thighs, with no blisters. I put on a little soothing moisturizer, covered myself with a light sheet, and fell asleep without even noticing.

When I opened my eyes it was almost night. The room was dim and the commentator from a game could be heard from the living room. I remembered that the next day I had plans with the guys — a pickup game and then a barbecue at Rafa’s place — and I cursed under my breath. I grabbed my phone and texted them that I wouldn’t be able to make it. I turned on the TV in my room to keep myself occupied with anything when I heard my mother’s footsteps in the hallway.

She came in without knocking, with a small towel and the tube of cream in her hand. She was wearing a dark blue silk nightgown I had never seen before, or maybe I had just never really looked at it. She closed the door behind her quietly. She sat on the edge of my bed and, without any preamble, pulled the sheet off me, leaving me exposed.

—Mom, what…

—Oh, don’t be stupid —she laughed, but it came out strange, like she was rehearsing it—. I need to see how it’s going. I already saw you in the bathroom, it’s nothing I don’t know about.

It wasn’t the body that made me uncomfortable. It was the way she looked at me.

I was twenty-two, still living in her house because the university was three blocks away, and although I’d showered a thousand times with the door half open, this was different. Even so, I said nothing. She leaned over me, examined the pink area with her fingers, frowned, and nodded like she was the nurse on duty.

—It’s much better. But we need to put cream on it or you’ll peel tomorrow.

She squeezed the tube and let a white line fall onto my stomach. I shuddered from the cold. Then she started spreading it with the flat of her hand, in slow circles, going down from my navel toward my pelvis, still not touching me directly but getting closer and closer to the edge of my hair. I tried not to think. I tried counting the ceiling tiles, listening to the commentator on the game, remembering the team lineup. It didn’t work.

I started getting hard. At first just a little, a semi-erection I hoped she wouldn’t notice. Then, with no way to hide it, I got completely hard in front of her eyes. I felt my mother’s hand freeze in midair for a second, hesitating.

—Good grief, son —she whispered with a crooked smile—. Don’t go taking my eye out with that thing.

I closed my eyes out of sheer shame, but shame didn’t bring the erection down. On the contrary, the comment made it worse. When I looked again, her hand was still hovering close, watching my cock with parted lips, as if she were silently working out an answer. She put more cream in her palm and, this time, her fingers brushed the base, almost by accident. Then again. And again.

—So the skin around it doesn’t dry out —she murmured, not sounding very convinced.

—Yeah —I said, my voice breaking.

The brushes stopped being accidental. She closed her fingers around the base, gently at first, testing. A short laugh slipped out of her, almost to herself.

—You didn’t get this from your father, that’s for sure. This comes from my side of the family.

I didn’t know what to answer. The line pierced me with a strange mix of pride and confusion. She settled onto the bed until she was lying on her side, pressed against me, her head on my shoulder and her hand firmly around my sex. The silk nightgown had opened a little, and from my angle I could see the valley between her breasts, white and heavy, with the little gold chain she always wore resting right in the middle. It was the first time in my life I’d looked at her like that, and I knew in that same instant that I could no longer stop.

—Mom —I murmured, not knowing if it was a question or surrender.

—Shhh. Don’t say anything.

***

She started moving slowly, taking advantage of the cream that had made her fingers slippery. She went up to the tip and back down to the base with a calm, almost methodical rhythm, as if she were measuring me each time. She murmured things under her breath that I could barely understand, broken phrases: “Jesus, what a thing,” “the girls you run around with don’t know how lucky they are,” “if I were your age…” Each word made me hotter.

I clenched my teeth to hold on. I usually last a long time — the girls I’d been with always told me that — but this was something else. This wasn’t a handjob, it was a short circuit in my brain. Every time she ran her hand back up to the tip and down again, I felt an electric lash race through my spine.

The rhythm picked up. So did her breathing. I heard her let out a contained sigh and knew she wasn’t doing this for me alone either. She was turned on, just like me. Maybe more.

—It’s beautiful, son —she said out loud for the first time—. Truly, it’s beautiful.

I didn’t know where to put my face. I turned slightly and buried it in her cleavage, against the breasts covered by blue silk. She smelled of the jasmine moisturizer she put on every morning and something else, something I had never smelled before, a scent of hot skin that made me close my eyes. Her breasts were soft, heavy, and when she breathed they moved against my face like little waves.

I felt her lean in a little more, offering them to me. She didn’t show them to me, she didn’t open the nightgown, but she settled them against me as if saying, “stay there.” I stayed. I buried my nose between them while my mother’s hand kept going up and down with new urgency. She started gripping harder, twisting her wrist when she reached the tip. Something in her murmur became unintelligible.

—I can’t hold it anymore —I warned, barely audible.

—Let it go, baby, let it go.

And I let it go. It was an orgasm that shook me from head to toe, a wave after wave of release that left white streaks on my chest, on the sheet, on the back of my mother’s hand. I squeezed my eyelids shut, felt my own muscles contract, heard the dull pounding of my heart in my ears. When I opened my eyes, her hand was still closed around me, but now motionless, catching her breath.

***

The silence that came after was thick. My mother sat up slowly, without looking at me. She took the edge of the sheet and carefully wiped her hand and forearm, as if she were cleaning a vase she’d knocked over. Then she covered me with that same sheet — wrinkling her nose as it brushed against the wetness — and stood up.

I didn’t dare speak. Neither did she. She walked to the door and, before leaving, half-turned, still not meeting my eyes. Her lips moved twice before any words came out. When they did, they weren’t the ones I expected.

—I’m sorry, baby. I got carried away. Sleep. Tomorrow morning I’ll put the cream on you again.

She closed the door gently, as if she didn’t want to wake anyone in the house, even though my father had been asleep since eleven and the neighbors were three floors away.

I lay staring at the ceiling for a long while. Guilt came almost at the same time as exhaustion, the two weighing exactly the same. I knew it was wrong, that it was one of those things a son shouldn’t do with his mother even in a fever dream. But I also knew something else, and this second thing was more absolute: that nothing I had experienced with other girls came anywhere close to what I had just felt. Not the first time, not with Florencia, not that summer with Camila at Cabo Polonio beach. Nothing.

“Tomorrow morning I’ll put the cream on you again,” she had said.

That sentence got me hard again within minutes. I wanted to jerk off to get rid of the guilt and everything else, but I stopped in time. I didn’t want to disappoint her in the morning. I wanted to keep everything stored away for when she came back through that door with the tube of cream in her hand and the blue nightgown half undone.

I turned off the light, closed my eyes, and started counting the hours until dawn.