The Day of the Divorce, My Mother Was Waiting for Me Naked

What I’m about to tell you, I’ve told no one. I’m writing it here because I need to get it out somewhere, and because I know that said out loud it would sound impossible. But life has twists like that even the most twisted imagination wouldn’t dare to anticipate.

My mother and I lived for years under the same roof as a man who never laid a hand on us, but who broke us inside in a thousand different ways. His name was Ricardo, my father, and he was a tyrant to the letter: the loaded silence, the stare that froze you, the exact right word to make you feel small in your own home.

He ate with us without speaking. He went out without warning. When he came back, he expected the world to adjust to his mood.

My mother, Mercedes, put up with it longer than she should have. I put up with it with her, because in your twenties you still don’t really know how to get out of a place like that. I grew up watching her hide her rage over a plate of food, pretend to be interested in conversations she wasn’t having with anyone, count the hours until he shut himself in his office and let us breathe.

The consequences showed on me. I was a shy kid, the kind who stays in a corner at the party. It was hard for me to approach a woman, ask for a coffee, hold someone’s gaze. And my mother knew it. Just as I knew she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt desired.

We told each other without telling each other. In long looks across the dinner table, in that complicit gesture of closing our eyes when he talked and talked, in the small smile that escaped us when he got up to smoke and left us alone at last.

The day she asked him for a divorce, I was with her in the kitchen. I remember the sound of the faucet none of us turned off during the conversation. My father didn’t shout. He did something worse: he smiled one-sidedly and said, “Whatever you want, Mercedes.” As if it were a whim. As if she hadn’t spent twenty years swallowing the urge to run.

The paperwork took months. Lawyer, documents, partial move, the house that finally stayed with her and me. My father took his books, his suits, his poisonous silence. And one morning in April we closed the door behind him for the last time.

***

The day the divorce became official, we came back from court in silence. It wasn’t an awkward silence. It was the silence of people who have walked a long way together and no longer need to fill the gaps. I was driving. She stared out the window with that look people get when they finally understand no one is coming to take anything else from them.

We parked. We went up the three flights without saying a word. I opened the door and dropped the keys on the hall table with a dull thud that sounded different from other times. My mother looked at me and let out a short, almost nervous laugh.

—At last —she said.

—At last —I repeated.

We hugged in the entryway. It wasn’t just any hug. It was one of those hugs that go on too long, where you can feel the other person breathing and don’t want to let go. When we pulled apart, her eyes were shining, but she wasn’t crying.

—I’m going to take a shower —she said—. It’s been years since I had a peaceful shower.

I nodded. I went to my room. I wanted to throw myself on the bed, stare at the ceiling, and listen to my own breathing without having to measure it.

I took off my shoes. I lay down for a while. I heard the water running at the end of the hall. I thought of her. I thought of my father. I thought how strange this new silence was, without heavy footsteps, without doors being slammed in anger.

I got up to get some water. I passed the kitchen. I went back to my room.

And that’s when I saw her.

She was in my room. Sitting on the floor, in the corner between the wardrobe and the window. Naked. Her head slightly tilted against the wall. One hand between her legs, moving slowly. She was looking at me.

I froze in the doorway. Neither of us said anything. I saw her exactly as she was: her breasts drooping with tired firmness, her nipples dark and taut, her soft belly rising and falling with each breath, her thighs parted just enough to show the damp hair between her legs and her hand buried in that fold with obscene calm, without shame, without fear. Her breathing was short, hoarse, and the sound of her fingers rubbing made her seem more alive than she had in all those years of cold meals and silence.

***

I left. I closed the door behind me. My heart was pounding in my throat. I walked to the end of the hall, turned around, and came back. I stopped in front of my bedroom door. I didn’t know whether to knock, go in, or pretend I hadn’t seen a thing.

I opened the door. She was still the same, in the same position, looking at me with the same strange calm. This time she lifted her chin a little, as if she wanted me to look more closely, as if it wasn’t enough that I had seen her body: she wanted me to understand she was there for me, open, no trick.

I stepped out again. I leaned against the hallway wall. I could feel my pulse in my temples and an erection I didn’t understand. It’s my mother. She’s my mother and I don’t know what to do with what’s happening inside my chest.

I went back in. This time I closed the door slowly. I took off my shirt, my pants, everything. I left it on a chair. I sat in the opposite corner, leaning against the wall, my legs stretched out. I started to touch myself. I looked at her.

She hadn’t stopped either. She was rubbing her vulva with her spread fingers, sliding her hand in and out with maddening precision, soaking her palm while holding my gaze. The smell of her desire started to fill the room, thick, animal. My cock was hard and hot, throbbing between my fingers, and I began jerking off clumsily at first, too fast, as if my life depended on it.

—Are you really worked up? —she asked. Her voice sounded different, deeper, as if she’d been saving it for years.

—Yes —I said.

—Me too.

We fell silent. I couldn’t stop looking at her body. She was fifty-one, and she had the body of a woman no one had wanted for a long time. Firm breasts, skin with the faint marks of a bra, a soft belly, the hair between her legs a little darker than I had imagined the few times I’d allowed myself to think about it.

And I had allowed myself to think about it. Why lie? Here, on the page, lying makes no sense.

—Imagine you’re touching yourself and I’m the one touching you —she said suddenly.

I almost stopped breathing. I nodded without a word.

—Imagine I’m touching your breasts —I replied, and my voice came out broken—. That I take your nipples between my fingers. Slowly.

—And I kiss you —she said—. On the mouth. With tongue. I shove it all the way in and suck it like I haven’t tasted anything good in years.

—And I kiss your neck.

—You lick me down over my chest —she went on, opening her legs a little more as she ground her fingers into the wet flesh—. You bite my nipples, suck them until they’re hard, squeeze my tits hard, like you want to mark them with your hands.

—And I take you down to the navel.

—And you take me lower.

I was jerking off faster. So was she. Her chest rose and fell as if she’d just run a mile. The sound of her hand on her cunt was a soft, obscene slosh, and every time she drove her fingers in, a small, angry moan escaped her, making me worse.

—I spread your legs —I said.

—Yes.

—And I kiss the inside of your thighs.

—Slowly.

—Slowly.

—And you lick me.

—I lick you.

—Where you know —she said, and for the first time she closed her eyes.

—Where I know.

She bit her lip. I clenched my jaw. The room smelled of skin and something else, that smell bodies have when they’ve been keeping themselves for no one for too long. I imagined my face pressed against her cunt, my tongue parting her swollen lips, saliva mixing with the juices already running down her thigh. I imagined her hand pulling my hair, pushing my head deeper, telling me not to stop, to make her come right there, with her ass planted on the floor of my room.

—Now turn around —I said.

—I’m turning around.

She turned slowly, and she did it without shame, offering me her naked back, the curve of her ass cheeks, the slit of her asshole half-open from the position. The window light fell on her and drew out her spine, the dimples of her waist, the soft flesh of her buttocks tensing and releasing with each breath. She ran her hand over the nape of her neck and swept her hair to one side, leaving her whole neck exposed.

—And I run my tongue all over your back —I said, now unable to think of anything but her skin.

—And you go lower.

—And I go lower.

—And you lick my ass.

She said it like that, without hesitation. As if she’d long known how that sentence would sound coming out of her mouth.

—I lick it —I answered—. Slowly. First one pass along the crease, then I spread your cheeks with my hands and bury my tongue deep inside, until you’re shaking. I’d suck your asshole until you ran out of breath.

—Until I’m trembling.

—And then I turn you around again.

—And you come inside me.

—And I come inside you.

—Slowly.

—Slowly.

—First I let it brush against you, feeling how you open for me with your cunt soaking wet —she said, her voice heavy with filthy impatience—. And then I push inside, slowly, swallowing that hard cock of yours bit by bit, until you fill me completely.

—And then fast.

—And then fast.

I felt myself go. I’d been holding in too much, something that hadn’t started that afternoon, but much earlier, at some Sunday lunch when my father had gotten up to smoke and my mother and I had been left alone, laughing at some stupidity. I felt everything burn inside me. The semen came out hot, almost furious, spilling over my thigh and hand.

I closed my eyes. When I opened them, my mother had her head tipped back against the wall. She was breathing hard. She wasn’t looking at me. She had gone too, in her own way, at some moment I hadn’t seen. Her hand was still between her legs, moving slowly now, as if there was still something left to tear from her body.

***

We stayed like that for a long while. Without saying anything. Without moving.

Then I got up. I picked my clothes off the chair. I dressed carefully, like someone getting dressed in another person’s house. I passed by her and brushed her hair with my hand. Just the hair. A son’s gesture, nothing else. She didn’t lift her head, but her legs were still slightly apart and the wet shine between them was still there, visible, indecent, like proof of what had just happened without happening.

I left the room. I closed the door slowly.

I went to the kitchen and drank a whole glass of water, standing up, staring at the tile on the wall. My heart was beating slowly now, as if everything that had to happen had already happened.

That night we ate whatever was in the fridge. We talked about the divorce, the missing paperwork, a trip she had always wanted to take up north. We didn’t mention the room. We didn’t look at each other differently. Or maybe we did, but in a place no one else could have seen.

Years have passed since then. My mother is doing well. So am I. I’ve had relationships; she’s gone back to seeing a quiet man who treats her the way people should. We never touched each other again, neither in front nor behind. We never again entered the same room naked.

But sometimes, when we talk on the phone and there’s a long pause between two sentences, I know we’re both thinking the same thing. About that April afternoon when we closed one door forever and, without meaning to, opened another we never would have opened if he had stayed home.

I don’t regret it. I don’t judge her. We both needed it.

Sometimes one frees oneself from fear and discovers there are desires that had been waiting for years, crouched in a corner of one’s own head. Freedom is that: being able to look straight at what was already there.