What I Discovered Behind My Sisters’ Door

My name is Marina, and I’m the fifth of six siblings. I had just turned nineteen when I finally understood how my house worked, though the suspicion had been growing inside me for months like a weed nobody wanted to pull out.

My father, Andrés, was fifty-two and had been an army officer all his life. At home he ruled the way he would in a barracks: with a low voice, clear rules, and the absolute certainty that no one would contradict him. He didn’t need to shout. A look was enough.

My mother, Pilar, lived to please him. She was a beautiful fifty-year-old woman who had given birth to six children and, by then, could not imagine any way of existing other than obeying. Her submission was not resignation: it was an offering that seemed to bring her peace.

The eldest of us all, my brother Marcos, was twenty-seven and my father’s exact reflection. They shared the same way of speaking, the same crooked smile when something amused them at another person’s expense. Marcos agreed with every rule my father laid down, especially the ones that handed him power.

My eldest sister, Lorena, twenty-five, was the smartest of the six. She got herself a rich boyfriend, left to study in Berlin, and stayed there before anyone could tell her otherwise. She had always been rebellious. She seized the first crack and vanished.

Then there was Carla, twenty-three, and Daniela, twenty-two. And lastly Aurora, my little sister, eighteen, with whom I shared a room and almost everything else. We looked so much alike that people used to confuse us when we were children.

***

The first time I suspected something wasn’t right was one winter night. It was two in the morning and I couldn’t fall asleep. From my parents’ room came sighs, and at first I assumed my father and mother were making love.

I woke Aurora with a finger to my lips. We went out into the hallway barefoot, holding our breath, and peered through the crack in the slightly open door.

There weren’t two of them.

My father and Marcos had my mother between them. They held her as if she belonged to them, spoke to her with words I had never heard used in that house, and she, far from protesting, sighed with a pleasure rising from some very deep place.

Aurora squeezed my hand so hard it hurt. Neither of us said a word. We went back to our room tiptoeing, our hearts pounding against our ribs.

—Do you think Dad has been with Carla and Daniela? —I whispered in the dark.

—You can bet on it —Aurora answered—. And soon it’ll be our turn.

She said it without fear. She said it almost with curiosity, and that night, curled up together in the same bed as so many other times, we both discovered that the image would not leave our heads no matter how tightly we closed our eyes.

***

I had been noticing something for a while that then finally made sense. Carla and Daniela locked their bedroom almost every night. I always thought it was just them, that they were very affectionate with each other. After what I had seen, my suspicions took another shape.

The next morning, at that same impossible hour, Aurora and I got up and found my mother asleep alone in her bed. No sign of my father or Marcos.

We went to Carla and Daniela’s room. Locked, as always. We pressed our ears to the wood and heard, muffled, moans that left no room for doubt. One of my sisters asking for more; Marcos’s deep voice answering her.

The key turned from the inside kept us from seeing anything. We were both crouched there, motionless, when a hand rested on my shoulder and I almost screamed.

—What are you two doing there, you little brats? —it was my mother, in her robe, not knowing what face to make.

—You shut up, Mom —I blurted—, because you enjoy it too. We saw it last night.

I disarmed her with one sentence. She lowered her eyes, sighed, and gestured for us to follow her.

—Come to the kitchen. I’m going to tell you something.

***

The three of us sat around the table, still in the dark, and my mother began to speak slowly, like someone setting down a weight she had carried for too long.

—Your father is a good man —she said—. He is, even if his rules don’t make it seem so. One night, some time ago, he confessed to me that he needed more. He promised me he wouldn’t look for it outside the house, that what he wanted he had right here. And I agreed.

—Agreed to what? —Aurora asked, though we both knew.

—At first he wanted to be with Lorena. You know what your eldest sister is like: she said no, and took the chance to leave for Berlin and never come back. I was devastated. And I promised him that his other daughters, now grown, would understand his wishes.

She paused for a long time. Her hands trembled around the empty cup.

—For about a year now, Carla and Daniela have been with him. Marcos too. I know it isn’t right, I know what you think. But I swear to you they enjoy it. And I’m only asking one thing of you: that it stays in this house.

—Mom, that’s incest —I said, and the word rang hard in the silent kitchen—. You can’t do that.

—I know —she replied—. That’s why I’m asking you. If you don’t want to, that’s fine. Your sisters and I are enough for them already.

I looked at her and saw a woman wholly given over to a man, without reservations, with a devotion that made me angry and tender in equal measure. Her eyes were full of tears.

—I love your father so much —she murmured— that I’d be capable of anything just to keep him happy.

***

I don’t know at what point the conversation changed temperature. Aurora stood up and hugged my mother from behind, and I took her hands over the table. Our kisses began as comfort, sweet, on the forehead and cheeks.

But my mother was shattered with emotion, and we had spent the whole night with our skin on fire from what we had seen. Without saying it, all three of us understood at once.

We led her by the hand to her room. We undressed her slowly, one on each side, tracing her body with our lips as if it were the first time anyone had treated her gently instead of with orders.

—Oh, daughters —she whispered—. How beautiful. No one had ever made me feel this.

Aurora moved down her belly while I lingered at her mouth, kissing her with a slowness that made her shiver. My mother let us do it, her hands open on the sheet, completely abandoned.

When she reached the edge, what escaped her was not a filthy cry, but something like weeping. She cried from happiness, repeating that she had never felt so much affection together with pleasure. The three of us fell asleep beside her, tangled together, without noticing that dawn had come.

***

My father’s voice woke us. He was in the doorway, still in his night uniform, looking at the three naked figures on the bed with an incredulous smile.

—Well, well. What an unexpected gift for a tired man —he said.

My mother sat up, not knowing whether to cover herself or apologize. I, still half asleep and far more awake than I looked, decided to play along in my own way.

—You must be exhausted, Dad —I told him.

—Yes, daughter, but I’m not going to be denied a proper good-night farewell. Tomorrow we’ll have a celebration the way God intended.

He called Marcos, who appeared wearing that hunter’s smile of his that I disliked so much. Aurora took care of my father and I took care of my brother. And, I confess, I played the fool on purpose: every now and then I squeezed a little harder than necessary, just to watch him lose his composure.

—Careful, girl, that hurts —he complained.

—Sorry —I told him, with a face like I’d never broken a plate in my life—. I have to learn.

Inside, I was dying laughing at the tough guy of the house looking frightened. When I got tired of the little game, I really put my mind to it and he finished quickly. My father didn’t take much longer either: the idea of having his two youngest daughters was too much for him.

***

On Saturday, at breakfast, with the whole family around the table, my father made the rules clear as he always did.

—Listen up, girls. You already know the rules in this house. Now that you all know what goes on between these walls, there’s a new one: around the house, no more clothing than necessary. A shirt and little else. And if we ask for something, I don’t want a single complaint. Understood?

My older sisters were already dressed exactly as he ordered, used to it. Aurora and I, on the other hand, exchanged a glance and, in front of everyone, made a small rebellious gesture, dropping what we were wearing to the floor with more spite than necessary.

—That temper needs correcting —my father said without raising his voice—. Marcos, let’s restore some order.

What came next was intense, shameless, and absolutely between the two men and the two of us. This time it was my father’s turn with me. I pretended to resist, but I was hotter than I had ever been in my life, and he realized it at once.

—Look at the little wildcat —he said, almost amused—. If she wants it as much as the others.

—Shut up and show me why you’re so much in charge —I replied, and wiped the smile off his face.

From there I stopped pretending. I rode him with the audacity of someone who has nothing left to hide, while my mother and my older sisters watched from the sofa and Aurora gave herself to Marcos beside me. The perversion of the situation, the prohibition, all of it blended into an orgasm that left me shaking.

—Had you been with anyone before? —my father asked me, panting.

—Of course. What did you think, that I was a prude?

He was left speechless, somewhere between pride and bewilderment, and I gave a soft laugh I couldn’t quite hide.

***

The following days were madness. The whole house revolved around a secret no one intended to tell. I think my father, to keep up the pace at his age, must have helped himself with something, because it was impossible for a fifty-two-year-old man to always be ready.

Until one morning, he simply didn’t get up.

—He must be tired —Aurora said.

I went to wake him and he didn’t move. I called him, touched him, shook him. Nothing. I shouted for my mother, who came running and collapsed when she saw him. Marcos called an ambulance, but anyone could see it was already too late.

The doctor was blunt: a heart attack. My father, the man who had ruled over all of us, had gone in his sleep, without warning, true to his habit of offering no explanations.

At the funeral, his old army comrades showed up. They sent him off with honors, as a respected and admired man. None of them could have imagined what kind of house that coffin had come from.

***

He left us a fortune. He had a life insurance policy signed that covered more than enough for any whims we might dream up. Marcos wanted to take his place, and for a while we let him.

My mother and he ended up sharing a room. My sisters and I, on the other hand, started looking for our own lives outside the house. We got boyfriends, went out, studied. Though, I admit, when we came back home we still looked for Marcos, turned into addicts of a habit that was hard to leave behind.

My mother bought herself a house on the outskirts of Valencia, with a swimming pool, where we held gatherings that no neighbor would have understood. Soon we brought our boyfriends into that very particular life of ours.

Now I’m twenty-two. I finished my advertising degree and I’m doing my internship at a company in Málaga. Here I met an older man, charming, whom I fell for helplessly. And, almost without realizing it, also his son.

He gave me a job, got me an apartment, and I am what my mother once was: the woman of a man I please because I want to, not because I’m forced to. The difference this time is that I choose it myself.

In the next story I’ll tell you what my life is like in this city of light, with father and son at the same time. But that’s another story.