The Night I Stopped Hiding the Woman I Am

It was almost eleven in the morning when I started up the building stairs. I could hardly walk straight. Every step made my ass throb and burn, and I had to grip the handrail to keep from getting stuck halfway up.

I was wearing the same short black dress I’d gone out in the night before, but now it was wrinkled, twisted on my body, and smelled like a mix of sweat, cheap perfume, and dried semen. My makeup was smeared all over my face. My hair was tangled, and underneath the neckline of the dress, there was a collection of purple hickeys, finger marks, and bites I hadn’t even finished counting myself.

I tried to open the door quietly, but the key scraped against the lock. As soon as I closed it behind me, I heard my mom’s voice from the kitchen.

—Brisa? Is that you?

I froze in the entryway. I didn’t have time to get to my room or make anything up. She appeared in the hallway wiping her hands on a dish towel, and stopped dead when she saw me.

Her face changed in seconds. First came the relief of seeing I’d come back alive. Then, as her eyes ran over me from head to toe, that relief turned into something close to horror.

—Brisa… what happened to you? —she whispered, coming closer slowly, as if I might break.

Her eyes stopped on my neck full of marks, then on the neckline, where my still-new breasts showed red and purplish blotches, and finally on the way I was standing: legs a little apart, weight shifted to one side, because my ass hurt too much to put my weight on it normally.

—Mom… —I started, my voice hoarse from how much I’d moaned and screamed the night before.

I couldn’t go on. My mom raised a trembling hand and brushed one of the biggest hickeys on my collarbone with the tips of her fingers.

—Who did this to you? —she asked, her voice breaking—. Did someone hurt you? Did they… force you into something?

I dropped my gaze. Tears started falling before I could stop them, not from fear, but from exhaustion and something harder to name.

—No… nobody forced me —I answered softly—. I did it. I wanted it. All of it.

My mom covered her mouth with her hand. Her eyes filled up.

—Sit down —she said at last, pointing to the living room sofa.

I sat down very carefully, and even so I let out a whimper when my ass hit the cushion. My mom noticed right away.

—Does it hurt there too? —she asked almost under her breath, sitting on the edge of the coffee table in front of me.

I nodded, mortified, looking at my hands.

***

—Last night I was at a private party —I began, because I knew if I didn’t say it all at once I’d never be able to say it—. In an apartment, far from here. There were several men. Sofía and Mauro took me, introduced me, looked after me all night. And I let them use me. A lot of them fucked me. Hard. They left me covered in marks. They came all over me.

The silence that followed was brutal. My mom just stared at me as if she were trying to recognize her daughter underneath the smeared makeup and bruises.

—Brisa, you’re my daughter —she said, her voice breaking on every word—. I watched you grow up. I took you to school, took care of you when you were sick, I’ve known you since before you could talk. And now you come home like this, marked, smelling like other people, walking like you’ve been broken open from the inside. Is this what you want for your life?

I stayed quiet for a moment, sorting through what I was feeling. Then I looked up and spoke with all the honesty I’d spent years keeping inside.

—Yes, Mom. In part, yes. I’m not sick. I’m not crazy or lost. I’m a woman. I’m a trans girl, and that’s not a phase or a whim. And I like sex too. I like feeling desired, looked at, wanted. Last night I was with several men and I came screaming, and yes, it hurt, my ass still hurts when I sit down. But for the first time in a long time I felt whole. I felt like myself.

My mom started crying silently, without sobbing, tears running straight down her face. She covered her eyes with both hands.

—I raised you to be happy —she said through her fingers—. And now my daughter comes home destroyed after being treated like she’s nothing. Aren’t you ashamed of anything?

—I was ashamed for years —I answered, and I noticed my voice coming out steadier—. Every morning in the mirror. Every time I had to pretend to be someone I wasn’t so everyone else could relax. But not anymore. I don’t want to hide in my own home anymore. My chest is like this because I chose it, because I started treatment knowing exactly what I was doing. I have this body because at last it looks like me. And I have these marks because last night I chose, all on my own, to be who I wanted to be.

***

My mom kept looking at me for a long time in silence. Then she stood up, went to the kitchen, and came back with a glass of water. She put it in my hand and sat down beside me on the sofa, not across from me, as if she needed to be close to believe it.

—The first time I saw your chest change —she said slowly—, I thought it was a phase. That at some point you’d turn back, that it was just something about your age. But you’re not going back, are you?

I shook my head slowly.

—No, Mom. I’m Brisa. And I’m going to keep being Brisa. I’m going to keep up the treatment. I’m going to keep going out, living, deciding for myself. I’m not going to lie to you about what I do or what I like. I’d rather you hate me knowing the truth than love me for a lie.

My mom let out a deep breath, a sigh that seemed to empty her out. And then, to my surprise, she raised her hand and tucked a tangled lock of hair behind my ear with a tenderness I hadn’t expected.

—I don’t understand you —she admitted, her voice shaking but no longer from horror—. I don’t understand almost anything you’re telling me. But you’re my daughter. That I understand. It hurts to see you like this, it hurts to imagine what you went through last night, and I’m afraid of everything. But I’m not going to lose you because I don’t understand you. I only ask one thing.

—What? —I asked, my throat tight.

—Take care of yourself. Really. Don’t let desire cost you your health or your dignity. Don’t let anyone hurt you more than you choose. And know that the day you want to stop, or change, or whatever it is… you’ll still have a home here. I’ll be here.

I couldn’t answer. I leaned over and hugged her tightly. She held me against her chest and we both cried at once. My sore breasts were crushed against her, my ass was throbbing against the cushion, my whole body reminded me of the night before. But for the first time in years, sitting in the living room of my own house, I felt like I no longer had to hide from the person who mattered most to me.

***

That afternoon I showered slowly, letting the hot water run over every mark. I stood a long while in front of the fogged-up mirror: the new chest, the bruises scattered across my skin, the hips the hormones were shaping little by little. I touched one of the bites on my shoulder and smiled with a strange mix of sadness and pride. I didn’t fully recognize myself, and at the same time I had never recognized myself so much.

Later I went down to Sofía’s apartment, two floors below. She greeted me with a long kiss, one of those that makes it clear there’s no rush, and asked me in my ear how everything had gone.

—I told my mom everything —I answered, still not quite believing it—. She saw me come in like this, a total mess. She saw the marks. She heard me tell her who I am and what I did. And she didn’t throw me out. She hugged me.

Sofía pulled me against her and held my face in her hands.

—Then that’s it, my love —she said—. You don’t have to hide from anyone anymore. You’re free now.

I stayed with her for a while, no sex this time, just wrapped up together on her sofa while evening began to fall outside. I told her every detail of the conversation, every gesture my mom made, how she’d fixed my hair, what she’d asked me for. Sofía listened without interrupting, stroking my back carefully over the pain.

That night I slept in my bed, in my house, with my bedroom door unlatched for the first time in a long while. My whole body hurt: my ass still tender, my breasts marked, my muscles tired from the whole night. But my heart was lighter than ever.

Before falling asleep, I heard my mom pass by in the hallway, stop for a second in front of my door, and keep going to her room without saying anything. It wasn’t necessary. I was no longer the person everyone had wanted me to be. I was Brisa. A trans girl, desired, in charge of her body and her pleasure, and at last, after so long, welcomed in her own home by the woman who brought her into the world.