What I Saw Through the Crack in My Parents’ Bedroom Door

It’s been a couple of months since I’ve written, and vacations are to blame. I left the laptop at home, promised myself I wouldn’t open my email, and went south with the whole family. I came back sunburned, two kilos heavier, and, above all, with an image in my head I still can’t erase. Here are the details, because I know my readers always ask for details.

My father rented a house facing the coast, in a small village we used to go to when we were girls. Three bedrooms, a terrace with a sea view, and the constant sound of the waves coming in through the open windows. My parents took the big room. In the back room, my sister Renata and her husband Andrés. I got the gallery room, the smallest one, separated from the rest by a narrow hallway.

The first few days went by the way vacations always do: late breakfast, coffee on the sand, lunch facing the sea, long naps. I’d bought a new bikini, terracotta-colored, that promised coverage and delivered the opposite. Every time I bent down to pick something up, I felt the heat of the looks on my back. Andrés was the worst. He took advantage of any lapse to brush my hip, to rest his palm at the base of my waist, to hold my gaze a second longer than he should have.

I played along with a smile and nothing more. Not out of morals, but because I didn’t feel like it. My brother-in-law has always seemed pretty handsome to me, but that week my body wasn’t asking for what he was offering. And what ended up asking me that week came from a place I hadn’t imagined.

The fourth night the three of us went out to the village square. Andrés, Renata, and me. My parents had stayed at the house with a bottle of red wine and a movie none of us had any intention of watching. We ordered a couple of beers at an open-air bar and, when I saw Andrés slide his hand over my sister’s thigh under the table, I knew I didn’t want to stay there. I made up a headache, left a bill, and walked back alone along the cobblestone street.

The house was dark. I pushed the door open carefully so as not to make any noise and crossed the living room on tiptoe. The kitchen clock said one twenty. I turned on only the hall light, left my sandals by the entrance, and went straight to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth, wiped my face with a cloth, took off my makeup from the day. I was about to head to my room when I heard the sound.

A low laugh. Female. Then a man’s voice. Then the laugh again.

It was coming from my parents’ bedroom.

***

I wasn’t sneaking around by choice. I was sneaking because curiosity beat common sense. I approached the hallway barefoot, feeling the cold of the tiles under my soles. The door to my parents’ room was badly shut, fitted into the frame but not latched. A vertical crack three fingers wide let through the warm light from the bedside lamp and, with it, a fairly complete field of view of the bed.

The first thing I saw was the bottle of wine. They’d brought it up from the dining room. It was on the nightstand, almost empty, next to two half-full glasses. The second thing I saw was my mother. She was lying on her side over the bedspread, wearing a cream silk nightgown that had slipped down to her hip, leaving one full thigh and the rounded beginning of her ass in view. My mother is in her fifties, with a waist I envy and tits that still hold themselves up without needing anything to lift them, her nipples showing through the silk like two dark buttons.

My father was sitting on the edge of the bed, shirtless, looking at her with an expression I had never seen on him. It was a mixture of hunger, patience, and something older, something they had been repeating for thirty years and that still worked. He ran his hand over her thigh, slowly, from the knee up to the start of her hip, pushing the nightgown higher with each centimeter. When he reached the top, two of his fingers slipped between my mother’s legs and she let out a short sigh, parting her thighs just enough to let him in. He didn’t go any further. He only watched her, palm resting on her skin, while his fingers made a lazy, circular motion, very slow.

“And?” she whispered, barely opening her eyes.

“And nothing. I’m looking at you.”

“You’ve been looking at me for thirty years.”

“And I’m not done.”

My mother laughed. The same laugh I’d heard from the hallway, but now with something underneath it I couldn’t name. It wasn’t modesty. It wasn’t shyness. It was the comfortable laugh of someone who knows what’s coming and has wanted it since before it arrived. With her free hand, she slid one strap of the nightgown down herself, pulled one breast out into the open, and offered it to my father with a naturalness that stole the air from me.

He leaned down and ate it. He sucked her whole breast, mouth open, and then bit her nipple slowly, pulling at it with his teeth while the fingers of his other hand kept moving between her legs. My mother arched her back. A sound rose in her throat, something between complaint and approval, and she put a hand on the back of his neck so he wouldn’t pull away.

I had to go. I had to go now.

But I didn’t move.

***

My father kept sucking her tits for a good while, moving from one to the other, leaving them wet and shining under the lamp light. He lifted her nightgown to her waist and opened her thighs with both hands, unhurriedly, like someone unfolding something he already knows by heart. My mother let him do it with her eyes closed and a barely drawn smile. He got off the bed, knelt on the rug, and dragged her hips to the edge by pulling at her ankles. He slipped his arms under her thighs, hefted her legs onto his shoulders, and lowered his face.

He ate her pussy. There’s no less crude way to say it. He ate her pussy slowly, with a wide, flat tongue, going from below up to the clit in long passes that made a moan escape my mother with each one. I could see my father’s nape moving between her legs, I could see my mother’s hands going down to grab his hair, I could see how she closed her thighs around his face and didn’t let him breathe. Every so often he pulled away for a second, pried her pussy lips open with his fingers, and went back down, now straight to the clit, sucking it with his lips and wiggling his tongue over it.

“There,” she whispered. “There, Ernesto, don’t move from there.”

Hearing my father’s name said like that, with that rough, low voice, tightened something in my stomach. I felt the pulse in my neck, in my temples, between my legs. My hand slid on its own to the waistband of my shorts. I didn’t even notice when it slipped under the fabric. When I came to, I already had two fingers resting on my underwear, feeling how wet I was, feeling the heat rising from inside. I pushed the fabric aside and touched myself directly. My clit was pulsing so hard it almost hurt.

My mother started moving her pelvis against my father’s mouth, setting the rhythm. She spoke to him in a low voice, short dirty things I could barely catch, asking him not to stop, telling him, like that, like that, a little more. He slid two fingers into her and kept his tongue on top. He pushed them all the way in, up to the knuckles, and pulled them out with a wet sound that could be heard from the hallway. I, in the crack, had to bite my lip not to moan.

My mother came with my father’s mouth glued to her clit and his fingers buried in her. I watched her clamp her thighs shut, grab his hair with both hands, shake on the bed with a long moan she half-stifled by biting the sheet. My father didn’t move away until she pushed his forehead, still trembling, and said:

“Enough. Now. Enough.”

He laughed with his face soaked and bit the inside of her thigh before standing up.

***

My father stood. He turned his back to the door for a moment, took off his pajama shorts, and turned back around. I have no intention of describing him under a magnifying glass, he’s my father, but he was hard and pointing upward, pressed against his belly, and even I, from the crack, understood why my mother made that face when she saw him. I’m going to skip the part I don’t want to remember and only tell what they did after, because that’s what stuck to my retina.

She sat up. She sat on the edge of the mattress, her feet still on the floor, and drew him toward her by placing a hand on his side. She didn’t use her hands for what came next. She didn’t need them. She tilted her head slowly and, without hurry, took him all the way into her mouth, to the back, no gagging, no hesitation. It was a way of doing it that had nothing clumsy about it, nothing improvised. It was the precise gesture of someone who has known that person forever and knows exactly what rhythm to begin with.

She pulled him out of her mouth and ran her tongue the whole length of him, from the balls to the tip, very slowly, looking up at him from below. She took him back in. Now she started moving for real, head going up and down, cheeks hollowed, sucking with just the right force. Her other hand grabbed him at the base and twisted while her mouth went up and down. Every so often she pulled back and licked his balls, one and then the other, taking those into her mouth too in turns. My father let out a rough breath every time she did that.

I stopped breathing. I spread my legs wider against the doorframe, slid in two fingers, and started rubbing my clit with my thumb in circles, following my mother’s rhythm. The crack let me see my father’s back tightening, my mother’s hair falling over one side of her face, saliva running down her chin, her hand sliding from his thigh to his ass and digging in her nails. Every time my mother’s head went up and down, my own pulse kept time.

“Like that,” he said, almost voicelessly. “Like that, Beatriz.”

Hearing my mother’s name said like that was stronger than anything else. Beatriz. The woman who made me breakfast when I was eight. The one who scolded me for not finishing my soup. The one who sits in the living room armchair reading detective novels with her glasses at the tip of her nose. That same woman, now, with my father’s cock in her mouth, receiving an order and obeying it with a smile you could see at the corners of her lips.

He put a hand on her nape. Softly, without pushing. He just left it there, like a rest. My mother lifted her gaze for a second, held his eyes without taking him out of her mouth, and went back down, this time all the way, until the tip touched her throat and stayed there for a moment before coming back up with a thread of saliva hanging from her lip. My father gave a low groan, almost a complaint, and yanked her hair harder. She understood perfectly, because right away she changed the rhythm. She started sucking him fast, short, concentrating on the upper half, while her hand worked him at the base.

Before he finished, she pulled him out of her mouth with a wet sound and climbed onto the bed on all fours. She showed him her ass. She showed it to him by arching her back, sticking it out, wiggling it just a little, and she said in a low voice, looking at him over her shoulder:

“Come on. Now. Put it in me.”

My father got behind her. He grabbed her hips with both hands, ran himself between her cheeks a couple of times, rubbing against the lips of her pussy, and shoved in all the way to the hilt. My mother moaned. A real moan, long, the kind you don’t bother to hold back when it arrives. He started fucking her that way, from behind, with his hands dug into her hips, watching himself go in and out. I could see everything from the crack. I could see his balls slapping against my mother’s ass with each thrust, I could see her tits hanging and swaying under the hiked-up nightgown, I could see my mother’s hand going down between her own legs to touch her clit while he penetrated her.

The bed creaked. A little, because he was holding back, but it creaked. My mother lowered her head until her cheek rested on the mattress, keeping her ass high, and he took advantage of that to land a couple of dry smacks on her, one on each cheek, while he kept thrusting. Not hard. Just enough to leave a pink mark. My mother let out a muffled little laugh against the sheet and said something I couldn’t hear, but it made my father grab her hair at the roots, yank her head back, and fuck her harder.

I was masturbating with two fingers deep inside and my thumb on my clit, pressing myself against the doorframe, terrified of being heard and unable to stop. My fingers were squeaking from how wet I was. I could feel the dampness running down my thigh inside my shorts.

***

They changed positions. My father sat against the headboard and my mother climbed on top of him, facing him, giving me her back. She lined him up herself, taking him with her hand and sinking down slowly, until her ass settled on his thighs. She began moving on top, up and down, bracing herself on my father’s shoulders. The lamp light hit her from the side and I could see her profile, her mouth open, her hair falling over one shoulder, her tits bouncing with the riding. My father held one breast in each hand and let her fuck him, looking up at her with that hungry face that had impressed me at first.

“Don’t stop,” I heard him say. “Almost there.”

My mother didn’t stop. On the contrary. She sped up. She started bouncing on him faster, with her hands on the headboard, her tits jiggling in his face. You could see the muscles in her ass tightening with each drop. My father ran his hands over her back, grabbed her ass, and helped her go up and down, setting the rhythm with his fingers digging into her flesh.

“Come inside,” she told him, bent over, her mouth pressed to his ear but close enough to the door for me to hear. “Come inside, do it now.”

There was a strange silence, thick, of two or three seconds, and then I heard the groan. Long, controlled, deliberately kept low so the walls wouldn’t betray it. My father buried his fingers in her ass cheeks, held her all the way down, and came inside her. I watched my mother throw her head back and stay still on top, feeling it, clenching inside with little pelvic motions to empty him completely. She ran a hand through his hair, messed it up, and bit his lower lip with a tenderness that was also filth.

I, without thinking, finished at the same time. I bit the back of my hand so I wouldn’t make a sound. I felt the orgasm rise from my legs to my shoulders, shake my back against the frame, and fall away like a receding tide. The fingers, still inside, got trapped by the contractions. I had to close my eyes for a second so I wouldn’t collapse.

When I opened them, my mother had slowly climbed down. She stayed seated next to my father, her legs crossed, and stroked his hair with a tenderness I hadn’t seen in years. With her other hand, without the slightest shame, she gathered up what was running down between her thighs with two fingers and brought them to her mouth. She sucked them clean, looking at my father, and he smiled at her like someone looking at what’s his. He said something I couldn’t hear and they both laughed.

“Buy a more expensive wine next time,” she said at last.

“And what’s wrong with this one?”

“That it runs out too fast.”

They laughed again.

***

And then I heard the keys in the front door.

I jerked away from the crack with such a clumsy leap that I almost knocked over the hall coat rack. I ran barefoot to my room, closed the door without making a sound, and threw myself face down on the bed. My heart was about to burst out of my mouth. I heard my sister and Andrés’ voices in the living room, their muffled laughter, the sound of the keys falling into the little dish by the entrance. Then footsteps toward the back room.

I stayed motionless for a full five minutes, still dressed, with my hand inside my shorts and my skin burning. When I finally managed to sit up, I undressed in silence and slipped between the sheets. From my sister’s room the predictable noises began: the bed creaking, Renata’s laughter, Andrés’s breathing speeding up, and then the unmistakable sound of my sister sucking him, a liquid, rhythmic sound that left no room for doubt. As a soundtrack for a body that had already decided on its own to start again, it wasn’t bad.

I spread my legs under the sheet and touched myself again. Slowly. With two fingers inside and my thumb circling over my clit, feeling how swollen it was after the first orgasm. Thinking of my mother, of her easy laugh, of the way she had looked at my father from below without letting him out of her mouth. Thinking of how she’d gathered the semen between her thighs and sucked it from her fingers as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I thought about how a couple holds together after thirty years to reach that kind of complicity. I thought I hope I find something like that someday, with anyone, with whoever, as long as they look at me that way and fuck me like that, unhurried and unashamed, until we’re old.

On the other side of the hallway, Andrés let out a short grunt and Renata laughed. I slid in a third finger. I was fucking my hand with my pelvis raised, my face buried in the pillow so I wouldn’t moan, and I came a second time thinking of my mother’s mouth going down and up, of my father’s hand on her nape, of the “like that, Beatriz” said in that hungry voice.

When I finished, I lay on my back with my legs still open, feeling the wetness cooling between my thighs, and fell asleep without drying my tears, which I also never really understood why they’d come.

***

In the morning, I went down to breakfast with guilt hanging around my neck. My mother was making coffee at the counter, her hair tied up in a low bun, wearing the same silk slip from the room but now covered by a cotton robe. She gave me a good-morning kiss on the forehead, as always. My father, sitting at the table with the newspaper, looked up and smiled at me. Andrés still hadn’t come down. Renata was stirring a yogurt, lost in thought.

Everything was identical to the day before. Nobody knew anything. Nobody could know anything.

But when my mother poured me coffee and asked whether I’d slept well, I could feel my ears burning. I told her yes, better than ever, and lowered my eyes to the cup so I wouldn’t give myself away.

That same afternoon, on the beach, I watched her like I had never watched her before. Every gesture, every way she ran the saltwater through her hair, every time she laughed and stroked my father’s nape as if by accident. It was all there, in plain sight, and I had never seen it.

Sometimes we think we know people because we’ve seen them every day our whole lives. I thought I knew my mother. That night, through a three-finger crack, I discovered I had no idea.

There are more things that happened on that vacation. The thing with Andrés, for example, which I ended up telling Renata about by accident and causing a mess I’ll talk about another day. But this story, the one about the crack, I wanted to get out first. It had been asking to come out for weeks, and, you know, stories push too when they want out.

A very wet kiss from me,

Camila.