Excerpt from Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist by Cecilia Gentili

Ay Inés!

Was my father a good fuck? I guess he must have been: You were so into him. Though that’s not what my mother said. In fact, Mami only had her first orgasm in her 60s. Not with him. Obviously.

Mami and I had this in common: When we were finally orgasming, we thought we were dying. Like, truly dying. Me with your nephew Alejandro, and her with this dude she met after dad passed. I remember her calling me after it happened. She went around and around for a long time until I said: “Mom, what’s up? What you want to tell me? I know you do want to tell me something.”

So she did. As she was talking I could picture myself, except when I went through it I was 10, and for her it was a little later in life.

Mami had met this dude a while before, but was too ashamed to tell me because he was married. She didn’t want me to know she was thinking of doing to another woman what you had done to her. But she also thought it was time to get what she’d never had. Like she smelled the nut! So she went for it.

I feel almost strange, telling you this. Almost embarrassed. I think America has taught me to be ashamed to talk about parents and sex. Trying to fit better into American culture, I must have blocked out the memories of how we lived, all in one room with our parents having sex in front of us. But Mami was not American, so she told me all the details.

She said that while they were getting undressed, just staring at each other, she was afraid that his wife had followed him, that she was outside the house now, about to knock at the closed window and yell, “Whore, leave my husband alone!” As Mami had dreamt of doing to you and my father so many times. But she and this dude were very attracted to each other, and then he kissed her. She said the way he kissed her, she didn’t know such a thing was possible.

(I too am a sucker for a kiss. I remember as a child telling your nephew Alejandro that if he didn’t kiss me, he was getting no ass. Not only that, I had to feel that he was willingly kissing me. And you know, he did it. He loved fucking me so much that he put passion into his kiss, too. Just to get his dick inside me. But for Mami there was no pressure needed. This dude loved kissing too.)

She told me he went down on her. She felt like she’d become the main character of one of the Jackie Collins books she devoured. Before then, with my father, she had identified more as a Danielle Steel heroine. Not that she ever got the Danielle Steele treatment from my father either, though, not in her real life. It had been a virtual reality. But now she was going over to the dark side, the Jackie side. My father was gone and this handsome construction worker, younger than her—he wanted her, needed her, and she needed that. She needed to be desired, and his tongue on her clit started to . . . uy! . . . to get her places.

But it was a difficult process for her. She wanted to pay full attention to the feeling of something as human as her and yet foreign touching her body, but she also kept thinking that it was not yet a year since Dad had died. Apparently there is some kind of year rule.

This sounds crazy, but it’s not the first I’ve heard of it, Inés. A year of mourning with no moaning. Needless to say, this only applies to women. No man is requested to wait any specific time to fuck someone else after his wife’s passing. But for women, it’s a year, minimum. Mami couldn’t get that out of her head. Shame can do terrible things.

But then she thought, who made this rule? Who would make her accountable for the transgression? Was there a list? Would she be put in a black book? And then she felt this . . . tingling . . . in the end of her big toe . . . it was God. Maybe God had made the rule about waiting a year, and it was all true, and she would now be stained forever. The feeling was moving from the toe to her full foot. Both feet now had a warm sensation of some kind of soft electricity. Had Jackie mentioned this somewhere? She couldn’t think of when, but God was there, in her head, and Jackie was fading from it.

Was Jackie God? No, if God was one of them, God was definitely Danielle.

God was punishing her. She didn’t wait a year. Dad was still warm, even though she never got anything good from him, not even this simple but overwhelming little feeling of shocks she was getting from this dude, which at this point were moving through her lower leg. Nothing good at all.

At that moment, I remember thinking, Mami, Papi gave you me and I am good, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to distract from her narrative. I could not recall ever hearing her talk with so much passion. About anything. I could feel it in her voice, almost crying while telling me this story.

She said at this point it became clear that the feeling coming from her toes and going through her body was death. God was taking her life for not waiting a year and also for sleeping with a married man.

I asked her, “Why is Inés not dead then, if she slept with Dad when he was married to you?”

She responded quickly: “Because she’s evil, and Godly things don’t apply to her!” And she went right back to the feeling, to the current moving inside her and how it would be the end for her. She said she thought of me.

A tear hung in my lower eyelid when she said that. But that was not important. I asked her, “What happened?”

She said: “It has a name. I heard of it before, but I thought it was a lie. I thought I was dying, but then I had an orgasm like are described in the books, and I want more of them. They are so good!”

So then I told her about me and your nephew, Alejandro. I told her, Inés, that I had had the exact same thought when, sitting over him, with his enormous dick inside me, he started touching me in the front, and it happened. The same shame, the same conviction that this could only be death, the same real-life Jackie Collins miracle.

Somehow life gave us an experience to share. I think it was that moment when my mother first truly saw me as an equal, as a woman. Mom and I had so many things in common and still the worst relationship as mother and daughter. Perhaps we should have been friends instead. Our lives became so intertwined after that confession. It felt terrible that it was through the phone and not holding hands.

But what I wonder, Inés (and this is why I asked you if my father was a good fuck), is: Was the reason my mother could never orgasm with my father because you put a spell on her?

Mami told me many times you were a witch. Not that you were visiting witches, asking for help, as she sometimes did, but that you were a witch yourself, actually doing brujería. As a kid I had all kinds of fantasies: you making potions, you conjuring forces, you enchanting a bone stolen from the cemetery to signify my parents’ marriage and then shattering it into pieces.

I should tell you I have just moved in with my boyfriend. Right now I am working on throwing out his ex’s shit to make space for my things. He didn’t do a good job of erasing his ex’s presence in the house before I arrived. I think he feels guilty for not fulfilling her dream of being a couple and living together forever, though from what he tells me (not that I believe him, I make it a principle not to believe men) they were very unhappy together. Like my mom and dad. Which I guess makes me you in this movie.

Anyway, as I was throwing all her shit out, I found three weird glass containers. Like marmalade jars but smaller. Each one had a little damp strangely colored piece of kitchen paper inside. I became afraid they were witchcraft, some kind of trap my boyfriend’s ex had maliciously left behind for me. I told myself I shouldn’t open them. But curiosity has always been my problem. Looking at these jars of possible witchcraft, I felt the same curiosity I felt when I used to look at your jewelry box, wanting to open it. So of course I opened the jars. And as I opened them, I thought of you, Inés.

I started remembering a day, back in Galvez, soon after my family moved to the government houses. The housing projects, Americans would say. It was summer, around 10 am, and I was planning to do one of the things I enjoyed most, one of those rare things where my overwhelming faggotry was not an issue, where I could laugh with other children instead of being laughed at: I was going to chase El Regador, the sprinkler!

The government houses were far from the developed downtown, and our streets were dirt streets. During the summer, they would get very dry, and any cars would throw up dense clouds of dust. So, twice a day, a truck with a huge water tank in the back would come to wet the soil, and we would run behind it, getting wet and laughing and screaming. And it went so fast that no one had time to comment on me and my flaws. Everything was too urgent. We would anticipate the truck, then run with it until we had no more breath. And because the moment of breathlessness was different for everyone, and different every time, it was a collective activity that was also completely individual. It was perfect!

So, it was 10 am. I took my shoes off and opened the back door, the kitchen door that would bring me to the patio. As I came out, but before I turned out to the street, I saw you coming along the back alley on your bicycle. You had a job delivering papers and magazines to different houses. I knew this because you gave me porno magazines.

I will admit, it wasn’t all your fault. Initially you offered me issues of a children’s magazine, Billiken. I thought at first that my father was having a rare fatherly moment, actually buying something for me. Then I realized it was just another of your bribes, which made it less special. I also noticed that in your bicycle basket, along with children’s magazines and fashion magazines, you had some items sealed in black plastic bags. I was curious, of course, but I didn’t want to ask you, so I went to the only smart person I knew, my faggot friend Juan Pablo. He was a little younger than me, but he knew everything.

Juan Pablo told me they were porno magazines. I’d seen porno magazines by then. Juan Pablo was adamant I should get some off you. His theory was that porno magazines were the best way to lure cute boys into jerking off in front of you so you could see their dicks. I’m not sure if I was more interested in seeing dicks or in pleasing Juan Pablo, but I said I’d do it.

When I told you I was done with Billiken, and I wanted the magazines in the black plastic bags instead, I truly expected resistance from you. There was none. You just handed the pornos right over, and I handed them to Juan Pablo, and he got the boys, and we all went into the eucalyptus forest behind the town. The perfect equation!

So, as I say, I knew you delivered magazines, but it was not normal to see you here, in the government houses. The people in this neighborhood didn’t have money for periodicals! Who, I wondered, besides me, was getting a magazine in this low-class craphole?

You rode up to my house and looked at me and raised your hand. I didn’t wave back (I knew if I waved to you and Mami saw me I would be in trouble), but I was instantly overwhelmingly curious about where you were going. You rode towards me, and at the same time, on the other side, El Regador came into sight down the block.

What a pickle! I could turn to the left and get the most water possible all over my little body. Or I could turn to the right and follow you to see whose house you were going to.

So, I compromised. I ran left, to the front of the house, to the sprinkler, but I kept looking back to the right to see where you went. And that’s when it happened. Your hand, the same hand that had waved to me a moment before, let go of this powder. It looked like a powder eyeshadow, brilliant and iridescent. It dispersed so gracefully over our house, flying across the small garden and in through the window of Mom and Dad’s bedroom. This must have been on purpose, Inés. Even if I’d tried, I could not have done it with such precision.

I stopped moving. I was totally immobile. The water truck passed right in front of me. I heard the children yelling and laughing, but it seemed so far away, and you kept going, bicycling away with your front basket full of magazines. I could feel you smiling. I didn’t see you smile, but I knew you were. Mission accomplished! This is the one that will break them apart! This is the one!

The sprinkler passed. Some children came back breathing heavily with their feet covered in mud. I just stood there. I had seen the magic happen. I wondered if I should I tell Mami. Was this important? Of course it was! But what to do?

Mami had been taking more pills from the head doctor recently to keep herself happy. If I told her, she would fixate and try to find another witch to counteract the spell. And this would mean I would have to travel with her to another city, to a scary house, and also, before that, that I would have to steal the money for this adventure from Dad, and I was scared of stealing from Dad, even though Mami always told me it was not stealing because she was going to use that money to keep us together so it was good.

But, on the other hand, if I said nothing and your brujería worked, Papi would leave us for you and you would not need me anymore and then who was going to let me get dolled up in drag? Well, Grandma still would. But we only visited her every now and then, whereas with you I could do it anytime, as much and for as long as I wanted.

So I kept it to myself, Inés. I convinced myself I was doing it to keep stress away from Mami, but the truth is I was selfish. I hated that you wished her ill, but I still wanted to dress as a girl at your house. I also hated that I didn’t know what the actual spell was. I was afraid it wasn’t just a love spell to get my father, that instead you might have made a death spell to have Mami die. After all, as I knew, you were not shy about killing mothers.