Mommy sat leaning back on her elbows, with her knees bent, pointing toward the ceiling. Her legs were spread apart as far as was possible, her breasts were divided, folding outward and down the respective sides of her body, almost overflowing, and the space on her chest between them was covered with sweat. This area that was called the rib cage on men’s bodies but on women didn’t have any name, I thought—but the thought disappeared immediately, because now I just had to look at him, at Daddy. He was on the floor, on his knees, with his head between Mommy’s legs.

I didn’t understand what I was seeing and at the same time I knew, because once I had heard two of the big girls at school talking and I knew that something happened between men and women in bed at night—something that had to do with children—but I never imagined that it could be like this. Because it was supposed to be about the man, the big girls had whispered, he was supposed to lie on top of the woman, he was supposed to empty something inside of her. But this was all about Mommy, all of it, the entire room, the house, it was all about Mommy, the sounds she made growing louder, rising and falling.

I didn’t move a muscle, didn’t even blink, while my mouth filled with water, so much water that I was unable to swallow.

Because Mommy was lying there, with him, and it was all about her, about them. I hated the bed she was lying in, I hated the room, I hated the house. I hate you, I thought, while the black waves filled my mouth.

Maybe they heard the bathroom door or maybe they heard my retching, because when I had wiped away the last strings of slime and flushed for the final time, the house was silent, an attentive silence.

But nobody came to the door, nobody asked me how I was feeling. Maybe they were ashamed. They should be ashamed, I thought, that they could do something like that, be like that, have something like that between them.

I sat on the bathroom floor, shaking with the cold sweats, with the door locked, as small as one feels only after having vomited. I was all alone; Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t be coming with a bucket and a cold washcloth for my forehead. I could dry off my vomit by myself, I thought. I managed it, because they had all of this together, this big ugliness that tore them apart and then this other thing, which I had seen tonight. I couldn’t understand how they could behave like that, how he could gobble her up when he at the same time so clearly cursed everything she stood for.