After finishing overtime work, Kei returned home. When he opened his mailbox, it was full of flyers. "I wish I could read Japanese," he thought as he looked through them one by one, and then he found a letter.
I hurried into the house, turned on the light, and saw the sender - it was from my mother! "What?! A letter from my mother? That's unusual!" I thought, and immediately opened it.
There was only one photo. "What? A cherry tree? Kaa-san is holding Eliza in the photo! Do they have cherry trees in Brazil?"
When I looked at the back of the photo, I saw the words "Don't come back! Do your best in Japan!" written in large letters, and I couldn't help but burst out laughing.
"That's typical of you, Mom! You didn't really listen to me! I never said I was going back to Brazil right away! I told you on the phone that I would work hard here for another two years and then come and pick you all up!!"
At that moment, I suddenly realized, "There's something I haven't told Kaa-san yet."
He said on the phone that he was coming to pick up everyone, but that "everyone" did not include his wife, Christina. He couldn't tell his mother.
In fact, Kay and Christina's marriage was rocky from the start, with the biggest crisis coming when Kay lost her job.
When Kay went to Japan to work, he decided to break up with Christina. He told his father, but kept it a secret from his mother. He decided not to tell the truth for a while. That's because when Kay lost his job and came to live with his parents with his wife and young daughter, his mother was happy to accept Christina. "My wife is quite something. She works as a nurse at a big hospital and makes a very good salary. What's more, she's very friendly and pretty, isn't she?" she would even brag to the neighbors.
Her mother was full of energy. When Christina worked the night shift, she always made lunch for her, took her first grandchild to and from nursery school, and even started to treat her husband more kindly than before.
One day, Kay accidentally overheard Christina talking on the phone.
"I'm sick of living in Japonezada 1 's house! I need to get out of here quickly!"
Kay wasn't surprised to hear that. She knew the person she was talking to was a trainee at the hospital where she worked. She'd seen him on Facebook. A young man with glasses, surrounded by female colleagues at the hospital's year-end party. Christina was holding her arm around him, looking affectionate. There was also a photo of her dancing with the man at the carnival. Christina, who couldn't live without Facebook, uploaded photos of him almost every day.
Since coming to Japan, Kei has tried to avoid Facebook as much as possible, but the other day he finally did. The title was "Sidney eu te amo 2 !" It was a selfie of Christina and a man wearing sunglasses under a blue sky.
In a twist of fate, Facebook was where Kay and Christina met, but it was also where they parted ways.
Fortunately for Kay, her mother had no interest in the Internet and had never even heard of Facebook.
I hung the photo my mother sent me in the entrance hall. Just thinking about being able to look at it and say, "I'm off!" and "I'm back!" filled my heart.
"One day I'm going to live in Japan with Toh-san, Kaa-san, and Eliza!" Kei decided in her heart. She was determined to work towards this goal.
Notes:
1. Derogatory term for "Japanese people"
2. "I love you, Sydney!"
© 2016 Laura Honda-Hasegawa
