前のエピソード――第5話 August, 1984 -- Chapter 5 --

　　　It was after 3:30 a.m. already. The air outside Sakura’s building was still very damp. Few people were seen on the street right and left.

　　　Across the street, a taxi was waiting for Lisa who, in a simple white T-shirt and blue jeans, was no longer showing any hint of her being mama at the saloon. Hving waved to me, she crossed the street with leisurely steps toward the taxi and, in an accustomed manner, looked into its driver seat through the open window of the front door. The driver seemed asleep. Nodding deep several times to herself, Lisa moved toward the front portion of the cab, placed her both hands on the hood, and suddenly started pushing the hood up and down. Being used to such means of waking him up by Lisa, perhaps, the driver woke up without any body-language of surprise at all and seated himself up behind the wheel, shaking his head, supposedly with a wry grin.

　　　‘Lisa has her own house to go back to. She has her own family waiting for her.' So was I thinking, while seeing off her taxi disappearing to M. H. Del Pilar Street.

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　　　At that time of my life, I was forced to live away from my own two daughters, Theresa and Yuki. They were left in care of my parents living in Bulacan Province. I was able to see them only on my off days that came every two weeks.

　　　Well, geographically speaking, Bulacan Province is located right next to Metro Manila to the north. So, it is not very far from Ermita district where Sakura was put up. However, it was still quite far for me to commute between these two places every day, especially when the time and fares I had to spend for the commuting were considered.

　　　All of my five sisters were married and lived in Bulacan too. So, they were unable to offer me any better accommodation than my parents. All they could do for me was to kindly help the parents take care of my daughters in their small rented house, once in a while.

　　　How about my only brother, Benjamin, who lived in an apartment in Caloocan then? The city is located right on the commuting route between the town our parents lived and the center of Manila city. So, certainly, it would have been much easier for me to commute to Sakura from his apartment than from our parentsEhouse. But I was not sure if his wife would have accepted my two daughters and me into her small apartment where her own mother was already in.

　　　Well, for his tuition, I once had given some portion of my money I had earned in Jaoan to the older brother of mine studying in a college along with the classmates a few years younger than he. But that had happened long time before. And no one in our family took my contribution to him being special. Among others, he was only son of our family. So, it had been quite natural for us -an average Filipino family- to try to congregate all family resources available for its only son’s higher education. As a matter of fact, I was not the only one who had helped him. All my sisters, I believed, had contributed to him some money, more or less. Besides, the brother himself, like anyone else, had a heavy enough burden on his shoulders to make his own family’s living. If he had found a job in the area of mass media where he could have made the most of what he had learned in college, he would have been a better help for me. But as a mere inventory manager at a bookstore in Quiapo, there seemed to be nothing he could do for me, even if he really wanted to.

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　　　It had passed almost five years already since Cesar and I had rented a small room in Paco as our first dwelling:

　　　Then, Cesar was somehow holding on to his job as a part-time waiter at a restaurant in a high-class hotel in the center of Makati city. And I believed such a fact was already near-miracle for a young man like him who not only had arrived in Metro Manila from Davao, Mindanao, not so long before but also had no family members or relatives near him, who could have helped him.

　　　I was working for a boutique in Harrison Plaza Shopping Center. It had been Lisa who, as one of the best customers of the boutique, had strongly recommended its owner to hire me. ‘I’m very happy to see you being so pleased, Trina. She had told me, responding to my deep appreciation. ‘I just wanted to do something I could do for you, as a matchmaker between you and Cesar.'

　　　　Being allowed to work on a piece rate wage, which would pay me fifteen percent of the sale prices the owner permitted me to offer customers, I earned a little more than the amount other store clerks gained as regular salaries. ..To tell the truth, however, the amount I was earning in those days could barely pay the rent for our room, as well as buy some food and small daily necessities, after another portion of it had been spared for my parents.

　　　Nevertheless, I was as happy as Cesar, who had resumed his study in the college as a fulltime student, using all his income earned as a part-time waiter for his tuition.

　　　At that particular period of time, our life was filled with a great hope for the brighter future.

　　　So believed we, vaguely.

　　　Cesar was twenty-one years old. And I nineteen.

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　　　Such happy days had not lasted very long:

　　　Our life suddenly began to look very different from what we had hoped for, right after the day my pregnancy was confirmed. And by the time we moved to a little bigger room in Santa Ana so that all of us could live together with some ease, we had become clearly aware that we no longer had been in a situation we could still be very hopeful for our future life, financially speaking.

　　　As my delivery approached, I quit my job, and Cesar went back to his old fulltime job.

　　　Theresa was born. I was occupied all day in taking care of the first baby of mine.

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　　　Plenty of things had happened to us one after another then:

　　　To begin with, there was a big change of mind in Cesar. One day, without any warning, he uttered his frustration, saying that he had decided to give up his long-time dream of gaining a bachelor degree on civil engineering. That meant that he would abandon his dream to work as a civil engineer someday in Saudi Arabia prospering by its oil production.

　　　Cesar was deeply depressed. His words sounded to me very ominous. Nonetheless, I did not oppose his decision. As a matter of fact, we no longer had any more money to spare for his tuition. I just let my anxiety about him go past by deeming of his decision as his positive intention to make our life somewhat better momentarily by devoting himself to his fulltime job for a while, that is, to think of his own future later on. There was nothing else I could do for the matter.

　　　Cesar started looking for his second job. But his time passed in vain. Available jobs were scarce anywhere in Metro Manila, in any industry field. And as his hope got diminishing, he became mentally weary more and more. We had to find the way to turn our life better by some means or other.

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　　　It had been Lisa, once again, who kindly had saved us:

　　　What a different world it looked!

　　　Soon Cesar and I were filled with a new type of hope we had never had before that I might have a chance to work in Japan -a chance to earn an unthinkable, huge amount of money- in the future not too far away.

　　　Cesar’s resurrecting chance to return to his college became one of our most favorite topics. At that time, our life was much more hopeful than any other previous period of time.

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　　　‘Too many unpredictable things have happened to me,' I thought, ‘even since then.'

　　　‘Or?' I was stuck in the middle of the narrow stairs to the dormitory upstairs, struggling with my big, heavy bag. ‘Are they still to come? In the forms more difficult for me to handle?'