I smile. “Oh. That explains it. And what does your dad do?”
We walk slowly, looking around like the many couples surrounding us. Except we are not a couple, and we never will be. And we are not arguing over cabinets and carpets or running after yelling children.
A little white-haired boy grabs my long skirt, hiding from his big sister. I smile at him and politely detangle myself as the dad comes running down the aisle, shouting at his wife, “We are not getting those!” I look back and see her dump something in their cart, saying, “Yes, we are!”
“My dad is a physics professor,” Erik answers my question with serenity, as if the lives of families and partners are not being built—or crumbling—all around us.
“Do your parents live in Copenhagen?” I ask as we enter the children’s department, moving with the flow. Erik is a private person, but if we’re living together, I want to know more about him.
“No, they live in Jutland, near Aarhus. Do you know where that is?”
I nod. I studied Denmark’s geography before coming, and Aarhus is the second biggest city. “I’ve seen some pictures. It looks cute there.”
He agrees, smiling. “I was born there and moved to Copenhagen when I started my bachelor’s.”
“Do you have any siblings?”
“A younger sister who lives in Amsterdam.” For a moment, I think he won’t ask about my family, but when we turn the next corner, entering the area with the bedrooms, he says, “What about you?”
“I have a big, noisy family,” I tell him, smiling. “My mom is a hairdresser, my dad is a high school gym teacher. I have a brother three years younger than me who lives in Rio, a grandpa, two aunts, four uncles, and too many cousins.”
As if my family had been listening, ready to make a dramatic appearance, my phone rings. I look at the time—7:30 p.m. In Brasília, 2:30 p.m. It’s my mom’s usual time to call, when she takes a break in the salon.
I reject the video call. I’m writing her a message to say I’m not home when she calls again. I show the phone to Erik: Call from Mãe over a selfie of my mom smiling at the camera with her 7.4 Copper Gold Blond short bob. I suggested it. The color matches perfectly with her warm brown eyes.
“See?” I shake the vibrating phone in front of him, laughing because this is so typical of Rosana Carvalho, calling and calling again. “This is my family. They think I must answer their calls no matter what I’m doing, because I owe them now that I moved across the ocean.”
“I can see where you got it from. The persistence.” He eyes me, serious in his sarcasm, but it gets a smile out of me.
I answer the call because my mom won’t stop disturbing me. I put on headphones so the whole store won’t have to hear her say, “Sol, minha filha! Já estava ficando preocupada!” Which directly translated means, “Sol, my daughter, I was getting worried!”
“Oi, Mãe,” I say with a half smile and move away from the frame for her to see that I’m in a store. “I’m here to buy a bed, so I can’t talk right now,” I say in Portuguese. My mom speaks zero English.
“A bed? Did you find an apartment?” Her voice is so loud I suspect Erik can hear it through my headphones. I lower the volume.
“Yes. I moved in today.”
“And you didn’t think to tell us?” She sounds outraged. If I’d found an apartment in Brasília, or anywhere else in Brazil, she’d be there as fast as public transportation would allow, with as many bags of food and utensils as she could carry. Denying her that, or even the knowledge that I moved, is to my mom like excluding her from my life, and she wants to be involved.
“Sorry, Mom. It all happened so fast, and I didn’t want to jinx it. I was going to tell you tomorrow when I was settled.”
Mom nods slowly. “It’s fine. I understand.”
And from one second to the next, the indignation is gone, replaced by her typical motherly enthusiasm—which goes hand in hand with her instinct to tell the world what her daughter has accomplished.
“Girls, Sol found an apartment!” she shouts to the women behind her—some having their nails done, others with caps on their heads. One of my mom’s loyal customers, Edna, a divorced sixty-five-year-old lady who goes to the salon every other week to straighten her hair or dye her roots, lowers the beauty magazine she is reading and waves at the screen.
“Hey, Sol! Congratulations, dear!”
“Let’s not celebrate yet!” Mom says. “Sol, you need to give us some details.”
I bite my lip. Oh dear. I didn’t want to have this conversation in the middle of a home goods store.
“I’ll call you when I get home, okay? I have to—”
“Ah, Sol, now you’ll tell us all about it!” My cousin that works at the salon, Luana, takes the phone out of my mom’s hand and sits with it on the couch. Other women gather around her, including Luana’s younger sister and my former roommate, Mariana, my mom, and my teenage cousin, Bruna, who is often there doing her homework while waiting for Tio Antônio to pick her up after work.
“Do you live alone, Sol?” Bruna asks me. She is sixteen and already dreaming of the day she can leave her parents’ house. Like me, Bruna can’t stand crowded homes, especially when the people living in them have little care for privacy and introversion. I should feel lucky that Erik is so mindful about personal space.
“Do you, Sol?” someone is asking me. Mariana, maybe.
“How much do you pay? Is it near the city center?” a customer I don’t recognize asks.
“Copenhagen must be a dream city!” Another unknown voice.
“Sol, you don’t live alone, do you?” says Edna.
“The person I live with is nice,” I say, taking a quick glimpse at Erik. He is a few steps ahead of me, looking at some boxes on a shelf.
“Is she a student? What is her name?” Mom asks.
I used the word “person” to avoid gender, which is a hard thing in my language. But I can’t escape now. I don’t lie to my family.
“Erik. No, he’s not a student.”
WRONG ANSWER, WRONG ANSWER—their stares scream at me like a wailing siren. My face becomes hot.
“Are you living with a man?” My mom is literally shouting now. While her expression is shocked and disapproving, the other women have more amused reactions. Some laugh, some clap, and others tap each other as if they have already made a bet about me. I roll my eyes.
