Sexta-feira, 25 de dezembro de 1998 · Friday, December 25, 1998

Feliz Natal.

Two weeks ago Seu Geraldo, who has the little travel agency on Ferry Street, went home to Valadares for Christmas with four suitcases, and three and a half of them were packages from people here for people there. Half of Valadares has someone in Newark or in Boston. In mine: money in an envelope, vitamins, a photo of me and Luís, and a housedress I made for Mãe, blue cotton with little white flowers, with a pocket on each side, because she always complains that housedresses have only one pocket and she has two hands.

Today Rosângela called. Mãe put on the dress for Christmas dinner. She says the pockets are perfect. She says it fits like I measured her yesterday. I measured her in 1991. A daughter's hands remember.

Domingo, 1º de novembro de 1998 · Sunday, November 1, 1998

Mãe is home from the hospital. Her heart is weaker and the diabetes is not controlled well, and she has new pills, many, in a box with the days of the week that Rosângela fills every Sunday. But she is home, in her own bed, with the window to the mango tree.

I talked with her tonight. Her voice is small. She asked about Luís and about my brides and if it is cold yet in Newark. Then she asked, "Quando você vem, filha?" When are you coming?

I said, "Logo, mãe." Soon.

It is a lie. She knows it is a lie. I know she knows. We let it sit there between Newark and Valadares like a piece of fabric on the table that nobody wants to cut. Then I asked for her blessing and she gave it, like always, and I sat on the kitchen floor a long time after the card ran out.

Domingo, 18 de outubro de 1998 · Sunday, October 18, 1998

Rosângela called Tuesday at six in the morning. When the phone rings at six in the morning from Brazil you already know. Mãe is in the hospital in Valadares. Her heart. The doctors say she is stable. Stable. I hate that word. A seam is stable. A mother is not a seam.

Wednesday I went to the lady who helps with papers at the church office, the one who helped us fill everything in April. I asked her, if I go now, only for two weeks, only to see my mother. She was very kind and very clear. If I leave the country now, my application is finished. And because I stayed so many years after my visa, when I try to come back they will say no, maybe for ten years. Even with a special permission to travel, for someone like me it is not safe. She held my hand when she said it.

Ten years. Mãe is sixty-nine.

So I did what I know how to do. I came home and sewed all night. A christening gown for a baby on the third floor, a long one, with pintucks on the front, forty pintucks, each one a straight line. You cannot sew a pintuck and think about anything else. That is why I chose them.

Quarta-feira, 16 de setembro de 1998 · Wednesday, September 16, 1998

My work permit came!

A little card, with my photo, the one with the right ear showing. For the first time since 1991 I have a paper from this country that says I am allowed to work. Seven years of sewing and I was always a little afraid. Now I am a little less afraid.

Monday I go to apply for a Social Security number. Then I will open a bank account with only my name on it. Luís says, "What, you are leaving me?" I said no, I only want to see my name printed on a check one time before I die.

This is not the green card. The green card is still far. This is only permission to wait while working. But I put it on the refrigerator under the magnet from Aparecida for one night, just to look at it, before I put it away in the folder.

Segunda-feira, 13 de julho de 1998 · Monday, July 13, 1998

France three, Brazil zero. In the final. I don't want to talk about it.

Okay, a little. For one month Ferry Street was green and yellow. Flags from every window, cars honking until two in the morning after every game. Portugal did not go to this World Cup, so the Portuguese cheered for Brazil too. Even Luís. He wore the yellow shirt I bought him and complained the whole time that it was too tight, but he wore it.

Yesterday afternoon the whole street watched the final in the bars and the bakeries and the living rooms with the windows open. After the second goal it was so quiet you could hear the trains at Penn Station. After the third, people started going home.

Today I hemmed eleven pairs of pants. Nothing is more calming than a pants hem. It is always the same. It never loses three to zero.

Sábado, 27 de junho de 1998 · Saturday, June 27, 1998

Wedding morning disaster, and I am proud, so I write it.

Today at eight o'clock the phone. A bride from Kearny, a dress she bought at a shop, only the hem and the bustle were mine. The zipper broke. Two hours before the church. Broke in the middle, the teeth opened like a mouth.

I took my kit and a taxi. There is no time to put in a new zipper, so I took out the zipper completely, and on both sides of the opening I sewed loops, little loops of satin cord, twenty on each side, fast fast fast. Then I laced her up the back with ivory ribbon, like a corset. Her mother was saying the rosary in the corner the whole time. Her sister was crying. The bride was drinking a glass of champagne at nine in the morning, which I did not stop.

Two hours. She went to the church on time. And the funny thing? Everybody said the lacing was the most beautiful part of the dress. Her mother asked me why I did not do it like that from the beginning.

Sábado, 16 de maio de 1998 · Saturday, May 16, 1998

A paper came from the INS. It says they received our papers. That is all it says. A receipt, with a number. I will learn this number by heart like a phone number.

Now we wait. How long? Nobody knows. The lady at the church office says Newark is slow, very slow, maybe one year, maybe two, maybe more. Priscila says in America everything is fast except the government and the line at the post office.

Meanwhile, the brides of May. Four this month. Two hems, one bustle, and one where the mother wanted sleeves and the bride did not, and they fought in two languages in my workroom until I made them both sit down and eat pão de queijo before I would pin one more pin. (No sleeves. The bride won. The bride always wins, but the mother pays, so the mother gets a little lace on the shoulders.) My hands hurt at night. Luís rubs them with the cream that smells like almonds and watches the Yankees.

Domingo, 26 de abril de 1998 · Sunday, April 26, 1998

We did it. Friday we brought the papers to the INS on Broad Street. We were in line outside the building at six in the morning, in the rain, with maybe two hundred people, every language in the world under umbrellas.

Let me say what is in the envelope, for anybody reading who has to do this too. The petition from Luís, to say I am his wife. My application to change my status to permanent resident. Because I came to this country with a visa, legally, and married a citizen, I can do this here, without leaving. The paper where Luís promises he can support me, with his tax returns, three years. A medical exam from a doctor that the INS chooses. The application for the work permit. Our marriage certificate, my birth certificate translated, my passport. And photos, special photos, where your face is turned a little so they can see the right ear. I don't know why the right ear. Maybe they know something about ears.

Priscila helped me fill everything in. We did it on the kitchen table over three Sundays, in pencil first and then in pen, like a pattern.

The man at the window took it all, stamped it, and said "Next." That's all. Two years of waiting for Luís and three Sundays of forms, and "Next."

Sexta-feira, 13 de março de 1998 · Friday, March 13, 1998

Luís is an American!

Yesterday at the federal courthouse in Newark, in a big room with a flag and a judge, with maybe a hundred people from everywhere: Portugal, Colombia, India, Poland, Egypt, Korea. He applied in 1996. Two years they made him wait. He wore his wedding suit. They all stood up and raised the right hand and said the oath together, a hundred accents, and my husband who is not a crying man cried.

After, we went to a Portuguese restaurant on Ferry Street with Wellington and Cida and Priscila and ate too much and Luís's cousin made a speech. Luís kept taking the certificate out of the envelope to look at it.

At home, in bed, he said, "Now I can ask for you." Now he can ask for me. I have been waiting seven years to be asked.

Sábado, 17 de janeiro de 1998 · Saturday, January 17, 1998

New year, new page. Priscila says the hearts were "too much, Tia." Now it is ivory, like silk. I like it. It is calm, like a fitting room.

Winter. Luís is laid off until March because in the cold you cannot pour concrete, it freezes before it cures. Every winter the same. He fixes things in the apartment and watches television and makes soup and walks around my workroom picking up pins with a magnet so I will not step on them. He is a very useful man in the winter and he drives me crazy.

So in winter I take everything. Pants hems. Sleeves. Zippers. Prom dresses for March. A coat for a man who wants the lining changed from brown to red. Twelve, fifteen jobs a week. We are fine. We have been through winters before.