Domingo, 20 de junho de 1999 · Sunday, June 20, 1999

Last night was the Festa Junina at the hall of Marcos's church. In June in Brazil we have the festivals of São João, Santo Antônio and São Pedro, with bonfires and flags of colored paper on strings and everybody dressed like people from the countryside, straw hats and patches and freckles drawn on with eyeliner. Here in Newark there is no bonfire, the fire department would come. But there were the paper flags, and canjica, which is hominy cooked with milk and cinnamon, and pamonha, and quentão, which is hot ginger punch, and in a Baptist church hall it has no cachaça in it, so it is only quentinho, only a little warm.

Priscila and Marcos danced the quadrilha with everybody, the square dance, with the caller shouting "Olha a chuva!" (look, the rain!) and everybody running under the arch of arms, and "É mentira!" (it's a lie!) and everybody running back. Luís does not know the quadrilha. He danced it anyway, always in the wrong direction, very happy.

I watched Priscila laughing with her hair coming down and I thought: October. Four months. The dress is still only drawings on my table.

Domingo, 23 de maio de 1999 · Sunday, May 23, 1999

The brides of spring. Five in May. Every Saturday a wedding and every weekday a fitting, and some nights I am at the machine until one and Luís comes and turns off the lamp over my head without a word, which is how he says go to bed.

My hands hurt. The right thumb especially, from the pins. Tonight Luís made dinner, bacalhau with potatoes and onions and olive oil and hard-boiled eggs, the way his mother made it, and would not let me in the kitchen. He says Brazilians put too much in everything. I say Portuguese put too much olive oil in everything. We both had seconds.

And a surprise. Seu Geraldo came back from Valadares on Thursday and brought me an envelope from Mãe. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, a strip of lace, maybe forty centimeters, yellow with age, soft as a baby's hair. A note in her shaky handwriting: "From my veil, 1951. For Priscila's dress. Something old." She has saved it forty-eight years in a drawer. I held it up to the window and cried and did not care who saw.

Sábado, 8 de maio de 1999 · Saturday, May 8, 1999

Tomorrow is Mother's Day, here and in Brazil both, the second Sunday of May. I called today because tomorrow the lines to Brazil are impossible, everybody in the Ironbound is calling Minas at the same time.

Good news. Mãe is walking to the corner and back every morning with Rosângela holding her arm. The new doctor changed her pills and her legs are less swollen. She sounded like herself. She told me the mango tree is resting this year, and the neighbor's dog had puppies under her porch, and she is going to keep one, and Rosângela says absolutely not.

She did not ask when I am coming. I think Rosângela told her not to. I don't know which is worse.

Domingo, 4 de abril de 1999 · Sunday, April 4, 1999

Páscoa. Easter. At Wellington's everybody got chocolate eggs, the big Brazilian ones wrapped in shiny paper with a toy inside, that the Brazilian store on Ferry Street sells for a fortune because they come from home.

After lunch Priscila brought a folder. Pictures cut from bride magazines, twenty, thirty pictures. This neckline from this one, this skirt from that one, these sleeves, no, these. It is the most normal thing in the world. Every bride has a folder.

But there is one rule. Marcos's church is small, and the pastor asks that the bride's shoulders be covered in the sanctuary. Priscila was afraid I would be disappointed. I said, querida, covered shoulders are a gift to a seamstress. Anybody can make a strapless. Sleeves are where you show what you know.

We decided: ivory satin, a fitted bodice, a full skirt, and sleeves and a high back in lace, very fine, so you see the skin through it but it is covered. The pastor will be happy. The bride will be beautiful. The seamstress will not sleep in September.

Domingo, 28 de março de 1999 · Sunday, March 28, 1999

Priscila is engaged!

Marcos is from Espírito Santo, he came in 1995, he hangs sheetrock, and he is very serious and very polite and goes to a little Brazilian Baptist church that meets in what used to be a shoe store. Two weeks ago he went to Wellington and asked for permission, the old way, and my brother, who has been waiting for this with a speech ready for two years, forgot the whole speech and just hugged him.

Yesterday the party, in Wellington's basement, with a churrasco on the little grill out the back door in the cold and fifty people inside eating picanha and farofa and dancing to pagode. The wedding will be Saturday, October 16, at Marcos's church.

At the end of the party Priscila took me upstairs to the kitchen where it was quiet and said, "Tia. Will you make my dress?"

I have been making her clothes since she was five. Her first communion dress, her fifteen-year party dress, her graduation. Of course I will make her dress. I said yes and then I had to sit down on the step stool. She said, "Tia, why are you crying, it's only a dress." Only a dress. She is twenty-two and she thinks there is such a thing as only a dress.

Quinta-feira, 25 de fevereiro de 1999 · Thursday, February 25, 1999

Yesterday, the fingerprints.

I did not sleep the night before. I know it is normal. Everybody who asks for papers gives fingerprints. The lady at the church office told me three times. But there is a place in you that has been afraid for eight years of a uniform, and that place does not listen to the lady at the church office.

Luís took the morning off to come with me. A guard, a metal detector, a waiting room with plastic chairs and a machine that gives you a number like at the bakery. Many families. A baby asleep on his father's chest. Everybody holding the same letter.

When my number came a young woman took my hand and did each finger, one by one, rolling, and then four together, and then the thumbs. She held my hand very professionally, like a nurse. She said, "Relax your hand, let me do the work." I said, "I am a seamstress, my hands never relax." She laughed and said, "My grandmother sews. Same thing."

Ten minutes. Then outside, and the cold, and Luís holding the door of the car. Now my fingers are in Washington. The rest of me is here, waiting.

Domingo, 14 de fevereiro de 1999 · Sunday, February 14, 1999

Carnaval weekend. Last night there was a Brazilian party at a hall in the Ironbound with a samba band, and Priscila and Marcos went, and Luís and I went for one hour to be young and then came home to be old with our feet in hot water.

And today here is Valentine's Day. In Brazil our day for sweethearts is June 12, Dia dos Namorados. So Luís, who is not stupid, gives me flowers twice a year. Today, red carnations and a card in Portuguese from Portugal, with the spelling all wrong for Brazil. I will keep it forever.

Quinta-feira, 11 de fevereiro de 1999 · Thursday, February 11, 1999

A letter from the INS. Not the interview, not the green card. An appointment for fingerprints, Wednesday, February 24, at nine in the morning. Bring this letter. Bring identification. Do not be late.

Ten months after we brought the envelope. Priscila says it means we are moving. Luís says it means they have my folder in their hands. I say it means I have two weeks to be nervous, and I am very good at being nervous, I am a professional.

Sábado, 16 de janeiro de 1999 · Saturday, January 16, 1999

Snow. The whole Ironbound is white and quiet and the buses are slow. Luís is home again for the winter. He is making caldo verde, the Portuguese soup with kale and chouriço, and the windows are foggy.

The spring brides are calling already. I have a notebook where I write every bride, her date, her measurements, what she wants and what she thinks she wants, which are not always the same. May is already almost full. When I started I took every job. Now I am learning to say, "I am sorry, that Saturday I already have two." Priscila says that is called being successful. It feels like being tired in advance.

I wrote Mãe a letter this week, a real one on paper, three pages. Stamps went up this week, the post office lady told me. I put extra. I always put extra on a letter to Mãe. I don't want it to stop somewhere in the middle of the ocean because of a few cents.