Domingo, 26 de setembro · Sunday, September 26, 1999

Yesterday Priscila and I went to see the church. I wanted to measure the aisle.

It is a little church in what used to be a shoe store, on a side street off Ferry. You can still see where the old sign was over the door. Inside, white walls, folding chairs in rows, a pulpit Marcos's father made from plywood and painted white, and a carpet runner down the middle that is maybe forty feet long. I walked it with my tape measure while Priscila sat in the front row and laughed at me. Twenty-two steps for a bride in heels. With the chapel train, in that room, the dress will fill the aisle almost to the second row behind her and then stop. Perfect. You don't want a train that is bigger than the church.

Then at home, the first fitting in the real satin. Priscila stood on the kitchen chair, the same chair Sandra stood on two years ago. Her mother Cida cried. I had pins in my mouth. Everything is how it should be.

Tonight I called Mãe and described it all to her, every seam, the sleeves, the buttons, the aisle. She listened without saying anything for a long time and then she said, "Você está lá por mim." You are there for me. I said, "Estou, mãe." I am.

The papers: still nothing. Three weeks to the wedding. Seven weeks to forty. I don't know how long to the green card. God knows. He is not telling the INS.

Quinta-feira, 23 de setembro · Thursday, September 23, 1999

I called the INS information number today. Fifty-five minutes on hold with the music, and then a recording that told me to check the date on my receipt and wait. I have checked the date on my receipt maybe one thousand times. I know it better than my own birthday.

The lady at the church office says Newark is doing interviews now for some people who filed in early 1998. We filed in April 1998. So maybe winter. Maybe spring. She says don't call anymore, it only makes you crazy, the letter will come when it comes. She is right. I will call again next month.

Domingo, 19 de setembro · Sunday, September 19, 1999

Today I sewed Mãe's lace into the dress.

Not where anyone will see. Inside, on the lining of the bodice, on the left side, over the heart. I washed it very gently first in cool water with a little baby shampoo, and it came out not white but a soft cream, the color of old piano keys. I laid it on the lining and sewed it all around by hand with ponto invisível, the blind stitch, one tiny stitch every few millimeters, so small the thread disappears.

My mother taught me that stitch. I was nine years old, sitting next to her at her Singer with the pedal, the kind you pump with your feet, in the kitchen in Valadares with the window open and the radio playing. She made me do the same hem over and over until you could not find my stitches. "If they can see it, filha, you did it wrong." She was so strict. I cried. I learned.

So now there is a piece of her wedding, from 1951, from Minas Gerais, inside her granddaughter's wedding, in Newark, New Jersey. Priscila will know it is there. The pastor will not. Mãe will not see it. But she made it happen from thousands of miles away with one envelope, and that is also a kind of being there.

Segunda-feira, 13 de setembro · Monday, September 13, 1999

Yesterday Mãe turned seventy.

Rosângela made a party in the backyard in Valadares, under the mango tree, with everybody: aunts, cousins, neighbors, the priest, the dog with the puppies. At four o'clock their time she called me and put the phone on the table in the middle of everything, and they all sang "Parabéns pra você," and I sang too, from my kitchen in Newark, but the line had a little delay, so I was always one second behind, and they could hear me coming after them like an echo, and everybody started laughing, and so did I, and so did Mãe.

Then they passed the phone around. Every aunt wanted to know when I am coming. I said the papers, the papers. One of them said, "You and your papers. Just come!" She doesn't understand. Nobody there understands. Only the ones here understand.

Mãe got the phone last. She said, "Filha, I am seventy years old and I am not in a hurry. I will wait for you." Then she said, "But don't make me wait for eighty."

Sábado, 4 de setembro · Saturday, September 4, 1999

Labor Day weekend and Luís is working overtime, a big foundation job before the cold. So I am alone with the bodice and the radio.

For the people who write me and ask how to say sewing words in Portuguese (three of you! from Massachusetts, from Florida, and one from Brazil who is laughing at me), here is my table today: alfinete, pin. Agulha, needle. Linha, thread. Dedal, thimble, which I never use and my mother would be ashamed. Tesoura, scissors, which nobody else in this house is allowed to touch, not even to open a package, Luís. Fita métrica, tape measure, around my neck always, like a doctor.

And the most important word: paciência. Patience. You don't need a translation for that one. You only need to have it.

Domingo, 29 de agosto · Sunday, August 29, 1999

The bride from Short Hills got married yesterday.

Her mother hired me to be there all morning with my kit, at the country club where they had the wedding, to dress her and fix anything. At seven o'clock the phone: the flower girl had been "practicing" with the train the night before and one of the bustle loops was torn out. I fixed it in the bridal room in five minutes. Then the hair people came, and the makeup people, and the photographer, and the mother, and everybody was telling the bride what to do and where to stand and how to smile.

At ten o'clock, when I was doing the last buttons, she looked at me in the mirror and said very quietly, "You're the only one who hasn't told me what to do all summer." I said, "Querida, you have enough people for that." And she started laughing, and then crying, and I had to fix her face with a tissue before the makeup lady saw.

I think I understand her now. All summer, every change, sleeves on, sleeves off, it was not about the dress. It was that the dress was the only thing that was hers to decide. So she decided it and undecided it. She hemmed and hawed. That is what the name of this page means, after all.

She looked beautiful. The bustle held through the whole reception. Her mother gave me an envelope with a very nice extra in it and a hug that smelled like expensive perfume.

Quarta-feira, 18 de agosto · Wednesday, August 18, 1999

Fifth fitting for the bride from Short Hills. The sleeves I put on in July, she wants off again. The beading she wanted on the bodice, now she wants only on the skirt. Her mother wants the beading on the bodice. They argued in English and I pinned in Portuguese under my breath.

My rule: never argue with a bride. Argue with the fabric. The fabric always tells the truth, and I can take it apart and do it again, and it does not cry.

After the second fitting, Luís had an idea. He said, "You charge them for the sewing. Now charge them for the changing of the mind." So now I charge by the hour for changes after the third fitting, and I told the mother so, very polite, in writing. She said, "Fine." Luís says it is the smartest business idea he ever had, and he is a man who pours concrete.

Ten days to the wedding. The sleeves are off. For now.

Domingo, 8 de agosto · Sunday, August 8, 1999

Priscila's muslin fitting. Ninety-four degrees in the apartment and the fan going and she stood on the kitchen chair in the white cotton, patiently, for two hours, while I pinned and marked and pinned. Every so often Luís put his head in and asked if we wanted guaraná, the Brazilian soda, and every time we said yes.

She has a long back, like my mother. I didn't know it until I measured. When I told her, she asked what that means. I said it means the lace on the back will look like water going down a window. She said, "Tia, you talk about dresses like poetry." I said no, poetry talks about things like dresses.

Tomorrow I take the muslin apart, very carefully, and it becomes the pattern. Then I don't sleep until October.

Sábado, 31 de julho · Saturday, July 31, 1999

Third fitting for the bride from Short Hills. Today she wanted sleeves. Little cap sleeves, in lace, like a picture she saw. Last week, no sleeves, never, sleeves are for old ladies. So today I pinned sleeves.

She stood in front of my mirror, which has a crack in one corner that I always say I'll fix, and turned left and right, left and right. Her mother sat on my sofa with her purse on her lap like she was afraid to put it down in this neighborhood. The bride said maybe. Then she said I don't know. Then she said maybe.

I have been doing this long enough. When a bride says "maybe" three times, it is not the sleeves.

Domingo, 18 de julho · Sunday, July 18, 1999

Since Friday night the little plane of John Kennedy's son is missing near Martha's Vineyard, with his wife and her sister. Every channel. I sewed with the TV on, which I never do.

I remember the photo of her wedding dress in 1996, in all the newspapers. A long slip of silk, cut on the bias, no lace, no beads, nothing. Every seamstress I know cut out that picture. It looks like nothing. It is the hardest thing in the world to make. On the bias, silk moves like water and every mistake shows. Only a very good hand makes something that simple.

Luís and I also married in 1996, in May, at City Hall. I wore a blue suit I made myself in two nights. The seamstress never has time for her own dress. I said a prayer for them tonight, for all the families waiting by a telephone.

Domingo, 11 de julho · Sunday, July 11, 1999

Yesterday Priscila and I went to New York for her fabric. The train, the Garment District, the stores to the ceiling, the men calling us "sweetheart." Priscila had never been with me before. She walked around with her mouth open.

We bought ivory satin, heavy, with a soft shine, not the shiny cheap kind, the kind that stands by itself. And for the sleeves and back, Chantilly lace, very fine, like a spider made it after a good night's sleep. Priscila fell in love with a different lace, twice the price. I talked to the man in Portuguese and Spanish and a little English for twenty minutes, and he came down, and then Priscila said she liked the first one better anyway. The man put his hands on his head. I laughed all the way to Penn Station.

Sábado, 3 de julho · Saturday, July 3, 1999

A new bride. From Short Hills, where the houses have lawns like golf. She found me from a bride she knows whose bustle I did last year. She bought her dress at a very fancy store in Manhattan for more money than Luís makes in two months, and she wants it changed. A lot.

She came with her mother up my stairs, which smell like Dona Fátima's cooking, into my workroom with Dona Maria and the pants waiting on hooks. I saw her look around. The little apartment, the Singer, the door on two sawhorses. I know that look. I stood up straight.

Then she put on the dress and I walked around her once with the fita métrica and told her three things about how it was made that the fancy store did not tell her, and her mother put down her purse. The wedding is August 28.