The Seamstress Read Online Free PDF

with brick on the outside and finished walls on the inside, plastered and painted with whitewash. When people visited, they held their hands to the walls’ powdery surface, amazed by this extravagance. Aunt Sofia had also installed an outhouse in the back, complete with a wooden door and a clay-lined cavity in the dirt floor. People said that she was playing at being rich, that she spoiled her young nieces with such luxuries. Their aunt was the town’s best seamstress. There were other women who sewed but, according to Aunt Sofia, they were not professionals; they had clumsy stitching and they didn’t reinforce the seams of pants or know how to tailor a gentleman’s dress shirt. Aunt Sofia’s sewing machine—a hand-operated Singer with a round crank and a wooden base—was ancient. The machine’s hand crank had rusted and grown hard to turn, the needle had dulled, and the lever that popped the foot of the sewing needle up and down often stuck. But Aunt Sofia insisted that it was not the sewing machine that made a seamstress. A good seamstress had to pay attention to detail, to recognize the shape of people’s bodies and understand how different fabrics would fall or cling to that shape, to be efficient with these fabrics, never cutting too much or too little, and finally, once a cloth was cut and set under her machine’s needle, she could not waver, she could not hesitate. A good seamstress had to be decisive.
    When they were very young, Aunt Sofia made them cut out doll’s clothes from butcher paper and then trace the patterns onto scraps of real cloth. She taught them how to stitch by hand first, which had been easier for Luzia, and then showed them how to operate the sewing machine. The hand-cranked machine had been a challenge for Emília’s sister. Luzia’s good arm ran the crank while her petrified arm moved the cloth through the needle. Because her arm would not bend, Luzia had to move her whole upper body in order to keep the cloth from slipping and to keep the stitches straight. Most people hired Aunt Sofia, Emília, and Luzia to sew their children’s First Communion gowns, their daughters’ wedding dresses, their fathers’ death suits, but these were rare and solemn occasions. Their main clients were the colonel and his wife, Dona Conceição.
    Emília adored sewing at the colonel’s house. She loved eating the sugared guava cakes that the maid brought into the sewing room as a snack. She loved the strong smell of floor wax, the sounds of Dona Conceição’s heels clicking on the black-and-white tiles, the grandfather clock’s deep chiming in the front hall. The colonel’s ceiling was covered with plaster and paint, which hid the orange roof tiles from view. It was smooth and white, like the frosted top of a cake.
    Dona Conceição had recently purchased a state-of-the-art machine: a pedal-operated Singer. The machine was set on top of a heavy wooden base with iron legs. It had floral designs engraved on its shining, silver face. It had taken both of the colonel’s pack mules to carry the Singer up the winding mountain trail into town. Its operation was much more complicated than Aunt Sofia’s ancient, hand-operated machine. Because of this, the Singer Company shipped instructors across Brazil and offered seven free lessons with each purchase. Dona Conceição insisted Emília and Luzia take them. Luzia didn’t appreciate the lessons, but Emília did. They’d introduced her to Professor Célio, who, she hoped, would introduce her to the world.
    On lesson days, Emília shortened her prayers to Santo Antônio so that she could wash her hair. It had to be completely dry before Aunt Sofia allowed her out of the house. Her aunt believed in the perils of wet hair—it caused fevers, terrible illness, even deformity. When they were children, Aunt Sofia often repeated the story of a rebellious little girl who went outdoors with wet hair. The wind hit her and made her crooked for the rest of her life,