I went to pick up my clothes at the tailor’s. Manuel, who works

in the front, dismissed me with a flick of his hand; “We still gotta

press the hems, mami; come back in ten.”

Instead I waited in a corner and watched as Manuel handled with

stunning diplomacy the demands of his customers. A woman with the

haircut and comportment of a man dumped the contents of a garbage

bag onto the counter, selected a red garment from the tangle, and

disappeared into a changing room. She emerged a minute later wearing

a long cotton shirtdress, clutching it tighter behind her back.

“I just love this. Make it shorter – I’ve lost so much weight that it’s gotten too

long and now I’m going to break my neck if I step on it. And can you take it

in? I knew I had to save it.” She scanned the tailor’s shop and made eye

contact with different people as she made these announcements. She

looked at me. “I lost seventy pounds but I would have stopped at fifty if I knew

what it would cost me in alterations.”

Towards the back of the shop I could see a teenager in a wifebeater and baseball

cap ironing down the seams of my newly hemmed dresses. He held up a very

short dress, looked at it, then me.

Manuel, crouching at his customer’s feet, chalked a white line along the hem.

“This good?”

She tried to examine his work and remain upright at the same time; she

gyrated a bit and then gave up. “I trust you. Do what looks good. I just don’t want

to break my neck.”

Next she wanted the ties on the sides of the dress cut off. “Can you get rid

of these? I don’t need ‘em. I don’t need ‘em, right?” In lieu of an answer, Manuel

snipped them off and handed them to her.

The teenager in the back raised his eyebrows at a foot-long leather skirt as he

laid it across the ironing board.

She swung the severed ties like a lasso. “Can I do anything with these?” No one

responded. “What can I use them for?” Manuel offered to throw them away for her.

“Give me a second, let me think if I need them. Because,” she explained, turned

towards me, “when they’re gone, they’re gone.”

My tiny garments were delivered in a tidy pile by the smirking teenager.

Index finger