Henrietta the Seamstress, the one I nicknamed “Goiter,”

came to my grandmother’s brownstone to mend assorted rips

and tears accumulating in faded dresses, smocks.

She was an intimidating woman who smirked and scowled

and pinched my wrist whenever I’d squeeze past her chair,

and I wished she would take the work home in parcels

wrapped in paper bags from the A & P on 4th Ave. and 45th Street.

But no, she was to stay, and I was to be grilled with grinding regularity

again and again in front of the Singer treadle machine

that sputtered its cacophony into the dim stretch of hallway.

“Have you been saved, little girl?  Have you seen the light? 

Have you taken Him as your own personal Savior?”

she rasped every Thursday evening at 6 p.m. as she poked

my chest with her tailor’s chalk, and squinted menacingly

over the rims of her bifocals.  Every Thursday at 6:01 p.m.

I answered yes.  I lied.  I was 8 years old.

Henrietta “Goiter” was an ugly, wretched, tyrannical hag,

but by age 10, being convinced of my spiritual preeminence

as a convert of Billy Graham’s Madison Square Garden Crusade,

I spoke with such vehemence and superiority, bolts of lightning

shot from my index finger.  Righteousness blazed from my eyes.

She was finally silenced, struck dumb.  Glancing backwards,

over my shoulder, I saw her pedaling absently,

reduced to a slab of stone, a bulging body for hire,

chin stitched into swollen throat, mechanically hemming

in her own darkness, cowed by the blinding light

of my arrogance, my utter lack of grace