I didn"t see the day. I didn"t see the night. I didn"t see the ocean. I didn"t see the sky. I only saw my lover in America, coming nearer and nearer to me, till I could feel his eyes bending on me so near that I got frightened and began to tremble. My heart ached so with the joy of his nearness that I quick drew back and turned away, and began to talk to the people that were pushing and crowding themselves on the deck.
Nu, I got to America.
Ten hours I pushed a machine in a shirt-waist factory, when I was yet lucky to get work. And always my head was drying up with saving and pinching and worrying to send home a little from the little I earned. All that my face saw all day long was girls and machines--and nothing else. And even when I came already home from work, I could only talk to the girls in the working-girls" boarding-house, or shut myself up in my dark, lonesome bedroom. No family, no friends, n.o.body to get me acquainted with n.o.body! The only men I saw were what pa.s.sed me by in the street and in cars.
"Is this "lovers" land"?" was calling in my heart. "Where are my dreams that were so real to me in the old country?"
Often in the middle of the work I felt like stopping all the machines and crying out to the world the heaviness that pressed on my heart. Sometimes when I walked in the street I felt like going over to the first man I met and cry out to him: "Oh, I"m so lonely! I"m so lonely!"
One day I read in the Jewish "Tageblatt" the advertis.e.m.e.nt from Zaretzky, the matchmaker. "What harm is it if I try my luck?"
I said to myself. "I can"t die away an old maid. Too much love burns in my heart to stand back like a stone and only see how other people are happy. I want to tear myself out from my deadness. I"m in a living grave. I"ve got to lift myself up. I have n.o.body to try for me, and maybe the matchmaker will help."
As I walked up Delancey Street to Mr. Zaretzky, the street was turning with me. I didn"t see the crowds. I didn"t see the pushcart peddlers with their bargains. I didn"t hear the noises or anything. My eyes were on the sky, praying: "Gottuniu! Send me only the little bit of luck!"
"Nu? Nu? What need you?" asked Mr. Zaretzky when I entered.
I got red with shame in the face the way he looked at me. I turned up my head. I was too proud to tell him for what I came. Before I walked in I thought to tell him everything. But when I looked on his face and saw his hard eyes, I couldn"t say a word. I stood like a yok unable to move my tongue. I went to the matchmaker with my heart, and I saw before me a stone. The stone was talking to me--but--but--he was a stone!
"Are you looking for a shidduch?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, proud, but crushed.
"You know I charge five dollars for the stepping in," he bargained.
It got cold by my heart. It wasn"t only to give him the five dollars, nearly a whole week"s wages, but his thick-skinness for being only after the money. But I couldn"t help myself--I was like in his fists hypnotized. And I gave him the five dollars.
I let myself go to the door, but he called me back.
"Wait, wait. Come in and sit down. I didn"t question you yet."
"About what?"
"I got to know how much money you got saved before I can introduce you to anybody."
"Oh--h--h! Is it only depending on the _money_?"
"Certainly. No move in this world without money," he said, taking a pinch of snuff in his black, hairy fingers and sniffing it up in his nose.
I glanced on his thick neck and greasy, red face. "And to him people come looking for love," I said to myself, shuddering. Oh, how it burned in my heart, but still I went on, "Can"t I get a man in America without money?"
He gave a look on me with his sharp eyes. Gottuniu! What a look! I thought I was sinking into the floor.
"There are plenty of _young_ girls with money that are begging themselves the men to take them. So what can you expect? _Not young, not lively, and without money, too?_ But, anyhow, I"ll see what I can do for you."
He took out a little book from his vest-pocket and looked through the names.
"What trade do you go on your hands?" he asked, turning to me. "Sometimes a dressmaker or a hairdresser that can help make a living for a man, maybe--"
I couldn"t hear any more. It got black before my eyes, my voice stopped inside of me.
"If you want to listen to sense from a friend, so I have a good match for you," he said, following me to the door. "I have on my list a widower with not more than five or six children. He has a grand business, a herring-stand on Hester Street. He don"t ask for no money, and he don"t make an objection if the girl is in years, so long as she knows how to cook well for him."
How I got myself back to my room I don"t know. But for two days and for two nights I lay still on my bed, unable to move. I looked around on my empty walls, thinking, thinking, "Where am I? Is this the world? Is this America?"
Suddenly I sprang up from bed. "What can come from pitying yourself?" I cried. "If the world kicks you down and makes nothing of you, you bounce yourself up and make something of yourself." A fire blazed up in me to rise over the world because I was downed by the world.
"Make a person of yourself," I said. "Begin to learn English.
Make yourself for an American if you want to live in America.
American girls don"t go to matchmakers. American girls don"t run after a man: if they don"t get a husband they don"t think the world is over; they turn their mind to something else.
"Wake up!" I said to myself. "You want love to come to you? Why don"t you give it out to other people? Love the women and children, everybody in the street and the shop. Love the rag-picker and the drunkard, the bad and the ugly. All those whom the world kicks down you pick up and press to your heart with love."
As I said this I felt wells of love that choked in me all my life flowing out of me and over me. A strange, wonderful light like a lover"s smile melted over me, and the sweetness of lover"s arms stole around me.
The first night I went to school I felt like falling on everybody"s neck and kissing them. I felt like kissing the books and the benches. It was such great happiness to learn to read and write the English words.
Because I started a few weeks after the beginning of the term, my teacher said I might stay after the cla.s.s to help me catch up with my back lessons. The minute I looked on him I felt that grand feeling: "Here is a person! Here is America!" His face just shined with high thoughts. There was such a beautiful light in his eyes that it warmed my heart to steal a look on him.
At first, when it came my turn to say something in the cla.s.s, I got so excited the words stuck and twisted in my mouth and I couldn"t give out my thoughts. But the teacher didn"t see my nervousness. He only saw that I had something to say, and he helped me say it. How or what he did I don"t know. I only felt his look of understanding flowing into me like draughts of air to one who is choking.
Long after I already felt free and easy to talk to him alone after the cla.s.s, I looked at all the books on his desk. "Oi weh!" I said to him, "if I only knew half of what is in your books, I couldn"t any more sit still in the chair like you. I"d fly in the air with the joy of so much knowledge."
"Why are you so eager for learning?" he asked me.
"Because I want to make a person of myself," I answered. "Since I got to work for low wages and I can"t be young any more, I"m burning to get among people where it"s not against a girl if she is in years and without money."
His hand went out to me. "I"ll help you," he said. "But you must first learn to get hold of yourself."
Such a beautiful kindness went out of his heart to me with his words! His voice, and the goodness that shone from his eyes, made me want to burst out crying, but I choked back my tears till I got home. And all night long I wept on my pillow: "Fool! What is the matter with you? Why are you crying?" But I said, "I can"t help it. He is so beautiful!"
My teacher was so much above me that he wasn"t a man to me at all. He was a G.o.d. His face lighted up the shop for me, and his voice sang itself in me everywhere I went. It was like healing medicine to the flaming fever within me to listen to his voice. And then I"d repeat to myself his words and live in them as if they were religion.
Often as I sat at the machine sewing the waists I"d forget what I was doing. I"d find myself dreaming in the air. "Ach!" I asked myself, "what was that beautifulness in his eyes that made the lowest n.o.body feel like a somebody? What was that about him that when his smile fell on me I felt lifted up to the sky away from all the coldness and the ugliness of the world? Gottunui!" I prayed, "if I could only always hold on to the light of high thoughts that shined from him. If I could only always hear in my heart the sound of his voice I would need nothing more in life. I would be happier than a bird in the air.
"Friend," I said to him once, "if you could but teach me how to get cold in the heart and clear in the head like you are!"
He only smiled at me and looked far away. His calmness was like the sureness of money in the bank. Then he turned and looked on me, and said: "I am not so cold in the heart and clear in the head as I make-believe. I am bound. I am a prisoner of convention."
"You make-believe--you bound?" I burst out. "You who do not have foreladies or bosses--you who do not have to sell yourself for wages--you who only work for love and truth--you a prisoner?"
"True, I do not have bosses just as you do," he said. "But still I am not free. I am bound by formal education and conventional traditions. Though you work in a shop, you are really freer than I. You are not repressed as I am by the fear and shame of feeling. You could teach me more than I could teach you. You could teach me how to be natural."
"I"m not so natural like you think," I said. "I"m afraid."
He smiled at me out of his eyes. "What are you afraid of?"
"I"m afraid of my heart," I said, trying to hold back the blood rushing to my face. "I"m burning to get calm and sensible like the born Americans. But how can I help it? My heart flies away from me like a wild bird. How can I learn to keep myself down on earth like the born Americans?"
"But I don"t want you to get down on earth like the Americans. That is just the beauty and the wonder of you. We Americans are too much on earth; we need more of your power to fly. If you would only know how much you can teach us Americans. You are the promise of the centuries to come. You are the heart, the creative pulse of America to be."