§ 2
She was at the steaming stove of the restaurant at the usual hour the next morning. She stewed the same tzimmas, fried the same blintzee, stuffed the same miltz. But she was no longer the same. Her head was in a whirl with golden dreams of her visionary future.
All at once a scream rent the air.
“Koosh! where in goodness’ name is your head?” thundered her employer. “The blintzee burning in front of her nose, and she stands there like a yok with her eyes in the air!”
“Excuse me,” she mumbled in confusion, setting down the pan. “I was only thinking for a minute.”
“Thinking!” His greasy face purpled with rage. “Do I pay you to think or to cook? For what do I give you such wages? What’s the world coming to? Pfui! A cook, a greenhorn, a nothing—also me a thinker!”
Sophie’s eyes flamed.
“Maybe in Smyrna, from where you come, a cook is a nothing. In America everybody is a person.”
“Bolshevik!” he yelled. “Look only what fresh mouths the unions make from them! Y’understand me, in my restaurant one thing on a time: you cook or you think. If you wan’ to think, you’ll think outside.”
“All right, then; give me my wages!” she retorted, flaring up. “The Tsar is dead. In America cooks are also people.”