“Nu, Zalmon?” said my mother, twisting my father around to what I wanted. “It’s not so far from sense what Sara Reisel is saying. In Savel, without a dowry, she had no chance to get a man, and if we got to wait much longer she will be too old to get one anywhere.”
“But from where can we get together the fifty rubles?” asked my father. “Why don’t it will itself in you to give your daughter the moon?”
I could no more think on how to get the money than they. But I was so dying to go, I felt I could draw the money out from the sky.
One night I could not fall asleep. I lay in the darkness and stillness, my wild, beating heart on fire with dreams of my lover. I put out my hungry hands and prayed to my lover through the darkness: “Oh, love, love! How can I get the fifty rubles to come to you?”
In the morning I got up like one choking for air. We were sitting down to eat breakfast, but I couldn’t taste nothing. I felt my head drop into my hands from weakness.
“Why don’t you try to eat something?” begged my mother, going over to me.
“Eat?” I cried, jumping up like one mad. “How can I eat? How can I sleep? How can I breathe in this deadness? I want to go to America. I must go, and I will go!”
My mother began wringing her hands. “Oi weh! Mine heart! The knife is on our neck. The landlord is hollering for the unpaid rent, and it wills itself in you America?”
“Are you out of your head?” cried my father.
“What are you dreaming of golden hills on the sky? How can we get together the fifty rubles for a ticket?”