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.