“When will I come to marry?” Dimiter asked my father.
My father said: “Sunday we’ll speak to the priest. Next Sunday will be the wedding.”
Up I jumps. Two weeks and me married to the rat? What about Tomaso? Two days ago he had walked with me from the factory. At the bridge we stopped. “You’re my little sweetheart,” Tomaso said, soft like. His eyes was shiny like dew. I got red as a pepper and runned away. But in my mind I was thinking I loved Tomaso. Sure, I would not tell my father, for the Albanese hates the Wops.
So I remembered Tomaso’s eyes and voice. And I said: “I won’t marry this guy.” My father’s shoulders went up high. My mother got mad like diavolo. The rat was yellow like sick. My aunt said: “Maria’s just a young girl. Give her time for thinking over.”
“No thinking over,” my father hollered. “I give Dimiter my daughter. Two weeks will be the wedding.”
My mother laughed with her tongue out, Albanese way. More than ever she looked like our old nanny-goat. I stood higher than her and said to her face: “If I am a little girl I will stay home with the other kids and my father to feed me. If I am a woman and works for the bunch I will find my own fella, American way.”
My father made to hit me, but I runned upstairs and shut the door hard. My aunt and the rat went away. All day I put nothing in my mouth. I said no word.
Next day I set the patterns wrong. The boss sweared. In the evening Tomaso walked with me. “Why are you to cry?” he asked. His voice was like all his peoples was dead. I told him about the rat. He put his head high and his eyes looked like two pieces of fire in the dark. His lips got tight over his teeth and I seen him make hard fists.
Then he comed close. His arm was by my arm. In my mind I said I would like to put my head on his shoulder and my lips to his lips. But Albanese girls don’t do that way till they’re married.
“I hates Albanese! I hates Italians! I hates the old country!” said Tomaso. His voice was like a knife. “They makes their girls to marry any old guy. I likes American way—a fella and a girl to love and then marry, and other peoples stay out of it.”