Chapter 26
Ramon Torres closed the textbook and then walked over to the bed in the alcove of his basement apartment and flopped down on it.
He was exhausted, his brain drained, and he prayed to make it through the next four months and earn his degree, then take the entire summer off to mentally recuperate before enrolling in medical school.
The apartment had become his sanctuary, where he wouldn’t have to interact with members of his family until it was time for him to eat.
He’d asked his father if he could move out of his bedroom and into the basement, because he needed a quiet place to study.
He had to maintain a certain grade average, because he didn’t want to jeopardize losing his scholarship.
Although there was more room in the house than in their Upper West Side apartment, his brothers and sisters ran down hallways and in and out of rooms as if they were playing in Central Park.
Once he threatened to move out and into residences belonging to Columbia University, Enrique agreed to let him move into the finished basement he’d planned to use as a rental.
His parents had worked two jobs for two years to save enough to purchase a two-family house in a quiet neighborhood along a tree-lined Bronx street.
Ray’s full scholarship to an Ivy League college was a financial windfall for his parents.
He’d made the Dean’s list every semester and was scheduled to graduate with honors.
He’d just closed his eyes when he registered tapping on the door leading into the backyard. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he went to see who it was. Peering through the security eye, he recognized his girlfriend.
Ray opened the door and went completely still when he saw her face. She’d been crying. She fell against his chest, his arms going around her body. He closed the door and led her over to his bed.
“What’s the matter?” Ray cradled the back of her head. “Come on, baby. Talk to me.”
“I’m … I’m pregnant,” she sobbed.
Ray went still, as if he’d been jolted by a bolt of electricity. “What!” She couldn’t be. He’d always used a condom whenever they slept together.
Moisture spiked her lashes as she looked up at him. “I’m having your baby.”
Ray shook his head. “No, Micky, that’s not possible. Every time we slept together, you know I always used a condom.”
Migdalia, or Micky to her family and friends, had become an obsession for Ray the first they shared a bed and, he’d found himself addicted to her. She’d become his drug of choice. And she hadn’t been his first addiction. That was sex.
It was with the onset of puberty when he’d begun masturbating several times a day, but it hadn’t been enough to quell the urges that would happen spontaneously whenever he saw a woman he found physically attractive.
Things changed for him when he met Migdalia Hernandez, who was working at a city hospital while studying to become a dietitian.
She was the first girl with whom he’d been able to discuss politics and current events.
They’d talked about the Vietnam War, and how drugs were ravaging and destroying Black and Spanish neighborhoods.
When he first asked her out, she’d admitted she was seeing a boy who was very jealous, but eventually she agreed to come to his house whenever she wasn’t working.
She would come when his family had settled in for the night and stay with him until dawn.
He never knew when she was coming, so he installed a telephone in his apartment so she could call before coming over.
Once they begun having sex, after she’d broken up with her boyfriend, Ray found himself in over his head, because he found himself craving Micky like an addict looking for his next fix.
“It is possible, because this baby inside of me is yours and you have to marry me.”
Ray shook his head. “If the baby you claim is mine, then we’ll wait until after it’s born to determine the paternity. Meanwhile, get it out of your head that I’m going to marry you.”
Micky sucked in her breath, held it, then slowly let it out. “I’m good enough to sleep with but not good enough to become your wife. Thank you, Ramon Torres, for letting me know what type of man I fell in love with.”
She was up and out the door before Ray could bring his thoughts into any semblance of order.
He buried his face in his hands, unable to believe what had just transpired.
They’d slept together less than a half dozen times, and there wasn’t a time when he hadn’t used a condom.
Maybe her menses was late and she’d assumed she was pregnant.
There were so many scenarios crowding his head that Ray felt like screaming at the top of his lungs to release his frustration.
The next day was the first Saturday of the month and his scheduled breakfast meeting with Frankie and Ray. He would wait and talk to his friends about his dilemma.
“We’ll be graduating in another four months, so why do you look so down in the dumps?” Frankie asked Ray.
Ray forced a smile. His boyhood friend was right.
It was 1973, and four years had gone by faster than he’d expected it would.
Many things had happened during that time.
Student protests at Kent State University in Ohio resulted in four students losing their lives and nine others wounded when the National Guard opened fire on them.
There was a Constitutional Amendment lowering the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen.
Newspaper headlines blared with the news that four men had been arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office building in Washington, DC.
And in the 1972 November election, incumbent President Richard M.
Nixon had beat his Democratic challenger George McGovern, winning by a lopsided victory of five hundred twenty electoral college votes to McGovern’s seventeen.
The Vietnam War had ended in January, and he, Frankie, and Kenny had miraculously escaped the draft.
The war was over, but at the expense of more than 58,000 dead American soldiers.
“I have a dilemma.”
Kenny ran a hand over his bearded face. “We all have dilemmas at one time or another.”
“Not the one I’m facing,” Ray said.
“Talk to us,” Frankie urged.
“How the hell can I support a wife when I’m still in college and living in my parents’ house?”
Kenny adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Why are you talking about marriage when you’ve never mentioned having a girlfriend?”
Ray told his friends about Migdalia and that she was carrying his baby. “I don’t know if she’s telling me the truth, but every time I slept with her, I used a rubber.”
Frankie leaned closer. “How long have you been sleeping with her?”
“Not long. I met her around Christmastime, and we didn’t begin sleeping together until a couple of months ago, and I doubt if we’ve been together more than six times.”
“Well, it only takes one time, Ray,” Frankie said quietly.
“She’s asking that you marry her?” Kenny asked. Ray nodded. “Well, brother, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Have you offered to give her money for an abortion?” Frankie asked. “In case she’s not aware of it, abortions are now legal in this country.”
Ray closed his eyes. Earlier that year, the US Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that women could not be prevented by a state in having an abortion in the first six months of her pregnancy. “No. And if she is having a baby, I can’t begin to think of her killing it.”
“A baby or your baby?” Kenny questioned. “Something tells me you don’t believe the baby is yours.”
Ray combed his fingers through his curly hair. “I don’t want to believe it’s mine. I told her I’m willing to wait until after she has the kid to determine whether it is mine or someone else’s.”
“Was she seeing someone else?” Frankie asked Ray.
“Initially she wouldn’t go out with me because she said she had a jealous boyfriend, then everything changed when she’d come to my place at night just to talk. The first time she let me make love to her, I figured she’d broken up with him.”
Kenny covered his face as he shook his head. “Ramon, were you so blinded by pussy that you were taken in by this girl? If she came to you at night, it was because she was still with her boyfriend. Maybe the dude worked nights, and that was when she was able to get away.”
Leaning back against the booth, Ray closed his eyes. “You’re right, because I never thought of that.”
“That’s because you were pussy-whipped,” Frankie snapped angrily.
“How many times haven’t we had this conversation?” Kenny asked, frowning at Ray. “You’re smarter than me and Frankie put together, but you’re a moron when it comes to women. You can dish out good advice to others, but you refuse to listen when me and Frankie tell you what you shouldn’t do.”
“I’m not telling you about my problem so you can beat me the fuck up. I need to know if my friends are in my corner.”
“We are,” Frankie and Kenny chorused.
“One thing for certain is I’m not going to marry her now. And if the kid is mine, then I’ll try and provide whatever financial support I can until I graduate from medical school.”
“So, you don’t intend to marry her?” Frankie asked.
“I don’t know, Frankie,” Ray said. “I like her a lot, but not enough to marry her.”
Reaching across the table, Kenny patted Ray’s hand. “Maybe you’ll change your mind after the baby is born. Kids have a way of melting the coldest hearts.”