“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. Studentprotests 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 inRoe v. Wadethat 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 oryourbaby?” 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.”
Ray knew his friends were right. Whenever they had a problem with a woman, he would tell them not what they wanted to hear but what they needed to do if it meant resolving their relationships. Kenny had become involved with a girl who was enamored with the Black Panther Party, and his increasing militancy was attracting the attention of college officials and also jeopardizing his draft deferment. Although Ray agreed with the organization’s fight for justice for African Americans and other oppressed communities, the FBI had identified them as a radical subversive group.
