The House of Eve (34)
And the last thing she wanted William to think was that she liked him for his money. Her parents had raised her to be independent, and to make a way out of no way for herself.
Some nights William talked about his medical studies. He was in General Medicine and had to learn to master a little of everything. At the moment he was studying infectious diseases. How to spot them in a patient, the symptoms and how to treat them.
He’d tell her, too, about his younger brother, Theodore, who lived in New York City and attended Columbia Law.
“Teddy always said he didn’t have the stomach for blood,” William kidded. “Honestly, I don’t much either.”
“Then why do you want to be a doctor?” she asked incredulously, but William didn’t hesitate.
“Pride family tradition. My dad is a doctor, his father was a surgeon, and my son will become one, too.”
Tiny goose pimples pricked the flesh of her arms. William’s family was truly unlike any she had known, and no matter how many months they had spent together, she still found herself periodically in awe.
Five minutes before they were due to hang up, William would say, “Okay, give me my bedtime story, baby.”
This tradition between them started when he gifted her the Phillis Wheatley book for Christmas. Every night she’d read a poem or two from the collection before they bid their adieus.
“You should be an actress, like Fredi Washington,” he would say sometimes after she finished.
“Nonsense,” she’d say and blush.
“No, really. I can listen to your voice all night long.”
“I think you are just smitten, William Pride.” She’d hold the phone so tight that she could hear the background noise on the street outside his apartment.
“That too.” His voice would vibrate through her ear, trickling down and settling in the space between her breasts, and she never wanted to part ways.
For spring break, Eleanor told her dorm mother she was going home to Ohio, but William took her to Highland Beach instead. A plot of land south of Annapolis along the Chesapeake Bay, Highland Beach had been established by Frederick Douglass’s son as a beach town for the elite Negroes of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. She found the history of the place fascinating, and brought back seashells that she and William had collected from their long walks, barefooted on the beach. The time alone without curfew, dorm matrons and work schedules helped them to relax into each other. They talked for hours, and when they returned Eleanor couldn’t remember her life without his affection.
Between her classes, spending time with William and working both jobs, Eleanor had lost track of her monthly cycle. Since she’d been rooming with Nadine, they had always been on the same schedule, but it had been days since she had walked in on Nadine shoving her Kotex belt back into her bottom drawer, with that expression on her face that said thank goodness that’s over and done with.
Eleanor looked up at the calendar that hung on her side of the wall, the one her father had sent her with the four blue woodpeckers sitting on a log and Ridge Tool Company emblazoned on the bottom. She tried to remember the last time she had bled. Now that she was in an intimate relationship with William, it would have been prudent to keep track of how often they were together, but they had been careful over the last three months. Mostly careful. There was that one slipup on their last night at Highland Beach when they had run out of condoms, but William had pulled out and she had gone to the bathroom right after and washed her insides good.
As Eleanor was trying to calculate the day of her last cycle, Nadine walked in and closed the door with her foot.
“Ohio, you wouldn’t believe the food fight I just endured in the cafeteria. It started off as a peaceful protest over meals being too expensive, but then turned into an outrageous mess.” Her soft hair fell down into her face. “Did they get any in my hair?” She moved in close, shaking her hair in Eleanor’s face.
“No,” she replied flatly.
“You barely looked.” Nadine turned her neck. “What is it?”
It was hard for Eleanor to push the words from her mouth. To confer with Nadine would make it real. She swallowed the lump that had swelled in her throat. “When did you last have your monthly visitor?”
Nadine’s eyes expanded. She was so close that Eleanor could see the flecks of mascara that had flaked under her lashes. “Finished about a week ago. Why, are you late?”
Eleanor nodded, and the weight of the possibility caved in on her chest. “We’re usually within a day or so apart.”
Nadine sat down next to Eleanor and opened her gold cigarette case. After a long drag she offered, “Well, no need to panic. Could be a false alarm. You’ve been under a lot of stress lately, right?”
“Sure. Right.” Eleanor’s mind had already started racing and wrapping itself around a disastrous end. No period, kicked out of the dorm, dismissed from school, bus back to Ohio with no degree, parents too disappointed to look at her, illegitimate baby, damaged goods. And William. What would she say to William?
“Look, whatever you do, don’t go to the school’s nurse. Your business will be all over campus. I know a white doctor across town who sees Negro patients.” Nadine placed her cigarette down in the ashtray and started fumbling through her purse for a pen.
“Here, I think this is his name. Look him up in the telephone book.” She handed her the scrap of paper. “Go give them a call now before it gets too late.”