A Drop of Patience

by William Melvin Kelley

  He had taken his hands from her head, was digging with his little finger in his ear. “Look, Ragan, I don’t want to know this.” He leaned back.

  “No, wait, Ludlow, listen—please listen.” He wished she would stop. “Please listen. So we went for coffee and I must’ve looked terrible. I know I felt terrible. I knew I’d betrayed you. And finally he asked me what was wrong.” She paused. “And I started to cry, and—oh Ludlow, please listen—I told him everything.”

  His stomach dropped; he felt warm. “Everything what?”

  “I told him everything. And I told him to tell my parents. That you’re a Negro, that you’re blind, that you’re a musician, and that I love you. I told him.”

  He was leaning forward now, almost afraid to believe her. “What’d he say?”

  She laughed shrilly. “Oh, he asked me if I was insane. And I said no. That all my life I’d been lonely and frightened and now I loved you and wasn’t any of those things anymore.” She stopped. “I love you very much, Ludlow.”

  He covered her ears with his hands, bent forward and kissed her. “I love you too.” Then, taking her under the arms, he helped her up and onto his lap. Pulling up her blouse, he unfastened her bra and cupped his hand over her breast. She rested her head on his shoulder. After a few minutes he asked her, whispering, when she had to return to work, but she had fallen fast asleep.

  5

  THEY DECIDED to live together and moved into three furnished rooms and a kitchen on the upper West side, Ludlow’s first real home since he had left New Marsails. When he finished working, they would go straight to their apartment and Ragan would fix him breakfast. She had never made grits before, but learned. She still went to work, and slept in the late afternoons so they could be together as much as possible. A few Sundays in autumn they drove to the Bronx and sat in Hardie’s back yard until the cold-edged breeze forced them into the house to dinner. But for some reason Ragan did not like going to the Bronx and they did not go often.

  The New Music, as it was called, had now caught on, and people all over the country wanted to hear it played by those who had done the most to create it. Four-Four magazine, which had early given Ludlow recognition, organized a nationwide concert tour built around Ludlow, Hardie, and a few others.

  The night before they left, the four of them—Hardie, Juanita, Ragan and Ludlow—ate dinner together, then went to Harlem to listen to Norman Spencer.

  “I want to make a toast.” Ludlow let go Ragan’s hand and picked up his glass. “To the ladies—who make life good.”

  “Which ladies?” Juanita sat to his left. They were at a small circular table.

  “You two—what you think?”

  “Just so you keep it that way.” She was being too serious. “Someday I’ll go on tour.”

  “What’ll you do, baby?” Hardie must have been resting on his forearms; his voice was only a few inches from the table.

  “I don’t know, but I’ll find something to tour with.”

  Hardie straightened up. “You better just stay home with Otie.”

  “All right, baby.” She was very sweet now. Ludlow listened to the small kiss.

  “To the ladies?” Ludlow extended his glass, felt Hardie’s click against his. They drank.

  He turned to Ragan. “How you doing?”

  “All right.” She was sad, had said very little this evening.

  “Awh, baby, I’ll be back.” He spoke to Juanita and Hardie. “She thinks I ain’t coming back.”

  “He’s coming back, Ragan. I’ll bring him back myself. And you know I’m coming back.”

  Ludlow put his arm around Ragan’s shoulder, felt her raise her head. She was a little happier now, but not much. “All right.”

  He appealed to Juanita. “Now won’t we be coming back? Don’t Hardie always come back?”

  “Yes.”

  He had expected more from her than one word. “Now what’s wrong with you?”

  “Not a thing.” She did not mean it, then suddenly she brightened. “Nothing wrong with me. I’m getting rid of my husband for a couple months.”

  “You sound like you mean that.” Hardie was puzzled.

  “Do I?” She laughed. “All right, we’ll forget about it. How’d this conversation start anyway? Oh, yesss.” She paused. “Don’t worry, Ragan, Ludlow’ll come back.” Her voice was flat.

  “You see, baby? It’ll be all right.”

  “All right.”

  They did not stay much longer. The four sat silently in the car as Hardie drove Ludlow and Ragan home. The closing doors echoed down the quiet street. A few blocks away, cars washed along the highway.

  Ludlow stood beside the car, the cold coming through the soles of his shoes. In one of his coat pockets, he and Ragan held hands.

  “I’ll pick you up at eleven, right?” Hardie’s voice came up from the car window.

  “Good.” Ludlow felt Ragan squeeze his hand. Her smooth fingernails were colder than the rest of her hand.

  “I guess I won’t be seeing you, Ragan, but I’ll take care of Ludlow for you.” She did not answer. “You take care of yourself. So long.”

  Ludlow nodded, stepping back. The car’s exhaust smelled salty.

  Upstairs, that morning’s bacon and coffee still hung in the air of the apartment. As soon as they had closed the door and removed their heavy overcoats, Ragan grabbed him around the ribs and pressed against him. She was shaking. “Promise you’ll come back. Promise.”

  He could not help smiling, but did so with his chin resting on the top of her head so she would not see it and be hurt. “I promise, baby. I’ll come back like a God damn homing pigeon.”

  “No, Ludlow. Don’t joke. Promise.”

  “I’ll come back, Ragan. I promise.”

  She released him, stepped away. She must have been looking at him. “All right.” She led him into the bedroom, hugged him again. “I love you, Ludlow. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do without you for three months.” She could have been smiling now. “I’ll probably end up in Los Angeles one night.”

  “That’d be nice.”

  “Do you really love me?” She was worried.

  “I love you all right.”

  She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, her breasts rubbing against him. “I’ll write you every day…I won’t be able to say everything I’d like to because Hardie will see, but I’ll write.”

  He pushed her back, and reached for the buttons on her blouse—cold, of metal, with a design stamped on them. She stood and did not move, her hands at her sides, until he had removed all her clothes. “Get under the covers, girl. Don’t want to leave you here sniffling.”

  Her quick, bare steps went across the room. The covers rustled.

  He took off his coat, pulled at his tie. “There a couple things in the drawer there?”

  She did not answer immediately, nor did she open the drawer of the bed table. “Ludlow, I don’t want anything at all between us, not even something that thin. Not tonight.”

  He thought a moment. “Where you at?”

  Now she did move—opened the drawer, fanned through the pages of a book, her diary. She counted, whispering, then sighed. “I may not be…” She did not finish.

  “Where you at?” He took a step closer to the bed, continuing to undress, dropping his clothes on a nearby chair.

  “Right in the middle.” She crawled across the bed, toward him, and grabbed his hands. “I can’t stand the idea of that thing tonight.”

  Someday they would get married. In fact, sometimes he did not know why they were not already married. They had always been very careful because they wanted to choose the time to marry and have children. But then, even if she were to become pregnant, he would never feel forced into marrying her. If he wanted, he could always arrange an abortion anyway. But he would not even want to arran
ge one; he would want to marry her and feel her grow large and have his child. He would be able to feel something for a child now, especially hers. He decided: no matter what happened, it could not turn out badly. “All right, Ragan.” He laughed. “We’ll play this number without a mute.”

  He was undressed now. When he got into bed, she wrapped her thin arms and legs around him as if she intended never to let him go.

  6

  SHE WROTE HIM every day for two months. Then finally she missed a day. He did not worry. It had probably been luck that he received all of her letters, especially since the tour spent no more than three days in any one city. But in a week, he still had received no word and he began to grow concerned. He tried to call her several times, but she was never at home, the phone buzzing until the operator apologized. He had Hardie call Juanita and ask her to contact Ragan. In a few days Juanita wrote saying she had called and even gone by, but had found no one.

  He was tempted to leave the tour that day, but he did not. It was going very well; sell-out crowds were coming to hear them, him really, and he realized that twenty men were depending on him. Anxiously he waited for the tour to end and then, as quickly as possible, returned to New York.

  As his taxi turned into their street, he did not know what to expect. He might find her gone and the place empty, echoing, no furniture to swallow the sound of his footsteps or voice. But if she had left him, she probably would have written him. Perhaps he might even find her lying on the floor, dead, the victim of some crime, the blood from the blows on her head crusty now, the room smelling sweet. He began to shake as the narrow elevator carried him to their floor.

  He put down his instrument case and bag, found the key, and opened the door. If she was gone, she had not been gone long; her perfume was still strong in the rooms. He moved his bags over the threshold, closed the door, and stepped across the squeaking, carpetless floor.

  Rapid steps came toward him, and, thinking he might have surprised a thief, he ducked from them, but then: “Oh, Ludlow…” She was hanging on him, moaning as he himself had moaned his first day at the Home; she moaned and repeated his name.

  “What’s wrong, Ragan?” He held the back of her neck, kissed her mouth; it tasted of tears, of being hungry. “What’s the trouble?”

  She only moaned, hugging him. He led her into the living room, to the sofa. They sat down. She moaned on his shoulder. Even though he knew something terrible must have happened, he was happy. The worst had not happened; she had not left him.

  He waited until she showed signs of quieting. “What’s the trouble?”

  She put her arms around his neck. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “Why’d you stop writing?”

  “I—couldn’t. I—” She did not finish, began to gasp, fighting tears. “I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t get anyone to help me.”

  “With what?”

  “At first I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it.” She sighed. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  He fought being impatient with her. “About what?”

  “I’m—I’m preg—nant.” The second half of the word shook from her.

  He could not understand why she was so upset. They had figured that risk into their decision to make love that night.

  “Ludlow, what’ll we do? I tried to find a doctor, but I couldn’t—I mean, to do something, but there was some trouble. I mean, another doctor, he couldn’t tell if I was really pregnant or if I had been and it was dead. I mean, they couldn’t tell me anything and I couldn’t find anyone and—what’ll we do?”

  The answer was so simple, but he hesitated to say it. “Don’t worry, Ragan.” He put his arm around her.

  “But I’m almost three months pregnant!” Suddenly she had stopped crying; no trace of it remained in her dry, brittle whisper.

  He would have to give her the answer, though he wished she had thought of it alone. “We’ll get married, is all.” He laughed nervously. “So we did things a little ass-backwards.”

  She did not reply for a long moment. “We can’t do that, Ludlow.” Rather than a flat refusal, it was resignation to a sad fact.

  “But, baby, we was always getting married. So what if you have a baby three months too soon. Who’ll know? And who’ll really care?”

  “You don’t understand.” She was slightly annoyed.

  He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her toward him, kissed her. “You got pregnant that night we—”

  “Don’t say it!” Her hands covered her ears.

  He grabbed her wrists and pulled them down so she would have to listen. “We knew what we was doing. You looked in your book, right? You said you was in the middle of the month, dangerous time, right? I said to myself: so what if she get a baby. I love her. I’ll want her to have it. So what’s the difference? You ain’t got to wear no sign around your neck telling your baby was born six months after you got married.”

  “I’m not worried about that, Ludlow.” Her shoulders swayed; she was shaking her head slowly.

  “Well, what then?”

  “I don’t want you to feel forced into marrying me.”

  “But, Ragan, ain’t nobody forcing me. We love each other, right?” He waited for the answer.

  “Yes.” He did not like the tone in her voice, as if she might be having doubts.

  He ignored this and went on: “We was planning to get married sooner or later, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s changed?” He tried to think as she must be thinking, and asked again the only question he could find. “You think people’ll be counting the months between when we get married to when you have a baby?” He shook his head. “Ragan-honey, people don’t give two shits about other people.”

  She began to shake, but, he soon discovered, not with crying. “I am not thinking about other people! I’m thinking about us.”

  “So’m I.” He was bewildered.

  “No, you’re not!” She was becoming angry. “I don’t want you to turn around in a year or two and feel trapped.”

  An uneasy, sick feeling was pursuing and overtaking him. “I don’t neither, Ragan.”

  “But you don’t understand.” She sighed, began reluctantly. “I’ve been sitting here alone for almost a week realizing things I never realized before.” She twisted her wrists out of his grip. “We’re very different, Ludlow.”

  “I know that.”

  “I mean, you know what you want out of life. You want to play music. But I’m just realizing I don’t know at all what I want to do. Suppose someday I want to do something you don’t want me to do?”

  “But everybody take that chance, Ragan.”

  “It’s wrong to take it. It’s not fair to you.”

  “I’ll decide what’s fair for me.”

  “Anyway, that’s why we can’t get married.”

  She was not being realistic and he had to help her to be. She had lost touch with all the things they had taken for granted. “Well, what you planning to do if we don’t get married? Ain’t it getting too late to get rid of it?”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do, Ludlow. Don’t nag me.”

  “I ain’t nagging you, baby. I’m just trying to get you to do the best thing for us.”

  “You mean the best thing for you.” She took a deep breath, sighed, took another breath. “Ludlow, I don’t want to get married now. I don’t want to have a baby. I’m not ready to be a mother.” Her voice was cold.

  Perhaps if he got a little tough; it sometimes worked with her. “Ready or not, baby, you’ll be a mama in six months.”

  She got up, walked across the room, stopped, turned around. “Don’t rub it in.”

  “I ain’t rubbing it in. I’m just trying to make you und—”

  “Ludlow, I don’t want to get married.”
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br />   Somehow they had to get back to the essentials of the situation, of their lives. “Ragan, don’t you love me?” There was a long silence, too long, and he began to sweat.

  “I don’t know, Ludlow.” He ducked as if to avoid a blow. She went on: “I did before. I mean, I suppose I still do, Ludlow, honestly. But now everything’s different. I mean, I don’t think I realized before all the things loving you meant.”

  He had been cut so deeply his nerves had been severed; he was numb. “You mean all this time you been playing around, lying to me?”

  “No.” She might be crying now. “No, Ludlow. Lying to myself maybe.” She appealed to him. “Don’t you understand? I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to hurt you and I’m afraid I will if we get married.”

  He no longer wanted to hurt her. “That’s my worry, Ragan. I love you. I ain’t never loved nobody, not even when I was married before. I didn’t even know what love was. But now I do and if you marry me, I’ll love that baby you’ll have.” He was pleading with her and did not care. Then, all at once, he knew the real reason why she did not want to marry him. “You worrying about your folks, ain’t you.”

  She did not answer immediately. “My parents?” She sounded guilty.

  He nodded. “Don’t worry about them, Ragan. They can’t do nothing to you. And when they understand how much we love each other, they be all right. And besides, it ain’t like they don’t know nothing at all about us, because you told their friend that time.”

  Her whisper was so soft it took longer than usual to reach his brain. He had already begun to speak again.

  “I didn’t tell him.”

  “So they know all about me and what I do and—what?”

  “I didn’t tell them anything.” Her voice was a bit louder, a bit colder.

  He did not know what to say. She had lied to him. He reached for cigarettes and matches, felt the fire warming his lips.

  She sighed. “And you might as well know the rest. There wasn’t even a friend. I just didn’t want you to walk with me…and then I…didn’t want…to lose you.” She had begun to cry; she was gasping. Finally: “You understand how I can hurt you? I don’t mean to—really. I just…I just…”