Barking Man by Madison Smartt Bell Page B

Susan getting beat up once in a while. That was her name—a sweet name, I think. I found it out from hearing him say it, which he used to do almost every time before he started in on her. “ Susan ,” he’d call out, loud enough I could just hear him through the wall. He’d do it a time or two, he might have been calling her to him, I don’t know. After that would come a bad silence that reminded you of a snake being somewhere around. Then a few minutes’ worth of hitting sounds and then the big slam as she hit the wall and the clatter of my pots falling down on the floor. He’d throw her at the wall maybe once or twice, usually when he was about to get through. By the time the pots had quit spinning on the floor it would be real quiet over there again, and the next time I saw Susan she’d be walking in that ginger way people have when they’re hiding a hurt, and if I said hello to her she’d give a little jump and look away.
    After a while I quit paying it much mind, it didn’t feel any different to me than hearing the news. All their carrying on was not any more than one wall of the rut I had worked myself into, going back and forth from the job, cleaning that apartment till it hurt, calling up the lawyer about once a week to find out about the next postponement. I made a lot of those calls from the TOA, and Tim and Prissy got pretty interested in the whole business. I would tell them all about it, too. Sometimes, when our shift was done, Prissy and I would pour coffee and sit in a booth for as much as a couple of hours, just chewing that subject over and over, with Tim passing by now and again to chip in his opinion of what was going to happen. But nothing much ever did happen, and after a while I got to where I didn’t want to discuss it anymore. I kept ahead making those calls but every one of them just wore down my hope a little more, like a drip of water wearing down a stone. And little by little I got in the habit of thinking that nothing really was going to change.
    It was spring already by the time things finally did begin to move. That sad little apple tree was beginning to try and put out some leaves, and the weather was getting warmer every day, and I was starting to feel it inside me too, the way you do. That was when the lawyer called me , for a change, and told me he had some people lined up to see me at last.
    Well, I was all ready for them to come visit, come see how I’d fixed up my house and all the rest of my business to get set for having Davey back with me again. But as it turned out, nobody seemed to feel like they were called on to make that trip. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” was what one of them said, I don’t recall which. They both talked about the same, in voices that sounded like filling out forms.
    So all I had to do was drive downtown a couple of times and see them in their offices. The child psychologist was the first and I doubt he kept me more than half an hour. I couldn’t even tell the point of most of the questions he asked. My second trip I saw the social worker, who turned out to be a black lady once I got down there, though I never could have told it over the phone. Her voice sounded like it was coming out of the TV. She looked me in the eye while she was asking her questions, but I couldn’t make out a thing, about what she thought. It wasn’t till afterward, when I was back in the apartment, that I understood she must have already had her mind made up.
    That came to me in a sort of flash, while I was standing in the kitchen washing out a cup. Soon as I walked back in the door I’d seen my coffee mug left over from breakfast, and kicked myself for letting it sit out. I was giving it a hard scrub with a scouring pad when I realized it didn’t matter anymore. I might just as well have dropped it on the floor and got what kick I could out of watching it smash, because it wasn’t going to make any difference to anybody now. But all the same I rinsed it