I would encounter Marla a total of four times in my life, the day she knocked on the back door being the third. She only stopped knocking to yell my name and to tell me to open the door. “David,” she yelled. “It’s me, Marla. Open the door, honey.”

I remember picking Bedogi up from between the pillows and cradling him, and maybe I’m misremembering this next part because of guilt, but I was so frightened that I thought about opening that door for her. But I didn’t open it. That’s a detail that cannot change. As I sat there cradling him, I told my scared self she could knock and yell and knock some more until she couldn’t stand on her fat legs any longer. My and Bedogi’s condition was fine, except he started to cry a bit at Marla’s knocking and yelling.

To keep pretending we were not there, even though Marla had seen us, I had to quiet him. I reached for the bottle on the nightstand, and when I brought it to his mouth he latched on to the rubber tip, and I tilted the bottle upward.

Neither he nor Marla took a break: he sucked, she knocked, he sucked, she knocked, he swallowed, she yelled, he sucked, she knocked and knocked and knocked. She didn’t let up one bit, and kept on through my burping Bedogi and his throwing up on my shirt and my wiping his mouth clean and my laying him back between the pillows. When I took my dirty shirt off and tossed it to the floor, Marla finally quit knocking, and the screen door slammed shut.

Bedogi dozed off between the pillows, and I looked down the hall at the door: no Marla behind it. (I would dream of that too—being in a house and hearing somebody knock, only to find nobody at the door, nobody searching for me.)

With her gone, I slipped into my room and grabbed a new shirt, put it on, and then crawled down the hall and into the living room. I stayed low and moved slow to the curtains draped over the window. I peeled back part of the curtain, and in the driveway was Marla’s red Dodge, her in it and on the phone. I watched her talk, and then she hung up.