The Pain Eater Read online

  “Farang wasn’t allowed to play with other children. She didn’t learn the things women did in the tribe. She lived in the temple, but she wasn’t taught how to be a priestess. She slept alone in a small hut, and spent most of her time wandering alone in the woods. If anyone from the tribe bumped into her by accident, they didn’t talk to her. No one was friends with the pain eater; mostly people pretended she didn’t exist.

  “Except once a month, at the full moon. The full moon was when the tribe believed the heart was strongest, when it loved and hated and felt more than at any other time. At the full moon, the tribe held a ceremony in the middle of the night, where they danced and sang in the middle of their village. People were happy. They gave each other gifts. Young couples announced their engagements. This was a time of celebration, and everyone looked forward to it.

  “Everyone, that is, except Farang. For at the end of the celebration, the tribe stopped singing and dancing. The high priestess walked to the middle of the crowd and raised her arms. ‘Pain eater!’ she cried. ‘Where is the pain eater?’

  “Then Farang came crawling out of the woods. She wasn’t allowed to walk to the high priestess – she had to crawl, her face in the dirt, into the middle of the tribe. When she reached the priestess’s feet, she had to wait there, crouched and silent. Everyone was silent. No one moved.

  “‘The pain eater comes,’ the high priestess said, and shook her rattle. ‘She comes to eat our pain, so we can be free of it. Don’t worry where your pain comes from, or why – once the pain eater eats it, it’s gone forever. Because when the pain eater eats our pain, it leaves us and goes into her. It’s her pain then, not ours. That’s the way things are. That’s the way they’ve always been. That’s the way they should be. So don’t hold on to your pain – just give it to the pain eater. Then turn your back on her, so your pain can’t come back to you.’

  “All the people raised their arms and shouted with joy. Then, one by one, they walked up to the pain eater. They leaned down, opened their mouths, and pretended to spit something onto her. Some of them actually did spit on her.

  “‘Eat my pain,’ they said. Or ‘My pain is now your pain.’ Over and over, they said this. Then they spat their pain onto Farang, turned their backs, and walked away.

  “Then there was only the high priestess left. ‘Pain eater,’ she said. ‘Eat my pain. Now it’s yours and I am free. You are not me. You are not any one of us.’ She turned her back, walked to a cage, and opened it. Everyone watched as Farang crawled into the cage and over to a bowl of food. The priestess locked the cage and Farang began to eat. Nearby, the tribe began to dance and sing again. But they also watched Farang eat. And when Farang began to shudder, they danced quicker. When Farang fell to the ground and writhed, they cheered and sang louder. They didn’t know the high priestess had mixed a mild poison (the juice of the allura leaf) with Farang’s food – enough to make her ill, but not to kill her. All they knew was that Farang had taken their pain and was feeling it so they didn’t have to. As long as Farang suffered, none of them would get sick, or hurt in an accident, or die young.

  “That was what they believed, this tribe who lived in the hills of Faraway. And every full moon until she was fifteen, Farang ate their pain and believed it too.”

  A brief pause followed the end of Kara’s reading. Head still bowed, Maddy sat pressing her right thumbnail into the back of her left hand. “Well, that’s it,” said Kara, her voice for the first time uncertain. “Uh…do you want a copy of it, Ms. Mousumi? I printed an extra one.”

  “Oh, yes!” said the teacher. “I’d like to compile the individual contributions in a binder so they can be read by everyone. And I’d like to create an electronic version too. Can you email it to me?”

  “Sure,” said Kara.

  “Tell me,” said Ms. Mousumi, her voice growing thoughtful. “What was your inspiration for this story, Kara? Have you read Shirley Jackson’s short story ‘The Lottery’?”

  “No,” said Kara. “My story is sort of like ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ by Ursula Le Guin, but not really. It’s way different, actually.”

  “I don’t know that one,” said Ms. Mousumi. “But I think you’ve given us an excellent start to our class novel. Thank you, Kara. You can sit down now. Well, class – any response? Yes, Julie?”

  Kara sat down next to Maddy, as at the back of the room, from the seat on the other side of David Janklow, a girl named Julie Armstrong spoke up. “This is, like, ancient times – before electricity and cars and democracy, right?”

  “Yes,” said Kara.

  “Duh, Julie,” said Ken Soong.

  “Well, how ancient?” asked Julie, ignoring him. “Is it before the wheel? Before they invented agriculture and farming, and all that? I need to know – I’m right after Harvir.”

  Kara hesitated. “I only get to write the first chapter,” she said. “I guess that’s up to Harvir, really.”

  “Oh, Haaaarviiir!” came a mocking voice as Harvir grimaced.

  “Enough of that!” Ms. Mousumi cut in. “This class will show respect at all times, or it will learn it in detention after the bell goes. Understood?”

  A thoroughly understanding silence engulfed the room. “All right,” said Ms. Mousumi, mollified. “Any other questions for Kara?”

  Hunched over her throbbing left hand, Maddy’s entire body was a question mark – a silent, unspeaking one.

  “Okay, class,” said Ms. Mousumi, when no one else spoke up. “I want you to open your books to page….”

  Chapter Two

  Back to the tree house wall, Maddy sat watching the lit cigarette between her fingers. The ember at its tip flared and ebbed, the red glow shifting within itself like a secret – a secret alive and flicker-dancing, so tiny most people never noticed it. And yet that tiny red glow had power – power that could take away what was wrong and make everything right. Make everything right, thought Maddy, trancing herself out on the secret red glow. Everything right, everything right.

  Outside the tree house, the afternoon breeze tussled with poplar leaves. The tree house hadn’t been built in one of the backyard poplars – they weren’t sturdy enough to take its weight – but there were several nearby, and poplars were the trees the wind talked loudest to. You always knew when a poplar and the wind were having a chitchat, thought Maddy as she slid up the hem of her shorts. Talking back and forth about taking away the wrong – taking away the wrong and making it right.

  Eyes drowsy but intent, she watched the cigarette ember move toward the skin of her inner left thigh. It was important to be respectful of this process, she’d learned – to honor the huge forces being tamed by the approach of fire to skin. There was fear, for instance, huge flames of it dancing inside her body; this had to be tamed, as did the pain that could explode through her flesh. But even in the beginning – even the very first time Maddy had brought living fire up to kiss her skin – she’d known she could do it. She had what was needed to tough out mind over matter. It was simply a matter of becoming all mind – of withdrawing in behind the eyes and watching what was happening to your body, but not feeling it. When you became the watcher, the body became something apart – something removed from you and entirely other, as far away as the cigarette ember that was now hovering like a tiny spaceship before a planet of flesh, about to make contact….

  “Maddy!” called a voice, and the tree house vibrated as feet started up the outside ladder.

  “Ssssst!” hissed Maddy, and slid her shorts back down. Straightening her shoulders, she brought the cigarette to her lips and inhaled, just as her sister’s head rose through the trap door opening.

  “Hey, Maddikins!” Leanne grinned, her short blond hair a breeze-blown halo as she paused to survey her younger sister. “Thought I’d find you up here.”

  Still fighting off the tail end of her trance, Maddy silently held out her cigarette. Leann
e took it and dragged, then settled down beside her. “Drawing?” she asked, her gaze skimming the tree house’s interior. On all sides, chalk-drawn images filled the walls – sunflowers, the Taj Mahal, a family portrait Maddy had worked on for weeks last summer. In the latter, the resemblance between Maddy and her sister could immediately be seen – both blond and short-haired, gray-eyed, big-boned and solid-looking. Trucker was Leanne’s nickname, but there wasn’t an extra milligram on her, and she knew how to move on a volleyball or basketball court to devastating effect. Maddy, in contrast, was an average athlete. For her, it was color that called her name, as in Maddy Scarlet, Maddy Mauve, Maddy in a Peach Pink dream.

  “Thinking about it,” said Maddy.

  “I ran into Mr. Zarro today,” said Leanne, taking another drag. An occasional smoker only, she’d gone on a major guilt trip when she discovered Maddy had started smoking in grade eight. She’d cut her own smoking back to almost nil; to her dismay, Maddy hadn’t followed suit. “He wanted to know why you didn’t sign up for art this year.”

  “Grade ten art is next semester,” said Maddy.

  “No, it isn’t, it’s now,” said Leanne. “I asked Mr. Zarro.”

  “Oh,” said Maddy, taking back the cigarette.

  “Come on, Maddikins – don’t lie to me,” said Leanne. “You know it’s this semester.”

  “So?” said Maddy, staring at the floor.

  “So he wants to know why you’re not in his class,” said Leanne, her voice blustering to cover her hurt. “So do I.”

  “I didn’t feel like it,” shrugged Maddy. The shrug was intentional – she knew how it bugged her sister. Two years older, Leanne had taken on baby Maddikins at birth as a lifelong babysitting project; every now and then she had to be reminded to back off.

  No, that wasn’t fair, and Maddy knew it. There wasn’t a better older sister than Leanne anywhere on the planet. Maddy was being a deliberate bitch, an unforgivable one.

  “What’s going on with you?” asked Leanne, the hurt now obvious in her voice. “This has been going on for months. Everyone’s noticed – Mom and Dad, Aunt Cass. Even the neighbors. Mrs. Liu asked me about you the other day, why you always walk looking down at the ground. You don’t hang around with your friends anymore. And you don’t talk—”

  “I talk,” said Maddy, shifting away from her sister.

  “Not like you used to,” said Leanne. “Nothing’s like it used to be with you. C’mon – why aren’t you taking art?”

  A grimace crossed Maddy’s face. Silent, she stared at a chalk sunflower opposite, tracing its outline with her eyes. “Mr. Zarro’s not the nice guy you think he is,” she said finally.

  “He gave you an A-plus!” cried Leanne.

  “He was mean to some of the other kids,” said Maddy. Mean was an understatement. For some reason, the teacher had taken a dislike to Jennifer Ebinger, a shy, quiet girl who’d sat next to Maddy in grade nine art. Maddy knew she’d never forget the way Mr. Zarro had stood, leaning over Jenn’s shoulder and snapping, “Look at that line! D’you call that three-dimensional? What’s the perspective on this – up, down, all around?” Rigid, Jenn had sat, staring wordlessly forward as tears ran down her face, and Maddy had sat just as wordless beside her, horrified, wanting to intervene but not knowing how. Now she wished, more than anything, that she’d just put her arms around Jenn and hugged her – right in the middle of Mr. Zarro’s heart-murdering tirades. That would’ve shown him and Jenn, she thought fiercely. Yeah, that was what she wished she’d done.

  Instead, she and Jenn had never talked about it. They were still friends – Maddy was sitting directly behind Jenn this year in French – but to date neither had mentioned Jenn’s repeated humiliations in art class. Jenn hadn’t signed up for grade ten art, needless to say. But she didn’t know Maddy hadn’t either, or why.

  “All they wanted to do was draw,” said Maddy. “So they weren’t Vincent Van Gogh. Since when is that a crime?”

  Taking the cigarette from her, Leanne dragged, then butted it out in a tinfoil ashtray sitting on the floor. “Okay,” she said. “He’s a prick sometimes. But how are you helping those kids by not taking art yourself?”

  “I can’t draw for someone like that!” exploded Maddy.

  “You did last year,” said Leanne.

  “I didn’t know what he was like when I signed up,” said Maddy. “I could hardly quit partway through the semester. But now I do know, it’d be like selling my soul to the devil, wouldn’t it?”

  Leanne’s eyebrows hiked. “I guess,” she sighed. “I just don’t like to see you not taking art. You’re happy when you’re drawing. And you’re good.”

  “It wouldn’t be right,” said Maddy, scowling at her runners but mollified nonetheless. “You make senior volleyball?”

  “Tryouts are next week,” said Leanne. “There’s some tough competition, but I’ll make it. I heard this fall’s drama production is The Merchant of Venice. You going to paint the scenery like you did last year?”

  Last year, the fall production had been Bye Bye Birdie. Maddy hadn’t been involved with that play, but for Our Town, the spring production…. Her face twitched, and she shoved the memory away. “No,” she said shortly, keeping her eyes down. Beside her, Leanne sat motionless, putting on the brakes, refusing to get angry, to react without thinking.

  “Maddy, what’s wrong?” she asked finally, her voice plaintive. All Leanne wanted to do – Maddy could feel it – was put her arms around her little sister’s pain and hold it. Hold it until Maddy ’fessed up to what the problem was, and could be comforted.

  But to tell meant to relive it. To relive every second of that heated, ugly, soul-shattering event. And Maddy simply couldn’t do that. Last March, the rape had gutted her. It had reached into her, deeper than flesh, and pulled something out – the something that made her alive, that made her sing, dance, hope. She didn’t know where that something had gone, only that it had gone. She didn’t know how to get it back. What she did know was that since the rape, everything had changed. Colors were dim and shadowy; even the sun looked gray. Food tasted like cardboard. Nothing felt good; she didn’t look forward to anything. Whatever it was that made life alive, the spark within all things, had gone away, and with it had gone what used to be her – the person Maddy Malone was supposed to be but was no longer.

  Again, Maddy shrugged. Beside her, she felt her sister’s hurt deepen.

  Leanne took a careful breath. “You’re not…doing meth?” she asked. “Speed…anything like that?”

  Maddy snorted, then shook her head. Silent, Leanne sat a moment longer, her mouth working. When she spoke again, her voice had hardened. “Y’know, Maddy,” she said. “Sometimes you can be a real bitch.”

  Crawling to the tree house entrance, she descended the ladder without glancing back.

  . . .

  Friday’s English class loomed. Coming around a corner, Maddy saw the open door halfway down the corridor and was hit with a wave of nausea. It didn’t get any easier – this was her fifth English class of the year, and still she was walking straight into sky-high panic as she approached that door. Just the thought of Ken Soong, of seeing him…. Again, nausea swept Maddy, stopping her dead in her tracks.

  “Watch it!” said someone, clipping her from behind. It was David Janklow – blond, cool, and popular, and also the guy who sat beside Ken in class. As he passed Maddy, their eyes met; briefly his widened, and then he turned and disappeared through the doorway. Rooted to the spot, Maddy stood, bisecting the hallway stream of students as she worked up the nerve to approach the class entrance. Finally, she forced herself through it and into the classroom, where she made an immediate right, away from the direction of Ken’s desk. Scurrying across the front of the room, she sank into her seat and concentrated on breathing – just getting enough air, sucking it in, gasping, gasping around the fist in her throat.
r />   In front and to her right, desks filled as other students arrived. Kara took her seat without speaking; no one seemed to notice as terror gradually left Maddy and her body slumped. Soaked – she was soaked with sweat, her armpits disgusting. And now she was shivering, chilled to the bone.

  A guy sitting directly in front of Maddy turned around in his seat. Tousle-haired and ruddy-faced, he’d been in several of her classes last year, but she’d never spoken to him. “What d’you figure Harvir’s going to do to your story?” he asked, grinning at Kara.

  Jeremy, thought Maddy. Jeremy Dugger. Not one of the five. His voice wasn’t one of the ones that had been there that night.

  Kara shrugged. “Axe it, probably,” she said. “Turn it into something about hockey.”

  Jeremy snorted. “Harvir’s a soccer man,” he said.

  “Same diff,” scoffed Kara.

  “Hope it’s good,” said Jeremy. “I’m coming up soon. Not looking forward to reading my pitiful genius to the class.”

  Alarm shot through Maddy. This wasn’t something she’d considered – she was going to have to take her turn, stand in front of the class and read her contribution to the novel as Ken watched her every move. How long was it before her turn arrived? Malone usually appeared halfway down a class list. If a student read every two days…. But Maddy couldn’t think straight, her mind spinning and tripping over itself. How was she going to write three hundred words, much less get up and read them, knowing Ken—

  “Good afternoon, class,” said Ms. Mousumi, cutting into her thoughts. “We’ve got a lot to cover today, so I’d like to get going on the next chapter of our novel. Harvir, could you come up and read your chapter?”