by Beth Goobie
“My username is LivingSkyBrain,” said August.
Maddy could picture it immediately – the entire sky filling the inside of August’s head. “Mine’s Yummibreakfast, with an i,” she said with a small smile.
August giggled. “Well, you’ll be hearing from me, Yummibreakfast with an i. Make sure you approve LivingSkyBrain.”
“LivingSkyBrain will be approved,” said Maddy.
“And, hey,” added August, “don’t think I didn’t notice you got skipped for The Pain Eater. Did you want to be?”
“When it happened, I did,” Maddy admitted. “Now, I don’t know.”
“Well,” said August, “I’m the last one. You let me know, after Sheng does her chapter. If you want to have your say, I’ll make mine end so it needs another chapter. Then I’ll announce to Ms. Mousumi and the entire class that Ms. Yummibreakfast still gots to take her turn!”
The weight pressing on Maddy had almost vanished. “You serious?” she asked.
“You want the last word on The Pain Eater, you got it,” promised August.
The thought made Maddy giddy. “Has Julie talked to you about it yet?” she asked.
“To influence me, you mean?” asked August. “Not yet. When she does, me’n her’ll have an interesting conversation, don’t you think?”
She and Maddy grinned at each other.
“And,” August added, as if the thought had just occurred to her, “Julie and Ken Soong started going out about a week ago. She was talking about it in History, and I saw them smooching at the 7-Eleven. He’s up next, right?”
“Yup,” said Maddy, suddenly breathless.
“We’ll see what they come up with together,” August said drily. “Well, see you tomorrow, Yummibreakfast.”
“Add me tonight,” Maddy replied, turning toward the exit.
“Yummi tonight,” called August as she headed the opposite way down the hall. “You got it.”
. . .
The boy watching from the edge of the clearing was finished. The tension in him was obvious, Maddy thought – he was looking into the copse, but his body was turned away, as if he wanted to run. Just looking at him, she could feel her own body tense, and hear the blood pound in her ears. But nothing further – there was no sense of any memory about to rise up from within herself and take over, to pull her out of reality and into itself.
Cautiously, she began to sketch the outlines of the boys in the clearing. Two standing, here and here. A third on his knees, arms leaned out and down. The fourth…. No, first there was the fifth figure, the central one – the one everything else revolved around. The one who opened the door onto terror and pain. The pain eater. Tears stung Maddy’s eyes. Yes, the figure at the center of this mural was a pain eater, she realized. An eater of other people’s pain and fear. An eater of their violence and hatred. And an eater of silence – theirs and her own. An eater of poisons, none of them good.
How was she to draw this? How was she to communicate all of this in the shape of the face, the eyes? The color of the eyes? Yellow, she decided. And the mouth. Both should be brilliant with fear, what could not be spoken. The rest of the body would be shadow, a held-down form; all of the emotion had to go into the face. Tentatively, as if the chalk she held was high voltage, Maddy began to draw the face – her own face, the feeling of her own face. Not trying to make it better, not trying to make it brave and strong. Just terror, raw and screaming. Her own terror, right here under her fingertips. Her fingertips now drawing fear out of herself like pus out of a wound – saying, Here it is. Here is what happened. Here is the me that was. She is me, I am going to let her be me. Me.
Maddy had no idea of how much time passed. She was simply a body reduced to a direct line, the flow of the inner to the outer, onto the tree house wall. When she was done, two more figures had been completed: the girl on the ground, and the guy on top of her. Ken Soong, not that anyone could have identified him. But she knew who it was – she, Maddy Malone. She had drawn his crime here on her tree house wall, and now it was more than memory and silence. Now it could be seen, pointed to, defined. The drawing of the other three boys would have to wait; she was exhausted, trembling. Enough, already, for one Thursday evening’s work.
But she was ready for him. Tomorrow afternoon, when Ken stood to read his chapter, Maddy Malone would be prepared.
Chapter Fifteen
Ken Soong got to his feet, accompanied by low cheers from his surrounding seatmates. His expression was confident; as he reached the front of the room, he nodded to Ms. Mousumi, who smiled in reply. Ken was active on the wrestling and swim teams, as well as in lunch-hour intramurals. Last year, he’d been a member of the Athletic Council.
He was popular, where Maddy went unnoticed. He liked an audience, where she shrank from one. A week ago, just glancing in his direction would have made Maddy feel as if she was going up in flames. Today, as Ken came to a halt and switched on his tablet, she felt shaky. Her breath shoved in and out; sweat broke out across her skin. When she forced herself to look directly at Ken, focus in on his grinning profile, her heart shouted in alarm and her body tensed, ready to flee. But she made herself stay with it – her gaze repeatedly jumping off but coming back, each time staying longer as her hands gripped the sides of her desktop, white-knuckled but helping her stay put. Because Maddy was here to listen – to hear every word, to watch every flicker in Ken’s expression. In spite of his overwhelming advantage, she knew something he did not: that whatever he said today, whatever new slur or attack he was about to launch on the pain eater’s already slaughtered reputation, she, Maddy Malone, would get the last word on it. And if she wanted to give her best last word, she knew she had to hear Ken’s every syllable today. Quiet, Maddy told the blood pounding in her ears. Shhhh, play stupid, play dead.
Fingers touched her right hand. “Are you all right?” whispered Kara.
Maddy tried not to flinch obviously. She nodded.
About to start, Ken sent his gaze roving across the class, stopping just short of Maddy’s desk. “We all know what kind of girl Farang is,” he began. “She steals. She sneaks around at night and spies on people. She parties and…” – he smirked – “gets around. In all this time, name me one good thing she’s done. She knows everyone’s secrets, but does she try to help anyone? Instead of sneaking around, stealing and wrecking things, why doesn’t she do something positive? But no, she hangs out with the partiers and gets pregnant. She had a choice. She didn’t have to steal and drink and get pregnant.
“The boy thinks about these things. It’s true he saw the priestesses almost drown Farang. And he felt sorry for her and brought her food. But then he keeps watching her. And he sees the way she really is.
“What he sees is that she asks for what she gets. She’s lazy. She just hangs around all day, waiting for her free food. And after she gets it, she goes off and works on her suntan. She doesn’t work in the fields and help with the harvest. She doesn’t help collect herbs for the village healer. She doesn’t help the old people. She could think about helping out and doing things for other people, but all she thinks about is herself. That, and getting drunk with the partiers. There’s only one reason a girl like Farang goes to a party. She knows what she’s getting into.
“So the boy gets to know Farang by watching her. And what he sees disgusts him. At first he felt sorry for Farang, but not anymore. No, Farang isn’t the type you feel sorry for. But he has to be sure. So one day, he breaks the rules and talks to Farang. He follows her into the woods, and when he’s sure no one else is near, he says, ‘Hello, Farang.’
“She sees him there. She knows they’re alone. What does she do? She comes on to him. The boy is shocked. He doesn’t want this. But Farang won’t stop. There’s only one thing on her mind, and she’s out to get it. ‘Stop!’ says the boy. ‘I just want to talk to you.’ But she won’t stop. She knows what she’s doing, all righ
t. Soon the boy can’t stop himself, because that’s what boys are wired for. Besides, Farang made him do it. And so what happens? Farang gets pregnant again.
“So this is what I mean. Farang had a choice here. She could’ve talked to the boy and something could’ve come out of it. Maybe something big, maybe just a small thing. But something positive. The boy wanted to pull her out of the gutter, but she pulled him into the gutter instead. You’ve got to watch out for girls like Farang, keep yourself clean of them. The boy learned this the hard way. When the tribe found out what he’d done, they kicked him out. He was sent off into the woods to die. And it was all Farang’s fault. They didn’t kill her, because she was their pain eater and they needed her. They didn’t need the boy. No one needed the boy, except maybe himself. I wonder what he was thinking while he lay there in the forest, starving to death. All because he wanted to help Farang. He died for Farang in the end. And she didn’t even care. She was as bad as he was good. Too bad the boy didn’t notice until it was too late.”
As Ken paused, then shut off his tablet, Maddy felt the full weight of knowing descend upon her. So this was how he was presenting what had happened to other people. This was how he was describing the gang rape – as something she’d initiated, group sex she’d wanted because she was “that type of girl.” It was all something she was “asking for,” probably begging for. And the four boys? she wondered. Were the three rapists and their accomplice in his version all shocked innocents who ended up giving in to their “wiring”?
Her gaze darted over to David. Flushed, he was sitting with his eyes downcast, his face twitching. His lips twisted as if he was muttering aloud to himself, as if he was spitting out words. Not once did he glance up at Ken, and when Julie touched his arm and whispered to him, he jerked.
“Well, Ken,” said Ms. Mousumi, getting to her feet. “Thank you. You may sit down.” Her tone was cool, and she looked decidedly unimpressed. Ken got her drift. As he headed back to his seat, his grin had shrunk considerably.
“Any comments?” asked the teacher.
The class sat, musing. A hand went up. “I never thought about it – that she could’ve been doing something positive,” said Harvir. “If you want people to do good to you, you gotta do something good for them.”
“But she couldn’t talk to anyone!” protested Theresa.
“And they all spat on her!” added August. “Once a month. You’re complaining about her attitude?”
“Maybe,” said Brent. “But after a while, she would’ve gotten used to it. I think Ken’s right – she should’ve helped out somewhere. And when you think about what we all wrote, no matter whether you’re for her or against her, no one in this class has written about Farang doing a single good thing for anyone.
“Well,” he added uncomfortably, “maybe she saved the tribe from Zombiedom. But that was just to get a wish from the wizard, so it doesn’t really count.”
Again, the class fell silent. Ms. Mousumi waited them out, letting them think. Maddy sat as still as everyone else, her gaze darting hit-and-run-style across David. When Ken had sat down in his desk, David had leaned in the opposite direction, as if blown by a gale-force wind. Minutes passed, and he didn’t straighten up. Ken kept glancing at him, obviously uncomfortable.
Kara’s hand went up. “So maybe it did go like Ken said,” she commented briskly. “Maybe Farang did get pregnant on purpose a second time. But maybe she had a reason for it. A baby would be company. At least then she’d have someone to talk to all day.”
Without raising his hand, Ken shot back, “Why didn’t she talk to the boy, then? She had her chance there, and she didn’t use it.”
Eyebrows lifted at his tone. Kara smiled slightly. “Looks to me like she and the boy talked just fine,” she drawled in reply.
Snickers rippled across the class. “Okay,” said Ms. Mousumi. She looked as if she’d heard all of The Pain Eater she wanted to for a while. “I have a comment that I’d like to make here. I want to disagree with your comment, Ken, that ‘that’s what boys are wired for.’ Boys are not machines. They make choices with their minds, and their minds decide what their bodies will do – not the other way around. So they are responsible for all their choices, unlike a machine, which is not. I also think it’s disrespectful to boys to think of them as being machines. They are human beings and should be honored as such, as should each and every girl.”
The silence that followed Ms. Mousumi’s short speech vibrated with intensity. No one looked at anyone else. Again, Ms. Mousumi waited out the silence, letting students struggle with their individual thoughts. Then she added, “We’ll leave it there for today. Sheng, you’re up Monday.”
Seated at the center of the front row, Sheng Yoo nodded. Slowly, finger by finger, Maddy relaxed her death grip on her desktop. Her hands ached; her heart was performing martial arts; she had to keep swallowing the bile that surged up her throat. But she knew now. Through the tweets she’d received, comments from other students, and, finally, Ken’s chapter, the situation had become overwhelmingly clear – Maddy now understood what other kids, August excepted, thought and said to each other when they looked at her. Nothing Ms. Mousumi said could change that; nothing any adult said ever changed the jungle of teenagers’ thinking. Whether they were wired for it or not, once they got going they were all hunters looking for prey, and that was what she, Maddy Malone, was to them now – prey.
The question was where things were headed from here.
. . .
She made it out of the school building by shutting down inside, hunching in between her shoulders and keeping her eyes on her feet. If anyone spoke to her, she did her best not to notice. On one side of her locker, Tim Bing protected her from comments; he was the kind of guy who was immune to scum – just walked around handing out his cheerful smile to anyone and everyone. If he’d heard anything, he didn’t let on, but Maddy wasn’t in a grateful mood. Grabbing what she needed from her locker, she headed for the nearest exit. Once outside, she bolted down the sidewalk, skirting loiterers, but she wasn’t fast enough to block out one last, shouted comment: “Maddy! Hey, Maddy! Let me be the father of your child!”
Four blocks from school, she was swarmed. It happened while she was crossing a small park – three boys jumped up from a bench where they were having a smoke and surrounded her, their voices jeering, their hands reaching. All three were in grade nine; Maddy didn’t know any of their names. “No!” she cried, crossing her arms over her chest, and the boys’ hands shifted, going low. She doubled over to protect her groin, and they began pinching her butt, then punching it.
“What, you don’t want us?” they leered. “But you like anyone you can get – that’s what we heard.”
Maddy was on her knees now, her arms over her head, the boys circling as if waiting. She felt it – that they were waiting for something – but what that something was, and whether they expected it to come from her or from them, she didn’t know.
Abruptly, there came the sound of pounding feet and a shout, and then a figure launched itself at the circling boys. “You shits!” Maddy heard someone cry. “I’m not letting this happen again! Leave her alone! Get out of here!”
A few protests, some insults in reply, and the three boys scattered, disappearing into the late afternoon. Still, Maddy hunched, her arms over her head. Her heart kickboxed her chest; she sucked and sucked and sucked for air.
“Are you okay?” asked a voice. It was familiar. Lowering her arms, Maddy glanced up into David Janklow’s face.
He reached out a hand. She took it, and he helped her rise. Hugging herself, Maddy continued to suck air.
“Let’s sit down,” said David. She followed him over to the bench. They sat as he waited for her to steady her breathing.
“How did you know?” she asked finally.
He was silent a moment. “I’ve been watching you for a while,” he admitted. “I want
ed to talk, but not at school. I didn’t know if you’d…” His voice trailed off.
“What about?” she asked, her eyes on the ground.
He swallowed so intensely, she could hear it. “I’m sorry!” he exploded. “I’m just so goddamn sorry!”
“You didn’t do it,” said Maddy.
“No,” David said bitterly. “I didn’t do anything, did I?”
Maddy sat, silent. The moment was huge, too big to hold on to. She didn’t know what to do with it.
“I couldn’t believe what was happening,” David continued, faltering. “It wasn’t planned, nothing like that. We were just walking home from the play, and we saw you ahead. And then…they just all took off in a group. At first I didn’t know what they were after. I ran after them. When I saw…I, like, froze. It was like I turned into concrete. I couldn’t move.” He was crying; Maddy could hear the gasp in his voice. But she couldn’t look at him or respond in any way. Inside herself, the memory was starting to take shape. It was rising, about to come at her. Fighting – Maddy was fighting to keep it under control, to beat it back down, to kill it.
“My brother,” said David, his voice breaking. “Keith. I couldn’t believe Keith.”
“D’you have a cigarette?” asked Maddy.
“I don’t smoke,” said David.
Maddy panicked. The memory was looming large – larger than David’s words, the park, anything she could fix on. When it got this big, only burning would keep it at bay, and she didn’t have that here. Sliding off the bench, she landed on her hands and knees. There was the ground – she could feel it, warmed by the afternoon sun. Maddy pressed her palms against it and the ground pressed back, solid, bigger than herself, bigger than anything that had happened or could ever happen. Sudden rage erupted in her. Lifting her hands, she began pounding them against the grass.