BKMT READING GUIDES
The Stranger Box
by Pamela Cuming
Paperback : 414 pages
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Introduction
Set in New York City and Los Angeles between August 1999 and November 2001, The Stranger Box is a fast-paced psychological thriller. It is the story of a mother and a daughter caught like two white dwarf stars in separate orbits, destined to collide. Though she does everything in her considerable power to insure the child never finds out who she is, the vain and self-obsessed Katherine Blair is unable to change the course of her destiny or evade Eden, the resourceful daughter whose pursuit is fueled by the desire for revenge and the determination to steal the family that has been denied her. Eden’s sometimes tortured and always tumultuous journey is the focal point of this story of abandonment and revenge. Her character and beliefs regarding right and wrong, and good and evil are influenced not only by her Jewish adoptive mother, but by their housekeeper, Leila, a young Voodoo priestess from Haiti. It’s Leila who gives Eden her first Stranger Box, and teaches her to keep it filled with things that will protect her from others who would do her harm. Under her tutelage, Eden learns to worship the Iwa, and begins to master the art of using plants and herbs to heal and to punish. Fascinated by the black magic as well as the white magic that characterizes the Voodoo religion, Eden becomes intrigued with the notion of zombies. At a Voodoo ceremony, she witness a possession and encounter an opportunity to steal a jar of the powder used to create a zombie. Eden’s burgeoning fascination with all things Voodoo comes to an end when Leila is forced to leave the family’s employ and return to Haiti because of the sexual advances of Eden’s adoptive father. Eden's journey becomes more tumultuous as tragedy strikes and her adoptive family disintegrates, forcing her onto the streets and into the arms of a disciple of Satan. The tension between good and evil is reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley series. The portrayal of the consequences of intense negative emotion on the outcome of a family drama is suggestive of Ian McEwan’s Atonement. Eden’s resilience, and her ability to emerge as a strong and resourceful adult inspite of a disastrous childhood brings to mind Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander. Among the many early readers of the book was R.W. Goodwin, Executive Producer of The X-Files. He reflected the opinion of many when he said, “The Stranger Box is a real page-turner. Eden is right. Trust no one.”To tell more would destroy the tension and ruin the surprise.
Excerpt
Part One ORIGINAL SIN Chapter One Cain and Abel When she heard the front door slam, Eden breathed a sigh of relief. Her adoptive parents, Carolyn and Robert, had finally left for their weekend in the Hamptons. I don’t get how Robert is always able to finagle invitations to rich people’s houses. He is such a jerk, Eden thought as she retrieved her well-used, red leather journal from under the mattress and plumped up the pillows so that she could sit up in bed. I just wish they’d taken Sam with them like they used to. I loved spending the weekend with Leila. I know why Robert didn’t want to bring Sam. He’s afraid she’ll tell someone that she’s his only client. He’s such a poser. He’s always pretending to be someone he’s not. He tries to make people think he’s a major player and represents a lot of young actors and actresses. That’s such bullshit. He only represents Samantha. Unhooking the silver chain from around her neck, Eden removed her silver cross and a tiny brass key. Rubbing her thumb across the surface of the artifact studded with carnelian, jade, and pearl, she recalled Carolyn telling her that she was wearing the cross when she came to them as a three-year-old. She’d mentioned that during one of the many conversations they had had after Samantha had upset the seven-year-old Eden by telling her she was adopted and could just as easily be unadopted. Years later, she had considered putting the cross away when Carolyn began pressing her to become a Jew. Leila had strongly advised against it. Eden remembered her caution as though it had been rendered yesterday. “This house is the repository of evil spirits. Your cross will help protect you from them. Wear it always, and serve the Iwa as I have taught you.” Eden unlocked the journal. A sheet of paper fell out. Picking it up, she smiled at the image of two girls. Identical twins, they had large round eyes, blue hair, and a scowl on their faces. They wore pink dresses with large hearts on the front. They looked like troublemakers, but the fun kind. Returning the cross and the key to the chain and putting it around her neck, Eden contemplated the drawing. These were my best friends, my only friends, when I was little. Except for Leila, that is, but she was too old to really be my friend. For a while, I saw them everywhere, and I often dreamt about them. Leila told me they were spirits, but they could make a big difference in my real life. She called them the Marassa Jumeau and said they were the ghosts of dead twin children. She told me they live between Earth and Heaven. They symbolize the forces of the universe and are, therefore, very powerful. Eden flipped through the pages of her journal until she found the photograph taken in a photo booth near Leila’s apartment in Brooklyn when she was twelve and Leila was twenty-five. Looking at the photograph of the two of them, she spoke to the young woman with the long black hair, brilliant white teeth, and wide smile. Even in the photograph, her iridescent blue eyes gave her burnt umber face an otherworldly air. “You were so pretty, Leila,” said Eden to the photograph. “You cared about me, and you taught me so much. It was you who taught me to write down my dreams. I’m still writing them down, but I’m having trouble making any sense of them. Last night I had the same dream I used to tell you about. You always told me it was a dream about crossroads and that one day I would understand. You helped me build a shrine to honor Legba, the Iwa who guards the crossroads of life. I did that, but it didn’t seem to help.” Removing the pen from its place at the back of the journal, Eden began to write: August 21, 1999. Last night I had the dream again. I was a little girl, a baby really. A tall woman with blond braids was carrying me. We were coming down a narrow flight of stairs. Standing at the bottom of the stairs was a woman in a long coat. She had red hair the same color as mine. It was like she had no face. Her arms were folded tightly against her chest. Suddenly, I turned, opened my arms, and leaned toward the woman with red hair. The lady holding me tripped. The woman kept her arms crossed over her chest. I fell and cut my head. Returning her pen to its holder, Eden locked the journal, stuck it under the mattress and then lay back. Twisting a long red lock around her index finger, she thought about the dream. Red hair. People say my red hair is my best feature, and they’re probably right. One of my parents must have had red hair. Is that what the Iwa are telling me, Leila? Are they telling me my mother had red hair? What else are they telling me? That my mother dropped me? That she refused to catch me? That she abandoned me? Not wanting to dwell on such hurtful questions, she got out of bed. She removed the combination lock from the antiquated cabinet she had found discarded across the street from their building. Leila had convinced Dino, the superintendent, to let them work on it in the basement. They had sanded it down, painted it white and, with his help, installed a brace across the front that would accept a combination lock. I should change the combination, she thought. Or at least erase it from my journal. I’ll do that later for sure. I’ll make up a special code that I can remember without writing it down. Opening the doors, she surveyed the shelves. The top shelf held a framed photograph of Leila wearing a starched white dress, a white turban, and a red scarf around her neck. “This was taken at my initiation as a Voodoo priestess,” she had told Eden when she gave her the photograph. Next to the photograph was a ceramic Buddha Eden had found in a sale bin outside a store in Chinatown. Picking up the statue, she thought, I don’t think Min Tan would approve of the contents of my cabinet. He probably wouldn’t like this statue locked up with stuff I use to build shrines to the Iwa. The next shelf held the artifacts, potions, and objects she had used for honoring the Voodoo Iwa. They included a GI Joe doll, a cigar, a small bottle of rum, a red scarf, a wide blade knife that looked like a saber, and a box of matches. These objects had been used to construct a shrine for Papa Ogou, the warrior. The third shelf contained the objects she had used to adorn the shrine made to honor Iwa Gran Bwa, master of all forests and plants, maker of both healing potions and toxins that kill. It contained a branch of jimsonweed that Eden had dried in the oven one afternoon when no one else was home. Gran Bwa loved jimsonweed, known in Haiti as the zombie’s cucumber. There were two scarves: one red and one green. There was a small figure of Treebeard from the Lord of the Rings and an image of St.Sebastian, a Christian martyr shown tied to a tree and pierced with arrows. On the bottom shelf were the four books that Eden cherished. The Secret Garden had been a gift from Carolyn. Leila had given her the handbook on Voodoo practices. She had bought The Rainbow and the Serpent herself at a used bookstore. It described the practice of Voodoo in Haiti, and got her intrigued with the notion of zombie powder, and the job of an ethno botanist. Her most recent acquisition had been a gift from Min Tan. It was a short book on Buddhism. Next to the books was the pine box that Leila had given her a week or so after she’d had to leave the employ of the Denglers. Like the cabinet in which it was housed, it could be secured with a combination lock. “You arranged to meet me after school,” Eden said aloud to the photograph of Leila in the starched white dress. “You handed me this box and said, ‘Since you were a little girl, I have encouraged you to keep a Stranger Box filled with objects to ward off evil and help keep you safe. Now it’s time for you to have a box that you can lock, and that contains things that can truly help you defend yourself.” Eden closed her eyes and visualized her first Stranger Box. It was the shoebox that had contained my new pair of snow boots. I must have been five years old at the time. When she saw the box, Leila told me the story of the orphan boy who lived alone in the woods and kept things in his Stranger Box to protect him from those who would do him harm. She suggested that I begin to build my own. Within weeks, with her help, I had filled it with objects that I believed had magical powers. The flashlight from the cereal box was the beacon that would guide me safely through danger. The broken shell I found on the beach could cut anyone who tried to harm me. The large rubber bands we took off the fresh broccoli would make a great slingshot. Dead leaves I picked up in Central Park would make a potent tea. As the years passed, the box fell apart. I replaced it with a wooden cigar box that I found in the trash. The contents began to change. I started collecting healing herbs and mild toxins. “Some of them weren’t so mild,” Eden said, opening her eyes and smiling at her old friend and mentor. “You introduced me to nightshade berries once when we went to the park for a picnic. I picked a bunch when you went to the bathroom. I was only ten at the time. I guess I believed that if I made the Denglers sick enough, I could go live with you. When I got home I mixed them with the other berries that were in the refrigerator. I figured sooner or later the Denglers would put them on their ice cream. They did that same night, and man did they get sick.” “You knew what I’d done. The next day you told me I had been very naughty, but you were smiling when you said it. It was like you were proud of me for showing initiative.” Her stomach growled, reminding Eden that she was hungry. She returned the Stranger Box to its place and locked the cabinet. She then turned to face the window and peered through the bars at the New York street below. A dizzying haze rose from the blistering concrete. Even from five stories up, she could smell the acrid fish, rotten melons, and decaying onions in the black plastic garbage bags piled on the sidewalks. On this third Saturday in August 1999, heat and humidity levels were about to break all records. Removing her sweaty nightshirt, she put on a yellow sleeveless tee shirt and denim shorts – both cast-offs from Samantha. She walked through the living room rendered oppressive by heavy velvet drapes and threadbare Persian carpets and into a kitchen that bore testimony to the apartment’s age and overall disrepair. Poorly mended cracks looked like varicose veins on the black-and-white floor tiles. The porcelain sink was badly chipped. Eden opened the refrigerator and reached for the Chinese takeout dinner the family had eaten the night before. Taking the cardboard container with her, she sought refuge in the only room with an air conditioner – Carolyn and Robert’s bedroom. She turned on the television, grabbed the remote, and sat down on the floor with her back resting against the footboard of Robert’s bed. After flipping through the channels, she settled on The Matrix. She was engrossed in the movie when Samantha appeared shortly after 11:30. Samantha planted her body on her mother’s twin bed. “I’m taking over this room. You may leave.” “I was here first,” countered Eden, turning up the volume. “So what. You have no rights in this house, especially this weekend. If it weren’t for you, Daddy would have taken me to the Hamptons. He told me I couldn’t go because he didn’t want you along, and you couldn’t stay alone.” “Bullshit. They just used me as an excuse. They didn’t want you along. Carolyn knows I’m sleeping over at Linda’s tonight. I could’ve spent the whole weekend there. I don’t need you to look after me, that’s for sure.” “You pretend you don’t need anybody, but you’re just a sniveling fifteen-year-old brat.” “And you’re a seventeen-year-old asshole who can’t do a damn thing but strut around a stage half-naked and recite words somebody else has written. You think you’re somebody special, but you’re really a nobody.” “I told you to leave. And, in case you’ve forgotten, I’ll be eighteen in a week.” “Yeah, but that’s not going to make any difference. You’ll still be a vain, self-absorbed asshole.” Eden stood up and walked toward Samantha. Picking up the mirror from Carolyn’s cluttered bedside table, she shoved it in Samantha’s face. “Here, look at yourself. I know how much you enjoy that. Admire your long blond hair, your opalescent blue eyes, your cupid-shaped mouth, and your petite, well-formed nose. Oh yes, I’ve got the words down pat. If I hear Robert describing you to one more casting director, I’ll puke. And it doesn’t work. You never get past soap operas.” “Shut up! You’re just jealous. Your curly red hair is weird. You’ve got a fat butt and a scar on your forehead. Those freckles make you look like a rag doll that somebody threw in the garbage.” “I’d rather look like a rag doll than a skinny, pasty-faced flake.” “Men prefer blonds, Bitch. Men do not prefer red heads with freckles, or olive- skinned women with greasy black hair and horned-rim glasses.” “Carolyn’s hair is not greasy! I won’t let you put her down. She’s an attractive woman.” “I’m glad I look like my father.” “The aging blond Adonis. In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s getting fat, and his hair is turning grey,” said Eden, resuming her place on the floor and turning her back on Samantha. “Get the hell out of here,” roared Samantha. Eden ignored her. Moments later, Samantha came up from behind, grabbed a fistful of Eden’s hair, and cut. A tangle of long, curly red strands fell to the floor. Eden jumped up. Though, at five feet, five inches, Eden was three inches shorter than Samantha, she had the benefit of strength. She raised her hand and came down hard on Samantha’s skinny arm, forcing her to drop the scissors. Samantha screamed, “You crazy bitch! We’re shooting a scene on the beach next week. You just better hope my arm doesn’t bruise.” Her eyes fixed on Samantha, Eden reached down and picked up the scissors. Closing the blades, she sneered, “Poor baby. Baby might bruise. Tough shit. I hope your whole arm turns black and blue.” “You better hope my arm isn’t bruised. My looks support this fucking family.” Eden rubbed her thumb against the blades. “You don’t support the family. Carolyn does.” “Bullshit. I make way more than Mom.” “That doesn’t mean you support the family,” Eden retorted. “You support Robert. Carolyn supports me. You have nothing to do with me.” She turned and walked away. Eden was halfway down the hall when Samantha yelled, “I wish I had nothing to do with you. So do Mom and Dad. They wish they’d never adopted you.” Stung, but unwilling to show it, Eden turned to face Samantha. “That is not true. At least it’s not true of Carolyn. I don’t care what Robert thinks.” “Wrong,” raged Samantha, her brow furrowed in a knot of hatred. “Mom is ashamed of you, especially in front of Rabbi Cohen. He makes Mom feel bad because you refuse to go to synagogue, because you stopped going to the classes on becoming a Jew, and because you always wear that dumb cross around your neck.” “At least I believe in something beyond myself,” said Eden. “Maybe I’m Catholic. Maybe I’m a Voodooist. Maybe I’m a Buddhist. Maybe I’m a modern Jew. Rabbi Cohen told me modern Jews don’t have to go to synagogue. Modern Jews don’t even have to be Jewish. They just have to be kind a charitable. There’s only two people in this family who are like that, and neither of them are you or Robert.” “Daddy is a wonderful man. He’s given up his whole career for me.” “Give me a break, Sam. He got fired. Your daddy got fired, and that was over two years ago. The senior partner stopped buying his crap. He couldn’t even peddle the flesh, and that’s all headhunters really do, you know.” Samantha clenched her fists. “Daddy did not peddle flesh. He was in executive search, and he was damn good at it. He quit so he could help me get better parts. He’s an artist, and I’m his painting.” “That is so lame!” said Eden, twirling the scissors. “You don’t get it. Neither does Mom. Daddy says both you and Mom are ‘ice queens.’” “And he thinks you’re hot, right? That’s disgusting!” When Samantha failed to respond, Eden continued. “The other night Robert left one of his porno books on the floor in the dining room. I just about tripped over it when I went to bed. When I picked it up, it fell open, and you know what fell out? Your publicity photo! Don’t you think that’s a little weird?” Samantha put her hands on her hips. “What do you mean his porno books? Helmut Newton is not a pornographer. But what would you know about art?” “I know plenty. And I also know that publicity photo doesn’t even look like you anymore. You’ve gotten so thin, you’re skanky. And your boobs are gone. All this bingeing and throwing up is making you ugly, Sam.” “Shut the fuck up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” “I sure do. Remember last week when you refused to eat the pizza we ordered? It was the night Robert didn’t get home until almost dawn. Anyway, in the middle of the night, a weird sound woke me up. I went to investigate. The lights in the kitchen were on. You were standing over the sink, shoveling the cold, dried out pizza into your mouth.” “Shut up, Bitch!” Samantha yelled. “I watched you gag and lean over the sink. It looked like you were letting your bloody guts fall out. The stuff was still oozing from your mouth when you shoved in another piece. Then you raced into the bathroom and started vomiting. Yuck! You are fucking disgusting.” “I am not disgusting. I stay thin because I have to. The camera adds ten pounds. It’s a good thing you’re not behind the camera. You’d look absolutely obese.” “I am not obese.” “Not yet, but you are sexless. Both you and Mom are sexless. You have no passion. All either of you do is think. Think. Think. Think. Read. Read. Read. Daddy says Mom’s gotten boring because she reads too much.” “Yeah, and he’s boring because he never reads. Robert married Carolyn for her brains, so he has no right to complain about her reading. The only reason he graduated was because she wrote his papers.” “Well, if she did, then he suckered her into it, and that makes him smarter.” “I bet you wish you could sucker me into writing your papers. You’d get better grades. The reason you go to that stuck-up Walton School is because you’re too dumb and lazy to make it in public school.” “The Walton School is where anybody who’s anybody in this town goes.” “Only jerks go to the Walton School. I’m glad I go to public school. I wouldn’t go to the Walton school even if somebody paid me to go there.” “Well, that’s sure not going to happen. You’re never going to amount to anything. It’s in the blood. Your mother was probably a teenage pregnant whore who had to drop out of public school.” The ringing of the telephone stopped Eden from striking Samantha. Position gave her an advantage as they raced into the hall for the phone. Holding Samantha back, Eden answered. “Hello, this is the Dengler household. Eden speaking.” Clutching the receiver to her chest, she teased, “It’s Gregory, Gregory Pecker, Samantha. Gregory wants to talk to Samantha, but that’s not going to happen.” Smiling derisively at Samantha, Eden yanked the cord out of the wall. Shrieking, Samantha ran down the hall, bound for the receiver in the dining room that Robert had taken over for his office. Eden turned off the television, sank down in the frayed stuffed chair, and fingered the ends of her butchered hair. She heard Samantha say, “My parents have split for the weekend. I can get rid of Eden. I’ve got some good pot. I hope you can make it . . .” Eden got up and shut and locked the door. She picked up the scissors and went into the bathroom. Jagged strands reached only to the bottom of her left ear lobe. Sighing, she began to cut the long hair on the right side. As the curly strands fell to the floor, she felt better. The shorter cut suited her heart-shaped face and made her emerald green eyes more compelling. Ruffling her hands through her new bob, she thought, the bitch did me a favor. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t need to be punished. That’s how it works. Leila taught me that. Min Tan wants me to think about it differently, but I just can’t seem to get there. If somebody hurts somebody else, then they need to be punished. If the Iwa won’t do it, then I’ll have to do it. Putting her ear to the door, Eden tried to figure out what Samantha was up to. The apartment was silent. Finally, Eden heard Samantha approach the other side of the locked door. She began speaking. “Last night I had the dream again. I was a little girl, a baby really. A tall woman with blond braids was carrying me. We were coming down a narrow flight of stairs.” “Stop!” Eden screamed, pounding the door with her fists. My journal is off limits.” “Nothing is off limits to me, Eden.” “It was hidden and it was locked. How did you find it? How did you get it open?” “Scissors cut more than hair, little sister.” “You bitch! You had no right to even be in my room.” “You don’t have a room. You have a space behind a screen in the dining room. And that’s all you deserve.” In a melodramatic stage voice, Samantha continued reading. “Standing at the bottom of the stairs was a woman in a long coat. She had red hair the same color as mine. It was like she had no face. Her arms were folded tightly against her chest.” “Shut up, Samantha,” Eden yelled, resisting the temptation to open the door and grab the book. She didn’t want to give Samantha the chance to take back the air-conditioned room. “Make me,” challenged Samantha. “Open the door!” When Eden refused to take the bait, she continued. “Ah, here’s another good one.” “I don’t like the way Robert looks at Leila. It all started the other day when he came home and found us dancing. Well, I wasn’t dancing. Leila was dancing to a Haitian CD. I was playing the drum she’d given me for my birthday. Leila was a great dancer. She could make her body move like a snake, like Damballah, the great white serpent who lies between heaven and earth and moves like the seas. Leila was so into it, she didn’t even notice Robert, but he sure noticed her. The way he looked at her gave me the creeps. I knew he was going to make a move on her.” “And that’s exactly what happened,” yelled Eden through the door. “After he came onto her, she decided she had to leave.” “Leila had to leave because she was fired,” yelled Samantha. “Carolyn fired her, and I was glad. Leila was one weird bitch.” “She wasn’t weird, and she wasn’t a bitch. Carolyn only fired her because Robert lied and told her Leila had come on to him. Carolyn bought the lie because she wants to believe your daddy loves her. Robert doesn’t love her. He doesn’t love anybody, except himself and maybe his mistress.” “Daddy loves me, and he doesn’t have a mistress!” “Oh, yes he does,” said Eden. “Her name is Luisa. I hear him on the phone with her. Where do you think he is when he stays out all night?” “You’re a liar,” Samantha shouted. “Leila was a liar, too.” “She was not!” Eden shouted back. “Listen to this one,” demanded Samantha. “It’s so off-the-wall it has to be a lie.” “Today Leila told me about Ti Femme. When Ti Femme was thirty years old, she died and was buried. Three years later, her mother found her wandering around. She knew it was her because of a scar on her body.” “That was no lie. The story is even in a book I have written by an ethno botanist who graduated from Harvard!” “Harvard, schmarvard,” Samantha taunted and kept on reading. “They dug up her coffin. It was empty. She was like the living dead. She was a zombie. Leila says that her jealous husband made it happen with a special potion and a curse.” “Bet you wish you had some of that potion to use on me,” said Samantha. “You have a lot of Voodoo crap. I got your cabinet open, you know. You shouldn’t have written the combination down in such an obvious place.” Eden yanked the door open. Samantha fell into the room. Eden grabbed the journal, kicked her and ran. She tripped over a pile of books and then knocked over a large china lamp. Carolyn’s prized ceramic frog fell to the floor and shattered. Seething, Eden kicked the books into a corner and righted the cracked lamp. Then she went into her end of the dining room. The artifacts were smashed, and the pieces strewn all over the floor. The Buddha was cracked and broken. The photograph of Leila and Eden was torn up into little bits and scattered across her unmade bed. The framed photograph of Leila in the starched white dress lay on the floor. The glass was shattered. Pages from her books, torn out at random, lay here and there amidst the sacred debris. I won’t cry, Eden vowed. I’ll get even, and the Iwa will help me. Samantha, you will be sorry. You have done more than offend me. You have offended Gran Bwa, and you have offended Papa Ogou, the warrior. You have even offended Buddha. ? view abbreviated excerpt only...Discussion Questions
Does Eden feel guilty over Samantha’s death? Should she? Why or why not?Is the Dark Angel pure evil. If not, why not?
Does Katherine Blair have any redeeming characteristics? If so, what are they?
In what ways is the influence of the Dark Angel over Eden apparent in the way the story ends? Min Tan? Leila?
Min Tan tried to teach Eden to be compassionate. Did he succeed or fail? How did she show compassion? When did she fail to show compassion?
Eden tells Anna she was never really mothered. Is that true? Did Carolyn totally fail Eden as a mother figure?
The Dark Angel talks about the differences between aggressive, seductive Lillith and the passive, responsive Eve. These two types of women are mirrored by the two types of mothers in Eden’s life: Katherine Blair, and the more docile, easily manipulated, Carolyn Dengler. As she matures, what kind of woman is Eden becoming? What kind of mother is she likely to be?
Eden could have stolen Bryce from her mother. Why didn’t she?
Eden always believed in rejecting others before they could reject her. She didn’t do that with Bryce. Why not? What happened?
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