Home > The Eighth Girl(3)

The Eighth Girl(3)
Author: Maxine Mei-Fung Chung

“Yeah? Well, it’s definitely more geek than Gaga.”

“Rude!”

“Just saying.”

Sweeping my long brown hair to one side, I tuck the wayward strands behind both ears. Unfortunately, my right ear is unable to hold back my hair as effectively as the left because a chunk of it is missing. I am the opposite of Mr. Spock. Were I to be invited aboard the USS Enterprise I would have to decline. Fact. I pinch my cheeks for a flash of color and turn, noticing that Ella, now fully dressed, has borrowed my mint cashmere sweater, which I have to confess looks a zillion times more chic on her than it ever has on me. I may sound a tad envious, but that’s only because I am.

“ALEXAAAA! Hurry up. I haven’t got all day. You’ve got five minutes, young lady!”

That’s my stepmother, Anna, at the bottom of the stairs screaming her pretty little lungs out, clearly vexed. Ella and I roll our eyes.

Anna pretty much raised me after my mother killed herself—pause for a feeling—there. If my young life’s taught me one thing so far, it’s not to skip over difficult feelings. For many years I did my best to avoid them, fearful they’d destroy me. Comfort eating, drinking, masturbating, or sometimes even cutting—the backs of my legs, often with a blunt kitchen knife. The messy butchering ordered my pain inward and took preference over letting others witness my rage, a result of my mother’s sad life and lonely death. I was too vain to cut my arms and hadn’t wanted to give people the opportunity to judge me, at best, or at worst, pity me, assuming I was self-loathing, which, if I’m completely honest, I was at times.

When one of your parents kills themselves you grow up believing you were never quite good enough. But you also realize there is always a way out, however many people you might hurt in the process. Selfish, I know.

When I was nineteen years old, Anna suggested I go to therapy. “I’ll pay,” she said, so she did and I went and it helped. For four years I talked the hind leg off a dog. I became fluent in the language of shrinkese: exploring feelings, repeating behaviors, and patterns of self-destruction. I understood why cutting felt safer than rage; masturbating less scary than intimacy; why eating kept the Body protected and that talking was curative. Back then, Anna had me down as some kind of teenage cliché—mad, moody, and depressed, and for this she blamed my father, claiming no responsibility for her part. I eventually became a bone in Anna’s contention. An inconvenience and constant reminder of the man, my father, who eventually up and left. But I haven’t forgotten what she did, or rather, what she didn’t do. I’ve stored a tiny mental note in my brain should I ever need to remind myself, the resentment felt just one among many.

“Better go,” I say, collecting my denim rucksack and sunglasses.

Ella smiles and leans into me. “Your dress is on back to front. Who got you dressed, Dolly?”

Checking my collar, I notice the label that ought to be at the back is right here beneath my chin. I laugh, embarrassed, circling my red dress back to its rightful place before straightening it with a gentle tug at the waist.

“Whoops.” I smile.

Ella and Anna are the only people besides my previous shrink who know about my other personalities. During my third year of therapy I decided to come clean and confessed to the other people living inside me, and that was when I was given a diagnosis of DID.

Dissociative identity disorder, previously known as multiple personality disorder, is caused by many factors, including trauma in early childhood. This leads to depersonalization (detachment from one’s mind, self, or body) or derealization (experiences of the world as unreal) and dissociative amnesia (inability to remember events, periods of time, or life history, and in rare cases complete loss of identity).

I was fearful to begin with, thinking that if I told anyone about my condition that I’d be committed or that said shrink might attempt to control, remove, or even destroy my personalities. This was not an option. After all, I was the one who created them, which meant I got to decide who went and who stayed. Not him.

Anna has less of a grasp on my condition because she chooses to live in denial and think of my personalities more like moods. The very idea of others living inside me freaks her out, so I guess it’s just easier for her this way. Less mad.

Those who have never seen a switch of personalities in someone often expect some big dramatic physical transformation. Something like a vampire or werewolf sprouting fangs, hair, and claws. But in reality it’s much more subtle. The Body doesn’t change per se, just the body language. Or sometimes it’s our voice or the way we dress. Occasionally, I’m told, it can be the gaze that is actually far more unnerving than anything else.

Unlike Anna, Ella can handle it—them—us. The Flock. And even though she finds it rather amusing at times, she is incredibly attuned to us all. She can usually tell when one of us has taken the Light and seized control of the Body. Take last week: Ella and I were waiting for the Tube when Dolly, not realizing we’d left home, woke up and caught sight of a moving train and completely freaked. Ella immediately noticed the switch—a childlike look of confusion, the simple in-turn of feet and wringing of hands—then put her arm around us for comfort.

“It’s okay, Dolly,” Ella whispered, “don’t panic. It’s just a train.”

Most people wouldn’t know what to do with so many personalities set loose in one body. That’s one of the reasons we’re so close, Ella and I. Even though we’re very different—opposites, even—she’s not once made us feel mad or bad or unlovable.

I look affectionately at my Reason and follow her swishing black bob down the stairs.

“What time do you have to be there, at Daniel’s?” she asks.

“Eight,” I reply.

“Remember. Just be yourself. Okay?”

“Okay.”

She turns back and smiles. “You got this.”

Outside, Anna greets Ella and me with a tight jaw. She crosses her tanned, slender arms and with a pinched mouth—glossed with peach—makes a disapproving sound. I attempt a smile, hoping it might smooth things over, but she simply looks away. Clearly miffed at having missed her Zumba class, she makes a point of slamming the door of her Volvo SUV—such a drama queen—and mutters something under her breath about thighs and bums.

“You look nice,” I chime brightly, lying.

Anna checks her rearview mirror, fingers a lone blond curl, and keys the ignition.

“Yeah, thanks for the lift,” Ella adds.

I clear my throat.

“Sorry you missed your class,” I say sheepishly, applying three strokes of cherry ChapStick.

But Anna’s glance, mean and sharp, silences us. Refusing to indulge our docile chitchat.

“You girls,” she finally snaps, gripping the leather-covered steering wheel, “why do you have to drink yourselves sick? There’s no need for it, getting drunk like that. It’s not—”

“Ladylike?” I finish for her. “Christ, Anna.”

Silence.

“You’re right, Mrs. Wú,” Ella allows, kneeing me in the back of my seat, “we’re no ladies. You’re such a bad influence, Alexa!”

I eject my seat belt, and a trio of pings fills the car, alerting us that I’m no longer safe. I twist around, giving Ella the middle finger.

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