At this point, I am shaking. The Tribe is in full alarm. Other than Miss Marple nobody knows that we are a multiple. It’s not something to brandish around like an achievement of any kind. We prefer people seeing us as dimwitted rather than mentally ill. I get a sense of Sky’s hand on my shoulder, reassuring me and hear her whisper, “Tell him.”
The idea of telling him about us is petrifying. What if he thinks I’m lying and doesn’t want to know us afterwards? It feels risky. I can hear young parts inside crying. They are overwhelmed. We learned from early on that telling anybody anything is forbidden. The kids are afraid our abusers will punish us. They don’t understand our abusers are no longer in our life or that we are not helpless children anymore.
“I’ve got time.”
“Time for what?”
“For the not so quick answer.”
He catches me not paying attention.
“It’s complicated.”
“I think I can manage, or do you have doubts?”
“No, no. I know I’m stalling. Where do I start?”
He gets up and pours a glass of water. “You too?”
I nod and wait for him to sit back down.
“I guess you noticed I use the pronoun ‘we’ a lot of the time.”
“Yes, I did. Is it the royal ‘we,’ should I know something about your aristocratic family connection? Any links to the royal family, Your Highness?”
“Ha, ha. No, it’s not that fancy. Or maybe it’s even fancier. You decide.” I take a deep breath like a swimmer on the side of the pool, about to dive in. “I experience myself as a we, a person of many parts who are quite distinct from each other.”
He looks at me with interest, but not at all shocked so far. That’s a good sign.
“There is a part of me who is a caretaker, another part is a healer, a gardener, a child, a warrior, and so on.”
“We all have that, don’t we? Wearing different hats depending on what we are doing at the time?”
“Yes, we all have that. It’s called dissociation. The thing is, I’m doing it just a whole lot more sophisticated than the average person. When you get engrossed in a book and don’t notice the phone ringing, you dissociate. When something similar happens to me, I dissociate to such an extent that I become a different person. I might switch into a different part who picks up the phone, or I don’t hear the ringing at all.”
He frowns as if he has trouble with what I’ve just said. “I can’t see how that’s a big deal.”
“Like the other day when you stayed overnight at our place. A part of me came down the stairs and weaved. You talked to her.”
“Yes, I remember. You talked funny.”
“Now, see, that wasn’t me. That was a child part of me. She’s only four years old and has a different name to me. She thinks and acts like a four-year-old. I don’t remember that incident at all. I know about it because we are writing these things down in a book where all the different parts can get up to speed about what’s happening.”
“Now I’m confused.”
“Try living with it. It’s difficult.”
“My name is Lilly. I pulled you out of the car. I’m strong. I don’t remember much of our past. It would get in the way of me getting things done.”
“Lilly? You introduced yourself as Elise Reid when you arrived.”
“That wasn’t me. That was Elise. Elise is the one who fixed your head wound. She knows about healing. She’s amazing, but when she gets frightened, she slips inside, and I have to clean up whatever mess we are in. Like today, talking to you.”
“Wow… So, the night of the accident Elise took care of my injuries? And the next morning at breakfast that was…?
“That was me.”
“And after the little girl left, that was…?
“That was our camp mother.”
“That sounds, I don’t know, interesting? Weird? Amazing?”
“Well, it’s all that, but living with it is difficult. Unless we get better at working together, we’re not going to get anywhere. We all hold different pieces of memories. We don’t have our memories all in one place. So, when you ask whether we suspected anything about the marriage, the answer is no. Because different parts hold different memories and we’ve never been able to put all the pieces together. We are starting now but it’s a slow process.”
“How is that connected to being followed?”
“I’m not sure yet. Our condition is called Dissociative Identity Disorder. You become a person of parts like us through physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in the early years of childhood. We remember most, but not all. Some happened here, and it involves the Gateway Community, some happened in Auckland.”
“This explains a great deal about your reaction at the grocery shop.”
“Yes, a child part recognized the compound in the newspaper and pushed Elise aside for a while. We fear we are considered a threat because we could identify the abusers. We also think my parent’s estate is somehow involved. Our lawyer Patrick Armstrong is looking into that, too. He thinks our guardians misappropriated significant portions of our inheritance.”
“Holy shit. That’s unbelievable.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I mean unbelievable as in Whoa. How can I help?”
He wants to help? That’s more than I ever dreamed of. And he seems to mean it too, because he looks sincere. It’s an amazing feeling. Before I know what I’m doing, I jump out of my chair and press a kiss on his stubbly cheek.
“Oops, sorry, I didn’t…” I don’t even know what I’m saying. But I know I’m turning red like a fire engine.
He smiles at me and gives me an awkward upper body hug before he lets me go. “No need to be sorry. We are friends, aren’t we?”
“Yes, we are.” There go the butterflies again, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“What do you need from me?”
I slip back into my chair. “I’m not sure. Elise drove us here
