The Flock

by Joan Frances Casey

  Jo was lost in her memory of pain and surprise. “When I finally decided I wasn’t imagining the scene, I walked upstairs and found my mother in the kitchen. ‘What are those girls doing here?’ I asked her.

  “ ‘You know perfectly well that they are here for your birthday,’ she answered. Then I understood. They were with me to make a bad experience worse.”

  Jo brightened. “But there was some comfort associated with that particular birthday. Later, when I was alone, I realized that I was a full decade old. A decade sounded like a significant span of time. It meant to me that half of my waiting period was over. When I got through another decade, I’d no longer be a child. I wanted so badly to be an adult, so that I’d understand everything and be able to get away from all of the people.

  “I guess that birthdays always have been horrible times of tension for me. A lot of that tension revolved around my mother. I ached for my father as he tried year after year to find a way to please her on her birthday. He wanted so badly to please her. The year he bought her a fur coat, both he and I were sure he had it right this time. But my mother burst into tears when she unwrapped the gift: she didn’t want mink.”

  “No wonder you don’t like birthdays,” Lynn began, but Jo cut her off.

  “I mostly hate birthdays because I know I was supposed to be my mother’s birthday gift. That’s what my mother said. Carol was born December 22, her Christmas present, and I was her birthday gift. I think I always felt that I was the worst birthday gift my mother had ever received. Getting me for her birthday was far worse than getting the wrong fur. The coat was returned, but I couldn’t be.”

  Jo looked at Lynn, face drawn and bitter. “My mother was never particularly good at handling disappointment.”

  Jo stopped speaking and finally, for the first time, cried in front of Lynn. She cried with guilt and resentment that she had never been able to celebrate her own birth. Jo sobbed at the injustice of it all, and let Lynn comfort her.

  When I resumed control to take the body home, I noticed that Lynn looked a little drained by the ordeal. “Well, Renee,” she said, “the birthday cake didn’t work, but focusing Jo’s attention on birthdays sure did.”

  I couldn’t help agreeing.

  —

  A FEW MONTHS LATER, Missy, Isis, and I held a rare internal discussion about what to get Lynn for Christmas. Jo didn’t have internal awareness of us, Joan Frances turned her back on us, but Missy, Isis, and I could talk together if we chose. Christmas-gift giving and receiving were almost as frightening for Jo and the others as birthdays.

  The Jo personality was consumed with finding Lynn the perfect gift, even if she couldn’t discuss it with us. Joan Frances wouldn’t consider it. Missy, Isis, and I decided we would follow Jo’s lead and then add some touches of our own.

  “Something living and growing,” Jo thought.

  “She has an officeful of plants,” I grumbled, but didn’t interfere as Jo walked through a nursery and picked out a small Norfolk pine.

  “You can make things to put on it, decorate it like a real Christmas tree,” Missy said excitedly.

  “The decorations must be significant,” Isis added.

  Over the next week, Missy worked carefully with an art knife held in her left hand, sculpting intricate paper snowflakes. Isis helped with the design, so that each tiny flake was unique but as exquisite as the last. I tied the paper snowflakes to the branches with slivers of red ribbon, and Jo sat back, embarrassed but pleased with the improvements her “unseen elves” had made to her gift for Lynn.

  Lynn openly admired the tree’s beauty and the deep meaning of the gift. “I want to give you all a big hug,” she said, but as she reached, she saw the body flinch. She moved back. “I also don’t want to scare anyone.”

  She gazed thoughtfully at the tree. “Renee,” Lynn said slowly, “there are an awful lot of snowflakes on that tree.”

  I shrugged. Isis had decided on the number. (I was the one who gave Lynn the tree, because none of the others dared to be out for the presentation.) Lynn was right. I counted twenty-four snowflakes on the tree. Isis’s message was clear. There were more personalities, each unique and important to the design of the whole.

  BOOK

  II

  13.

  DIARY    January 14, 1982

  At every session since the holidays, I have been meeting and hearing about more personalities. The new level of trust has allowed out personalities who have mostly remained dormant during the adult years. Renee now seems more intrigued than frightened by the appearance of personalities she didn’t know existed. She’s thinking about them actively, using her talents to make sense out of a system that was first denied, and then seemed terrifying and chaotic to her.

  The first group are what Renee calls the autonomous personalities—Jo, Missy, Joan Frances, Isis, and Renee—who are truly well defined and complete enough as individuals to be able to function autonomously, without the assistance of the others. Each appears to have as full a range of dispositions and capabilities as any individual person. They seem to me also to be competitive with one another. Each is worried that they (or I!) will make a final determination of which one of them gets “total control of the body.”

  Then there are the special-purpose or “single-motive” personalities, who have clearly defined tasks—such as organizing files, cooking, or cleaning house—and seem to have no interest in holding the outside consciousness after they have completed their tasks. Nor do they seem to have the capacity that the autonomous personalities have for individual growth and change.

  The third group Renee describes as “past-keepers,” personalities who hold some experience or knowledge from the past. They fit into the system, she says, by hiding memories that might prevent the autonomous personalities from functioning.

  The Robin and Reagan pair of personalities, who filled me in on some family background and early-infancy events, were only a precursor of the many past-keepers I have met in the last few weeks. Robin and Reagan are unique in that they date their creation not to a single traumatic event but to the need of the group to maintain a nonconflicted, nonabreactive memory trace.

  The other past-keepers are both reactive and information-providing personalities—they appear in my office to give me information the system seems to think I need, or in response to my touching a critical nerve in the Jo, Missy, Joan Frances, or Renee personalities. Renee tells me that they sometimes come out outside my office, when something triggers an abusive memory.

  The past-keepers often seem “frozen in time.” When a past-keeper surfaces, it usually relives or abreacts a situation before my eyes. I don’t have to worry that the actual situation being relived isn’t as clear to me as the emotions involved. Renee is able to watch the personality’s memory-come-alive from a safe distance. “It’s as though I’m sitting in the audience, caught up in a well-made film,” she says.

  Renee invariably pops out after one of these emotionally draining scenes and describes in detail for me what the past-keeping personality was experiencing. Interestingly, Renee is now spontaneously offering some analysis from her protected “outsider’s” position. I am encouraged to hear Renee cluck sympathetically, “That poor kid,” or “No wonder she felt so bad.”

  Some personalities are difficult to classify. Little Joe, for instance. Renee says he’s a past-keeper, but he doesn’t seem interested in sharing what he’s kept. He appeared for the first time just last week.

  Missy had come out and instead of engaging me in conversation announced that “you wanted to be in your corner.” I reminded her that it was safe outside, too, but let her retreat to what she called her “inside place.”

  I stroked her back as she huddled deep within herself. After a few minutes, I noticed that she was staring intently at my hair.

  “What is it, sweetie,” I asked.

  “Hair,” said a voice that wasn’t Missy’s. It was Little Joe, a two-year-old personality, and his fingers played i
n my waist-length hair just as my own babies had many years ago.

  My skin prickled as I realized how complete my experience was of being touched by a toddler.

  Little Joe told me nothing, nor did he demand much in return. In response to his plaintive “Twuck?” I brought in a red-and-yellow toy dump truck that sat on a low shelf awaiting his visits.

  Little Joe rolls the truck back and forth across the rug with plump, uncoordinated hands or touches my hair and stares at my face. Renee says that Little Joe thinks I’m his mommy, who, twenty-five years ago, also had long dark hair. I’m happy to give this baby boy the nurturing he needs.

  —

  THE JO PERSONALITY HAD no early-childhood memories of her mother, although she could recall happy hours spent with her father when she was very young. Ray’s companionship and affection had been freely given and gratefully accepted.

  The little girl’s dependency on her father made Ray’s abuse more insidious. From the time she was three, Daddy took her along when he ran errands. Once they drove away from the house, Daddy picked her up and placed her on his lap so that she could hold the steering wheel and “drive the car.” Daddy’s hardness under her buttocks and the hard steering wheel in her hands were equally part of the experience.

  Still, Ray provided security and certainty. The personalities knew where Daddy stood on most issues and could usually predict his reactions. Mother’s expectations were never so clearly stated or understood. More than one personality was created in the hope of being the daughter Nancy could consistently love. More than one new personality was created in response to Mother’s unexpected fury.

  After the initial personality split at six months, the Missy personality had no interest in pleasing Mother. When Missy wasn’t doing what she liked—drawing, playing outdoors, or spending time with her daddy—she retreated to her “inside place” and left the outside to “that other girl,” as Missy called most of the other personalities.

  Nor did the Jo personality care about pleasing Mother. Ray spoke of Nancy with disdain, and Jo learned to look at her mother with pity and feel proud that she wasn’t, in her father’s words, “anything like your mother or her side of the family.” But the Joan Frances personality wanted desperately for Mother to love her and always felt guilty and unworthy of Nancy’s approval.

  Nancy was as proud as she was critical of her younger daughter. She spoke glowingly about the precocious little girl who said her first sentence at seven months and walked at ten months. She boasted that Joan Frances had taught herself to read when she was three and began reading music and playing the piano at five. Unfortunately, Jo—the personality who accomplished all of this—did so for her own pleasure. Jo cycled inside her mind whenever Nancy tried to show her off to company.

  The Joan Frances personality cringed in embarrassment when Mother demanded that she perform tasks of which she was incapable. Joan Frances didn’t have access to Jo’s learning in the early years, and no amount of maternal anger could summon it forth. The only solution available was to create yet another personality—one who loved performing for Mommy’s friends and who had the additional ability to skim off Jo’s learning.

  Dear, the young “performing” personality, sat primly on the chair in Lynn’s office the day they met, her hands folded on her lap. Lynn watched the legs shorten as Dear took control. Soon only her toes scuffed the carpet. Dear’s recitation of all that she did was so vivid that Lynn said later she could almost see the inevitable white anklets and black patent-leather shoes. “I know how to be a little lady,” Dear explained with her five-year-old confidence. “I like doing all of the things I’m asked, so that Mommy will be proud.”

  Joan Frances, who often heard Nancy extol the virtues of the Holy Sisters, wished that she had “the calling,” because Mother would like her then. And so Theresa, the personality who wanted to join the convent, came to be.

  Nancy smiled with reverent pride when she walked by her daughter’s room and found the seven-year-old on her knees, eyes closed in prayer. Jo, however, was annoyed to find that her allowance had been spent on holy cards and religious statues for the altar she had supposedly created in the corner of her bedroom. Even at that age, she chafed under the dogma of the Catholic Church and the strict discipline of the parochial school she attended. Jo decided it was pretty dumb for a religion to connect wearing hats to church with getting into heaven. The religious fervor soon abated, but Theresa, full of guilt for her sins, remained.

  The Karen personality was created when Jo was nine and her mother said once too often, “Why can’t you be like your cousin Karen?” Jo’s internal Karen was the perfect mimic of her cousin, and fulfilled Nancy’s demand that the child be neat and organized. Unlike such past-keeper personalities as Little Joe and Dear, who stayed frozen in time with their bits of childhood experience, Karen grew and developed into a “special-purpose” personality for the group. The group had a continuing need for her organizational abilities.

  Mother seemed never to be satisfied. Tracy came at age ten to appease Nancy’s demands that the child remain in view. Unlike Jo and Missy, who liked to hide themselves away, Tracy was content to read or play quiet games in her mother’s presence.

  Tracy didn’t mind being observed because she had a magical, invisible bubble that wrapped around and protected her. Sure enough, when Nancy came close enough to touch Tracy, Tracy disappeared and one of the other personalities was forced out to deal with Mother.

  Other “past-keepers” weren’t nearly as sweet as Little Joe, Dear, Theresa, or Tracy: they weren’t at all what Mommy wanted. But they were created by Nancy and her anger.

  One day, when Nancy screamed in rage at her two-year-old daughter, Josie found herself propelled against a wall. Josie, created in that instinctual certainty that she was about to die, remembered her terror and then a wonderful blackness that brought peace. It was Jo who woke up in the emergency room, having her head X-rayed because she had “fallen out of bed,” but there was now a personality who would be called forth by an overwhelming panic in the system. When Josie resurfaced through therapy, she seemed to Lynn terrified and impulsively self-destructive. But all Josie ever wanted was peace, the lovely black unconsciousness that came when she hit her head hard enough against the wall.

  Sissy too was created in terror and anger. But, unlike Josie, she sought the help of others rather than unconsciousness. She wanted people to know about her anger and pain. She first came one day when three-year-old Missy was practicing her drawing. Missy loved when big sister Carol gave her drawing lessons. But this Saturday morning Carol was playing with friends and Daddy was at work, so Missy started a picture to show her sister later.

  Missy drew her cat carefully, in short, controlled strokes, with her crayon. Carol always placed the crayon in her little sister’s right hand, but Missy knew that her left hand was better for precise work like this. She concentrated so completely on her task that she didn’t hear Nancy enter the room.

  Suddenly Mommy was beside her. She grabbed Missy’s left hand, and a long jagged stroke ran the length of her nearly completed picture. “How many times do I have to tell you to use your right hand?” Mommy shouted. “That’s bad, to use your left hand!”

  Missy quickly slipped away to her inside place. “I’ve had enough of this,” Nancy stormed as her daughter got that “blank” look. She raced from the room and returned with a pitcher of cold water, which she threw at the still-expressionless little girl.

  That certainly did the trick. Her daughter’s eyes opened wide and full of hate. “Out!” the child screamed and ran for the window, her tiny fist clenched to beat through the glass. “I want the people, the people!” Nancy pinned her daughter’s arms behind her back and carried her kicking and screaming from the window. The tantrum subsided, but Sissy remained and held her rage, sure that one day she could make the people see.

  —

  SCHOOL WAS A REFUGE, Lynn and I learned, and at first an enjoyable experience for Jo. Jo sta
rted the first grade a year early, when she had just turned five. Since she could already read, the schoolwork was easy. She was so quiet and polite that she never received negative attention from the nun who taught her class of forty children. In fact, in a class so large, Jo was mostly left alone.

  Jo, the personality who started school, was the best student in her class. She was challenged by the independent work Sister gave her and quietly made her way through third-grade math problems and the fifth-grade reader after she performed the first-grade classwork with dispatch.

  One day, some new adults came into the first-grade classroom to give the children IQ tests. Jo worked happily through all of the easy little tests, careful to listen and follow directions. Then she noticed the testers nudging one another and watching her as she completed page after page at twice the speed of the other children. Afraid of any attention, Jo began pacing herself with the little boy next to her. Over time, she learned that she attracted even less attention if she purposely made a few mistakes.

  In this strict Catholic school, where all children learned to use their right hands, Jo’s natural left-handedness caused problems for her as well. She was obedient even when she thought the rules were stupid, and during writing practice calmly worked at making her letters with her right hand. It didn’t surprise her that her writing was worse than the other kids’, nor was she distressed by the low marks in penmanship on her report card. Jo received the top marks in every other subject, and the nuns wrote glowing comments about her school performance.

  But when it came time for art period, Missy took over. Art was her favorite activity, even if her mother said she didn’t have her big sister’s talent. Art demanded a steady hand, whether Missy was drawing, coloring, or cutting paper, and Missy knew her left hand was best for that. Why should the nuns care which hand she used if a pretty picture was the end result? But the nuns did care, and after her left hand was smacked with a ruler, Missy gathered her artistic ability and nestled it safely in her inside place, where people didn’t hit her hand or call it bad.