Face Number Seventy-Eight

Click. The green light flashed on. The tape was recording. “So who are you today?”

“My name is Eliza Friday and I am a hit man. Jesus, I sound like I’m at a god damned AA meeting. Let me start over… Hi, my name is Eliza Friday and I kill people for a living. Does that sound too blunt? The truth never sounds as nice as I’d like it to. I lied though. I used to kill people for a living, then I just killed people. I guess you could say that I’ve retired.”

“Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?”

“I’ve been pulling triggers since I was eight. I made my first hit when I was sixteen. A man paid me $600 to shoot his brother. I did it. I was desperate. I needed the money for drugs. My uncle Dorian became my guardian when I turned seventeen after my parents were killed. It’s been a year since the night I came home and discovered their bodies, sleeping in pools of blood in their bed. I’ve cleaned up since then. Well, I’ve cleaned up meaning the whole drug thing is long gone. I guess I can’t say I’m really clean since my profession is in the area of death-dealing. I can remember what it felt like the first time I picked up a gun. I found it pushed in the back of my father’s sock drawer. There it lay, tucked away in an innocent sleep. I hesitated, but not for long. Curious little fingers wrapped around the barrel, plucking it from its bed. It was cold and heavy in my third grade hands. I’d never had anything more dangerous than safety scissors. Honestly, those things are more terrible than garden shears because at least garden shears get the job done, quick and clean. Those damn safety scissors would take two hours to break through the first layer of skin. Sorry. I’m rambling.”

“It’s alright, continue.”

“I inspected the barrel. It wasn’t loaded. My eyes had to be gleaming by then; I had just discovered a shiny, new toy and spent the rest of the morning running around my playroom, clicking the trigger at dolls and teddy bears. My nanny, Lupe’, found me eventually. I remember the look on her face when she walked in to find my eight year old self pretending to put a bullet into Mr. Bear’s right ear. There was a lot of screaming and crying from both of us as she grabbed the gun out of my hands and marched me straight to my father’s office downstairs. She was muttering Spanish curses to herself the entire way. I’d never been more scared and I have never walked more slowly through the house than I did that day. I thought maybe my father was going to take the gun, load it and shoot me right there for being so bad. Or, at least if he didn’t, I knew for sure Lupe’ was going to. I knew that woman had always hated me anyways. When I was seven, I was under the firm belief she was trying to poison me. She always used to tell me she’d cook something extra special for me or she had a special surprise for me, stuff like that. Anyways, she was fired a few months later for stealing money from the family vault. Rambling again. I’m really sorry.”

“Keep going.

“Lupe’ marched me right into my father’s office. He looked up from the phone setting the receiver down. ‘Look what I find your daughter playing with,’ she had shouted, dropping the gun onto the desk like it had an offensive smell. He picked it up and asked me where I had gotten it from. I bit my lip, rocking back and forth on my feet. I whimpered that I had found it. ‘You took it out of my sock drawer, didn’t you?’ he said. I was shaking by then. ‘Senor, she is terrible child! She need to be sent away to boarding school at once! I found her shooting at dolls with gun!’ I really hated Lupe’. My father thanked Lupe’ and dismissed her, setting the gun back down. I gulped as he crossed his arms. ‘Eliza, you know you’re not allowed to go snooping around our bedroom. Your mother would have a fit if she knew about this… that’s why I’m not going to tell her.’ I nodded in shame. I’d rather have had him shoot me than be disappointed in me. I apologized. ‘But since you found your first gun, let me at least show you how to shoot it right so you don’t go killing yourself.’ And that’s all I remember from that day. He wasn’t even mad. After that, he started taking me to shooting ranges. For my thirteenth birthday he gave me my first handgun, a Beretta Tomcat. He told me never to use it on a person and I obeyed. My father was my superman.”

“What were you thinking about the first time you killed someone, Eliza?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I wasn’t thinking about anything. It happened too quickly to think about anything. I watched him walk to his car and the I just… shot him.”

“And you didn’t feel angry or scared or nervous?”

“No.”

“Were you happy? You said that you wanted the money for drugs, did that make you feel good?”

“I was addicted to heroin, nothing made me feel good.”

“Why did you do it then?”

“Don’t you ever do things for no reason? I’m assuming that since you’re the doctor here you’ve never killed anybody before, but haven’t you ever just… done something just to do it?”

“Of course, but Eliza, I think my situation and yours are slightly out of comparison.”

“Just because I’ve killed twenty-two people and you haven’t doesn’t mean we can’t relate here.”

“Eliza, the difference between you and me is…”

“The difference between you and me is that I’m crazy and I used to kill a lot of people for a living. You’re crazy and you enjoy rooting around killers’ heads for a living. In the end, Dr. Hill, we’re exactly the same, we’re both crazy!”

The doctor’s arms folded across her chest, red lips pursing. “If that’s the way you to look at it, so be it.”

“You’re the god damned so called psychologist, you tell me how I’m supposed to look at things. You’re supposed to be ‘helping me out.’”

Her head shook, she took off her glasses, “I can’t help you.” Her voice almost sounded like it wanted to laugh. “You can’t even help yourself. Look at you, you wake up a different person every day.”

“But I’m Eliza Friday.”

“You’re not Eliza Friday. You’ve never killed anyone in your entire life. Your name is Jane Elizabeth Brody. You’re fourteen years old, born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts. You had dog names Sam and you went to Salem City School for Girls. You liked to draw a lot. You didn’t have many friends, always quiet, smart though. And when you were twelve, your family died in a freak car accident.”

“What are you talking about? My name is Eliza.”

“And yesterday your name was Cleopatra and the hospital was your kingdom. The day before that you were captaining a ship heading for the Caribbean. The day before that you told everyone you were the color purple.”

“I am the color purple.”

“You can’t be a color, Jane.”

“Yes I can,” I whispered.

She shook her head, “No.”

“And I was Cleopatra, I was, do you want me to tell you about it? I remember everything.”

“No Jane, I’ve already heard about Cleopatra.”

She rummaged into a file cabinet behind her, pulling forth a shoebox labeled “Cleopatra.”

“What is that?” I asked, leaning over in my seat.

“It’s all of your Cleopatra days on tape.” She pulled off the lid, revealing at least twenty tapes, arranged by date. “I’ve been introduced to Cleopatra on twenty-three different occasions. Usually on Thursdays.”“Cleopatra likes Thursdays, it’s her favorite day. She said so.”

“I know,” Dr. Hill nodded, putting the tapes away.

“What is it called? What is it called again? I know you tell me everyday, but everyday I forget.”

“Dissociative Identity Disorder, or Multiple Personality Disorder. You have a lot of different people living up in that head of yours.”

“How many?”

“Seventy-eight, now counting Eliza Friday, whom I met for the first time today.”

“I don’t believe you,” I mutter.

“You never do, would you like to hear some of the tapes?”

“No.”

But Dr. Hill was already back in a different file cabinet. She set a box labeled “Kitty Bellevue” on the table.

“Who’s that?”

“Kitty Bellevue, you were here for a week straight last February,” Dr. Hill said as she popped a tape into the player. It crackled a moment for her voice came on.

“Who are you today?”

“Kitty Bellevue, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep this confidential. I don’t want my fans knowing I have to see a shrink.”

“You have fans? Are you a celebrity?”

“You should know that I’m an actress, a very famous one.”

“How old are you Kitty?”

“Twenty-nine.”
“Have you ever heard of a girl named Jane Brody? She’s a big fan of yours.”

“A big fan you say? I knew a Jane Brody once. She did my makeup for the Oscars. That was back in, oh let’s see… 1932.”

Dr. Hill stopped the tape I had lost my train of thought, staring at the little gears winding around and around inside the tape player.

“Let’s have a listen to the color purple now,” she said, putting in a new tape. It started the same way as the last one.

“Who are you today?”“Purple.”

“I asked who, not what. Who are you?”

“I am purple. That is who I am and am not.”

“I’m not sure that makes sense.”

“Purple never does make very much sense. That’s why it’s purple.”

I didn’t want to listen to this anymore. “Turn it off please.” Dr. Hill’s eyebrows raised above her square glasses. “Okay,” she said, hitting the stop button, switching tapes and hitting record.

“Is Eliza still in the room?”

“No,” I paused, “she had to go.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know.”“Are you sure?”“She told me not to tell you.”

“So who are you now?”“I’m Dr. Hill.”

“Jane,” she said her voice suddenly stern.

“Is the tape still going, you’ll want to get all this. Start asking me questions.”

“You’re not me.”

“My name is Doctor Jillian Hill. I used to get teased a lot at school. Everybody call me no-hills-Jill because I didn’t need to wear a bra until I was in twelfth grade. I never had many friends. I…”

“Jane!” She cut me off, “that’s enough.”

There were tears rolling down my cheeks, “I’m sorry.” Glancing at the clock, Dr. Hill stopped the tape.

“That’ll be all for today Jane, I’ll see you tomorrow.” She hit a button on her desk, leaning over to speak into the intercom microphone, “Micheal, please escort Jane back to her quarters.” The door opened, Micheal entered. He bent down beside me, smiling and holding out his hand for a high-five like he always did.

“Are ya ready kiddo?”

I stared at his hand, then looked back at Dr. Hill as she opened her laptop and disappeared into her world of work. “Janie, c’mon, it’s almost time for television. Everyone’s waiting for you.”

“Waiting for me, waiting for the girl who wakes up a different person everyday, waiting for the girl who’s always entertaining, who always has a story to tell. No wonder everyone likes me, they look at me and see some… some creature with seventy-eight faces and they think it’s funny. They’ve never woken up in the middle of the night and been one person and suddenly been a completely different person. They don’t sometimes forget their real name, or that their family is dead, or that they used to have a dog named Sam.”

“Janie, let’s go now. Dr. Hill has work to do,” he said.

I blinked, sliding out of my seat. Micheal led me out the door and down the hall. I could hear the television muttering cartoons in the rec-room. The rest of the girls were sitting around, looking like angels in white nightgowns. They turned their heads when I walked in. “Who is she today?” One girl blurted out, standing on the couch. A round of questions came hurtling at me as Micheal quieted everyone, steering me into my usual chair off to the side, “leave her alone girls, just watch TV.”

They all shut up, watching me walk by with cold eyes. Sara was sitting beside me. She was my only friend. She’s a pathological liar. She smiled at me, blonde curls bobbing as she leaned over, “Jane?” She whispered.

“Yes?”

“Was it a good one today?”

“Yes, I made her mad again and then I cried. She bought it all,” I whispered, a little grin smearing across my face.