“Deacon King Kong” (post 3) by James McBride: Protagonist converses with an alternate personality based on his deceased wife, Hettie

“…Hettie suddenly appeared…

“‘I don’t care what you done,’ she said. ‘Fact is, when you walk about being spit on, it don’t much matter what else you think you done.”

“Who spit on me? Nobody spit on me.”

“You spit on yourself.”

“Get done with that foolishness. I’m going to work.”

“Well git on then.”

“…I gived joy to everyone.

“Except your own wife.”

“Oh hush.” 

“I was lonely in my marriage,” she said.

“Stop complaining, woman! Food on the table. Roof over our heads. What else you want? Where’s the damn church money, by the way? I’m in a heap of trouble on account of it!”

“She watched him silently, then after a moment said, “Some of it’s not your fault.”

“Sure ain’t. You the one hid that money.”

“I ain’t talking about that,” she said, almost pensively. “I’m talking about the old days when you was a child. Everything ever said to you or done to you back then was at the expense of your own dignity. You never complained. I loved that about you.”

“Oh, woman, leave my people out of it. They long dead.”

She watched him thoughtfully. “And now here you are,” she said sadly, “an old man funning around a ball field, making folks laugh. Even the boys don’t follow you no more.”

“They’ll follow me plenty when I get ‘em back on the field. But I got to get get off the hook ‘bout them Christmas Club chips first. You kept the money in a little green box, I remember that. Where’s the box? Where’s it at, woman?!” “Stop talking in circles, dammit!" 

"She sighed. When you love somebody, their words ought to be important enough for you to listen…”

“Then she was gone” (1, pp. 159-161).

Comment: Hettie, long-deceased wife, appears, speaks, and departs like she has a mind of her own, which is the essence of an alternate personality, as opposed to a person’s regular personalty’s own thoughts. Of course, if you refuse to think in terms of multiple personality, you could explain Hettie away as a ghost.

1. James McBride. Deacon King Kong. NewYork Riverhead Books, 2020.