“The Color of Water” (post 1) by James McBride: Alternate Personality in Mirror

“Music arrived in my life around that time, and books. I would disappear inside whole worlds comprised of Gulliver’s Travels, Shane, and books by Beverly Cleary. I took piano and clarinet lessons in school, often squirreling myself away in some corner with my clarinet to practice, wandering away in Tchaikovsky or John Philip Sousa, trying to improvise like jazz saxophonist James Moody, only to blink back to realty an hour or two later. To further escape from painful reality, I created an imaginary world for myself. I believed my true self was a boy who lived in the mirror. I’d lock myself in the bathroom and spend long hours playing with him. He looked just like me. I’d stare at him. Kiss him. Make faces at him and order him around. Unlike my siblings, he had no opinions. He would listen to me. ‘If I’m here and you’re me, how can you be there at the same time?’ I’d ask. He’d shrug and smile. I’d shout at him, abuse him verbally. ‘Give me an answer!’ I’d snarl. I would turn to leave, but when I wheeled around he was always there, waiting for me. I had an ache inside, a longing, but I didn’t know where it came from or why I had it. The boy in the mirror, he didn’t seem to have an ache. He was free. He was never hungry, he had his own bed probably, and his mother wasn’t white. I hated him. ‘Go away!' I’d shout. ‘Hurry up! Get on out!’ But he’d never leave. My siblings would hold their ears to the bathroom door and laugh as I talked to myself. ‘What a doofus you are,’ my brother Richie snickered” (1, pp. 90-91).

Comment: Search “mirror” and “mirrors” in this blog to read past posts that discuss this textbook symptom of multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity), whose normal, creative version, an asset of many novelists, I call "multiple personality trait.”

1. James McBride. The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother (a memoir). New York, Riverhead Books, 1996/2006.