This is a portrait piece for my workshop writing class...we were asked to pick someone who has made an impact in our life and "flow write" on them for thirty minutes. It turned into a memoir/tribute/therapy session/something way more personal than I expected. Interesting how we discover who we are when we write about ourselves. *Names have been changed*
She poured out the puffed rice, each grain clinking against the sides of the glass measuring cup as it filled to overflowing, like rain on a tin roof. She leveled it off to a perfectly smooth top with one hand. Must be meticulous in the measurements; the OCD demanded aggravatingly precise standards. The extra rice, the loose drifters of the overflow, must be kept in a separate container entirely. Everything must be kept perfectly in its place. No matter how many extra dishes it created. She handed over the cups and the rest of the rice for me to finish. What was I doing? Melting the marshmallows. There were four different kinds: plain white, rainbow, chocolate, and jumbo. Which bag? Which one? Too many choices. Panic. Close eyes, pick one at random and empty the contents into the pot on the stove top. Ok. Breathe.
Funny how her face reflects peace, I thought, funny how the act of creating something new gives her light. Was she remembering Christmases past? A bigger kitchen maybe, elbow to elbow with her sisters and her mother, before the accident. Before the misunderstandings began. Always the endless misunderstandings. Was that an actual smile? I tried to think the last time I’d seen genuine interest and joy for anything in her expression. I was grasping at straws. No such moment existed in my memory.
What is she doing? She just dumped the extra rice back into the bag? And look at her scoop the rest of the cereal without measuring it first. I saw anxiety etched in her frown, but we both remained silent. Keep stirring. Keep measuring. A pool of pastel cream frothed inside the pot, like a multicolored ocean. I got out two potholders, one checkered sunset orange and the other cornflower blue, and took the handles of the pot. I poured the melted mess over the rice while she stirred, and both of us watched the dry cereal crackle with heat and form bigger and bigger clumps, the marshmallow goo sealing the gaps in between. Head bent over the bowl, she concentrated on the task at hand. Make it even, make it perfect. I took the dishes lying at random around the kitchen and bathed them in suds in the sink, washing quickly and quietly to prepare for the next batch of krispies.
A hard ceramic bowl suddenly slipped from my fingers to splash into the muddied dishwater below, making a loud “thud!” as it hit the bottom of the sink. Who’s there? Like a dreamer rudely awoken, Sheri’s eyes snapped to mine, all tranquility and peace scattering across the floor and fleeing through the open window. It was as if she had forgotten my presence in the room, or in her very life, and I had now very unconsciously reminded her of it. I felt every bit the trespasser. As if I had dropped the bowl on the floor and it had shattered instead. I wished I had. Ceramic could be swept up into neat piles and carried to the dustbin and forgotten. Hearts were different. I couldn’t begin to find her pieces, let alone organize them into little piles. And there wasn’t a dustbin big enough to fit them.
That night, I realize now, I didn’t really know Sheri. Had it really been a month ago that my cell phone had lit up with the words “she tried to hurt herself again. Glass everywhere. What do I do?” The frenzied phone calls, the panic that I was too late. The endless talking and praying for guidance (on my end). The silence (on hers). Question. Pause. Reply. Pause. It was not the first time it had happened, nor would it be the last. But I did not know that then.
When she was fourteen years old, tragedy struck Sheri’s family. The lives of her sister in law and two nephews vanished in a matter of seconds, smothered by the impact of cars grinding, metal twisting, and windows bursting on the highway. A funeral service was held, a period of mourning begun and ended some weeks later, and the family moved on. Racing, always racing. Work, school, appointments. Why didn’t they slow down? Life drove away from the accident like a hit-and-run, and Sheri was left standing on that highway road, waiting for closure. Representing the lost. For whatever reason, she was the most affected by what happened. But in a family of twelve it was difficult to be heard, difficult to demand recognition for her pain. So Sheri allowed herself to be swallowed up instead.
In a matter of a few months, she lost her only friend at school, a girl too startled by the changes she saw in Sheri and too frustrated with her inability to communicate that she too drove away. Another casualty of the drive-by friendship. To all outside appearance Sheri was a normal, if somewhat quiet and subdued, teenage student. But there was intense emotion bubbling under the calm surface. None of her teachers gave her comfort. No counselor offered an ear. And so she faded. She graduated Jr. High and then High School, got a part-time job, and devoted hours of her time to books and fantasy and online gaming. She created an imaginary world where she could stand out, and pretend to be something bigger than herself. Most notably, the world she belonged to substituted dragons and horses for automobiles. There are no highways in World of Warcraft. No crosses on the side of the road marking another life lost.
On her twenty-first birthday, someone coaxed Sheri away from the light of her computer monitor and into the black-lights of a local bar. Excitement. Panic. It was there she had her first kiss, and with courage she didn’t know she had (probably helped by the alcohol) she exchanged numbers with a young man she barely knew. Two years later, they got married. I didn’t go to the wedding (I had midterms) but I heard it was beautiful. The flowers were cornflower blue and sunset orange, and the fall day was warm and bright. “It was the sunniest day of my life,” she later told me. I believe her.
But within two months there was trouble. Sheri still rarely communicated, and eventually this drove a gap between herself and her husband. They spoke rarely, laughed even less, and clouds of doubt and divorce began to hover. No way out. There’s no way out. Too much silence. That was the first time she became self-destructive. Her husband painted frightening images of bottles strewn across the floor, Sheri in the bathroom throwing up beer and pain killers. That was also the first time those of us at work could tell how much sleep her husband got by counting the dark rings under his eyes. Two hours last night. Another bad one. I knew him first, and it wasn’t until halfway through the summer before I actually met and began to befriend Sheri, when they were still engaged.
I still don’t know why she chose me. Why I was able to succeed in getting her to open up where countless others failed is a mystery. But sooner than I could have believed possible I became her Dr. Phil, attempting to make sense of her failing marriage, her family’s apathy, past pain, and lack of confidence in herself and her worth. Perhaps it was because I represented stability—a fairly normal family life, faith in God, friends and relationships unfettered by silence. Not so stable now. Perhaps because I didn’t ask anything of her, but only listened. Perhaps it was just because I could make rice krispies. None of us anticipated the changes it would create.
Come Thanksgiving my prayers to God had not been heard. Sheri where are you? Where are you bleeding? Drink some more water. Breathe. She was not getting better. So many questions and images from that night, but chief among them are mirror shards littering the bathroom floor and bouncing light reflections on the walls. Panic. Not perfect. I have to sit down. So tired. I need more sleep. Breathe in. Glass on the floor. Glass is dangerous. Must pick up the pieces. Put them in their place. It struck me that Sheri had not been trying to break the mirror, she had been trying to break what she saw when she looked into it. And in a way, she succeeded.
I remember the moment it hit me, while reading Pat Barker’s WW I novel in my dorm room. I am Dr. Rivers. In the book, Rivers develops shell-shock and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the soldiers he treats, and although he never steps foot on the battlefield he begins to have nightmares just as acutely as any of the veterans. I was developing the very symptoms that I was trying to prevent in Sheri: insomnia, repressed emotion, panic attacks. It got to the point where I was no longer shocked to receive a call at one in the morning—and my trained response simply to grab my coat and keys and go. Her husband and family members were torn; grateful for a person that she could rely on, but worried about the changes they saw in me. Don’t worry. I’m okay. Just let me think. Just let me breathe. Yes I’m getting enough sleep, don’t worry about it.
There was a collective sigh of relief when I went to college, but the physical support I wasn’t able to provide any longer carried over into continuous e-mails back and forth. Sheri and I relied on each other. We were becoming each other. Here, take my hope. Here, take my fears. I didn’t sleep again last night. Me either. Does it ever get better? Gradually her writing grew more positive and rang with hope and promise. I looked in the mirror one day and decided I wasn’t sure who was looking back. I loaded up my textbooks and my new college friends and stepped on the gas, accelerating slowly away from Sheri, but gaining speed the more I was convinced that she was okay. I didn’t see it as a hit and run, but she did. One more person to enter her life too late and exit too soon.
After that night she was placed under a licensed counselor and given constant supervision by family and friends. She still has occasional moments of self-destruction, ripples in a tidal pool of otherwise emotionless living, but they have become fewer and farther in between. Little by little she is finding reasons to talk, reaching for a person that she remembers she was and wishes to be again. Little by little she finds more reasons to smile. For the first time in months, it looks like there might be peace again. The girl in the mirror is not so bad. Not so bad. I can see me again. But that week, peace was not a part of our vocabulary.
Crunch. Crunch. The frozen snow underfoot reminded me of broken glass as I walked to my car, carrying a few squares of rice krispies folded neatly in a paper towel. It’s not glass. It’s snow. Keep walking. It’s ok. Breathe. I shivered and cranked the heat up when the car rumbled to life, glancing back at the porch steps of Sheri’s apartment. The street light above flickered, electricity humming inside. Tires screeched somewhere. But inside, the apartment was silent. I was embarrassed for the tears that had found their way down my face when I hugged her good-bye, herself paralyzed by the sudden emotion and uncertain how to act. It will be okay. Don’t cry. She hugged me harder, and for a brief bizarre moment I recognized that it was her strength holding me up, and our roles reversed for an instant. Am I myself? Or am I you? Who am I?
And then the instant passed.
