Sherri Through The Looking Glass

Part Three! For anyone who cares.

On one of the final days of rehab, my Goth Lesbian Addictions Counselor Named Vanessa led our entire therapy group on a walk outside of the treatment center. It was the first time any of us had engaged with the outside world in weeks, and I suppose it was all very exciting. In reality, though, we only ventured about 100 yards from the strip mall where the rehab was located to a nearby dock that stood on one of those man-made lakes you sometimes find in South Florida. The ones they build next to apartment complexes to make them seem fancy when they are really just crack dens and whore houses with Wi-Fi. Vanessa made it seem like we were flying first-class to the freakin’ Maldives.

“All right, everyone,” Vanessa said, motioning a silver-laden wrist toward the junkies in her wake. “Single file, please. Let’s not make me regret this.”

Sherri and I were walking together at the back of the group with our arms linked.

“What is this supposed to be, a goddamn treat?” she muttered, swatting a fly from her face.

“If she makes us do some sort of healing group activity on that dock I’m gonna throw myself off it,” I replied.

“Yeah, baby, I’m right there with you. I’ll drown us both and we’ll say she did it.”

“How will we say she did it if we’re dead?”

She unlinked our arms and shoved me playfully. “Shut the fuck up and let Mama handle the logistics.”

“Okay,” Vanessa announced, sitting criss-cross applesauce on the sun-bleached dock and placing a large canvas bag in front of her. “I’ve brought us some goodies to celebrate our sobriety. But first–an activity!”

“Fuck me,” I whispered to Sherri as we all sat down around Vanessa in a circle.

“You realize this is killing my back?” Sherri announced to the group. “There better be some Oxy in that bag of yours.”

“No Oxy,” Vanessa said through gritted teeth. “But I do have mirrors!”

She whipped out a stack of 10-15 little hand mirrors. The kind they give you at the beauty salon so you can see how much Antonio fucked up your layers.

“So here’s the deal,” Vanessa continued, passing the mirrors around the circle so that each of us had one in our hand. “When I say so, I want you all to hold up your mirror and take a good, hard look at yourself. Then we’re gonna take turns telling the group what we see.”

One boy immediately held up his mirror and shouted, “Acne!”

An older woman did the same. “Crow’s feet and jowls!”

“No, no,” said Vanessa. “I want us to all look in our mirrors on the count of three and think for a minute or two about how we’ve changed in the past 30 days. Not just physically, but mentally and spiritually, as well. Okay, people? One, two, three!”

She said “three” like it was the end of a countdown to an Olympic race going nowhere. On your mark, get set, love yourself! We all followed her lead. I remember the image of sunlight reflecting off each one of our mirrors as we held them up to our faces–blinding anyone who dared trespass the Sacred Sober Circle.

So, I did what any girl would. I took a good, hard look at myself. And I saw Sherri do the same to my left. All I can remember is really noticing the skin on my face for the first time–how it hung sad and low in broad daylight. The redness, the pain, the bleeding of it all. How it ached and creaked and moaned back at me from years of aggressive shaving. It seemed to say, “Why are you doing this to me? What am I doing wrong?” I wanted to tell my skin it wasn’t its fault. That it was mine.

I took a peek at Sherri in her mirror. She had taken out her bright pink lip-gloss and was touching it up like she always would. But her eyes told a different story. They were the same as mine. Hateful, full of regret, angry. I thought of her dead son, her Creepy Biker Boyfriend, all the ways she tried and tried and came up short. If I felt this way, I can only imagine Sherri felt it tenfold. The self-loathing, the martyrdom, the sadness—it radiated off both of our reflections, suspended in a red-hot mist amid the Floridian atmosphere. 

Well, I was right. An activity like this could only end in one way: with me and Sherri, tits-up in the man-made lake. A testimony to what happens when you make broken people face their own broken-ness. I had never wanted to do drugs more.

“So…” Vanessa chimed in after a couple minutes of agony. “What are we noticing?”

“I guess I look younger, maybe. More healthy,” said one middle-aged woman whose husband had forced her into treatment… “for the kids’ sake.”

“Yes, exactly!” said Vanessa. “Don’t we look better, people? More proud?”

I sensed trepidation from the rest of the group and immediately panned over to Sherri as if to say, “Is this bitch for real?”

“I don’t look better,” I suddenly found myself blurting out. “I look worse, actually. Worse than I ever have.”

Vanessa frowned and took a beat, as if this was not the usual response to her little activity. “Well,” she started. “Why not look again? And ask yourself: what do I really see after nearly a month of sobriety?”

“I see someone I don’t recognize,” I replied. “A monster. A stupid fucking bitch I drank to get away from.”

“Am I always this old?” Sherri chimed in, flipping her mirror around to inspect it. “What the fuck are these shits made of?”

Vanessa held her own mirror back up to her face, seemingly at a loss for words. She pulled at her cheeks, her eyelids, her jawline. “Okay, well, anyway! I brought candy, too!”

***

It was the last day of rehab. I had all my bags packed and was completing an outtake survey with one of the nurses, rating my experience at the center. There was a little scale we could use to measure how happy we were with our time there. A frowny face for “extremely poor” and a big, smiley one for “exceedingly good.” I gave every section the smiley one. Not because I had the time of my life, but because I didn’t know what else to do. I came, I saw, I traded alcoholism for lung cancer. All in all, rehab had served its purpose.

I met up with Sherri in the smoking area as we both waited to be picked up–me by my mom and her by her Biker Boyfriend Named Donny. We sat and vaped in tense silence.

“I can’t wait to fucking get out of here,” she said, inhaling mango-flavored air.

“Me, too. This fucking sucked. But–”

“But what?” she replied, exhaling.

“I met you, right? So maybe things are…”

“What, baby? Meant to be?”

“No,” I said, suddenly embarassed. “Not exactly. I just mean…”

“I love you, Wick,” she blurted out. 

What an odd word. Love. Even as I say it now, the syllable rolls off my tongue in a way that feels almost foreign. I watched Sherri’s boyfriend pull up to the parking lot in his Harley. It seemed to growl at us, shouting, “No time left!”

“I love you, too, Sherri,” I sniffled. Fat, wet tears began pooling on my cheeks.

“You know,” she said. “You could call me mom. Or mama or whatever. It just… well, it might be nice.”

We hugged for what seemed like an eternity—neither of us really wanting to let go. Is this what it all came down to? My unlikely friend, my partner-in-crime, my rehab mom—gone as quickly as she came? I wondered who would be there to tell me my eyeliner looked “choppy.”

“Well, bye, mama,” I said weakly, stifling more tears. “Promise you’ll call?”

“Every day, baby.” Sherri was crying now, too, but she quickly gained composure.

I watched her run over to Donny, hopping on the bike as she strapped on her helmet. She waved goodbye as I continued to vape and sob.

I never saw Sherri again.