She Didn't See It Coming

The events that are about to occur today have been years in the making. Today is the last day that you will torture me. You have tortured me with the vilest of weapons that exist. Not a whip, nor a knife, what you used was far worse. Maybe it would have been better if you had kicked or punched me. Thrown me in a basement and starved me, if you had taken a knife and cut me, the pain would have been bad, however the wound would have healed. But you did none of these things, instead of inflicting bodily harm you used a far worse weapon against me. Your vile tongue spewed hatred and disease every single day for years.

I will never forget the first day I laid my eyes on you. What a dreadful awful day! It was third period on the second day of 7^th grade. I was the average awkward teenager, and my life was about to get much worse. Being in middle school was a whole different world then elementary school. I was surrounded by unfamiliar faces and was awkward in my own skin. You walked through the door late and made quite an entrance. You didn’t so much as walk but strode into class. Disrupting it as you did, however, your face showed you couldn’t have cared less. You weren’t scared of anyone or anything, at least not in our classroom.

The memory of your fiery red hair trailing behind you still remains almost 15 years later. You were taller than most of us, and far thinner. The monster of adolescence you had somehow tamed. Your skin was beautiful, without any signs of acne like the rest of us. You weren’t the prettiest girl in the world but there was something about you that set you apart. You held a sense of self-confidence that is unnatural to teenagers. It was as if you knew deep in your soul that you were better then everyone else. You believed it and would make us all believe even if it killed us.

You walked in, looked around at, and frowned when the teacher called your name. “Sherilyn, please take a seat at one of the open desks.” Mrs. Farrow said. The look you gave Mrs. Farrow made me shiver. Judging by your look it was more likely Mrs. Farrow called you an evil witch and asked you to remove your black cat from the classroom, when in reality all she had done was request that you choose a seat. That first day I felt sorry for you. I didn’t understand why you had such a callous expression on your face, nor did I know who placed the chip on your shoulder. It would take me years to discover the answer.

As middle school progressed so did the look of distain you carried on your features. The contempt spread from your face to your entire being. You were hateful to everyone outside of your little circle of friends. I don’t believe that I ever initiated conversation with you in all of our school years together. But you certainly spoke to me, perhaps its more accurate to say you spoke at me.

“Who told you that you could wear that? You spit the words out with such venom I had never witnessed before.

“What do you mean? I stammered.

“You can’t wear those tights; they look terrible on you.

I remember staring down meekly at the plaid tights I convinced my mom to buy me. It had taken me 3 weeks of begging her and doing extra chores, but she finally relented. I paired them with black shorts and low kitten heels appropriate for school. I thought I looked mature and smiled at myself in the mirror that morning before leaving for school. I realized too late that the tights resembled the kind of fashion you liked and that meant I wasn’t allowed to wear them, since I wasn’t part of your group. Tears rolled down my cheeks that night as I hid the tights in my dresser drawer hoping my mom wouldn’t ask me about them again.

In high school you continued your verbal assault on me and everyone else. You called us fat and ugly even though we were not. You laughed at us if we danced with a boy at one of our homecoming dances even when you didn’t like him yourself. You tripped us as we ran up the stairs, cackling in our faces as we pushed back tears.

I distanced myself as much as I could from you. In high school it was easier since our school had so many students. It also helped that you started to pick on those in younger grades as we got closer to graduating. Do you know that the freshman you tormented for two years before she finally killed herself? You used to tell her she was disgusting and reminded her how pathetic she was. Do you remember screaming at her almost daily before class started?

“You are one ugly, fat bitch Kate”

Chuckles and snickers enveloped the crowd. It’s sad how many people laughed at their peer, when in reality they were laughing only because you weren’t attacking them.

“Who would ever want to date you?”

“Shut up Sherilyn, you’re such a bitch” Kate shot back.

“Don’t you say me name. Get my name out of your disgusting mouth.”

My heart sunk in my chest. I didn’t know Kate well. She was a freshman when you and I were Juniors. She seemed really nice and funny. Yes, she was overweight and a homely girl but so what? Why? Was what I always wondered. Kate wasn’t a threat to you. She wasn’t in your league in either appearance or popularity. Why did you attack her? I remember trying to figure it out as I walked to my classroom feeling terrible.

I force myself to stop thinking about the past as I move slowly towards you apartment. I can’t let my emotions get in the way of my plan. Being subjected to your wrath got underneath my skin and became a permanent fixture in my body. This is what happens when someone is tormented for years by such an evil entity as you. I wonder if once this is completed and I’ve changed you if the permanent residence you’ve taken up in my mind will somehow dissipate. I think that it will. I imagine that it will work in an equivalent way as water erodes rock. By washing away, the sediment slowly.

I’m almost at your apartment and I have to confess that I’m giddy with excitement. Oh, I should have done this years ago. It pains me that I lost track of you after high school. However, at the time I thanked God for not having to be around you every weekday. It was so nice to be free of your witchy voice and evil eyes that bore through me. I actually hadn’t thought of you for a long time until that fateful day at the beach.

I laid on my beach towel enjoying the sun on my skin as I though about how refreshing a cold glass of iced tea sounded. Oh, how I wish I never thought of than damned tea. If I hadn’t, I could have lived the rest of my life not remembering you. I grabbed my wallet, told my husband to watch the kids and walked to the beverage sand. It was after I paid for the tea that the familiar sound of your voice pulled me back to high school within seconds of hearing it.

“Cover up Millie, you can see your fat thighs.”

Anxiety washed over me, and I froze, the straw between my lips. I slowly turned and there you were. You looked exactly as I remembered you. Long red hair, poker strait, tall and thin. But this time your words were directed at the most innocent of people. A small little girl, perhaps 8 or 9 stood tugging at her bathing suite trying to cover up. She looked just like you, her red hair just as strait as yours. She was skinny, almost unnaturally skinny, and here you were, telling your own daughter that she was fat. I felt the tears roll down my cheeks as I was suddenly standing in the halls of high school again.

For the next 6 months I was obsessed. Searching social media in a frenzy and learning all I could about you. I even went so far as to hire a private detective to find out anything I could. Once the PI told me you now went by Sherilyn Gaws instead of Sherilyn Nessle it was easy to find out everything I needed.

I found out you were married for a brief time and had a daughter. Facebook confirmed my suspicions that it was the same little girl I saw you chastise at the beach. You went through a divorce out of state and then moved back to the town where we grew up. You own a small vegan bakery and pride yourself on producing organic vegan baked goods. Which I must say taste as disgusting as they sound. You live in a two-story condominium which I have visited frequently at night. You don’t have any security at the condo and luckily for me it is free standing, so I don’t need to worry about a pesky neighbor hearing me when I break in to change you. You have a cat, and thankfully no dog or other pets. You do not have a boyfriend as far as I know, and you barely have people over besides your book club members on the first Saturday of the month. Your daughter spends 2 weeks out of the summer with her father in Georgia and she just left two days ago.

I’ve spent hours thinking about what I could do to get you to change, to try to make you understand how much you hurt people and how much you were hurting your own daughter. The more I found out about you the more the hatred grew and that’s when I realized that you wouldn’t change unless you suffered some drastic fate. The private investigator used surveillance allowing us to listen to conversations at your bakery. You are nice to every single paying customer that comes in. Yet the moment you are alone with an employee or your daughter the mask you wear comes off.

“Millie, you do not need another cookie. You look like a little pig. You might be skinny now but just you wait; it doesn’t last forever.”

“Robert, why are there two racks of brownies? Are you an idiot? I specifically told you we needed three. Is there something wrong with your brain that you cannot remember the simple tasks of your job?”

The yelling goes on and on. I’ve listened to hours of your cruel antics, realizing you had to be stopped and that I was the only one that could stop you. I thought about killing you, and even fantasized about how I would do it. Unfortunately killing you is too hard to cover up. The private investigator is a problem I can’t overcome, he would turn me in as a person of interest to the police and I can’t have that. This has plagued me and after over a year of thinking through every possibility I won’t kill you, but I will disfigure you. Maybe then you will understand what it feels like to have others look at you and speak about you with disgust.

A smile comes to my lips as I think of the jar of gasoline that I have stuffed into my backpack. You deserve this, plain and simple. Your daughter deserves a mother who isn’t concerned with appearance only. Yes, this is an extreme way to teach a lesson but it’s the only way to get through to something like you.

As I walk to the condominium, I can hear you talking. Your windows are open and although its late you are still up. That’s ok, I know you have an early day tomorrow morning, Tuesdays are aways early for you. All I have to do is wait patiently until you go to bed. You leave your windows open and rarely remember to lock your back door after letting your cat out. You have made this quite easy, it’s almost as if you know that the universe has to even out the playing field.

It’s been 45 mins that I’ve waited next to your back door. Just as your turning out the lights and walking to the back door in order to let the cat out I hear your phone ring.

“What?” you sigh into the phone.

Something is off, your voice doesn’t have the normal distain that I’m used to hearing. I continue to listen.

“I know that she has problems, ok I know that I’m the problem. I, I can’t do this anymore.” Your voice cracks.

“She is almost the age I was when it happened and I’m starting to unravel.”

What is this all about? I think as I step closer to your open window. I need to hear everything you are saying.

“When Mom left, she told me I was the reason. She told me that if it wasn’t for me being born and changing her body into a disgusting mess Dad would have still loved her and he would never have cheated. She told me I was the reason she became old and ugly. It was her baby who broke her and aged her beyond repair. If it weren’t for me, she would still be with her husband as happy as can be.”

You start to cry, and I suddenly feel that I shouldn’t be listening to this. Even though I followed you and listened to your conversations for months, this somehow is too much. But I can’t pull myself away even as I’m getting angry at myself. This isn’t fair, just because you have a bad mother doesn’t allow you to be such a bad person yourself.

“She kept me in that awful room, do you remember? She lined it with mirrors and all I could do was look at how terribly ugly I was. All day I thought how I ruined everything for my parents. When Dad and I finally moved it didn’t get better. I lost my mom, even though she wasn’t a good one she was the only one I had. Every time she sent me a letter, I silently hoped that she would say that she missed me, but every letter I received she asked if I had gotten any prettier, or any thinner. When she called, she would scream at me instead of asking me about my life.”

Your sobs were uncontrollable at this point, and I couldn’t make out anything else as your words became blurred by tears. I turn and start back in the direction of my car, trying to digest all that I’ve just overheard. I can’t believe this. The hatred I had for you is not the same, its mixed with sadness. I see a picture of your life and realize its different then I thought. It’s softer and its filled with a profound sense of loss.

I toss my bookbag with the gasoline in a nearby dumpster before climbing into my car. As I drive home, exhaustion hits me. The time and effort I’ve invested in hating you has taken its toll. I think of my own children, and shudder when I think about the horrendous crime I almost committed. I think about you and your daughter. I hope the two of you can build a better life and think that perhaps all these years you’ve been living in your own hell that I can’t even imagine. I hope that hell can be transformed. It seems you’ve made a relationship with your daughter that’s far more painful than any punishment I could have inflicted.

As I drive in the dark of night, I think about my own family at home asleep. I realize now more than ever how lucky I am to have be surrounded by people who loved me both now and when I grew up. I climb out of my car and walk to my own house; I feel a little lighter and for the first time in a long time I feel hopeful.