Scent Map

[creative nonfiction]

The scent of my childhood is irises and dogshit. Metallic like wire and blood from splinters. A dry dust that coats the nostrils, leaves tissue black.

The childhood of my friends smells different. Sweet like candy and attentive parents. I notice their fences are just for animals like pigs and horses, and I wonder if they can smell the fear in me.

Jenny’s mom thinks I’m too polite and therefore insincere. I worry they can smell the caged-ness of me, so maybe I am insincere.

Jenny smells like mall body lotion—cucumber and melon. She smells like middle-class and after-school activities. She smells like how a Bruce Springsteen song sounds, and I worry that the smell of cigarette smoke from my parents will turn it into a sad honky-tonk song.

My childhood smells of high-gloss paper selling unattainable abstractions in grocery store lines. Wrist to folded out paper—CK1; the grayed out tones of the ad selling sophistication and coolness, the scent forward and cloying. Too poor to afford Herbal Essences, I can only imagine what it smells like. Can only imagine the kind of girl who would use that shampoo, her hair smelling like hidden glades full of flowers. My childhood is the concrete smell of poverty. Function stripped of any form. The soap clean smell of Suave.

My childhood smells like cherry Chapstick on the nicotine stained corners of my mother’s mouth. A blend of menthol and the not-right sweet of Diet Pepsi mixed with Opium perfume—a relic from her white-collar past. My childhood smells of my mom’s nostalgia, her never living in the moment. A romantic for a history that only exists in her mind.

My childhood smells of the saw dusted floors of separate spaces—his and hers—and the machine oiled hands of my father. Of stale beer and the sweat of a hard day’s work. My childhood smells of the giant bowls of Rocky Road ice cream my dad inhales in front of the television, checked out from his surroundings, emotions limited to: tired, hungry, angry. Instills in us the smell of repressing any feeling that could disrupt the sanctity of the TV’s halo.

My childhood smells of tea and pirouette cookies, affectionately called “swizzle sticks” in the oasis of my sister Alyson’s room after dark. The cardboard smell of shoeboxes full of baseball cards and the pressed ink of comic books. Of anything we could pour focus into outside of ourselves—drawing, writing, music. My childhood smells of escape—the two locking doors of Alyson’s haven, the always knowing there was another exit if the barricades didn’t hold.

My childhood smells of mud and stick-crushed oak leaves in the waterlogged boles of trees as my sister Amanda and I dream of curing cancer or AIDS with our concoctions. Of dirt beneath nails and scraped knees and Irish Twin rivalry. My childhood smells of sickly sweet vanilla Bonne Bell Lip Smackers and troll doll hair and relief that my mom has named Amanda “The Problem Child,” which breaks my heart as an adult, but offers me great latitude in my youth.

My childhood smells of baked earth and overgrown grass. Of dirty dog and piss. Of thick wired fences crowned with chicken wire—security measures to ensure keeping in rather than keeping out. A place my sisters and I call “The Kid Kennel.” It reeks of the fetid decay of distraction exerting control. Of parents trying their best with limited tools. Of mental illness and alcoholism. My childhood smells of the quiet ambition of three girls who turned the fortifications and twisted crenulations of their caged-castle into goodness without bounds.