Perfume
Sarah Jennings
She told every Jehovah’s Witness who came to her door that she used to dance. She told them she was a ballerina in France as a young woman. This of course was entirely false, but who were they to call an old, pitiful woman on her bluff? She would tell them that she used to model, that she was beautiful once, and then when they left she would whisper it into her cigarette and read the ashes like braille.
Each morning she would wake up and salute the carcasses of empty perfume bottles and telenovela magazines by her bed. Once she found one bottle that was still breathing, she would kiss it and hope that the smell of purification that began on her tongue would vanish. It never did, but mixed with the scent of magnolia, it didn’t seem so imminent. Next she would stare lovingly at her picture of Arturo, and then mimic one of their fights and throw him against the wall. She would grab her pillow and call it kitty, holding and stroking it as she hobbled into the kitchen. It was always hard to find the kitchen, but the old woman never risked turning on a light, for fear of catching her reflection in a window, or a mirror, or a tea cup. She wanted to remember herself as she once was, at the ripe age of 83, young and passionate.
She would get lost a few times, entering the bathroom, then accidentally walking outside and into the soil that used to be a garden. None of the doors were closed because she was afraid of being trapped. After all, a closed house and a closed coffin were both made out of wood. Once in the kitchen, she would step on the ants that trailed towards the opened packages of bread and jars of jam on the counter. She proceeded to the cupboard, and grabbed a moldy English muffin. Her eyesight was poor, but she brushed off the ants best she could, and trusted that god took care of the rest. Once it was sufficiently ant-less, she grabbed a knife and pretended she was hunting. She threw the bagel across the room, and threw the blade with great gusto, missing the English muffin drastically, but hitting the imaginary boar in the corner. How she missed having bacon.
After killing and cooking her breakfast, the next cigarette was ceremoniously lit and offered to the sun (the gaudy chandelier that hung over the living room), unlit to be sure, but reflective. This was where the woman would spend most of her day. She enjoyed her conversations with the radio, which rang out with static and made about as much sense as she did. She would imagine that the carpet under her recliner was a snoring lion, protecting her as she enjoyed her day. Sometimes she would bump into the radio by accident and it would play salsa. She may have passed time sitting down, but she did a lot of things. She would bring bread to the prisoners in the county jail, she would go to ballet class, and at times she would hide when she heard the sound of missiles being dropped from above.
It was around the afternoon that her fantasies would turn on her. Sometimes the house was comfortable, but sometimes it was a sinister place. Shadows would leap around the woman’s blurry vision, people would speak to her and not reveal themselves. In these moments she would say a “Hail Mary,” try to pirouette, and fall on the ground writhing, yelling “Demons unhand me” in what she assumed was a real language. She would go on in this manner until she became tired and fell asleep.
Sometimes there would be a knock on the door, and a familiar face would appear, her lovely daughter. Immediately her beautiful appearance fit into place like a puzzle piece, and everything made sense again, even the old woman. She would lead her into the living room, and hide the infestation in the kitchen. She would reminisce about her younger years, how she once met Fidel at a birthday party. She would turn on the lights and make café con leche like she used to. The daughter would leave, and when the door closed behind her there was silence.
Sarah Jennings is a writer and yoga teacher from North Carolina. She draws influence from different philosophies around the world as well as her own experiences. She has been published by Fish Food, Coffin Bell, and The Write Launch, and won the DA Brown award for poetry in 2018.