Oregon Humanities Spring 2008

Cover of Oregon Humanities Spring 2008
Kathleen Holt
EDITOR
Jennifer Viviano
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Leigh van der Werff
PUBLICATIONS ASSISTANT
Allison Dubinsky
COPY EDITOR
Editorial Advisory Board
Tom Booth
Brian Doyle
Debra Gwartney
Julia Heydon
Marianne Keddington-Lang
Guy Maynard
Win McCormack
Camela Raymond
Kate Sage
Rich Wandschneider
Curt Yehnert

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The Scent of a Stranger

Sniffing out our differences

By Monica Drake

My three-year-old daughter pressed her tiny face into worn cushions lining a wooden bench in a funky pizza place. She gathered a loose cushion into her arms. It was a long cushion, meant to seat two adults or maybe three kids. It was tattered and flattened. She held it tight, like an old friend. She couldn't get that raggedy upholstery close enough. My husband and I sipped our pints. We waited for a pizza. We talked to each other, glad to let our child entertain herself. After a few breaths, a deep inhale, she said, "Those smell like some different kind of boys, Mama."

Kids are human, sure, but my daughter, my darling beauty, she smelled those cushions the way our dog smells cushions. She smelled them in search of complicated clues.

Earlier, there'd been four boys and a girl seated at the table next to ours. Each one of the kids was maybe a year apart, creating a ladder of ages from three on up. They were out for pizza with their dad. They were a tumble of gorgeous children, a mess of blond hair, blue eyes, and red cheeks, and they were out of control. In the five or so minutes that our paths crossed, the dad issued gentle threats and proclamations. The kids had him outnumbered. They were under the table, then across the table. They were up off the bench, then they climbed over each other, rearranging themselves. The dad said, "We don't act like that in a restaurant." He said, "Gin, honey, I don't ever want to see you do that again." He said, "If we can't settle down, we're going to take this pizza home." The kids sported handmade sweaters and shimmering, tangled hair. They looked like they deserved to be raised in an untrammeled wilderness, to get their own fresh start in a clean world. What would it be like to live with the richness and chaos of five kids, all so close in age? While they were there, I couldn't take my eyes off them.

When they left, their exit was as good as choreographed. The father went first, and three kids followed. Two hid under the table. The first three kids came running back. One grabbed another's hand. Then two ducked out and three stayed. Two more went. The last, the smallest, lagged behind. Finally the four came back, collected their sibling, and they all ran out together in a swooping arc, like a flock of migrating swifts.

Our daughter is an only child. She watched the kids, this foreign tribe, as closely as I did. Then she smelled where they had been. She wanted a trace, a hint of their lives.

I watched her bury her face in the pillows. My husband said, "How many asses have sat on those things?"

I've read that standard poodles have the IQ of an average three-year-old child. This assessment was based on vocabulary comprehension. Tell a trained poodle to sit and the dog sits. Tell a kid to sit and who knows what might happen, but still we believe the child knows the word. I don't trust the results of that study, though. Three year olds know more than we think.

In my own little study, I'd turn it around: babies and toddlers have the olfactory capabilities of the average bloodhound.

I learned this from my daughter.

One morning I poured her a bowl of Cheerios, and a small black ant showed up swimming in the milk. I was in the kitchen. My daughter waited at a table in the next room. Before she could see it, I flicked the ant from the bowl. Then I went around the corner and put the cereal in front of her.

She wrinkled up her face. She said, "This smells like ant, Mom."

I didn't even know ants had a smell. It turns out that scout ants, the ones who search for food, leave an odor trail for their colony to follow. Each colony has its own scent. When you crush an ant, it gives off an awful whiff of formic acid. It's an ant alarm pheromone.

Ants tell a story in the trail of scent they leave behind. They use scent to define insider from outsider, their own colony from another. At three, my daughter can read the drama of a single ant's memoir on the side of her cereal bowl.

Years ago, I studied animal behavior. I interned at the Portland Zoo. I had a timer and a clipboard. I'd record certain animals' behavior at intervals. Toddlers are little animals.

My daughter was born in four minutes, in an emergency C-section. The medical staff hung a blue cloth across my chest to block my view so I couldn't see my own body slit open. They lifted my daughter out. I saw her, as she rose above the curtain, come into the world covered in blood. She sat in a V-shape in the doctor's hands. Her legs unfolded slowly.

I've been watching her ever since. I've been listening. When she was a newborn, I didn't know her at all. I'd look at her all day long. I studied her every eyelash and fold of skin, her hair and her hands. One day my mom said, "Babies don't like to be stared at. You need to smile, to make faces."

I'd smell her hair and pull her close. These days I listen to her stories. Sometimes, I seem like a permissive mom. At the pizza place, I let our daughter press every inch of the pillow to her skin. I let her smell the pillows, taste them, feel them. While she smelled the worn-out cushions, while she searched for clues to the lives of other kids, I watched her. She's my daughter, and she's her own person. I don't pretend to know exactly who she is. I try not to let her catch me staring.

Monica Drake is the author of the novel Clown Girl (Hawthorne Press). Her stories have been published in Three Penny Review, Beloit Fiction Review, and various anthologies. She teaches at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and can be reached through her website: www.monicadrake.com.

Published in the Spring 2008 issue of Oregon Humanities.

© 2008 Oregon Council for the Humanities