Memories come to you in form of fragrances; fragmented blends of different perfumes which may not even belong to you. Sometimes, yours oozes an odour you get rid of with the most available cologne, irrespective of where you get it from. You jumble these pieces together to make up a story, pretending that your experiences have been this exciting to prevent your audience from falling asleep. Sometimes you play the clown.

* * *

There is no greater reminder of mother than the cancerous bitter smell of dye. You still puke whenever you perceive it.

You are ten, and you watch her seat in front of the mirror, searching layers of her scanty hair for strands of grey hair which have refused to be black even after the constant application of dye. You’ve heard Karachi, her younger sister, tell her that the reason her hair is short and scanty is because of those ‘damn chemicals’ she uses on it. You admire the way Kara speaks: blunt and rapid as though she wants to get everything over with. You’ve never seen her in the flesh, but she always calls on Sundays to ask your mother how she is doing, if she is still bent on not forgetting Toyin. She always seems angry at mother, complaining about why she would ask for nothing but the duplex as alimony. 

‘You should make the fool regret what he did. Fucking bastard. Does he still visit Toby?’

The only part where you don’t like her voice is when she mentions your name. You feign a smile as mother turns her camera to focus on you, and you pretend to smile, holding a long breath because the stench of the chemical is stronger now that mother is closer to you.

You live in the expansive toilet for days afterwards, flushing and spraying air freshener to curtail the smell of your own vomit. 

The stench follows mother around for many days, but you hate the dark stain it leaves on your fingers even more, because it is you who applies the dye on her hair. Kara has asked why she doesn’t want to go to a saloon, and her reply has been that she doesn’t want strangers gossiping about her.

‘Oh, continue. Soon all your hair will fall off.’ Kara always says, but mother never listens. You want to throw the packets of dye out because they make the bathroom smell afterwards despite your house help’s efforts to clean it thoroughly.

You wonder now if perhaps the smell had always been in your head, refusing to leave even after it had ceased to infiltrate through your nostrils. Because you can still perceive it, though it hasn’t been around for years.

***

Provocative masculine cologne blended with baby powder and used diapers remains the worst combination yet. 

You hate Toyin’s children. They run around like missing nuts, spreading noise all over the house with their footsteps, their high-pitched voices, and clatter-clatter sounds of whatever they are playing with. They have entered your room once to play with you and ended up throwing your laptop on the floor. You lock yourself inside since then. Still, you can’t study when you go over to visit, and although you’re preparing for the most useless exam of your life, BECE, you still wish to ace it. 

Toyin has three other children; you’ve heard Kara snicker about his wife practically being a breeding machine. But you know she’s only saying this for mother’s benefit. Somma is after all the one that changed your mother’s status to that of the ‘other woman.’ 

It had confused you at first: why she bears that title instead of an ‘ex’. But one night, crazy noises from your mother’s bedroom wake you up from sleep. You catch Toyin the next morning sneaking out of the house like the rats which invade your village house despite the pesticides. You understand immediately. 

You puke again.

You’ve never mentioned it to any of them. But they know that you’re aware, just as you know that they are bolder now, no longer sneaking around like cockroaches running away from pots whenever the owner returns. Somma is also aware. You’ve never heard her argue with Toyin over it, but you know she isn’t in the dark, just as she’s aware of your lack of ignorance in the matter. She sometimes gives you the look; she doesn’t like you either, but for some masochistic reason, you keep coming over to her house during the weekends. Sometimes, Toyin returns with mother’s perfume on him, and Somma simply asks him to wash his hands before carrying the baby.

Although you can’t study properly there, and you hate the aura and aroma of the house, you keep visiting, earning the same words from Somma:

‘Oh, you are here again.’

***

Undiluted antiseptics. Cheap perfume and bleaching cream. Sweat, more sweat. Crude

oil…

Mother has attempted suicide. Again. But you are not to speak of it. For the first time, you meet Kara who flies to Nigeria to visit at the hospital.

‘Toby, use this to get food for yourself alright? I’ll take care of Bechi while you rest, inu?’ 

But you know that sending you away is only a strategy to get herself alone with your mother. You have no problem with it as you collect the money from her and leave, almost bumping into an accident casualty being wheeled in at that moment. You close your eyes and enjoy the fresh air, spitting and washing your hands in front of the hospital. Though the water stinks, it still smells better than what mother has turned into.

You know why Kara has sent you out. She’s going to convince mother that Toyin choosing to pack up and go to America is not the end of the world. She can stop using different creams which darken her knuckles and leave brown patches on her skin now. She would shout at her, asking her to at least wash her hair and quit using those perfumes she gets from vendors who sell in barrows. She would credit her account as well as yours. You know these things, and so you find it unnecessary that you have to be sent out for them to be said. You don’t even want to eat anyway; you can’t wait for mother to get better again so you can return to school. 

You hate hospitals.

Toyin visits your mother, ignoring Kara’s hisses and sighs. He cries at your mother’s feet and apologises for making her this way, but keeps checking his phone, looking around like the night you catch him sneaking out of the duplex. He gets a call, and you hear him whisper that he has had to fly to London for an urgent company meeting.

Kara waits for him to sleep off in the visitor’s seat, and then pours cold water on him, soaking his designers’ suit.

‘Fucking whim.’ She mutters, smashing his phone on the tiles.

You laugh from the visitor’s bed, chuckling lightly as you watch him get soaked. He is like a vulture, hunched and soaked in the rain as he cowers before Kara. 

Before he leaves, he presents a paper to your mother. He wants you to quit applying for JAMB and come study in America immediately after writing WAEC. 

‘It will be better for our son,’ he speaks through gritted teeth, water dripping from his head.

Kara calls security to send him out.

***

Gucci Rush Men…

Chamomile and Jasmine…

Books fresh from the printer…

New clothes from the boutique.

People have always marvelled at your beauty; your gender being a source of argument when you were a child. But at the end of your teenage years, you experience a new kind of adoration. You are perfect: tall, exquisitely handsome and smart. Your barber enjoys it whenever you come to his shop; how you sit calmly, your eyes shut as he shapes your curly hair into a new perfected look, your full brows arching when he asks if you like the hairstyle, your thin brown lips relaxing as you nod in response. Your voice is a light baritone, your brown pupils expressionless. You are mystical and intelligent and even more interesting? You live in one of the most expensive lodges.

It is at this time of your life, in the fourth year of your stay at the school of medicine that you start dating for the first time. Your girlfriend smells of Chamomile on some days, and then Jasmine on the others. Unlike you, she is an art student in the Law faculty, and is one of the people who have never asked why you don’t talk about your family.

But while she thinks you don’t mention them because of some weird painful memories, it is because it is uneventful. Inconsequential.

Grandmother is dead.

Mother is in an asylum.

Toyin has returned to Nigeria with his family and become a senatorial aspirant.

You visit Kara and her family now and then, and it is she who attended your matriculation, looking so glamorous. People wondered if she was your sister.’

Even you would yawn in a cinema if this kind of story were being told to you. And so, you always choose to avoid the talk. Ella doesn’t pressure you into replying to, ‘I love you’ but you say it to her anyway, shrugging afterwards when she has left your apartment. You argue with her over political affairs and literature and you enjoy watching her play dress up and urge you to apply to become a model. You also like that she isn’t a noisy screamer, and doesn’t pester you into attending social functions with her. So you tell her you love her and swallow hard afterwards. You love her, you say to yourself in front of the mirror repeatedly.

You represent the school in a national competition of medical students and emerge the winner, unconsciously taking the path to becoming a model. Your name and face make it to newspaper covers and headlines and your followers increase on Instagram. Kara is proud of you when she calls, and when you visit mother, she can’t remember you, but you see the pride in her eyes. You sure do. 

Toyin mentions during his speech that you’re his son and everyone in school watches it, and Ella still understands why you’ve kept it from her, kissing you deeply and repeating that she loves you.

With her head buried in your chest, you stare at the television, at Toyin whom you realise is a spitting image of you.

That night, during your practical class at the teaching hospital, you wield the scalpel more tightly than usual before handing it over to the Chief Surgeon. After that, you go to the cafeteria to buy snacks, but your classmates are there teasing you about purchasing meat pie when your father is ‘stinking rich.’ You leave the cafeteria.

You eat alone by the side of the building, gobbling the coke down your throat and belching loudly. The moon is not full, and the coke manages to remind you of the blood that spilled from the patient’s stomach during the surgery, killing him on the table. But you drink it till you finish it, and head back to the teaching hospital after again ignoring Toyin’s call. It is probably to request that you back up his statement that his incompatibility with mother is the reason they broke up.

He visits you with his entourage parked outside your apartment, and you watch him prance casually in your living room, making himself comfortable.

You stare at the wall when he talks to you, biting your inner cheeks as his palms make contact with yours. He apologises for being a shitty father, and promises to be there for you henceforth. You inform him that you’re living a comfortable life because of his money after all, that he has done his best. He smiles at you, obnoxious and delusional. As he leaves, he asks that you take a picture with him outside your apartment. 

You agree, and walk slowly to the room to change into more presentable clothes. You cannot after all be ‘caught unfresh.’ You push your hands into your pockets as you step out with him, and when the cameraman asks you to smile, you suddenly feel an object in your pocket. You have mistakenly taken the scalpel with you after the surgery, with the patient’s blood gumming to your fingers. You bring it out and stare at it. Before Toyin, the security men, and cameramen can wonder what for, you push it right into Toyin’s stomach.

There’s the metallic smell of blood, and the hot musky aroma of flesh permeating through your nostrils. It makes you smile hard, overwhelmed by the art before you; gasping for breath before going immobile. The shouts become music to your ears, intoning a sweet melody you wish to savour forever. This becomes perfection. The fragrance you don’t want to blend with anything.

***

You never do fulfill Ella’s wishes for you, but somehow, you manage to make it to the showbiz. Cameras lights are flashing from every angle, with microphones being pushed towards your direction, people asking for an interview with you. It seems interesting how famous you’ve become; you have security protecting you from the reporters and you are wearing your designers’ clothes, being led through the expansive aisle. It’s like runway, the most triumphant walk of your life.

It’s more special because some of the spectators are people you know: mother, Kara and Ella. You can see them standing a little distance away from the crazy paparazzi, their eyes wearing different emotions like thick veils. You don’t mind beholding them through these coverings, since you’ve worn a mask yourself your entire life.

Toyin survives the performance, you hear, and you will be charged with attempted murder instead. Your performance has perfected your character as a villain, and he, the hero is being received warmly by the audience. 

You don’t care either way, as far as your part is done, your script over. It is left for the audience to comment, and they do a hell of a job.

‘Such a fine boy…’

‘And he had such promising future…’

‘He’s not okay, I tell you. Must be a psychopath.’  You turn to the last speaker, impressed by her words. Because for the first time, you will get rid of the script, get down the stage and interact with the audience. As one of them.