How to Leave (in Four Acts)
by Prasida Clare Newman
Act I: X-Ray Pulses
Wearing Pekji Blacklight makes it possible to observe the influence of the magnetic field, how it feels like her mother’s ‘stuff’ is hurling through the space between them. Black holes suck matter in from the objects around them; nothing is stronger than gravity. The x-ray pulses can be felt shockingly far away. An article published by NASA in 2020 provides context:
“Although light cannot escape the event horizon, the enormous tidal forces in its vicinity cause nearby matter to heat up to millions of degrees and emit radio waves and x-rays. Some of the material orbiting even closer to the event horizon may be hurled out, forming jets of particles moving near the speed of light that emit radio, x-rays and gamma rays.”
Blacklight has that dull ache of black licorice—a sticky, black substance—the inky darkness of space is comforting. But she cannot find comfort in the starry flecks that surround her. This shaking of distant-coriander stars feels unsettling. She has to deal with the periodic force of these pulsing waves of iris, material that smells like light pushed to the hottest temperatures. X-ray beams ripping through her space time continuum, echoing through the decades. Something that repeats is a pattern. Something repeating should not be ignored.
Sixth X-Ray Pulse: New York City. January 2013
“I have forgiven you for these lies.”
Yes, her mother wrote that in an email. Forgiveness is not a weapon. It is not to be aimed like a pulsing ray at the integrity of her being. Her floral heart is strong. Her mother cannot pierce it, her mother cannot:
“What God do you worship now?”
Same email. Her mother did not say believe, she said worship. Credo in Deum: words that martyrs wrote in sand when they were asked to deny God. Catholicism is not worship—it is belief. God does not need our worship. And are humans capable of it anyways? Being in contact with her mother is a losing game. Just because it has been a while since the last pulse shook her, attempted to rend her floral heart in two, just because it has been a while does not mean that it is over.
Fifth X-Ray Pulse: New York City. Easter Sunday 2011
The priest is pouring holy water onto her forehead beside the Easter candle, because she is an adult she will remember her baptism:
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Credo in Deum. Over the baptismal font the priest says her name. The Easter candle, burning beside the water, is as tall as a person or a sapling. Fire and water, the names of the Trinity spoken. Her name and the name of her saint spoken out loud. Words spoken break down the ways she has felt silenced.
Baptismal waters cool the heat of her forehead; seeing blue light, she feels her spirit; inhabiting her own body is required to feel her own spirit.
After her baptism, she is talking to a friend in the church basement when her mother touches her arm—it feels like her mother is trying to regain control. Surrounded by the grey stones of the Church of Our Savior's foundation (visible in the basement) she is strong; she has gained new confidence. She removes her mother's hand from her arm because she does not like how it feels. Her mother's gravity feels the same as before, but also different. Is this another kind of indoctrination? Maybe. Prasida Clare is a name said over the baptismal font; Prasida Clare is no longer smashed into those rings of fire.
Her departure, her disconnection, it had forced the X-Ray pulses to cool. But with this cooling, other forces have been activated. New pulses arrive. This is a fresh attempt to rip through the floral heart of a perfume called Blacklight. The gravitational waves are strong enough to tear through dust and debris, but Prasida Clare holds steady: she has become her own star.
Fourth X-Ray Pulse: New York City. November 2007
Before her baptism, after five years in New York City, she felt the distance of Mars. She was insulated and isolated to a certain extent, but there was one time when she felt her mother reached across the distance:
-It was wrong of you to stop talking to me.
The bitter, virulent pulsing of gravity blasted the surface of Mars. She was shaken.
It seems that the gravitational pull of her mother was still out there. In some ways, it was worse. Because I tried, I made it worse.
She had gotten back in contact with her mother because a man she loved told her to do it. The man had been wrong. It was bad advice, but what to do? Because Mars made peace possible, she ignored it. She thought she was far enough away to be insulated from her mother's “stuff;” for a while, it seemed okay.
Third X-Ray Pulse: Austin, Texas. June 2004
This is how ‘no contact’ ends: a man she thinks she loves criticizes her for not accepting her own mother, says she must go back. Mothers are selfless. She must be wrong. Because she cares about this man, because she does not understand how strong the effects of gravity are, how her own movements have already been determined, she goes back. She will learn how her mother will not let it go. She will learn that her mother is capable of shooting out jets of fire.
Second X-Ray Pulse: Austin, Texas. August 1998
The Moon is far enough away—almost. In childhood, she told herself how she would fix it as an adult. Her first attempt is to go silent. She stops talking to her mother. In Austin, in her twenties, she cuts the wire. But the Moon is a space of solitude without freedom. The orbit is not her own. All she could do was go silent.
First X-Ray Pulse: Cross Lanes, West Virginia. December 1987
At nine years old, it is happening. She does not understand. This one engulfs her. It submerges her own instincts and pulls at her own space-time…she washes her hands.
She washes her hands to remind herself how she can feel. She can feel the cold droplets of water, how the water feels different at a trickle or on full blast. She can feel the slickness of the soap, how one hand slides over the other. She can smell the soap too. These are all things that she is doing.
The core of her star is in danger. If she disappears, who will be there?
She cannot control her behavior. Hand washing becomes a compulsion. There is an aspect of her soul that will be kept intact. This compulsive use of water and soap to remember how she is a person will preserve it. Her mom yells, her mom screams:
-Stop washing your hands.
…
Her soul has decided to do this; her soul believes it is too important. It is important to maintain a piece of herself that is authentic. In most other ways, she feels like she is her mother. But not in this way. She cannot control it because if she could, she is sure that her mother would take it away.
Pekji Blacklight: aldehydes, black pepper, coriander, iris, leather, licorice, smoke
Act II: Sandalwood Fallout
Sandalwood is the softest of woods. Clouds appear from the condensation of chlorophyl—pulpy resin holding the spirit of the tree. The sandalwood clouds capture and freeze thoughts, making it possible to think of them as being something external, floating in the airspace above, like clouds. “No one is going to believe you.”
She remembers that winter after Scott died when she invited her mother to come spend Christmas in New York. Her dad was in Saudi Arabia. She did not want her mom to be alone in that holiday so close to when it happened.
Sandalwood clouds float between them, trapping thoughts like little bubbles within the growing tree. An invisible tree growing in the space in-between.
She was blind to it at the time, but here they are again, her mom on the couch—it is strange, she looks again, in the memory her mother is watching Still Missing Morgan on Hulu, but that show did not air until 2023.
Emotions start to pop. Flecks of black pepper appear, revealing the danger. The sandalwood cloud is no longer safe. Why did it not all flow away? How did this invisible thing remain?
A second tree arrives, another one that is more substantial, Cedar is the West—the place where a daughter leaves. Poison bubbles persevere, the trees are whispering:
-She knows that you lied to her.
-She figured out that it is a made-up story.
-Figure out how to discredit her. Figure out what to say.
She remembers how it seemed that night; she imagines her mother watching Still Missing Morgan. The Voice interrupts:
-I cannot imagine the horror of an abducted child.
-You are keeping her close to keep her safe.
-She disrespected you at dinner. How dare she tell you to stop saying bad things about him? How dare she say that you are lying?
-Your daughter is in danger of going missing too. You are going to lose her if you don’t do something.
-She is your daughter. She belongs to you.
-Your husband is a bad man.
“When you get people that are bad people and you know they are bad people, they have a history of this, they become a person of interest.”
-You need to tell her that her father is a bad man. She is your daughter. You need to protect her from the bad man.
Sandalwood, black pepper, and cedar morph into something else. This electricity, this pulsing of her mother's intention, it is something created.
The heightened sense of desperation, black pepper is clouding the air. Sound from her neighbor's television is seeping through the wall. It sounds like static on the couch but when she puts her ear on the wall, she can make out the words. She hears the dialogue on the television; she imagines the dialogue in her mother's head:
“If I am not careful then I let my hope get too big then the disappointment is too big.”
-This woman lost her daughter! Look what will happen to you if you lose your daughter too.
“It’s insane that we live in a world where someone can take a child and we just don’t know what happened to them off the face of the Earth and we cannot find them. We cannot allow that to happen in our world. There is no part of that that’s acceptable.”
-There is no part of that that’s acceptable…yes, yes. Your daughter cannot leave. We cannot allow that.
The dangerous creature leaps through the static of the television screen. Today, it is flaming from the heat of electricity. The creature jumps through the wall of her apartment beside the bridge, an apartment that used to be an electric factory:
“He was a local, elder man in our area.”
-This man looks like my husband. The bones of his face are prominent and jut out, a solid presence. Oversized glasses that are almost square, but they have rounded corners.
“He has a very indecent conversation…”
“That scared her…”
“Even though he remembered a lot of things, he chose to forget that part.”
“We believed that Heinrich may have been taking things from his victim. He had cut hair…static…kept underwear.”
“We didn’t know where his clothes might have been. A search warrant, that person would likely have—potentially have child pornography.”
“You’re gonna find some things in that house that look pretty damn—damning to me.”
“Someone had located child pornography in a closet. He had cut out from school yearbooks pictures of kids that he had likely gone to school with, and he had pasted them onto nude images of other children.”
How the thinnest wire carries and preserves the words by using the lightness of sandalwood, how cedar and black pepper combine to smell like a sparking metallic force, she can hear her mother’s thoughts through the wires. Something else seems to be talking, it is like her mother is tuned in to an invisible channel:
-You need a plan to escalate. She’s onto us. She is doubting you.
-How to escalate? What can I say?
-Find the worst thing. Make it something embarrassing, something with a personal impact.
-These people on the television, the abductor was caught with child pornography.
-That is good. Tell her that her father looks at it.
-But it sounds crazy to say. She already doubts me. And it's not true.
-Tell her that it came from someone else…
-Her sister…
-Yes. Tell her that her sister found it. You have to get justice. Her father is a bad man.
-But it is a lie—
-It doesn’t matter. You must get justice for you and for her. She is your daughter. You have to protect her.
Sharp and acrid pepper opposes soft and sweet sandalwood; the sword was carved from—scratch that—it was my own cedar tree. Her father did not steal cedar from her adult life; no, it was something else entirely.
Ett Hem: black pepper, sandalwood, cedar
Act III: Blackberry Memories
A perfume called Blackbird smells like the devastation of pine needles mixed with the sweetness of blackberries. This is not an edible memory. Blackbird by Olympic Orchids is a sharpening of the faded edges. The contrast of a childhood forest against an adult cityscape makes this memory of trees feel like something imagined instead of real. Her father is somehow behind this memory of blackberries. He drove them there. He made this exploration of an unknown place possible.
Her experience of the blackberry forest is not about pine; she spent her childhood in West Virginia, where the forests are maple. A perfume called Blackbird hovers around her with the scent of melancholy, a place that smells wonderful, but she never visited. Pine notes smell like that time in childhood when her father made a sensory experience possible, but he never managed to reach her. She wishes he would have taken her to discover pine too—a place far away from the turmoil surrounding them. Amid those imaginary pines, her father is picking blackberries.
In her city apartment, surrounded by green aromatics, a jammy sweetness is revealing itself, heat from her oven changing how a perfume called Blackbird smells. This is the humid, blackberry cloud that emerges when canning fruit. Glass, warm to the touch from the sterilization of boiling water, pectin turning dark purple from all those berries.
Her father must have imagined how he was preserving the experience, how the fruit would live past its allotted time. But canned blackberries from the eighties would not be edible anymore. How long until even the memory fades?
In the closeness of this jammy, blackberry sweetness, she finds a way to save herself too. She figures out how to preserve her own past. A fragrance is a feeling. It makes it possible to access emotions that both connect and distract. The remembering is not about what happened. It is about the feeling. It is about what has been preserved.
The deep dry down of Blackbird leaves no trace of previous indulgences. A cold wind blows through dry bones carved from pine. The time of imagination cut short by an aromatic darkness, dry and cold. Blackberries are immolated for the sake of preserving their flavor. The original is never as sweet as the attempt to hold onto it.
Olympic Orchids Blackbird: Himalayan blackberry fruit, dry grass and leaves, elemi, cedar wood and resin, woody-amber accord, fir balsam absolute, musk
Act IV: Duct Tape & Lilacs
Comme des Garçons Eau De Parfum smells like lilac blossoms stuck to duct tape. Oddly specific, duct tape and lilacs remind her of the good things.
Industrial Glue, 13 years old, Kingwood, Texas
She is making a bridge out of spaghetti and Elmer’s glue. It is for Geometry class. She does not ask for help because at thirteen, she believes what her mother has been telling her for years: her father is a bad man. He sees her starting and he wants to help. The memory is both beautiful and tragic. There were so few times that she got to interact with him. But they struggled to communicate. One could even say, she did not contribute to the project.
Smelling industrial glue in this perfume reminds her of how he did not know how to talk to her. She falls back into memory. He says it is a good idea to use it. Using industrial glue is not allowed, but because she is afraid to speak up, they use it. The industrial-glue bridge is a happy memory—the clarity of her father's engineering mind becoming more apparent in this gluing of spaghetti into the shape of a bridge—it is a precious memory, this bridge he is building for her, his daughter.
In Geometry class, a fellow student points out that it smells like industrial glue. Yes, there is evidence of something forbidden, but thank God, their teacher leaves the connection intact. Teacher chooses her forbidden bridge as the one she will keep as a souvenir of this year's class.
Styrax, 11 years old, Yellowstone National Park
Summer vacation. The family is outdoors. It is nighttime. While stars can be seen at home, they live too close to a city to see anything spectacular. Her dad seems excited. He is looking up. A splash of stars covers the sky above them: pinpoints of sharp, cool, metallic light breaking through. The cold styrax sky has carried them far away from the heat of their troubles:
-It is the Milky Way!
This is how we preserve our relationship—we remove the heat. This is decades before Hubble and James Webb; no one knows what exists in that cold space in between stars. It is black and empty—the burnt-rubber smell of styrax hiding worlds. Is the distance between us tragic, or is it a blessing?
Lilacs, 3.5 years old, Cross Lanes, West Virginia
In the late spring of 1982, at three-and-a-half years old, she moves with her family from Texas to West Virginia. Their house smells of lilacs. A shrub the size of a tree filled with flowers. The shrubs in Texas smell dry and dusty. There is not enough water in Amarillo to grow such delicate flowers.
She remembers him playing with her: mornings, laughing, being held, seeing smiles, her father reaching for her, she can feel the love. He picks her up like gravity does not exist. These lilacs are a part of her; no one, not even her mother, can deny it; it is true.
Vinyl, 3 months old, Amarillo, Texas
In the time after the invention of the camera but before the computer, vinyl is a recording of the non-digital world. But vinyl can be damaged. It can fade; it can be lost.
Her Aunt Evelyn recorded the scene, a family trip from her birthplace in West Texas back to Amarillo. The back of the photograph notes the date in Evelyn’s cursive writing—21 May 1978. This recording of light on paper smells like vinyl. The photograph has her name written too. Evelyn, with her French last name, presents another perspective. Evelyn wrote Lisa’s French middle name in the French manner by dropping the second ‘n’ and adding l'accent aigu: “Lisa René.”
She will find the photograph after Evelyn dies. She will find it in boxes of the evidence of Evelyn’s life. Evidence her father insisted on removing for further inspection. She will find it after going through the boxes. She will only get to go through the boxes after fighting with her brother Daniel who says they should throw it all away:
-Dad was a hoarder. He kept too many things.
-Oh my, it’s Evelyn.
-So what?
-Do you remember her?
-I remember people talking about her.
-Yeah, you were too young. I will not let you throw those boxes away.
Vinyl means that her story exists; vinyl is a recording of what happened. The photograph is dated 21 May 1978: she was three months old. In this photograph, her father looks so very happy. The sparkle of his smile, she had never noticed before, how happy he looks in her baby pictures. Her own father’s joy—how is it that she had been overlooking it, that she only sees it now, when he is gone?
Safraleine, 13 years old, Kingwood, Texas
Her dad is a process engineer. He designs the processing of carbon-based substances from one form to another. She considers his gemstone hobby to be a byproduct of his career—he designs the processing of ancient carbon. He seems obsessed with all of it—not just oil and gas—he went to Colorado School of Mines. They move to the Houston suburbs when she is thirteen years old because of his career.
At the kitchen table in Kingwood, during those precious years when they are living under the same roof, he is showing her gemstones: rubies, sapphires, and more rubies. This one is an imitation: a ruby with an inclusion, a flaw added on purpose to make it seem real. She falls for the trick—a beautiful lie, designed to confuse and confound.
A synthetic stone that appears to be a ruby, made by a person instead of an ancient process, the synthetic representation of emotion. Before her brother died, she believed that her mother’s emotions came from a genuine place. The flaws—the places where it did not seem quite right—she thought they were coming from somewhere within herself instead of her mother. She dares to look closer at that ruby before accepting it. What does she see? Inclusions created by scientists making chemical reactions in a laboratory.
Duct Tape cushioned in the Aldehyde Bubble, 2 February 2015, New York, NY
One month earlier, she had broken through. She had sent the email. In the email, she told him what her mother said. She wrote down what her own mother kept repeating—it happened in the car, on the way to swimming lessons.
He calls her on her thirty-seventh birthday, when they are still cushioned in the Aldehyde Bubble. She is a data analyst. She tells him about her model that predicts daily cab rides in New York City. She tells him it is a duct-tape model. It is not perfect. It is impossible to be perfect in the prediction. Close enough is good enough for a duct-tape model.
He tells her how the liquid natural gas plant in Borneo needed a duct-tape model too. He explains how the temperature fluctuations on the tankers were reaching dangerous levels. He tells her how the people who wrote the original model were being too precise. He made a duct-tape model too.
But aldehydes are fragile. Aldehydes are the first notes to disappear. She does not know how this is the last time they will speak. She does not know how he will go silent on her. She does not know how in one year, one week, 6 days and 12 hours he will be dead.
The Aldehyde Bubble is. It just is. Like light emanating from stars that existed a billion years ago, it exists and will never stop. Somehow ending on a high note made the entire thing something good. Somehow knowing that he died knowing the truth redeemed them both. They figured out how to use duct tape in such a way that it held together. Duct tape and lilacs are good enough. They are strong enough to hold the seal.
Hawthorn, March 2016, telephone call from Gary, her father’s brother
Her father had told Gary he was ecstatic to find out she loved him. She had sent her father an email telling him that her mother spent her childhood telling her he was a bad man. It seems her mother had been telling her father the same thing, but in reverse. This time, the made-up story was about her—Gary said Kim had always told her father she did not want to have anything to do with him. Her father was ecstatic to find out it was not true.
But this sheds new light on the problems they had. Her mother’s words must have been a negative influence: what kind of mother doesn't want their child to have a good relationship with their dad?
She could have had it, a good relationship with him; it is something her mother took that she can never get back.
Hawthorn—a beige sparkle in the background that is overlooked until it is gone. The absence of hawthorn is more noticeable than when it was present.
She misses him. She regrets not noticing his beige sparkle sooner. But the important thing can never be taken away; the essential thing remains: “I know that my father loved me.”
Duct tape and lilacs are holding the seal. What they had was, is and always will be good enough. It is true, this perfume smells like duct tape and lilacs; it is true, her father loved her.
Comme des Garçons Eau De Parfum: aldehydes, Safraleine, hawthorn, lilac, industrial glue, duct tape, vinyl, musk, styrax
BIO: When writing about perfume, Prasida Clare Newman aims to capture the immediacy of emotions. So much of what we believe comes from the outside, but no one can tell us how something smells. Her work is forthcoming in Marrow Magazine. Find her at pclarenewman.com.