Velociworld

An Odor of Dismay

When I was about five years old my mother took me on an errand, to see an old seamstress in downtown Savannah. She was at least eighty. A tenement on the west side, three floors up. This was before the Negroes moved in, and old white single women still lived downtown.

I don't know exactly what this woman was doing for my mother, I just remember the smell of the place. That old people smell. Death, decay, rot. The cologne of the Grim Reaper. It wasn't too bad of an apartment. No air conditioning, so the windows were open. But that didn't waft away the smell of death.

I squirmed for twenty minutes until we left. I remember walking back down the three flights of stairs thinking That old lady's gonna be dead in six months. Maybe she was, maybe not. Not too long after that, for sure.

Ever catch that vague aroma of fatality? Hugging your grammy, say? It's a creepy thing, that's for sure. Time to wash my bed linens.