My first memory of perfume comes from when I was about four years old. My grandmother had a set of miniature perfume bottles, probably ordered from the Sears catalogue, and when they emptied she filled them with water and gave them to me to play with. My grandparents lived in a snow belt in the Cascade Mountains in northern California near the Pit River Indian reservation. I sat in her cool bedroom and copied my grandmother’s motions by dabbing the faintly scented water behind my ears while my grandmother went to the back porch to ring the triangle, calling my uncles in for dinner.

My grandmother had four sons but thirsted for a daughter. Later, she told me that she cried after her third son was born because she wanted a daughter so much…

Read the rest of this article »