Menthol and Something Else

Every once in a while, I get a whiff of a peculiar mint odor. Not any mint will do the trick, only menthol. And not menthol in any form, it has to be mixed with another scent. Something undistinguishable. Despite being busy or otherwise preoccupied, a hand reaches down, yanks me by the back of my shirt, and shuttles me back to a time I’d rather not revisit.

I was in the back seat of Grandma’s car. Since she shared it with my uncle Mark, his stuff was littered about the floor and back seat. A red and white Playmate cooler rested behind the driver’s seat. I didn’t know where Uncle Mark went long enough that he needed to pack a lunch, as he didn’t have a job, friends, a significant other, or a family of his own, but I remembered seeing it in there often. On the floor was a gallon jug, half-full of sloshing water, and an orange juice container with brown fluid floating at the bottom. The scent of menthol chewing tobacco and something else filled my nose. The car hummed on the road. I looked to my right and saw rows of wilting corn blur by. I told Grandma that I didn’t feel good. Something about that car gave me a merciless headache and churned my stomach. Every. Time.

She wondered if any other car made me feel that way.

I said no. Just this car.

The ride used to be shorter, just a quick trip down the street. In pre-school, I was always going back and forth between my mom’s house and Grandma’s in that car. Later on, I prided myself in my pre-school dropout status, something I earned by already lacking the motivation to get up in the morning and feigning illness. Since starting first grade, however, the trip to Grandma’s was less often because I no longer need a babysitter.

Grandma and Uncle Mark used to live in a two-story house with an unfinished basement with ill lighting and an exposed toilet, and an attic used only for storage that was suffocatingly hot in the summer. Bees and wasps collected in the stairwell leading to the door by the garage, but the rest of the house had plenty of rooms to play in. Now, they lived in a trailer, with no fun places to play, five miles outside of town. It took almost ten minutes to drive back to my mom’s in that foul-smelling, nauseating car.

I let my eyes fall shut, the world spinning like the tire swing on the playground. Everything ached. I might throw up. I needed fresh air. I cranked the plastic window handle to roll it down, letting in cool air as my ears popped from the pressure change. Baby hairs danced across my flushed cheeks, inviting the breeze. My fingertips stroked the dimpled gray fabric of the back seat as I tried to stabilize myself. What was that smell?

I pull myself out of the memory, but I don’t get very far. Instead, I think of the time my brother and I asked to ride in the trunk of Grandma’s car. My uncle, an unsettling asocial man-child, fit both me and my older brother into the trunk, slammed it down, and went on a joy ride. Illegal, yes. Inappropriate, yes. Innocent? Not in the slightest.

But we didn’t know that then.

Laughter pushed against our confined ribcages as we squeezed our bodies into the tight space. My brother, though only eleven or twelve at the time, was nearly six feet tall and took up the whole trunk with his lanky limbs. I don’t know how much time passed before the car came to a final stop and the trunk unlatched and lifted. Light flooded in and we climbed out, laughing still. Our parents didn’t think anything of it when we told them.

I follow the scent out of the car, imagining a trail of it leading into the house, upstairs, and into a bedroom. His bedroom. My stomach tightens.

Sour. It smells of menthol, saliva, and the sour scent of tainted sleep.

Another memory, chained together with more disturbing scenes, flashes in my head, briefly taunting me with an image of Mark’s bedroom. I drag in a deep breath and push the images down like a suitcase overflowing with clothes. I pack them down, tuck them in, and zip them shut before anything can spill out. The zipper protests but holds still.

Gripping the leather steering wheel of my own car, my eyes come back into focus. The ten-minute drive acts as a trance until I pull into the potholed trailer park, snapping out of the fog at each jarring bump leading to Grandma’s driveway. Every Sunday, I pick her up and bring her back from church, a ritual for a few years now. As I say goodbye, she hoists her small body up with her new cane and heaves herself out of the passenger seat. Her shoulders curl into her chest, guarding her from the fierce wind. She shuffles up the few steps leading to the trailer that she still shares with her son. Her son. Her fifty-one-year-old son.

My fingernails dig into my thigh as she reaches for the railing for support. Every second that passes, I fight the urge to help her. But I can’t be the one to approach that door, the door that leads to the monster inside. She knows what he did to me. I told her five years ago on my seventeenth birthday. Maybe there’s a difference between knowing and believing. She chooses to protect him, so I remain in my seat. I watch her, though, make sure she gets inside safely, and glance over my shoulder before backing away.

Their car, over twenty years old now, sits in the cracked, unkempt driveway. Rust creeps its way up the sides of silver paint. Only one tire has a rim and the door handle on the driver’s side is replaced by a bungee cord. If you peek into the rear windows, the same Playmate cooler, though rougher and older, sits on the backseat. Without opening the doors, I know what it smells like.