Lavender, Cinnamon, Pepper Steak
Lavender reminds me of my childhood, our first home, with a huge yard, and a swimming pool with a lavender bush growing in the corner, buzzing with bees in the afternoon heat. The smell of chlorine on my skin and lavender warming in the sun. I loved swimming, and to have a pool in my own home was a dream come true for a ten-year-old Coloured girl from Newclare Flats.
Cinnamon smells like my second home. Weekends at my aunt’s house. The aroma of rock buns baking in the oven, sugar and spice floating through the kitchen, while I climb roofs and trees with my cousins in the yard. My bare feet covered in dirt and dust, scratches on my knees, and flour still clinging to my cheeks.
Pepper steak smells like dirty men standing on the corner near the pie shop, hot gravy, cheap body spray, and cigarette smoke tainting the air. It smells like the long winter jackets I wore in the summer heat to hide my eleven-year-old body.
