Marilyn

(For Mom)

It’s funny how a little thing can bring it rushing back. When I was a little girl, somebody must have told me that if I could smell my own perfume, then I was wearing too much. I could, though; it was a green smell which recalled green things, especially green Indian silk pulled across my face in traffic to keep out pollution, to ward off death. It made me think of Elizabethan women carrying oranges stuck with cloves, only that was the scent of their own bodies and this was the entire world. I didn’t want the smell, you see. I didn’t want the smell to get in. How do you know when you’ve been in Delhi for too long? You’re not holding onto anything except for the scarf across your nose and mouth. And then we’d laugh, but we weren’t laughing at the time. Delhi was a step too far for both us in our white plastic charity bangles (don’t give begging children money, you can’t give all of them money, but, God, they love pens). Bangkok was closer to home. Western-Eastern. We were so shamefully grateful to see fast food with recognisable wrappers; everything tastes the same everywhere. You can never leave home again. When we went away, I’d had this vague idea of embracing it all, taking it into myself, coming home with no fear of death having experienced the whole of life. Failed, though. I’d given up, by Bangkok – I leant my head against the sealed window of an air conditioned cab and watched the city pass me by. Bangkok, Bangkok, city of angels, city of lights, loud and full but not quite so close to death as Delhi. I wasn’t even twenty one; I was too young to come so close to death, if not mine then other people’s. Young people aren’t immortal; they just don’t yet know anything about death.

I must have been wearing my scarf; the one bought in Delhi for virtually nothing and sprayed with duty-free perfume. Scent is such a strange thing. Scent is sometimes more powerful than sight. I’ve got no memory for faces. I have always had trouble picturing people’s features with my eyes closed.

And then I opened my eyes, and saw your face, fifty foot high. We’d seen a Buddha the day before, reclining, the biggest in Thailand, the world, the Universe, something and there you were, big as Religion, pink satin, bleached blond, perfect. Suddenly, I felt much closer to home. You were that familiar thing I’d needed. I guess that this needs explaining.

Your influence in my life was not even an influence at all. You were a ghost in my mother’s machine; a birth date-death date thing. I didn’t learn to recognise your voice until I was buying my own films to watch in my own time (never specifically searching for you, but you turned up anyway). It was never your voice that my mother was interested in. An icon is a symbol is a matter of faith but it all comes down to beauty, to the image, first of all. August 4^th or 5^th, 1962. She was six years old and, somehow, you implanted. A kind of reincarnation by pieces, I guess. A million little girls, each carrying you with them into womanhood. A second chance. The world forces connections in unlikely people. When we moved, you moved with us; a box of books, framed photographs, a shelf with jewelled bags, your face in black and white and glitter. Your smile look wrong on a doll’s face; neither hair nor dress hung quite like the pictures. We grew up with you in the background but we never really knew you or claimed to; that song, the one they wrote about you was about somebody else by the time I even realised. It wasn’t until later that I realised that I should have taken a photograph; that building framing your storey high eyes.

Bending over in Belfast to pull on boots, I get a mouthful of my own perfume and, via Bangkok, I suddenly feel closer to home. When I ring my mother, I don’t say anything but you’re part of our shared experience, one way or another now and you get another cycle, another life. I liked the first version of the song better anyway. This is a letter. You’ll never get it but you might and then you’ll know. I love you because I loved her first.

Stay righteous, Norma Jean.