L.C. Chu

“It’s jasmine, an intoxicating single-note floral. I wave the blotter and sniff again, the memory coming to me not in bits and pieces but fully formed. When I was sixteen, my mother told me to re-create the jasmine she grew in the small garden behind the house in all its different moods. Jasmine in the rain. In the sun. Playing up the indoles for the pungent smell of mothballs, and then its green notes. I’d done dozens of jasmines, refining and learning each time. The one my mother had chosen for my birthday was a light and sweet interpretation, something suitable for a girl.
Luling22 makes me gasp out loud. It’s a rich, spicy bomb, not typical of my mother, who prefers soft fragrances designed to stay close to the skin and respect the olfactory space of those around the wearer. This is the opposite, an amber overdose with notes of opopanax, civet, and vanilla. It’s said when Giorgio Beverly Hills was released, it was so overpowering restaurants posted signs asking people to tone it down. Luling22 could give that, Angel, and Poison a run for their money. It’s the 1980’s in all its lavish excess, and it pulls a surprised laugh out of me. If it were a relationship, it would be the love-bombing of a narcissist.
The more of them I smell, the more I’m convinced my mother is trying to tell me something— but don’t know what. There’s a tea scent with a breath of buttery pastry that reminds me of Sunday mornings, a leather that smells like a supple old handbag, and a powdery rose I recall from one of Waipo’s old cosmetic compacts.
I sit with Luling28 for a while, as it’s a feat of technical brilliance that brings me an unusual feeling of envy. I knew Mom was good, but this good? She’s combined the ozone of an approaching storm in the top notes with the petrichor of the rain-soaked earth, giving the entire story of a summer shower, with an epilogue of fresh leaves trembling with rain. I don’t know how she made the green linger, when its volatility means it should be one of the first notes to disappear.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“All I want is for you to be happy. I didn’t want you back home because of the store. I wanted you. I wanted to be in your life, the way all the other women in our family were in each other’s.”
For some reason, her low, sad tone infuriates me more. It’s like she refuses to understand that this is not all me or my fault, and the unfinished fury from the fight we had the other day surges back up. “Yeah, well, I wanted my mom. I wanted you to want me for who I was, not for what I could bring the family. I wanted you to love me, not what I could do for you.”
“I do, Luling.”
“Call me by my fucking name,” I snap. This is the first time I’ve sworn in my mother’s presence, let alone to her face. “I’m Lucy.”
“You were named Luling.”
“It doesn’t matter what I was named. I chose something different.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers