The Smell That Lingers

One thing no one tells you about the dead is that their smell lingers in your insides. Especially when they’re rotting.

I don’t know why I insisted on going to see Auntie Carol. I still don’t know why, till today. It’s been two weeks, and her smell still hides inside me, and it's not something my perfume can handle. I’ve drowned my bathwater in Dettol and filled my room with air fresheners of all sorts. Yet the smell lingers. And the worst part is her face. Every moment, her darkened, swollen face flashes before my eyes, and it takes everything in me not to puke again. I'd vomited on the day I saw her. And again I ask myself: why did I go to Awka? Why didn’t I just wait at home like everyone else?

Auntie Carol was the sweetest auntie. The life of the party. A breath of fresh air. The person you leaned on. Her smile made your day. Her singsong voice gave you sweet dreams whenever she said, "Night, night." The kindest, sweetest soul.

So, when my mother called and said, "We’ve found Carol," I asked, "Where?" She replied, "Dead." I sighed a deep, heavy sigh. "Where is she?"

That question broke my mother. She wailed for her foster niece. I waited, then asked again. Between sniffles, she croaked out, "Anambra State."

I should have blinked, but I didn’t. Auntie Carol being in Anambra was expected. You have to understand: we hadn’t actively been looking for her anymore. The search had become futile. Not just a waste of resources and time—our emotions were stretched, and at some point, no one had any left to give.

So, when my mother said Anambra and I said nothing, she said, "I’ll send you a video of where she is." I said, "No, please don’t."

I knew what it would be. I knew the kind of place a person like Auntie Carol ends up. I couldn’t prevent myself from hearing it, but I could prevent myself from seeing it.

"Who found her?"

"Her video was trending in Awka. Someone recognized her and sent it to me."

I learnt that the rest of the family had been informed, and Uncle Ifesi and Anyika would leave in an hour to go pick her. I said I’d join them. It was my duty.

I called my uncle. He asked me to help with mortuary plans—the mortuary was attached to the hospital where I worked. I called in favours, reserved a space for her. They picked me up at 10 a.m., and we drove to Awka.

The journey from Enugu to Awka felt like a still, windless day in the bush, punctuated by bird calls and the sound of wings flapping. My chatty uncle was lost for words. My cousin Anyika dozed off. Our conversation drifted from my leave of absence to the latest addition to the family tree, then fell silent. We pointedly refused to talk about our mission. We didn’t want to talk about the past, or how we’d tried our best, because a part of us knew it was mere lip service. I am certain that each of us had the same persistent question echoing in our minds: Did we really try our best?

When we got to Awka, we reached the junction where Auntie Carol’s corpse still lay. Someone—out of kindness or disgust—had covered her body with banana leaves. Plantain or banana leaves, I cannot tell the difference. Touts accosted us. We told them she was our relation, we were there to take her body. They insisted we inform the police. So, we went to the nearest station. A few questions, a few thousand naira, and two policemen came to watch as we debated how best to take her corpse back. The state of her was a mess. Yet it was Auntie Carol. Even with the vestiges of what was once a very beautiful face, very beautiful dark skin, anyone intimate with her could tell it was still Auntie Carol. It became obvious we could not take her corpse back with us. She had been exposed to the elements for two days—under the blistering sun and May rainfall. So, we arranged for a mortuary in Awka to pick her up, wash her, and prepare her for her journey back to Enugu in three days' time. Of course, they shook us down for money. We did not mind paying. We wanted to take our dearest back home.

Finding Auntie Carol that way shook me. As a medical doctor, I have seen a lot of corpses, but seeing her like this left me shook. I didn’t cry. I had no tears to give. At that point, all of us were in solution mode. We had a problem: a rotten corpse in our hands, and we needed her cleaned up, and we needed to transport her.

By 4:30 p.m., we had sorted out Auntie Carol’s cleanup and her subsequent delivery to the Enugu mortuary. By the time we got into the vehicle to drive back, we were spent. The smell of her rotting flesh lingered on our skin, in our hair, in every part of us, despite how many times we washed our hands, face, and head with bottled water. The drive back to Enugu was silent. We sat in silence, each refusing to engage the other, because we recognized that this grief was private. Yes, she was family. But based on what we saw, we needed to process it privately. We couldn’t do it together. So, we drove back to Enugu in silence.

I need to tell you about Auntie Carol. I need you to understand how we got here. I have to convince you that we did not abandon her. Perhaps if you don’t judge our family as harshly as I do, I might be able to get rid of this smell.

Auntie Carol was my mother’s youngest sister’s only child. Her mother died in childbirth—a teenage pregnancy. Auntie Carol was taken in by my mother, raised as my mother’s first child. Even when my father came to marry my mother, he assumed that Auntie Carol was my mother’s child, and my mother was lying to cover it up. He told her he did not mind. He loved her and was willing to love the child too. That’s how Auntie Carol came to stay with my mother as her foster child. She was raised in a loving home, given everything she needed. My mom and dad treated her as their own. She took on the responsibilities of the first child. And she was good at it and loved us as her siblings.

She met a man. Then hell broke loose.

After her youth service in Lagos ended, she brought him home. My mother did not like that man. She was vocal about it: "This is not the kind of man I want for you. His eyes are unkind and sly. Yes, he might come from a rich family, but he will devour you." They fought. And Auntie Carol told my mother, "You are not my mother."

That broke my mother’s heart because she had always been honest with Auntie Carol. Yes, she wasn’t her birth mother, but she was her mother. She didn’t want her to grow up without knowing the truth. She had shown her pictures of her mother, told her stories. So, she knew. And because of this man, she refused to call my mother 'mother' and walked out on her... on us. My mother tried her best. To not lose her, she gave in, agreed to the marriage. That man came, paid a bride price, and left with her.

After Auntie Carol left with her husband, she hardly kept in touch. Two years later, she came back to Enugu from Lagos for a visit—a shadow of herself. We learned she was searching for the 'fruit of the womb'. She was having a hard time conceiving, and her husband and his family were maltreating her. It took a toll on her. She went through different churches, miracle centers, hospitals. You could see it on her body and mind.

She left us again for Lagos. The next time she came back, she announced she was leaving the marriage. My mother thought she could rebuild her, help her find purpose, but the Auntie Carol who came back was a lost one. She came back with a habit. Street drugs. We tried our best. We sent her to rehab.

For over five years, she was in and out of rehab. She would get better, disappear to Lagos, come back again broken. We learned she was going back to her husband—not exactly ex because he never returned her bride price, he never asked for it, and we never returned it. It was as if that man had consumed her. We begged her to let him go. She kept going back. Each time she came back, she was worse.

One day at home here in Enugu, she ran out on the street. Dancing. Screaming. Laughing. It took six men to put her down. We took her to the psychiatric hospital, where she spent more years. She looked like she was getting better, so we brought her back home. She was really doing better. We tried to monitor her, ensure she took her medication. But we don’t know what happened. One day she snapped—or relapsed—and walked out of the house, never to be seen again for two weeks. By the time we found her, she had lost her mind again.

You need to understand that this happened over the course of fourteen good years. Of trying to help her. Trying to save her. Of her going in and out of rehab and psychiatric hospitals. Of her walking the streets, of us finding her, taking her back, and her escaping once more. She started leaving the home, walking from one street to another, disappearing for weeks, being found in different local governments, different states. It took a toll on us all. Especially my poor mother, who at some point had a heart attack.

And it was at that point we knew we had to let Auntie Carol go. We left her but tried to keep tabs on her, paying people to find out where she was. But over time, we got tired of that. We just let her be. Until two weeks ago, when my mother got the video of her corpse lying in the middle of the road in Awka, Anambra State. A hit-and-run victim.

Thinking about her now, I remember the first perfume I ever got. It was a gift from Auntie Carol. I cherished that perfume so much. Such a lovely smell. I forget the name. It wasn’t a local perfume. She got it for me for my 13th birthday. She was a lover of perfumes. She always smelled good. Always. She had every kind of perfume, body sprays, deodorants.

So, imagine the irony.