I started sweating when I was twelve. During school games, wet patches came under the armpits of my t-shirt. Bitter and sticky, it was different to anything my body had smelt of before and called for only one thing: deodorant. 

I knew what deodorant was because my classmates used it. They sprayed it over themselves first thing in the morning, not yet practised in how much to use or where best to apply it. Come the first class of the day, they smelt like a jungle of fragrant plants, exotic fruit and cotton candy. I was caught out in this artificial mist. Walk past me at the right angle and you’d catch the whiff: something near to roast sweetcorn or unripe banana. “Why don’t you wear deodorant?” a classmate asked. 

On the school holiday I bought the cheapest deodorant I could find. A brand called Mum. It had an apricot-coloured lid and came in a white bottle with curves suggesting the shape of a woman. There were round plastic hips where you gripped the bottle, a small waist in the middle and a heavy upper half. But I didn’t need to wear a bra or have hair to wax to know that sweat meant woman. 

Instead of using it, I wrapped the bottle of Mum in socks and hid it in my top drawer. It wasn’t the absence of classmates that made me forget how bad I smelt. I was nervous about using deodorant. Unsure, firstly, of just how distinctive Mum would smell. Over breakfast, would its artificial apricot waft over toast and coffee, and lead to awkward questions about what smelly tonic I was wearing and why? But the monster of self-consciousness was my second problem. 

Getting to sweaty womanhood meant crossing an obstacle that was fixed in my mind, one that sounds childish today: I felt that needed to ask my mother’s permission. It wasn’t the smell, it was what that smell meant. I wasn’t a child anymore, I was almost a woman. Neither my mother nor I knew how that would turn out. The deodorant’s name, ‘Mum,’ neatly summed up my fear of asking, because I wasn’t allowed to use the word. 

At primary school, I’d come home and said it. “Mum.” “Mum-EE,” she had replied. “Don’t say Mum, say Mummy.” She would repeat this, stamping down a rule about what to call her without explaining why. Don’t say Mum, say Mummy. I was scared by the possibility of this word, by the Mum deodorant hiding in my drawer and its implication of womanhood. She didn’t like one, would she hate the other?

To the question, here’s my answer. Sweat and love come out in ways you can’t determine. Just like a mother’s name: you can’t control it. 

I learnt this walking with Mummy down the black and white tiled corridor towards the door of my grandmother’s flat. It smelt of musty grass and old socks. And all down the corridor my mother would call out, “Mom, Mom,” until she got to the front door. She sounded American and she sounded like a child. She didn’t sound like the woman I knew. My American grandmother would open the door. She is a tall woman, Mummy would tell me after, but she was in a wheelchair and I couldn’t remember seeing her walk.

Mom. It sounded foreign when I tried to say it, something so personal to her and not to me. 

Between us two it is still always “Mummy,” so it seems telling to have bought Mum deodorant. To have felt nervous about telling her I was the smelliest member of the school netball team. That I was growing up. To think that one day, when we were both older, I would call her by a name only we could recognise.

I told her about the deodorant when school started up. Sitting on the edge of the bathroom sink, I phoned her: “I’d like to start using deodorant, Mummy. I bought some over the holiday. It’s the ‘Mum’ in my top drawer.” Afterwards, I was unbelievably ecstatic and scribbled big, loopy words in my diary: “I told her about the deodorant! Only period and pregnancy to go!”

Other pieces from this series:
I woke up one morning and felt old
The scar on my elbow