Jitterbug Perfume

“Beets are deadly serious.” 

Our first indication that the narrator will have a very idiosyncratic influence on the storytelling comes right away, in this extended essay on the beet and its emotional and historical meaning. If the reader is primed to accept that the beet is so important, they might be convinced of immortality as well. It also readies us to take what the narrator says with a grain of salt.

“She continued weeping until the heat of her tear water, the sheer velocity of its flow, finally obscured the already vague circumstances of its origin.” 

Priscilla Pardito is often presented as a happy-go-lucky character. Yet in this first introduction, she is also presented as a person with longings that are difficult to fulfill. She is in search of something that cannot be satisfied materially.

“Among fashionable folk in the French Quarter, Madame D. was known as the Queen of the Good Smells. There was a time when certain people in the Quarter pronounced it ‘Spells.’” 

This introduction to Lily Devalier intimately connects her to the social life of New Orleans. The confusion of “smells” and “spells” intimately associates her work with a sort of witchcraft and perfume with magic.