Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady! (22 page)

I turned down one street, then another, remembered the adoption reunion site on the internet where I read stories about a birth child who goes on a rampage of a mission to find a birth parent, and after the dust settles, after the birth mom’s life is yanked and uprooted and left at the edge of some mental precipice, the birth child walks away, curiosity satisfied, no desire for a relationship. I feared this was where I was now, stuck on some cliff without a climbing harness and my partner decided to pick up her pack and hike home, leave me here.

Why? It’s not right, it doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feel like good manners or basic human responsibility. She called me. She called me first. She called me. She called ME. She uprooted MY life. She had months, or weeks, or maybe a few years, to decide she would find me and let me know I was her mother. She had the luxury of time. I’ve had six weeks of unknowing, helplessness, sad memory, wonder, fear, every emotion I own, and now I feel what it is to wait. I kept her in my heart all of these long years, and said a prayer and sent a kiss to her every day of her life. I want to know her, now.

But, I have to accept that this might not be possible. I have to accept whatever happens and let my expectations go. Let them go. I want to let them go.

Six years ago I made a trip to the Midwest, and flew home from St. Louis in a plane chock full of vacation people. I sat next to a window over the wing, and watched the silver arch fade from view as we leaped into the clouds. My mind was tired, I remember this, and I stared at the layer of angry clouds wondering if we would miss the storm.

An old man sat to my right. He wore a brown knit vest over a pinstriped shirt. He had rich curly hair the color of the clouds, and he smelled of cologne and garlic. He tried to make small talk with me but I pretended to sleep, my red runny nose on the cold scratched window, arms tightly around a red suede purse filled with tissues and cherry cold medication and lemon honey cough drops.

These details are fresh, beyond fresh, more than memories, as if someone took a sharp kitchen knife and carved them into my brain, because in that simple moment, the plane lurched and fell, how many hundreds of feet I don’t know, but fell out of the clouds and toward the ground and the cabin began to fill with smoke. The plane leveled again, and it struck me that no one made a sound, we sat in wild-eyed fear, my hands griping my purse. The captain’s voice filled the plane. He sounded afraid and full of panic.

“Sorry folks, we have a situation up here in the cockpit and we’re taking the plane back to the airport. We’re going to turn around and fly at a low altitude. The flight attendants will show you what to do. Please follow their instructions exactly. I repeat, we are turning around and taking the plane back to St. Louis.”

I remember these words verbatim, like a prayer you recite every Sunday in church, like the first love letter you receive. The plane spat and curved and I heard people praying for Jesus to save them. I looked at the man next to me, the old man I tried to avoid, and he smiled at me and took my right hand.

“Don’t worry, honey. I’ve been through worse. The captain will get us home safely. Now tell me a little about yourself. Where do you live?”

We held hands and chatted, the way you should chat with someone on a plane, about mundane things, my children, his wife, our favorite restaurants. I stopped hearing the prayers around me, almost stopped feeling the rumble of the plane, almost stopped smelling the acrid scent of the smoke. The flight attendants walked through the cabin, stopping at each row to tighten belts and demonstrate the landing crash pose. The old man and I took our crash position, leaned forward, one arm hugging our body, the other hand in hand with each other.

The old man was right. The captain got us home. The plane skidded to a stop somewhere past the runway, somewhere in a field of tall grass, and we exited the plane quickly while fire fighters rushed with hoses to investigate. I looked for the old man but couldn’t find him. I wanted to thank him, and tell him he saved my life. The pilot didn’t, not really. He did.

These moments of death seem to measure my life, maybe everyone’s life. His words of being simple, gave me hope that all things, Avon and kids you don’t yet know, will be all right.

I stopped at a light and glanced in my rear view mirror, ready to wink back tears, and realized just why Eliza had that bad tooth-licking habit. Red dark cherry lipstick smeared along my top teeth, in a Rorschach blotch of lust and wonder.

Shock the Monkey

Fifty tubes of hand cream. Check. I stuffed the product in three tote bags for Ulak’s train station appointment, then sat down to print out Lady Mystery’s invoice. I shifted my feet and twirled my chair to look out my window. The hammock slung under the roof deck rocked with the wind. Someone snuggled under a woven Navajo blanket, let the airy drone of the swinging bed carry them to sleep. I didn’t think about who might be hogging the hammock. With two boys and endless visits from neighborhood kids it could be anyone. But this kid lifted his... snout... from under the covers and rolled into a new position. Frankie. The pig! In the hammock!

I stood, walked to the window and smelled the lavender and sage. Frankie sniffed too, a deep and hearty snort, and I swear he sighed my cares away. I don’t know how he lifted himself into the hammock. I don’t know how he knew a breezy nap could be so damn good.

Click. The invoice printed on plain white paper. I stamped a fresh brochure and spritzed it with fragrance. My hands continued to fill and sort and print and spritz, my body an Avon assembly line. Marty and Louie ran inside to tell me they were heading to the movies with the neighbors. Thank God, I thought. Now I can get some real work done. I saddled up the kilt and called Shanna.

“Hello. This is Shanna’s cell! Leave a message.” Beep.

Damn. I knew Shanna had a real life, a real boy, something good going on. I should have been happy for her. We both stayed lonely girls for too many years. But, damn! I sucked in my stomach and looked at my feet.

I have no discipline. I’m such a seat-of-the-pants girl. I’ve built such a seat-of-the-pants life. I don’t know where I’m headed, I’ve got no diary, no blueberry-cake reserves, nothing in front of my face but backpack full of pretend happiness. The only thing I ever thought I was any good at - being a mother - is the one thing I fucked up big time with my birth daughter. I wish I hadn’t given her away. I know it was the only thing I could do then, I know it, I can’t hate myself for it. But I don’t have anything else to show for myself. I am a single mother, a single Avon Lady, and I do things alone. I headed out the door.

A woman invited me to step into her home when I held out the latest Avon brochure. She didn’t speak her name, but pointed to a framed needlepoint sampler when I told her my name was Birdie. The needlepoint hung in a golden Victorian frame over the gas stove. The name “Melva Cionavitch” filled the top third, in block letters made from red x’s and o’s, over a bronze threaded saying: “Only a Genealogist regards a step backwards as progress.” Specks of dust and grease clung to the glass over the fabric.

“So, Melva! Nice to meet you!”

I placed my backpack on the floor and took a seat on a floral loveseat. The cushions whooshed and I felt my butt nearly touching the floor. Who puts a loveseat in the kitchen?

“Do you chart your own family’s ancestry? Or are you a professional?”

I glanced around the room, and reached into my bag for my tub of wrinkle cream. Aside from the needlepoint, nothing adorned the cedar walls of the cottage. Everything came from a tree. The floor, the walls, the chairs, the long table, a lone piece of driftwood standing sentry in a corner, everything but the appliances and the saggy loveseat.

“Yes,” Melva said.

Yes? Which yes? I didn’t ask, just smiled and opened the jar and went into my spiel.

“Well, I’m getting to know new people in the neighborhood by demonstrating our new Anew Clinical Line and Wrinkle Corrector.”

I rubbed the lotion into my hand and told her how the cream fades lines and wrinkles and zits and, after getting a good look at Melva’s face, age spots. She stood in front of me while I spoke. She didn’t sit in the loveseat with me or offer me a glass of water. She didn’t even look at my hands, at the lotion, or even the brochure I set on the table before I sat down. She stared at my face, but not my eyes, someplace south of that, perhaps my nose or mouth.

“I’m not new.”

Melva said the words with hesitation, so quietly I almost didn’t hear them.

“Huh? Sorry? What was that?”

“I’m not new. You said you were showing this to new people. I’ve lived here thirty-six years.”

Her black hair was piled in a loose bun on the top of her head. The bun swayed back and forth, and I could see grey roots at her temples.

“Wow, that’s a long time. I only meant that I’m the new neighborhood Avon Lady and I’m out knocking on doors and meeting people and showing them this new wrinkle cream.”

I held out the jar but she didn’t lift it from my palm. I felt foolish, disjointed, like I walked into the wrong house selling the wrong stuff saying the wrong things.

“Wrinkle cream.”

Melva repeated the words and gave the jar a thoughtful look.

“You say it works on all kinds of skin conditions?”

“Sure! It does! Just about anything! One of my customers uses it on stretch marks and swears they are disappearing.”

I heard my words echo across the cedar room, but they were not alone. A low rumbling noise accompanied them, a sound like grunting or strange coughing. Melva didn’t seem to notice.

“Will this work on dry skin?”

“Yes, it sure will. It increases the collagen output of your skin and makes it firmer, smoother, and more hydrated.”

At this point I was beginning to make up stuff to say. I wasn’t sure that hydration was a by-product of the wrinkle cream but the wiggling bun and the growling and the way everything I said came out the wrong way discombobulated me, and I just wanted to leave the cream and run out the door.

“Can we try it right now to see if it works?”

“Oh yes! I can rub some into your hand and you can see the difference right away!”

Melva turned and walked toward a closed door next to the garbage pail. Her rubber flip-flops made a “thwack thwack thwack” sound against the floor.

“No, not on my hand. On Hubert.”

In that instant I knew that Hubert was not a reclining husband or a delinquent son. Hubert was the thing that made those animal noises, and I put one hand down, grabbed one backpack strap, ready to leap off the loveseat - if my butt could actually pry itself out of the damn thing - and run out the door if Hubert was a Pit Bull with mange.

Melva reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a key. I stared in perverse fascination. Who keeps a Hubert locked away? Who lets a Hubert out when the Avon Lady arrives? What the h-e-double-toothpicks was a Hubert?? Rotweiller? Lizard? Bobcat? She slipped the key inside the lock and I heard the latch turn. Something grunted at the door, something scratched and hit the doorknob on the other side.

The door swung open and a monkey flew out the door, screeching and hollering and swinging both arms. I don’t know much about primates, but he looked evil and childlike and brown like a movie monkey, the sort of mischievous small creature sent to Mars in a B flick or the sidekick to a down-and-out comic. I gripped the backpack strap tighter. I was afraid.

“Hubert!”

Melva grabbed one monkey hand and Hubert laughed, at least I think it was a laugh, a “Whee Hee Hee Grunt” of a laugh, and she led him across the kitchen, speaking as she stepped.

“I’ve had Hubert eleven years. He’s a good boy. You’re sitting in his favorite seat and he might want to sit in your lap. He loves company.”

I tried to stand up but couldn’t move. My smile was plastered on my face, like a wax statue, and I knew my eyes held a crazy and frightened look. I tried to say something soothing to Hubert but I only managed a squeak.

Melva let go of Hubert’s hand and he jumped into my lap. He put long arms around my neck and made kissy noises. His breath was fire-rotten tomatoes and diapers, and monkey drool started to roll down my neck. I heard someone hyperventilating and realized it was me.

“Ha ha ha,” I pretended to laugh, pretended to be delighted that the pet monkey from Hades was molesting me. “Melva, he’s sweet but can you pull him off? Please?”

I couldn’t see Melva, just short coarse brown hair and mottled skin, but felt her gently grab Hubert and set him down next to me on the loveseat.

“Now put that cream on his left arm.”

I didn’t bother to wipe the drool from my neck. My hands shook as I opened the wrinkle cream and scooped out a generous dollop. I spread the cream on Hubert and he sat in place, Melva’s arm around his middle, while I rubbed white lotion into brown wrinkled skin.

“Yes. That’s it. Good boy.” Melva nodded with approval.

“I’ll call you in a week if his skin improves. He likes you.”

I planted my feet firmly on the floor and heaved my butt out of the loveseat, backpack in hand. I didn’t want to ask why Hubert needed wrinkle cream, why she thought one application might do something, why she lived in a brown home full of brown things with a brown creepy friend.

“Now I’m not new!”