Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady! (26 page)

The first eleven homes I visited, no one answered my knocks, so I turned and walked, didn’t leave a book. The next house looked promising. A fat plastic flamingo perched in the small front lawn. I stood on a woven grass mat and rang the bell, brochure in my left hand. I heard someone rustle through the house, felt an eyeball glance through the peephole. An older man opened the door. He smelled like Kielbasa sausage and scrambled eggs, and he wore those casual expensive layered clothes you can buy at the adventure-man outdoorsy stores.

“No soliciting!” He slammed the door in my face.

I stood on the stoop and rolled my eyes. I heard a tiny feminine voice behind the door ask “Who was that?” and heard the man answer “Nobody.”
I am not a nobody!
I glared at the door, my indignation growing by the millisecond, and without thinking I hung the brochure on his door. Maybe his wife likes Avon, I reasoned, maybe he’s just a mean old grinch but his wife needs some nice blush or lipgloss. I turned and walked past his fake pink bird, and I heard the door open behind me, heard the rip crinkle of Avon brochure but didn’t turn to look, just kept walking, until SMACK!!!

The angry man threw the Avon brochure at me, hitting me on the back of the head.

I knocked on Lea’s door. I didn’t expect her to answer. She never answered, always left a check under the sisal welcome mat, but this time the check wasn’t there. I waited a moment, knocked again. Her porch floor was uneven and dirty. A broken bar stool leaned against the side of the cottage. It needed a good coat of paint. A new roof too, I surmised, some patching on that screen door, cleaner curtains, I continued making a check list of Lea’s Home Depot needs, started to turn to walk home when she opened the door.

“Hi, you must be Birdie.” She peeked around the door, held it tight against her body, and I could smell sandalwood incense and aromatherapy candles. She wore her hair extra short, almost a Marine-type buzz-cut, and her eyes were lined in deep brown kohl. “Would you like to come in?”

I smiled and stepped inside. She wasn’t what I expected. I thought she’d be older, maybe fifty or sixty. I thought she would wear classic clothes and carry a Kate Spade bag, but this woman looked my age, looked like a skinny Goth tattoo superstar, with daisy chains and barbed wire around her bare arms.

“Please sit down while I write out a check. Sorry I wasn’t ready. I was doing my meditation.” She motioned toward a homemade alter made of a rickety card table with a short mahogany bookshelf atop.

She walked into another room and I stared at the altar. Every square inch was covered with photographs and concert tickets, all carefully framed and dusted, all of ancient teen idol David Cassidy of The Partridge Family fame. Six candles glowed in front of a four-foot poster of David standing in front of the family bus, all bell bottoms and day-glo green and blue and orange.
Wow, that’s weird
, I thought. A plate of fruit sat in front of an autographed portrait. An apple, an orange, a handful of cherries, artfully arranged as some kind of offering.

Lea carried a check into the room. She extended her arm, looked ready to accept her product and have me run. I handed her the bag of Avon and wondered what kind of meditation she practiced. Some kind of David Cassidy telepathy experiment, perhaps? I wanted to laugh, but the look behind her eyes shamed me, told me I didn’t know what she was thinking, told me there was a deep story here, one I would never hear.

I accepted the check, unzipped my backpack, stuck it inside, saw a plastic baggie with my walking snack – two crumbling fig bars - and I pulled them into the sandalwood air.

“Hey. Can I leave some cookies for David?” I didn’t wait for an answer, set them carefully next to the orange, turned to see her smile, waved goodbye.

On the walk home I chucked the dirty old brochure in the dumpster, walked the tracks like a tightrope, arms straight out at my sides, decided the world didn’t have to make sense.

I think I love you, world. Yeah. What the hell. Someday, I’m gonna meet my birth daughter. Yeah.

Grand Slam High Noon at Denny’s

Ulak tore out of the house the moment I flung open the door. I ran after him, carrying the hand cream tote bags. I still had my backpack slung over one shoulder and it pitched and rolled as I slapped the pavement.

“Geeze, Ulak! C’mon, you promised you’d make the train delivery!” He tore the bags from my arms, mumbled something about his mother and all night and what would she think. He zoomed out of the drive, nearly knocking over my mailbox.

I walked my own street, leaving books and samples for my regular customers. My boys walked ten steps ahead of me on the other side of the street, leaving my Avon treats on doorsteps and hanging from mailbox handles. I ignored them, kept my eyes on the sidewalk, tried to imagine just how many new customers I would have to hog-tie in order to make the monthly bills. Too many.

“Hey! Mom! Hey!” My older boy, Louie, screamed and waved from behind a plump Azalea bush. “Mom! Come here RIGHT NOW!”

I hustled across the street, expecting to see a bee sting swelling his hand, or a dead mouse maggot-rotting at his feet, or the biggest red anthill he’s ever seen. His younger brother, Marty, continued up the street, carrying no brochures, his arms swinging in circles by his side, oblivious to Louie’s call of distress. I braced myself for the worst, but when I reached Louie and saw the reason for his yowl, I stopped cold chill dead.

Louie held an Avon brochure by his thumb and forefinger as if handling forensic evidence. He turned it around so that I could see the back corner - the place where all good Avon Ladies stamp their name and telephone number. I quickly glanced ahead, one house, two houses, three houses up my street. Someone had already hit it up! And by the name on the book, I knew just who. The fancy-shmancy big time recruiting Avon Lady with the huge hair who wins every damn contest, who makes Top Seller every month, and who knew I lived and worked Avon here.

This meant war.

I didn’t sit and stare at Huge Hair’s books for longer than a surf dude second. I didn’t have to tell Louie what to do, either. I glanced up the street at the stocked homes and nodded my head with military precision. He took off, a stack of my brochures under his arm. I watched him run house to house, remove the offending literature and replace it with mine. Marty seemed oblivious to the operation. He sat on the curb scratching a neighbor’s cat between the ears. I think I heard explaining to the Tabby that Data of Star Trek has a cat named Spot. I rolled my eyes.

“Don’t throw them away!” I yelled, when I saw my older boy head to a trashcan with Huge Hair’s wares. “I’ll stuff them in my backpack for now, ok?”

We blanketed my street and the three closest offshoots with my Avon goodies. No WAY was Huge Hair gonna grab my customers from under me. No WAY! I called her a hundred million mean names in my mind as we trudged home, and the moment I closed the door behind me I whipped out one of her brochures, flipped it over, and grabbed the telephone.

“Hi! Is this heah Deidre?” I tried to disguise my voice by talking in a deep Southern accent. “Well now, Honey, I need some of that nice Skin-So-Soft, so if you tell me where you live, I’ll just drop on by and pick up a little ‘ol brochure from you and drop you a check.”

Huge Hair took the bait. She rattled off her address and told me she would wait until I arrived.
Ha!
I thought.
You do that, Big Bad Avon Lady. You do that.

I hauled two boxes of stamped brochures to the back of my van and promised the boys a Slurpee apiece if they behaved.

“Now, kids, I’m going to be honest. We’re going to do something kind of sneaky. You know how that lady put her brochures down OUR street? Well, we’re going to put our brochures down HER street!”

My boys slapped me high fives as I backed out of the driveway. I turned the radio up high, and we rolled across the overpass connecting Olde Towne with the patchwork of newer identical subdivisions. Deidre lived in one of these square villages. Each house we passed had three matching palm trees in a triangular arrangement and an iron mailbox stuffed into a printed terra cotta planter. I parked around the corner and watched my boys turn into secret ninja Avon warriors carrying messages of beauty and redemption. They snuck from home to home, leaving my books and samples on each doorstep. They took their job seriously. Louie kept his back against each side fence, sidled up to each house with eyes darting back and forth. Marty crawled quickly from bush to bush, a trick learned from Star Trek, no doubt. I’m sure in his mind he set phasers on “stun.”

I leaned over a fence to stick a brochure in a wooden pelican’s mouth. My cell rang. Shanna’s number flashed on the display. I flipped it open, expected to hear her low voice tell me some tile customer sob story, but I heard giggles. Giggles? Giggles? Shanna?

“Uh, Shanna, is that you? What the hell are you on, girl?” I laughed, matching her spirit, not sure what would come next, only knew it was something wild and generous and full of secret spirit.

“Birdie! Birdie! Guess what? C’mon! You have to guess!” Shanna laughed, couldn’t stop, started gasping for breath as I held the phone away from my ear for a moment to ponder the situation. My boys looked at me from across a perfect lawn, and Louie pointed his index finger at his ear and rotated it in circles in the universal sign meaning “Crazy!”

“Uh. Joel proposed?” I figured her mullet-headed boy toy would never pop the question.

“Oh My God! You guessed! Ok, you have to be my best woman, ok? I don’t want a maid of honor, I just want a best woman. That’s you! You’re the best! Oh, I gotta go - Joel, stop it, hee hee hee – ‘bye Birdie!”

I stood, dead phone at my ear, for a long, long while.
Congratulations, Shanna
, I thought.
Wow. Wow. Way to go! What the heck do I wear to a Metallica Mullet Wedding? I hope I catch the (sure to be black roses) bouquet!

One hundred drops later, we were done. My mind still shook from Shanna’s surprise. I opened the back hatch of my van and scooped out Huge Hair Deidre’s books - the ones she left along my street - and ran them to her very own porch, left them wilting in the afternoon sun.

Big hair. Mullets. Trains. Daughter. Big Hair. Mullets. Trains. Daughter.
My boys ran through the sprinkler the rest of the afternoon. I watched them from the kitchen window as I filled the sink with soap and hot water.
Big hair. Mullets. Trains. Daughter
. Too many people, events, things I couldn’t control invaded my mind. I let the dishes soak and found my purple meditation pillow.

I bought the pillow at a yard sale when I was seventeen years old. I forked over fifty-cents to a middle-aged woman. She wore tight Jordache jeans and an oversized navy-blue sweatshirt cut around the neck like a television dancer. Heavy silver rope earrings dangled near her neck, and I noticed the line of her back reached from her feet to a spot just above her head, as if someone pulled an invisible string through her spinal cord toward central heaven. I hugged the pillow to my belly, swollen with my daughter, and I turned to walk home, the hand of the tiny girl I babysat in mine.

“Hey, miss? Miss? Do you know what that is?” Jordache Woman pointed to my purchase and I shrugged my shoulders.

“Yeah. It’s a floor pillow.” My charge’s hand slid from mine and she ran behind a heavy oak. I watched her body cast bent shadows along the grass as she collected acorns in her tiny fists.

“Yes. It is. It is also an invitation to not think.”

I pictured her grin as I walked home, one hand holding the pillow, the other a leash of exhaustion and sunshine spasm. The little girl didn’t notice the pillow, but my unborn daughter kicked it, meridian over nerve, until my belly became a soft practiced drumstick.

I gave birth to my daughter, gave her up for adoption. I was empty and painful, wistful and exhausted, like my womb. I took a walk one morning, left my new boyfriend in the kitchen, left the negative words he uttered that morning, found myself across the street from a place called a “zendo.” I didn’t know what it meant, only knew strange people with the scent of incense and quiet walked the steps each morning as the birds called, and each night as the street lights flickered to life.

“Hello! Miss! Are you here to learn about your floor pillow?” I smiled at Jordache Woman, this time dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt. She carried a small basket covered with a woven cotton towel, and I smelled cinnamon and vanilla.

“You use those pillows here?” I raised my eyebrows in surprise and disbelief, but Jordache Woman nodded her head carefully, looked straight at my belly as if she wondered why it looked different.

“Yes. We use those pillows here. Do you have a free morning? Please come sit with us.” She didn’t wait to hear my response. She slowly walked to a double door carved with delicate Japanese designs. I followed her, felt something leap inside my belly though it was empty and tired.

I watched a small group of eight pull floor pillows like mine off a mahogany shelf. Tall sticks of incense sparked in each cardinal corner of the room.

What is this place?
I wondered.
It smells like the sky, like a place I used to know.
I grabbed a pillow and arranged my legs to match the cross-legged position of the others. A woman dressed in a gray kimono with pajama pants walked to the center of the room. She didn’t speak, didn’t move, stood and waited, and I heard the breath of eight people roll around the corners of the room, reaching the incense, making it burn brighter, higher, sending some kind of secret message to the stars.