Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady!

by Birdie Jaworski

  “Now. Hello. What you got for me?”

  Maria carried one of those cheap white plastic outdoor chairs you buy at Kmart and plunked it down next to the bench. She sat, legs spread apart, wearing a powder blue chenille housecoat, an old fashioned housecoat with a princess collar and two hip pockets lined with navy piping. Varicose veins and age spots covered every inch of her legs, but even through the generous fat I could see muscle.

  “Sorry to walk in without knocking. I didn’t know you’d, uh, be indisposed.” I held out my right hand in greeting and Maria grabbed it with her left hand, a strong dry-skin grip.

  “No, no, it fine. I keep the Aloe high so I can wear no clothes. Nobody ever see.”

  She spoke like a man, a pirate’s swagger to her voice, rough and ready and bordered in laughter, and the many lines on her face gave away a life of this laughter, deep crow’s lines and smile arcs, not a hint of disaster or depression. “Plus I dun care. No one care about an old woman with no clothes.”

  “Well I don’t blame you! Clothes just get in the way, don’t they?”

  I winked at Maria and opened my pack to remove brochures and tiny lipsticks in rose and cinnamon and a stack of wrinkle care skin samples. She looked like she needed those.

  “Lemme ask you. What you name? Bird? Bird, I come from Hungary. We only use the aloe and witch hazel on the face. I dun need no skin cream. I want the lipstick. Hmm. This is nice.”

  She opened the cinnamon tube and applied it to her lips in a wayward pattern. “Very nice. I want order one of these. Lemme tell you Bird. My husband died two year ago. Heart failure. He was a gud man. He did no like no lipstick. But now I live by myself and I gonna wear it. Order me two of these. And that bath oil. You know.”

  I wrote down two cinnamon lipsticks in my order pad and one Skin-So-Soft, the bath oil of everyone. Maria bent down and scratched her left leg. Her fingernails were mottled gray, and a thousand veins popped from her hand.

  “Now Bird. Lemme ask you. How old you think I am?”

  Maria smiled and sat back in the chair. It creaked against the tile and I prayed it would not collapse under her weight. I hate age questions. I peered at her face, at the frizzy gray hair held back in little-girl barrettes, at the lines around her eyes, at the fingernails mottled and dark, and leaned just a bit closer. I hesitated, tried not to remember her sagging breasts and rumpled tummy.

  “Uh, 53? At the most, I mean!” Maria laughed and laughed, slapping her knee, nodding her head, laughed with delight and the sureness of someone who knows the answer will be good and great and predictable.

  “Bird, lemme tell you. I am 81 years old. Yes, 81. No one think I am 81. No one. I look so good because of the aloe. And because I swim one mile every morning in the ocean. One mile! Imagine that! I am 81 and I swim one mile every day! I could be in those Olympics but I’m not American citizen.” Maria stated that last bit like it was damn fact, like she was damn fast, as fast as Micheal Phelps himself, should he be 81 and a naked gardener and swim in a riptide ocean.

  “Wow, one mile! No way! You don’t look 81 at all!” I clapped my hands and grinned wide, thinking Oh Yes you old Hungarian lady, you look exactly 81 years old, but I love it, love the way you look and act and talk and growl. I love it.

  I drove home, thinking about Maria, knowing she shucked the housecoat the minute I slammed the metal lion shut, knowing you could cast her far out to sea, past Catalina even, and she’d backstroke home, naked and slick with aloe, through storm and shark and beds of mysterious kelp, sure as Hungarian witch hazel, a crazy pirate laugh on her lips. Why can’t I be that sure, that Olympic, that crazy? I want to make bold decisions, too, I thought. But I have, I remembered. I took a tattoo. I gave life to a child, then gave her life again with new parents. Maria’s face taunted me, told me something I knew the moment I signed those relinquishment papers.

  I wanted to agree to some kind of contact with my birth daughter.

  Ulak’s Folly

  Shanna called me six days later from Cabo San Lucas. She laughed over the phone, and I heard the plaintive cry of seagulls and the splash of someone diving cannonball into a resort pool. Joel murmured something in the background about going to get more cigarettes and Shanna made kissy noises with her hand over the receiver. I rolled my eyes.

  “Birdie, I’m in Mexico with Joel! Oh my God, Birdie, he’s divine. I’m so fucking in love.”

  I hung up the phone after hearing about whale watches, Baja lobster dinners, and Latino heavy metal. Wow, I thought. Shanna found the real thing. I brushed the hair out of my face and smoothed my t-shirt over my snugger-than-usual jeans. Geeze, I gotta lose a few pounds. I swore off chocolate for a week. I thought of Shanna and her zaftig figure and True Love mullet boytoy. Hmmmm, maybe chocolate is OK. I tumbled on the couch, decided I should write my own personal ad and find, find…find, what? No heavy metal guy for me. Maybe a chef. Or a fireman. I pictured men in utilitarian uniforms chasing fire, rescuing cats and grandmothers, their muscles sweaty, heaving under flame-retardant material. Yeah, a fireman. I lifted the newspaper from the floor and vowed to write that profile the next day. A glossy brochure dropped from the paper. An Avon Men’s Catalogue. Must have been sitting under the couch. I wiped the dust off the cover and turned it over in my hands.

  The prior fall, Avon printed thin glossy catalogues featuring items like battery-operated nose hair trimmers and NFL pajamas. A Men’s Catalogue, oh baby yeah. And good Avon Lady that I am, I bought in. I ordered two hundred brochures, pictured the fat neighborhood bookkeeper with the closet full of red plaid shirts buying moisturizing face cream and an extra-large spritz bottle of RPM cologne. I might double my earnings, I thought. I might meet a cute single guy in need of soothing eye cream and a soft pair of fingers to apply it. This Men’s Catalogue is brilliant, I thought. Brilliant.

  Three months later one hundred fifty Men’s Catalogues taunted me from my bedroom floor. No one wanted them. No men sifted through the slick pages, carefully considered the benefits of daily exfoliation. My female customers laughed when I tried to slip them a Men’s Catalogue or two to give to the homeboys ruling their sun. You’ve gotta be kidding, they said. My man barely showers. He ain’t gonna start spreading Ab Cream on his love handles. It’s a joke, right? I’ll just order him that soap-on-a-rope in the regular Avon book.

  So I tried stealth brochure drops - leaving those aging books stuck under the windshield wipers of every pickup truck in town, placing one or two next to the girly mags covering the coffee table at the barbershop. But no beauty-hungry men called. My demonstration nose hair trimmers gathered dust.

  I turned from my back to my stomach on the couch. The boys flipped cards on the carpet in a game of War. I squinted to read the fine print on the back of the brochure. One week before the damn catalogues expired. I still had close to forty glossies littering my floor. Oh crap, I thought. That’s fifty cents a book thrown away. My yard sale isn’t for another week, dang it. And where the heck did I store those nose hair trimmers, anyway? I considered dumping the entire lot. My boys fought against each other. Jack beats ten. Queen beats Jack. King beats Queen. Louie raised one eyebrow and gathered his cards close to his body. I decided this Queen wasn’t gonna bow down to any King.

  I searched the newspaper for some event where men gathered - a demolition derby perhaps, or a bear hunting convention. But Southern California doesn’t host a whole lotta manly man get-togethers, so I squished the paper into a small ball. As I reached over my head to toss the wad into the trash, the words Men’s Bowling League caught my eye. Oh! This is it! I unwrapped the paper, read the small notice about the summer league finals and nodded my head. Yeah. Bowling. Yeah!

  The phone jangled and I rolled off the couch.

  “Hello” Giggles escaped from my lips as Marty nonchalantly attempted to sneak a peek at his brother’s cards.

  “Ummm, is this Birdie?” The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Yes, this is Birdie, can
I help you?” I cleared my throat in embarrassment and reached for my Avon order pad.

  “I bought fifty tubes of Moisture Rich hand cream from you two weeks ago -”

  “Oh man, I’m sorry, Avon shorted me two tubes but I didn’t get a chance to tell you because you ran off so quick.” I jumped into her words, assuming she called to take me to task.

  “No worries about that. I need fifty more tubes. Can we make the same arrangements?”

  We agreed to meet once again at the train station on Thursday, at the same four-ten time, under the same ticket counter, on the same bench, and I assured her the bags would contain exactly fifty-two tubes, but she didn’t seem to care. She still refused to give me her name or number, and I didn’t press. I remembered that thirty-five dollar tip, and figured she was paying for my bewildered discretion. I also gave a prayer of thanks as her order jacked me into the highest Avon commission sales level, a cool fifty percent.

  Train station, Thursday. Yard Sale, Saturday. Men’s Bowling League, Sunday. I wrote the upcoming events in my organizer and mentally spent the boatloads of cash I was sure to earn. I’ll buy a new pair of jeans, and a new set of water glasses to replace the ones the boys broke. Marty’s screaming broke my reverie and I stepped in to referee a fight over who was cheating who at War. Oh man, make this summer go away, give me school days, I thought. I called my Turkish friend, Ulak, in desperation.

  “Ulak, I can’t do it. I can’t keep sane. I’m not a good Avon Lady. All I know how to do is bake cookies and cakes and tell kids funny stories and build school projects out of dried macaroni noodles. I can’t even sew patches on pants, Ulak! I’m freaking out over here! I’m serious! I’m freaking out! It’s a long hot summer and my Avon sales are way way down. I’m just not getting into it right now. Can you come over and entertain Marty and Louie so I can at least get my fucking brochures delivered without listening to their incessant whining? Please? Please?”

  I could hear Ulak’s mother in the background. She yelled something to him in Turkish and I heard him cover the phone received with his hand and answer back. She made a noise of disapproval, but Ulak returned to the phone.

  “Ok, I’ll come over. But on one condition.”

  “Fuck, I’ll do anything. Anything! What?”

  “Stop cursing. It’s unladylike.”

  Ulak drove over and parked his SUV in my driveway and the boys ran out to hug him. He handed them each a Hershey’s bar, and they wiggled and churned a chocolate victory dance around his car. Ulak saw me peering through a window and he waved to me, waved “come outside.” I slid into my Avon NASCAR slippers and walked out front. The air felt unusual, cold and heavy and damp, the aftermath of unusual torrential summer rains, and I saw piles of empty trashcans up and down my street and realized I forgot to take out the weekly garbage. Damn.

  “Birdie, good afternoon.” Ulak bowed his head in greeting and pulled a newspaper clipping out of the front pocket of his jeans. “Look, it says they have a new dog park by the old volcano. Let’s get your dog and go. You need a break, you don’t look good.”

  I ran my right hand through my hair in a self-conscious gesture and tried to suck in my stomach. “Well I don’t have time for the park. I have to get the Avon done. I still have fifty brochures to pass around and order day is Monday. It never ends, Ulak. But here! Take the boys and the dog, they’ll love it.”

  Ulak shook his head No and pointed to the newsprint. His bushy eyebrows met in the center as he frowned. “It says it’s a nature preserve now. You should go too. You look like you haven’t had much fresh air lately. When was the last time you just did something relaxing?”

  He’s right, I thought. I’m spending too much time trying to control the universe and make things happen. I shoved on my sneakers, grabbed Suzie and the good blue leash and stuffed a few plastic grocery bags in my back pocket to clean up any dog doo, and jumped in Ulak’s car. I grabbed a handful of my Avon business cards, too, in the event any women were wandering around the park looking like they could use some blush or hand cream.

  Ulak drove us past the Skull Hill development and into the stark volcanic valley. I didn’t realize my town saved 480 acres surrounding the tallest peak for recreational use. Ulak explained this as we rode, told us how the park surrounds a little mountain called San Francisco Peak and an old decaying reservoir dam from the 1940s. It’s not used anymore, he said, except by fishermen avoiding their wives on Sunday afternoons. We slid into another division of similar modular homes and Ulak came to a stop along the edge of the street.

  We walked on a thin cement access path between two new homes, past the tall concrete walls circling the division, into a patch of wet grassland. The mountain loomed in the distance, and I could see the ancient volcanic cone exposed along the south rim, the rest rocky and sandy, not a speck of living vegetation gracing its sides.

  Ulak told me he looked the park up on the internet and found a map with hiking trails.

  “We can walk around the reservoir, then climb the mountain and come down the other side. It will only take an hour. You’ll feel better, Birdie.”

  I could see the small lake stretched out in front of us. Much of the grasslands were muddy and wet from the rainstorm. The trail up the mountain looked steep but accessible. I glanced at the jungle foliage at the foot of the hill on the return side. I didn’t see any trails, only run-off water and reeds and a thicket at least a half-mile wide. The boys ran ahead, climbed rocks and sand hills and splashed in every single puddle they could find. The dog lurched on the leash, pulling me up the hill, sniffing the fragrant velvet leaves of black sage and the tiny orange blossoms of monkey flower, and much sooner than I expected we stood at the top of San Francisco Peak. The ocean spread her wings before us, such a salty revolving eagle, and I tried to find my house among the square specks organized in unnatural curves and rows at our feet.

  An older woman waited at a curve in the trail. She stood against a graffiti-scarred oak, her right arm wound with a brown leather leash that pulled a Chihuahua. A grossly overweight Chihuahua. An enormously grossly overweight Chihuahua. The little dog stared defiantly at his owner, hind feet pressed into the dirt. That is, I thought his feet were pressed into the dirt, but the overhang of his golden belly made him look as though his owner were dragging a World Record-sized stuffed sausage along the ground.

  “Just step around Bootsie! He needs to exercise but he hates it. You have a lovely trim dog.”

  The woman spoke with a thick Swedish accent. She leaned over to pat Susie between the ears. The dogs touched noses, sniffed butts and conducted dog business.

  “Bootsie? That’s a cute name.”

  I squatted, scratched the fat pup near his tail. I gave Marty and Louie a warning glance. Louie turned his back to us, and I heard him clear his throat to cover laughter. Ulak hovered behind us with a neutral expression, a model of Turkish propriety.

  “Are you hiking to the top? The view is incredible. Incredible! The trail continues around the back side of the mountain and back to the parking lot, you know.”

  The woman pointed up as if we were hiking toward Heaven. She wore expensive high-tech hiking shorts above the most muscular calves I ever saw, and ankle-high leather boots with small steel cleats. Her short gray hair stuck out in gentle gelled spikes.

  “But it is getting late. You might have a difficult time finding the trail if you keep hiking after dark.”

  We waved goodbye and headed up the hill. Louie muttered something under his breath about applying Avon Pro-Extreme Ab Cream to the Chihuahua.

  “Mom!” Marty yelled even though I walked next to him. “Can Avon make that fat dog skinny again?” I quickly stuck my hand over his mouth and coughed.

  “Oh, that dog was just muscular. You know. Like his owner. They look like a sporty couple!” I didn’t dare glance behind me!

  It would have been a perfect and invigorating ending to a crappy day, if only we did the smart thing and stop at the top, then retrace our steps t
o the car. But Ulak pressed on, pointed to a dirt rock trail cascading in switch-backs down the other side of the mountain.

  “That Swede. Birdie. She said the trail continues to the car park.” Ulak kept hiking.

  “But it’s getting dark! She said we might not be able to find our way back!”

  I looked uneasily at the sky, at the way the sun was about to fall into the mouth of the sea below us, leaving me, a crazy coffee salesman Turk, two young boys and a fluffy white sissy dog in utter darkness. The trail faded to nothing, faded to a tableau of bitchy mother, whining children, clueless dog and studious Turk.

  “Ulak! We’re lost! I can’t see anything! The trail must be around here somewhere but I don’t see it. Hell, there’s a river in the way. Look! Look at it!” I pointed to a swollen creek in our path, no footbridge in sight. “Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.” I stuck my hands on my hips.

  “Birdie. The children. Watch your language.” Ulak stage-whispered. He examined the sky, but the light pollution of So Cal swallowed any navigational aids.

  “We could build a raft and float across.” Louie stooped over, picked up an anemic branch. “Shouldn’t be too difficult.” He continued collecting bramble.

  I looked at Ulak. Ulak looked at Louie as if considering the idea. Only Marty had the presence of mind to say the obvious.

  “Geeze. What a stupid idea.”

  We hiked and prayed and hiked some more, two hours more, through hidden streams and slick marsh, over canyon ledges and into jarring dangerous ravines. The whole time I cursed Ulak and his great ideas.

  “Ulak, I swear, if we ever get out of this alive I am NEVER doing ANYTHING you suggest again!” I held both boys’ hands in mine, as tight as I could, as Ulak held onto Suzie’s leash. He didn’t lash back at me, didn’t raise his voice, only pointed and wondered if the next eroded ridge held our salvation.