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

by Birdie Jaworski

  I think I floated inside his house. I think I tripped into his steel and glass coffee table, dropped my backpack on my toes. I think I stuttered as I thanked him for the Avon call, as I unzipped my bag to get the foot cream. I don’t really remember, only recall the way my cheeks translated my emotional thermometer.

  I took a seat next to him on a brown leather couch. Foot Man took the demonstration cream tube from my hand, opened the top, took its scent in deep breaths, squeezed a generous dollop in his hands, and he began to rub it back and forth between his palms.

  “I need a foot to properly sample the product. Would you mind if I apply it to your feet?”

  I tried to speak, started mumbling that I didn’t have all the samples he requested, just this lone tube of heel relief, but my words sounded pickled and sliced. I giggled, kicked off a flip-flop and lifted my leg.

  He rubbed the cream into my foot. He’d obviously done this before, knew how to apply just enough pressure to keep the tickle reflex at bay. He kept kneading even after the cream vanished inside my pores, kept a rhythm of push and pull and I realized my eyes were closed. I opened them to see his eyes closed, too, in some kind of strange earthy rapture.

  “Um, sir? Excuse me, sir? I think the cream is gone.” I didn’t know what to say, kept giggling, pulled my leg back to my own space, and Foot Man snapped his eyes open and inhaled.

  “Let me try that again, if you don’t mind. I need to get your other foot.” He sounded like rumpled blankets and candles and Egyptian musk. He sounded like full-on midnight sex. I saw a bead of sweat grow under his neck, saw him shift his body, his legs, saw something I really didn’t want to see rising from the eggplant depths of his lap.

  “Oh! I think I left my stove going! Here! Just keep the cream! Good bye!”

  I grabbed my pack, shot up from the couch, strode fast for the door, yanked it open, felt brochures and men’s samples falling to the ground behind me, didn’t care, just kept moving, walking, running, sprinting home, didn’t notice the flip-flop I left lying on his floor.

  I breathed, in and out, in and out. I breathed a long time. I looked at Neighbor Guy.

  “Yeah. I think I know the foot massage guy.” Yeah. Wow. Dumb celebrities.

  The fish hid behind the treasure chest as Neighbor Guy closed his eyes, leaned further against the wall. His chest moved easy now, rose and fell with every third tick of his grandfather clock. I watched him fall asleep, patted him on the head, and whispered a message as I left.

  “Hey dude. Don’t look into the past. Take pictures of your future. That’s all any of us can do. And man, if you can manage, just be yourself to everyone. It hurts at the start, but then it gets easier, and you can drop all your pain. I promise.”

  I closed his door behind me, left him snoozing against the eggshell wall, remembered I had my own moment of strange disclosure to make with my own children, knew Neighbor Guy would be OK, the way we all end up OK, with memories of grief and love piled heavy beside us.

  Pig Town Dilemma

  I left messages for Ulak and Shanna. Come on, guys, call me! I have serious gossip! I wanted to tell them about the celebrities and Neighbor Guy and the rattle-trap Mercedes, but my friends didn’t answer. Ulak’s brother finally called me back a few days later, left a grainy Turkish message I only half understood, something about coffee and travel and the Holy Lands.

  I waited for my friends. I waited for my birth daughter. I waited for the Avon deliveryman, too, so I could bag the goods ordered at my yard sale, but when he arrived and I tried to make delivery arrangements, most of my customers were gone on vacation. Kilt Man’s girlfriend, or whatever she was, Eliza, returned my call and asked me to visit her home in two weeks. I marked it on the calendar and hoped she was ready with cold hard cash.

  I took my boys on long neighborhood walks. The days turned into a week, a week and a half. We spent a few evenings playing Go Fish and teaching Frankie the pig to sit, to stay, to dance. I renewed the Free Pig classified ad, but no one called. I honestly thought I would be inundated with calls, at least twenty, maybe thirty, or forty! There must be a bunch of pig-loving folk in North County, I figured.

  The phone finally rang, just when I’d given up porcine hope, and a woman with a voice like sharp gravel asked if I still had the pig. Heck yeah, I said, come on down!

  They arrived ten minutes early and knocked first before ringing the bell. I locked Suzie in my bedroom and screamed at her to shush her barking and I grabbed Frankie’s leash and ran for the door.

  “Hey, welcome! Come in! I’m Birdie!” I swept my arm inside, inviting them to enter and meet the pig. “So, you’re pig lovers?”

  The man and woman looked hardened, sun-weary, with aging lizard skin. The man wore dark jeans under a grade-A stomach and I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t make a comment about pot-bellies. He looked at me as if I were insane and he grunted.

  “Well I like a little sausage. Heh heh.” His laugh creeped me out, covered my arms with petrified bumps, and my eyes opened wide.

  “Oh he’s such a kidder, aren’t you, dear?” His wife smiled in apology but I could see something strange behind her expression. I didn’t know what it was.

  “Well, let me get Frankie. I didn’t name him that, but he does know his name. Hold on a minute.”

  I waved them toward the good couch and walked slowly toward the backdoor. I didn’t like these two, didn’t like the way the man practically called Frankie lunch, but I decided I was being a bit silly and presumptuous. I passed through the kitchen and saw the green stuffed rabbit that Frankie loved to chew, the box of milk bones I used as training treats and I almost started to cry.

  “Frankie! Fraaaaaaaankieeeeee!!”

  I opened the screen door and yelled for the pig. He looked at me from the treehouse window. He spent most afternoons watching cars and dogs and women with strollers hike up Hillside Street from his vantage point. He learned how to climb the treehouse catwalk the first day he arrived, followed the boys right up and in and decided their fort was really a pig sty. I couldn’t argue the point. He stared at me for a moment or two then his head disappeared and I heard the clip clop of his hooves crossing the walkway, then his sleek body rustled through the lemonade berry bushes lining my hill. He stopped at the stairs, stopped and sat, didn’t listen to me call his name, turned around and headed back to the treehouse. What the heck is that pig doing? I started out the back door, started walking across the lawn, but realized my mistake when Frankie reappeared outside the structure with his Harley Flame superball in his mouth. Awww. I started tearing up, wondering what kind of life he would have with Mr. Sausage Belly.

  “Good Piggie! Good Pig.” I patted Frankie’s back and clipped the leash to his harness.

  “Well, here he is! Some Pig!” I trotted Frankie up to the man and woman with a showman’s grin and twirled him around. “See? He is now leash trained, I did that over the past couple of weeks since we got him. I take him out for a jaunt around the neighborhood every morning. I read on the internet that those daily walks keep a pig pretty darn fit. And hey! Watch this!”

  I cleared my throat, said Frankie’s name in a no-nonsense tone and then pointed my finger at his nose. “Sit.”

  Frankie sat.

  I lifted my palm to the sky. “Stand.”

  Frankie stood.

  I twirled my finger in a circle. “Circle around, pig, circle around!”

  Frankie ran in a circle, chased his tiny tail, then plopped on his side flat on the floor with a happy goofball look.

  “See? These pigs are really easy to train, smart as heck. Milk bones are his poison of choice.”

  The man’s shirt stretched uncomfortably over his belly, and his light brown comb-over ‘do shook a little as he spoke.

  “Yeah, I’m good with pigs. C’mere boy.” He leaned forward with an eerie expression and his wife leaned one hand on his arm as if waiting to restrain him. Frankie lay on the floor, still looking at me, ignoring the man and woman.

&n
bsp; “C’mere boy! Stand up!” The man began to yell, moved to grab the leash.

  “C’mere boy!” I did a dance move out of the way, pretended not to see him lurch for the leash.

  “Um, he’s a little shy.” I never used the word “shy” to describe Frankie before, but was getting increasingly afraid of these sausage people. The woman giggled in a low earthy tone and tried to lighten the mood.

  “It’s been a long time since we had pigs. Not since two years ago. So Ed’s a little rusty. We’ll take him. What’s the free Avon gift?” She looked expectantly at my row of Avon delivery bags lined up behind the front door.

  I stared at them for a long minute, freaking out in all honesty, trying to figure out what to do. I was getting attached to the pig but knew keeping him was a huge commitment. Was this Frankie’s destiny? Probable cutlets on some weird couple’s dinner table? I took a deep breath and let it out, long and slow. Frankie raised his head to see what I was doing.

  “Well I have another person coming to look at him tonight. I’ll interview him and then call you both back and let you know. Ok?” I showed them to the door.

  “Yay!” Marty and Louie popped up from behind the couch and danced around Frankie. “We’re keeping Frankie! We’re keeping Frankie!”

  I plopped on the couch, watched the boys chase the pig into the yard, and glanced at my mounds of undelivered Avon. Damn. Yeah, I guess we’re keeping the pig. Maybe it’s karma. My young life as a pig weighed heavy on my mind. Yup, gotta be karma.

  I lived in a broken down trailer home the September of my eighteenth year. It sat dirt-crusty crooked at the intersection of a one-lane road leading to Boyd’s Blueberries and the county extension agriculture road. I bet those roads are gone to condos and big-haired mommas in SUVs these days, but I know one thing still stands, just a mile from my old habitat, in a Roman Coliseum circle made of cement and tacky colored plasterboard. The Puyallup Fair.

  I walked to those fairgrounds day after day, stood in the unemployment line while my live-in boyfriend dug ditches across town. He dug local girls, too, slept with half the townies on ditch digging lunch break. I knew this happened the way girlfriends always know - the way he turned his back to me at night, the small putdowns about my weight and hair, the vacant looks into other-woman dimensions, smells of cigarettes and Love’s Baby Soft mixed with his sweat. But man, I was poor, a lonely trailer girl from three thousand miles away, no friends, no family, no nothing to call my own.

  Damn him, I thought, damn him and damn me. I wish I were pretty.

  And so it went, me in my Calvin Klein’s and home-cut Farrah Fawcett hair, pink comb stuck in back pocket just so, tight striped v-neck t-shirt, just waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting in that job line for days, hoping for a chance to pull pork or flip biscuits or pour cokes during the upcoming six-week fair. Every day was the same. Stand in line. Wait for the old lady in the pink “Doin’ the Puyallup” shirt with serious underarm flab and pedal pushers to call for the next three people in line with her squeaky voice. Man, I was number forty, sometimes number fifty, had no car to crash the early line, had to walk and wait. Walk and wait.

  The day before the fair I still had no job. All the ticket takers were assigned, all the food service workers got their black hair nets and pink canvas aprons, only “shovel horse shit” jobs remained so I waited for one of those. Fifteen men stood with me, and one by one Pedal Pushers pointed and handed them a tax form and a hefty utility broom. She didn’t call me. I about gave up hope, got ready to walk my painted jeans home but a messenger strode past the line. He wore a blue uniform with gold piping and buttons, and carried an official fair messenger bag. He whispered to Pedal Pushers and she looked at the line, pointed to me, said “You. Come here.”

  I walked past the hungry line men, up to a line of baled hay, and smiled, extended my hand for a shake. Pedal Pushers ignored my hand, squint glared at me in a head-to-toe motion.

  “How tall are you? How much do you weigh?” She squeaked the questions in fast succession and I tried not to bristle at their personal nature.

  “I’m five seven, ma’am. One hundred twenty-five I think.” I actually weighed 135 but I wasn’t about to divulge the facts.

  “You’ll do. Take this form and return it tomorrow and follow Bart.” I grabbed the paper and snaked behind Bart as he marched through the fairgrounds, ramrod straight, cap set at a jaunty angle on his blond hair. What a suck-up, I thought.

  He led me to the barnyards, past the cows and sheep newly-penned for judging and display, to a white non-descript room across from the goats. An orange piece of construction paper hung over the door, lettered in black box print: Clown Room. I opened the door expecting a cadre of bilious white-faced young adults in spats and red noses practicing pratfalls but I stood eye-to-eye with six tall pigs.

  “Oh good. You’re perfect. Come on in, honey.” A skinny woman with long greasy hair and a faint mustache grabbed me by the arm. She pointed to the seventh pig costume sitting on a chair. “Here. Put this on. We have to practice the dance.”

  Well, this has to beat shoveling manure, I thought, as I pulled the costume over my jeans. I stuck the pig head over my own and stared out the eye slits. The outfit consisted of stuffed pink nylon overalls with a heavy foam head four times larger than any human’s. It was immediately Sahara hot. It smelled worse than hot, worse that the world’s most odorous person, like old man sweat and asparagus urine and a faint hint of vodka barf. But I kept the pig head, learned the Doin’ the Puyallup song and dance and signed my paper soul for six weeks’ pig pay.

  I walked home that night wishing the drizzle would wash the smell of community costume from my clothes and hair, but every step brought a new scent element to the forefront. Crap, how am I gonna get through six weeks of olfactory hell? I wondered and walked and saw the tinny lights of my boyfriend’s Volare drive past me, a willowy frizzy blonde riding shotgun. Dammit. I recognized her, a waitress at the Old Spaghetti Factory, young with large breasts and a tiny waist and one lazy eye. Double dammit. I opened the door to our trailer, expecting to see my man’s hands on those breasts, one creeping eye fluttering at me in surprise and embarrassment. But he sat alone in front of the television, grunted hello, laughed at a stale sitcom laugh track, ignored me as I showered and fell into a bed smelling of garlic and foreign passion. Triple dammit. I didn’t tell him I found a job, didn’t want him to know I would make my own money now.

  The next few weeks ran together in crazed entertainment frenzy. I danced my way across dirt fairgrounds, singing the official song on command, signing programs, posing for photographs with young and old alike. I would have loved it but for the smell, that ever-present hellacious odor, and I fought off the urge to add my own vomit smells to the pig head. I’m gonna save my fair money and leave that jerk, I thought as I sashayed around piles of horse shit and discarded lumps of fried dough. I’m gonna leave his sorry ass and get my own little trailer in the town next door. Heck, maybe I’ll join a circus now that I’ve got clown experience. I kept juggling fantasies as I smiled when old farts pinched my piggy butt and testosterone teens tossed cups of coke over my head.

  But one day a miracle happened. I did the Puyallup for the millionth time, curtsied, and as I rose to face my audience I saw her. Miss Spaghetti. I saw him, too, my crappy boyfriend; arm around her waist, both eating buttered scones with raspberry jam, the signature fair treat. She wore a white frilled peasant blouse that perfectly framed her bosom, and a pair of the tightest white jeans I ever saw. She wore white espadrilles, too, with stacked heels and white ribbons. My boyfriend moved his arm from her waist to her ass, rested it in her left pocket, and even twenty yards away I could hear her laugh.

  I twirled and did the pig giggle and waved goodbye to the two kids trying to see the person behind the mask. I ran to the nearest snack vendor and ordered a chilidog with extra mustard, an extra-large coke, and one scone, extra berries, please. I juggled my food and walked toward the happy couple, ignoring pleas
from several people to dance and sing.

  “I’m on break!” I stage whispered, “Even Puyallup Pigs hafta eat!”

  I sauntered past Romeo and Juliet, then immediately stopped short and twirled to face them. Her bare toe rammed into my pig clod-hoppered feet and the food went flying, flying, mustard and chili and coke and berry in a glorious Picasso across that bounty of a chest. And man, that stuff doesn’t wash out. I dropped the remnants and ran, ran across the grounds back to Clown Central and dropped into a chair in a fit of laughter.

  Twenty minutes later the loudspeaker called for all Puyallup Pigs to report to the security station. We stood in a line-up, pig to pig to pig, all five-foot-sevenish, all 130 pounds-ish, all identical pig heads, as boy and messy toy walked up and down, trying to identify which pig tossed the food. They couldn’t, of course, and later that night, as I walked the lonely roads home, I saw the Volare whiz right by, just a lone driver looking glum, tired beyond his young double-crossing years.

  Everyone Has a Story

  I leave my Avon brochures in a variety of places. Most customers like to collect them at the front door, so I hang them from a special plastic bag on the knob. A few customers are more particular. The old lady with no bottom teeth likes hers inside a clay flowerpot way behind a bent corrugated metal garden shed in her backyard. She’s never ordered anything, but I leave her a handful of practical samples every two weeks. Another customer likes her book slipped inside the driver’s window of her pristine blue Mini Cooper. She’s never ordered anything, either. I only leave her one sample.