Eight men stood in a line across the stage, arms akimbo, feet pointed outward. The rap section of the song began and the men worked in unison, flexing arms, then turning to reveal tight butts ready to burst from their shorts.
“Oh my GOD! I’m gonna use all my cash on Jay Jay. Look at that ass!” A voice to my left rose above the fray and I turned to watch the entire table blowing kisses and shaking cleavage at the Surfside Hotties. One petite woman in a peppermint red satin track suit grabbed the hem of her jacket and pulled up, flashing the stage. “Master Mark” pointed his fingers at her like a gun as he continued the routine.
My mouth hung open and I kept one eye on the audience and one on the stage, unsure which provided the better show.
And I’m here to combine
Beats and lyrics to make your shake your pants
All at once the Hotties threw their jackets in the air, revealing six-pack abs drenched in oil. They each took a different weight lifter’s pose, flexing backs, arms, legs, chest, and the women around me grew warm and red, still clapping, shouting, yelling More! More!
I think I stopped clapping and shuffling my feet. I think I sat down, too, stunned by the actions of the women more so than the men. I’d never seen strippers of any gender before, and in my mind’s eye pictured some kind of civilized party with chatter between table-mates, perhaps a nice ovation at the end, not this frenzied orgy of estrogen lust. I sipped my water, watching the women watch the men, missing the part where the men removed their shorts and began circulating around the room.
“Jay Jay! Jay Jay!” The table to my left began chanting and I saw the object of their affection slowly saunter to the table, clad only in a black satin g-string. The women sat down in unison, as if someone pushed their heads to the floor, and Jay Jay put his hands on his hips, making circle movements with his groin, circling closer and closer to the women. They howled in delight and grabbed green bills from their purses, waving them at Jay Jay, taunting him, taunting each other, and his hips came close enough to their faces so that they could lick him if they tried. He moved his hands over his head, grabbing one wrist with a hand and turned to bare his butt to them, and the women cried with glee and rewarded him with a grass skirt of dollars stuck under the thin black string of his uniform.
All around the room the same actions repeated. Strippers swung hips, women slung bills, some kind of strange mating ritual, each person reduced to a bare primal essence of sex and money and bad, bad music. I didn’t notice Ricky approaching my table, didn’t see him until it was too late, until he was grinding near my face, and I turned to see a satin package twirling before my eyes. Damn! I laughed and pushed my hands in the air as if shooing a dog home. No, no, I shook my head, and I pointed to the table behind me, go there! Go there! But Ricky smiled and continued grinding, waiting for a biscuit, wagging his tail, and the woman with the blue jumpsuit yelled “Give him some money, hon!”
I did the only thing a wallet-less Avon Lady could do. I stuffed a few Avon Ab Cream samples down the front of his “pants,” grabbed my purse, and ran!
I crossed my fingers and dialed Ulak on the way home.
“Hello. This is Ulak.”
“Yay! Ulak! I’m so glad you’re home! Where the hell have you been?” I launched into a description of all thing things he missed – the Mercedes, the yard sale, the evil Pig people – and he grunted at the appropriate moments. I told him about my daughter, how I waited for her to call or write.
“Ulak, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this earlier. I couldn’t get the words out. I just couldn’t. You’re still my best guy friend.”
Ulak cleared his throat. He told me about his business, about the difficulties caring for his mother, about his playboy brother, about the time his dad lost his shirt in Turkey and broke down, refused to leave bed for three years, a cool washcloth always present on his bald olive head, pimento tongue darting between long teeth.
“Birdie. We all wait. Every day we wait. You will get through waiting the same way I did when my father took ill. And Birdie. I will pay you one hundred dollars to settle the bet. You have won fair and square.” I laughed, told my friend I didn’t want money, but I wanted his time.
Ulak agreed to meet my mystery hand cream lady at four-ten Thursday afternoon, agreed to buy a ticket from the grumpy rail clerk, agreed to exchange hand cream for cold cash, sneak onto the train and barrel north in a silver streak, take notes, give me a story. In exchange, I agreed to take his cantankerous mother to the hair salon. He got the better deal.
Another Tumble in the Sky
People like the personal touch. They like the Avon Lady to show up at the door. Kilt or dress, tie-dye or suit - that part doesn’t matter much. They want someone to notice them, to listen, hear the things they say and don’t say, put a stethoscope to their heart, nod, say “Yes, You are Alive! I see you! I hear you! I hear you. I hear you.” I think of how I take care of my old own wounds when I look into the eyes of my customers, when I hear their words and read their lips.
I tossed two extra fragrance samples into a crisp white Avon delivery bag, and looked up Eliza’s, the Kilt Man’s “whatever,” address. I wore my best black low-cut sundress for the occasion, the one with spaghetti straps and a built-in bra and a slit up the left side clear to the panty line. I don’t have towering height or cascading glamour locks or freckles and dimples like Eliza, but I did have an advantage in one department. Cleavage. I added lipstick the color of black cherries and smudgy blue eyeliner and electric blue seashell flip-flops and new dangly pink teardrop earrings from Avon’s jewelry collection. And yeah, I looked hot, for a big-nosed practically middle-aged mom.
I drove to Eliza’s house and wondered why I took the trouble to look like an Avon Red Light District makeover, why I left my kids with the neighbor, why I spritzed her bag of goodies with Today fragrance and stuck a butterfly sticker on the thank you card inside. Ah, who am I kidding? I knew exactly why I did these things. Kilt Man Kevin’s smile.
I drove to the neighborhood bordering the north lagoon, and maneuvered, map in hand, to her house. It was a small brown home covered in broad-leaf ivy, almost a cottage, but the simple exterior didn’t fool me. I knew these homes among the reeds and pelicans cost nearly a million dollars each. A sparrow perched on an empty cement birdbath. She extended one wing and dipped her head to straighten her feathers. I walked past the eerie witch-twisted juniper trees. A redwood deck wrapped around the west side of her home. A jaunty garden gnome with a green cap and red knickers peered over the bottom rail. I looked for a doorbell but didn’t see one, so I knocked on the carved oak door.
Eliza took her time answering the door. I could hear someone walking around the house, footsteps on wood or tile floor, one way, then another, not a straight beeline for the knock. I knocked again. She opened the door, in a simple navy shift, which for all of it’s shapeless wonder looked ten times more classy and elegant and yes, even ten times more sexy, than my secondhand sundress. I still have the better cleavage, I thought, and held out her bag of blush and sundries.
“Hey! Thanks for ordering these things at my wingding. It was nice to meet you. Sorry about all the commotion. Right before you arrived one of the neighbor’s dogs got loose and we were just cleaning up.”
I looked up at her face as I spoke. My eyes were at the height of her neck bones, and she licked her teeth as I spoke, once, twice, three times. Man, what a bad habit, I muttered to myself. Maybe this is why she’s not living with Kilt Man. I don’t know anything about him, I thought, yet I dressed like one of those women who tries to look twenty years younger and fails, not in the lipstick or dress or earrings, but in the combination, the way they don’t add up to Audrey Hepburn or Sharon Stone or even the third runner up at the county fair. Eliza licked her teeth once more and took the bag from my hands.
“How much do I owe you?”
So cool and collected and charming and demure, and damn, I just wanted to de-Pygmalion her into someone more like me, some
one who would have laughed and tried to make a joke and invited me in all too hastily, tripping on the way. But Eliza just picked up a cultured leather pouch and extracted the sleekest bronze checkbook in the world. She wrote out the exact amount due in a measured flourish while I stared at her alabaster skin and tried to determine the vanilla scent of her tasteful cologne. She handed the check to me, licked her teeth, and gave me a gentle grin.
“Kevin says you seem like quite the enterprising woman.”
He talked about me! I felt my cheeks burn.
“So, how long have you two been dating?” I asked, putting the check in my purse, trying to sound like I didn’t give two rips about their dating history, as if asking a drop dead beautiful virtual stranger about her relationships was normal small talk.
“No honey, you misunderstand. I’m his ex-wife.”
I jumped in the van and grinned, did a little butt dance and shoulder shimmy. Kevin talked about me! I clicked on the radio and an old 80’s hit blasted the marine air, a song popular when my daughter grew inside me. I wondered if she’s changed her mind about contacting me, or if she’s taking time to compose a letter, or if she wants to do something but doesn’t know what to say, what to do. I wished I knew. I wished I knew what to do about the not knowing of it.
Part of my mind caressed my fears: She’s busy, she’s processing, she’s figuring out what to say. The other part yelled: She doesn’t like you, she’s disappointed, she’s angry. I didn’t know in which part she sleeps.
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.
&n
bsp; 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.
Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady! Page 16