I shushed my dog and shoved her outside. Frankie the pig stood at the front door. He didn’t want to stay inside; he didn’t want to go out. I locked him in the laundry room. I didn’t want to wake couch-crashed Ulak or my boys. And I sat on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands, pondering my options. I could wait until morning to deal with the rat. I could dig through the garage and find the old rattraps I kept in a box for just such an emergency. I could call one of those Rat Emergency Men and report an infestation. And as I sat and thought and listened, the rat grew louder and louder, almost thumping against the wall. I knew I could not sleep. Images of the rat finding a way inside the body of the house and nipping at my sleeping toes washed into my vision and I stood up and declared war.
I searched through the garage in vain. I shone a dim flashlight into every box in my garage but no rattraps. Damn. And then I spied it - the pepper spray swinging from a plastic holder on my beach cruiser bike. I could stun the rat! And shove him in a box! I grabbed one of a hundred empty Avon boxes piled in stacks by the garage door and the pepper spray. I pushed down on the spray switch, testing the trigger, and Hsssssssss. Nothing blew the space but stale air and one gray flake of desiccated pepper madness. Crap. I had to figure out a new option.
I tiptoed back through the house with my box and set it on the floor under the attic access outside my bedroom. The rat continued feasting and nesting, a hearty “claw claw claw” against wood-grain, then a running-in-circles pattern, rinse, repeat. I looked around my bedroom for a good weapon. Books, banjo, pillows, nothing seemed safe or rodent-worthy. I looked in the bathroom, too, for good measure, and grabbed the one item that might do the trick - my Avon Advanced Techniques Volumizing Mousse for Fine Hair. I opened the hatch, pulled down the miniature ladder and tossed the box in, following close behind.
The attic was dirty and dark. I held the mousse in front of me like a stun gun and crouched as quietly as I could, listening for my intruder. I heard him gnaw and arrange, gnaw and arrange, only twenty feet to my left and three feet down. I pushed the box across the floor of the attic and kept the mousse at hand. The gnawing stopped. I stood still, waited, held my breath. And then BAM! The rat scurried up a hole in the floor and toward me! I screamed! I squeezed the mousse trigger and an arc of heavy foam hit the air, flew, fell, right on top of Mr. Rat! I screamed again, watched the rat flail against the floor, rubbing one arm against his face to clear the sticky material. I slammed the box open side down right over his body and sat on the box, breathing heavily, listening to my boys jump from bed yelling Mom! Mom! Mom!
“Birdie! Birdie! Where are you?” Ulak ran from the living room. I could hear the thump thump thump of his feet as he ran from kitchen tile to hall parquet. His voice echoed – loud – and it made my boys scream louder!
“Ulak! I’m OK! I’m in the attic! Come on, climb the stairs and sit on the rat box while I look for a good piece of plywood to slip underneath!”
Ulak’s head peeked through the access panel. He pulled his tall body into the small space and hunched to my location.
“Birdie. The middle of the night is not the time to catch vermin.”
Ulak sat while I searched the attic for a suitable containment device. I found a slightly warped section of paneling and slipped it under the box. We carefully carried the Ark of the Rat Covenant out of the attic, out of the house, upside-down box on four feet of plywood. We carried it all the way through the night to my cranky neighbor’s house three houses down the street and my boys hid in the shadows. I grabbed one point of the box, angling my feet to run for home, lifted the box and zoomed the bejesus outta there. The rat ran for cover, hopefully my neighbor’s bed, and I collected the box and board and walked home. Ulak walked beside me. He looked to the night sky but the haze from San Diego covered the stars.
“Both the hunted and the hunter rely on God.”
I looked at him out the corner of my left eye.
“Well, Ulak. I think even God appreciates a rat-free home.”
Ulak flopped on the couch and I tucked the boys back into bed. I didn’t sleep. I sat at my desk, fingers on my computer keyboard, and composed another letter to my daughter. I didn’t fight the tears this time. I let them fall, cover my cheeks, my chin, my neck, as I wrote the things I most wanted to say.
I want to meet, I said. I know this is moving at the speed most comfortable for you, and I don’t want to add pressure. But I want to meet you. I have loved you ever since I knew you existed. The reasons why I gave you up are serious and personal. I will tell you why when we meet. But please know it’s not because you weren’t wanted or loved. I loved you and still love you the same way I love all my children. You are nothing less than a full daughter to me. I want to meet you, when you are ready.
I signed it Love, Birdie, and I clicked send.
I lay awake until the sun snuck through the marine layer and the pig pressed two hooves and a snout against the side of my body. All three men slept, so I left a note telling them to rustle up breakfast while I made a few Avon deliveries.
I grabbed my demo of the new Avon Magic Shimmering Body Spray and stuck it in the side pocket of my kilt, placed five packages of samples in the back butt pocket, and counted thirty brochures and stuffed them in my trusty black backpack. I noticed a new hole developing close to the zipper, so I cut a piece of silver duct tape in the shape of a heart and applied it over the worn area. Festive! The morning was breezy, cold for summertime in Southern California, so I added knee high rainbow socks and my Doc Martens, plus the only sweatshirt I owned, one with Rudolph pulling Santa’s Sleigh. His nose used to blink but the battery pooped out two years ago and I haven’t replaced it.
I carried a fancy bag with rope handles filled with the best skin care items inside, a customer’s order.
Lea lives in a dinky beach cottage near the Interstate 5 underpass. She ordered everything in the Anew Clinical line - the wrinkle cream, the fake botox treatment, the two-step facial peel - and I wrapped them carefully in baby blue tissue paper and added a free Glimmerstick and a tube of Silicon Glove hand cream as thank you gifts.
I left brochures and samples along the way, set them on pollen-covered plastic lawn chairs and beside painted mailboxes, even stuffed one under the arm of a cement St. Francis guarding a quiet front door. I cut through a backyard and squeezed through a hole in the chain-link fence bordering the train tracks. Somewhere between the Jimson Weed decaying next to the railroad and a lumpy green metal dumpster, a flutter of dirty paper caught my eye. An Avon brochure. Old. Faded. Crusted in salt and red dirt. I recognized the cover - the Christmas Campaign 24 book - and flipped it over to see what local representative littered my favorite short cut. Oh. Wow. Me. Damn.
I stuck the book in my kilt pocket and cursed my Avon life. I’m adding so much rubbish to this world, I thought. I’m giving people brochures they don’t want, colors and creams they don’t need, trying to sell women on the fake idea they don’t have a one-hundred-percent drop dead gorgeous life without slimming lotion and shimmer blush. What the hell is wrong with me? What the hell. I’m just a stupid makeup prostitute. I kicked a flat black stone and watched it skip across the railroad ties. My boots thwacked the silver line, rang an echo of slow sell-out despair. I wished I wasn’t adding to the problems of the world. I also wished I sold a lot more stuff, and that dichotomy nearly split my mind into two.
I hiked a good twenty minutes, past the lagoon, past the elementary school where my youngest son swings high on the monkey bars during recess, over the El Camino Real which snakes the long lonely way from Mexico to San Francisco, into a simple middle-class neighborhood. The Magic Shimmering Body Lotion hit my thigh with every step, and I found myself singing Christmas Carols to the rhythm. Christmas in July, I sang, Christmas near the ocean. While I waited at the traffic lights, a man wearing a Von Dutch baseball cap slowed his pick-up piled high with newspapers, slowed to a crawl as he passed me.
“Hey Lady! Wanna take a ride?” He leered, lean
ing into the passenger seat to let me see the lust fever in his eyes. I kissed my hand and smacked my ass at him, turned to look in the other direction, and heard a woman laughing from the condo balcony at my back.
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.
Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady! Page 19