Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady! (12 page)

A short middle-aged woman opened the door. She had Maria’s face, twenty years younger, but that same wide, flat, beautiful lined face and bittersweet chocolate eyes.

“Oh, I have a delivery for Maria. Is she home?”

I held the white tote bag high, next to my smile, and raised my eyebrows the way I do.

“I’m the Avon Lady!”

Little almost-Maria shook her head and spoke slowly, carefully, in an even voice devoid of emotion.

“Maria passed on Saturday of a massive stroke. I’m her daughter. I will pay you for the delivery. How much?”

She didn’t invite me inside, looked to the left as if looking for a worn shoulder bag. She didn’t have Maria’s incredible swimming shoulders and her neck rounded to her back in the sure slope of the sedentary.

“Oh no! I’m so so so sorry. I tried to call first but I didn’t get an answer. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry! No, don’t pay me, I can send the stuff back, ok? Please, don’t pay, I feel terrible. She was quite a unique woman, I only met her once but she left a huge wonderful impression on me. I’m so so sorry for your loss.”

I ran my words together and found myself matching the emotionless drone of mini-Maria, eyes stinging with tears that refused to surface.

She nodded, closed the door, and I stood under the portico staring at the garden, at the bits of algae clinging to the sides of the fish pool, and I knew what I had to do. I picked up the trash and put it in Maria’s delivery bag. I closed the gate behind me, patted the iron lion on his crowned head. I opened one cinnamon lipstick and carried it into the middle of the street, my own Avon High Noon, and I drew the biggest heart I could, covering the entire width of the street. I took the second lipstick and wrote in big block letters: Go for the Gold, Maria!

On my way to the next street I peered into the dumpsters in the alley. I found a small dented framed print of Van Gough’s Starry Night and stuffed it in my backpack. Maria would have done the same.

I walked up the big hill to the fancy street where every house has an ocean view. I remembered when this hill hurt my legs, when the backpack pulled my shoulders from my body, but now I could almost run to the top; I couldn’t feel those books against my back.

I did something bold and unusual at the home on top of this hill, something bold to honor Maria. I did something a little crazy, something Olympic. I took one of those new slick dark Avon Men’s Brochures and I wrote a note to stuff inside, between the first two pages. I didn’t know Kilt Man’s name. I looked to my right and left, made sure no neighbor was watching me, and I opened his iron mailbox and pulled out a letter. Kevin. I removed the cap off a brand new pen and began to write.

Hello
, said my note.
Hello, Kevin! Please come to my Avon Yard Sale! This is a private, special invitation! I will be happy to provide you with a manly makeover. Doesn’t that sound like fun? I promise not to throw samples at you!

I signed the note with the time and date of the event and a simple “
Birdie
.” I added a smiley face beneath my name. It looked naked, alone, so I colored in the pad of my thumb with that black gel ink pen and left a thumbprint next to the face.

I grabbed the iron handle of the gate in front of me and yanked but it wouldn’t budge. Locked. So I did what any strong Avon Lady should do. I scaled the fence, scraped legs against iron-spiked rods, fell to the ground on the other side in a tumble, still grasping that Men’s Brochure. I took the pen out of my kilt pocket and added a postscript to my note.

P.S. Please leave gate unlocked for visiting Avon Ladies, and should you accept the invitation herein, please do not comment on scraped up legs.

Subdivision Canyon Mural

My walk home took me from Skyline Drive where the nouveau riche reside. My house sits in barrio-lite, a neighborhood built on the side of a canyon in the early ‘70s. When I moved in four years ago it still sported original avocado shag carpeting, fake wood panels, and one hundred million fleas. The prior owners bred cocker spaniels and my backyard was a minefield of mummified dog poop.

Southern California is full of these retro pockets. Turn one corner and a sign welcomes you to “Capri,” where the homes have expensive red tile roofs and tall Queen Palms lining the drives. Some day my neighborhood will look like that, too. One by one these properties are bought and leveled and resurrected in upper middle class Pottery Barn splendor. It’s progress, they say.

No streets are flat here. They rise and fall, all canyon and mesa, like an echocardiogram printout. My heart rose and fell too, hiking with books and beauty, forgetting my goals and business, just an automated robot brochure delivery device. My back felt wet and sweaty under my backpack.

A middle-aged man in forest green cargo shorts and a brown wrinkled linen shirt sprinkled his Aloes with water at the end of Highland Avenue. His hair was black and gray and gelled into a deliberate bedroom mess. His arm swooped from side to side with repetitive precision. I didn’t drop a book at his driveway and he shot me an annoyed glance.

“Hey miss! Miss! You didn’t give me one of those!” He twisted his body to address me, but his wrist continued to flick the stream of water in its intended path.

“Oh, sorry, I’m an Avon Lady, would you care for a brochure?” My face burned with embarrassment and fatigue.

“No fucking way!” he exclaimed. His face broke into a huge grin. “Wait right here! Please! Wait!”

Sprinkler Man dropped his hose and ran up the stairs into his house. The water made a muddy river that flowed past the Aloe and Bougainvillea into the street. I watched it trickle past my sneakers, mesmerized. Red ants rose from the ground to evade the flood. They ran as one unit, toward the man’s Spanish mansionette.

“See! Honey, look! It’s a real Avon Lady! An Avon Lady! Look!”

Sprinkler Man held the hand of a trim woman in fancy black gym clothes. The word “Princess” was embroidered in hot pink on the butt of her low-rise shorts. She wore a high ponytail and I noticed that her platinum hair didn’t match the deep brown of her eyebrows.

Gym Woman laughed and waved as if I were a Shriner in an Avon parade. Her thighs bulged with muscle and spray-on tan. She rolled kohl-rimmed eyes and pushed Sprinkler Man in jest and ran back into the house.

“Sorry! She’s late for Pilates.” He reached for the brochure I held in uncertain hands and picked up his hose.

“We’ll look at this! We’ll call you!”

I turned the corner without waving goodbye. One old woman in a frantic Hawaiian muumuu and periwinkle hair wound tight around pink curlers peered from behind her screen door with a deep scowl. “I’m calling the police if you stop here again!”

I passed the Senior Center where I once brought my banjo to the rec room and played a few bluegrass tunes. When I finished picking, I took a bow, then passed around little plastic squares filled with Anew Retroactive creme. One lady at a corner table kept her beige knit acrylic sweater wrapped tightly around her shoulders.

“No. I don’t want one of those,” she grunted.

“Oh, it’s free! I’m not taking orders or anything. I just thought it would be fun to give away some skin care stuff.” I smiled with my biggest toothy grin and did a little body shimmy as I spoke.

“Nothing is free in this life. Free is a four-letter word.”

The huge hill that separated me from home loomed before me.
Hill is a four-letter word, too
, I thought. I plopped my pack on the cement and sat down across the street from the stop sign where illegal border men congregate in the early morning hours, hoping someone will stop and offer them work. Six men stood there now, and I saw them try not to look in my direction, saw them shoot looks from the corners of their eyes, and I coughed loud and waved hello. They looked rumpled and tired from nights spent asleep under pieces of damp cardboard in the canyons hidden between subdivisions.

Alone. I meet people one by one, in homes, on streets, in Senior Centers and grocery stores, but I land flat ass on the cement alone
. I pulled an apple and a baggie of shelled almonds from my pack and thought about my decision to sell beauty. My many hours of knee bandaging and casserole baking and papier-mache projects didn’t give me an “in” with the high tech companies around town. It took me six months to figure out that I had to work for myself once my youngest boy started school, but I didn’t have any inventions or a kick-ass cookie recipe or even the ability to make saleable arts and crafts. I’m a garden-variety mom, more a lone daisy in a field of millions, not a showy iris or tiger lily.

I ate the nuts one by one and debated whether to continue down the hill and past the school to the new condo complex, or if I should head on home and call it a crappy day. I still had animal shelters to call before I met Shanna at the train station. A white delivery truck with no back door rolled to a stop across the street. A man leaned out his window and yelled to the men.

“Hey! I need five strong guys! Field work! Jump in the back!” The men jockeyed for position and the five youngest made it inside the truck first. It sped away, up over the hill, probably for the strawberry fields now ripe and ready on the other side of the lagoon. The man left behind began walking down the hill. His shoulders slumped low and he walked with a slight limp.

“Hola!” I shouted a little louder than I intended. “Hola, señor!”

I held out two baggies. I wanted to offer the man some almonds and my peanut butter sandwich. He turned, looked at my face then at my hands, and crossed the street and accepted the food.

“Gracias.” His voice was delicate, gentle, a stark contrast to the scars running up and down his arms and his dirty clothes.

“Siéntese, por favor.” I invited the man to sit with me. I apologized for my poor Spanish, and I tried to ask him where he was from, what was his name. I told him my name and pointed in the direction of my house. I told him I had young children and I sold things to women. I didn’t know how to say beauty products so I pulled out an Avon brochure and handed it to him with a roll of my eyes as if to say I wasn’t too crazy about my work at the moment.

“My name is Comet.” He spoke in English, surprised me. “My name is Comet.” He repeated himself, pointed to his chest.

We managed some kind of bilingual mime language between us, got each other’s stories, shared the sandwich and fruit and nuts, and as we talked a tabby cat walked past us and Comet reached out to give him a scratch between the ears. Comet was forty-two years old. He crossed the border a few weeks ago near Calexico. He had a sister who was ill, who needed money. He was sending her the earnings from his time in the fields, digging ditches, picking up trash, any odd job anyone would give him.

He used unusual words, I couldn’t catch all of it, but I knew he saw the world in some kind of interesting and vivid way. He called the cat a “little boy wearing his mother’s coat” and he reached behind him and picked a couple of those spiky purple flowers that grow among the ice plant. He squished the petals between his fingers, rolled them, let them fall to the sidewalk.

We finished our snacks in silence, or at least I thought it was silence but I must have been humming because Comet asked me a question, something about a song, music, sing, I knew those words, and I explained.

“Oh, Comet, I’m tired of the yuppies. I’m tired of being lonely. I’m tired of Avon. I’m so tired. I’m trying to sort something out, I have a daughter, I don’t know her yet.” I was bungling my Spanish, adding English words like sprinkled cheese and as I explained tears fell out of my eyes, fell too fast, covered my cheeks and my shirt, so many tears I didn’t know I still had.

“I feel shackled, Comet. I can’t do anything right anymore. I used to run down these streets like my past didn’t matter. Now I’m stuck. I can’t even sell Avon things anymore. My magic is gone.”

Comet watched me cry, stayed still and quiet as my flood of sadness turned into full sobs over the bad morning, the loss of Maria, the unknown road ahead of me, all the things I wanted to accomplish in life but lay wrecked and rusted on the roadside.

“Look.” He took two purple flowers, squished the petals. He spit into his hand and rubbed until a light lavender ink spread across his fingers. He used his middle finger of his right hand and began to draw on the cement in front of us. He drew a hummingbird, a flower. He reached into the ice plant, felt around, pulled out a dirt-covered stone. He added some shading, a sprig of leaves. The painting was delicate, small, almost imperceptible to the eye unless you knew where to look. He wiped his hands on his pants, and in his own flood of words he spoke. His eyes seemed darker, more lined, as if what he told me came from a place of sorrow.

“My name is Xihuitl. It means comet. I come from Milpa Alta. I paint. I am an artist. I have painted many murals in my home city. I do the work I must do now, but I can make a mural wherever I am. I hope to return home some day. All of this life is sad.”

Comet shrugged goodbye and ambled down the hill. The sole of his right shoe separated from the body and exposed a stained sock. I didn’t live in this state of poverty now, but I knew it well, knew it twenty years in the past in the months following the birth of my daughter. I lived with a new boyfriend in a coastal town that smelled of fertilized sod farms and the fresh round watermelon that dotted the fields two miles from our rented shack.