Beauty Dish: Underground Adventures of an (EX!) Avon Lady

I archive my stories at OurStory

I archive my stories at a wonderful free networking site called OurStory. You can use OurStory to compile a timeline of your adventures, memories, dreams, goals and unforgettable events. In a way it's like compiling a scrapbook - you can add photographs, captions - even set up separate profiles for family members. Some OurStory users set up profiles to help catalogue their grandparent's stories, the lost stories of their great aunts and uncles who passed down tales of coming to America with only the clothes on their back.

If you like, you can connect to other OurStory writers and share your experiences, or you can keep them to yourself by labeling them as private, and sharing them only with selected friends and family. You can even export your stories and photographs - easily - into a book! The service even gives you lists of helpful questions that can generate memories, stories for you to write. You can export your timeline into a cool slide show like the one below, and post it to your blog, MySpace, or website, too.

I've made real-life friends at OurStory, and have found it be a completely unique service, unlike any other writer's site. I hope you enjoy clicking through my timeline of personal stories, below. I also have a profile of my Avon Adventures. I still have stories to upload to OurStory, and some years to remember, so many more stories to write!

I plan on setting up profiles for my deceased grandparents, and asking my sisters and other family members to help me fill in the missing pieces.

Start your own timeline at OurStory.com

Avon is for Sissies

One of my guitar students

I teach beginner guitar at my boys' school two mornings a week. Most weeks I let the students decide which songs to learn. They pick music that would make most instructors flinch - thick brassy chords under coochie mamma lyrics - but I don't mind.

"Just don't sing too loud. I don't want Megan hearing us."

Megan teaches art in the room next door. She wears dirndl skirts in pastel hues, cutesy artist's smocks with embroidered teddy bears, her curly hair twisted back in a perfect pre-Raphaelite halo. I wear my usual Avon Lady duds - whatever jeans are clean or at the very least not too dirty, a vintage 70's t-shirt, my hair in pigtails under my black Let's Party baseball cap. Megan likes order on the tiniest scale, likes still life with banana and pear, likes careful students who mix acrylic paints in exact amounts. I'm like my students. Chaos is my lover, I walk the halls with a pirate's swagger, eat still life for breakfast and burp when I'm done.

I start each class with a ritual. We raise our guitars overhead, high, high, almost to the cracked stucco ceiling and chant our chosen affirmation, one hand on neck, one fist raised in six-stringed unity.

"We're the Chicken River Rock Stars!"

We rock stars are a little too much for Megan.

"Could you keep it down in there? We're working on daffodils today and the students need to concentrate."

Megan's ready admonition is our signal to begin. I place my guitar on a desk and pull a tube of Avon Moisture Therapy hand cream from my backpack, pass it around the room. My students resisted the Avon at first.

"C'mon, Ms. Birdie. Avon's for sissies. We're men!"

The lone girl in the class sneered.

"You're gonna be sissies at the end of class. I've been playing for a year and my fingers are tough. Just wait."

She pulled a porkpie hat over one eye and loudly tuned her A string. She was right, of course. One hour into class the boys' fingerpads throbbed in steel-cut misery, and I whipped out the Avon. They extended hands without a word.

This morning I crossed the river late, huffed and puffed up the last steep hill, my guitar bag slapping my right leg as I ran. Megan drove past me. I recognized her hair in the Toyota's rear window. I tried to flag her down, bum a ride, but she breezed past, her eyes dark and angry in the rear view mirror. I slunk into school ten minutes late, found my students practicing the latest Limp Bizkit song.

"Could you keep it down in there? We're working on landscapes today and the students need to concentrate."

Megan's voice carried a hint of superior edge. I laughed, closed our door, unzipped my backpack and grabbed the Avon.

"Guys, let this be a lesson. If you're gonna be a rock star, you gotta understand this sooner or later. There's Us. And then there's Them. Never, ever let Them win."

We raised our fists, yelled our mantra, plopped butts into tiny school chairs, and began to rock the east wing of the school. Limp Bizkit never sounded so damn good.

Derek Jeter almost got me arrested for Postal Terrorism!

Some weeks ago I carefully encased a boxed bottle of Derek Jeter's new Avon fragrance for men, Driven, in three inches of bubble wrap. I twisted two good turns of black duct tape around the plastic and stuck it in a United States Postal Service priority mail box - one of the official ones with the self-stick tabs. I enclosed a hand-written letter and a small canvas covered in splashes of oil paint. An original Birdie piece of art, something I created when I read a story my friend Rick wrote about 9-11, something my fingers made me press into the stiff canvas. A self portrait. A shock of messed hair, a wink of bloodshot eye outside a window, a spray of primary colors that signalled dissent, forgiveness, something not-quite-of-this-planet.

I waited in line at the Post Office in the weeks before Christmas. A woman with a heavy red knit sweater stood in front of me. She wore jingle bell earrings. I could hear them, barely see them under her thick Latina locks. She turned to me, looked at my one small box.

Run, Frankie, Run!!

I first sent this story as a special secret preview to everyone who sent in a Beauty Dish paypal donation in early October. Some time in January or February I am doing something else special for these same folks and for everyone who has ever contributed to Beauty Dish - they will receive a bound copy of six stories never published anywhere else! I am so grateful to everyone who has been a friend and who has supported me in all the ways that have made a difference in my life -whether it's been through a financial contribution, or through love and fellowship. Thanks, everyone.

Run, Frankie, Run!

I follow the same simple ritual each time I cruise my neighborhood for new Avon customers. Backpack. Check. Brochures. Check. Extra skin care samples for bed-ridden Mrs. Gallegos. Check. Turn off the lights, fill my water bottle, one last pee. Check. Check. Check. The last item is the most simple, the one thing I never forget, the one thing my boys never forget, at least never until this morning. Lock the door.

My two boys ran ahead, left me carting fifty Avon brochures, a hundred samples, and three bottles of tap water. I must have been watching the boys chase half-frozen grasshoppers, the sway of my proud catalpa tree in the morning wind, the weaving swagger of the old cowhand with torn Levi's and a carefully brushed ten gallon hat. I didn't notice the unlocked door, the way it must have latched just shy of secure. I hoisted my pack against my sweatshirt-covered back, let it flap, flap in time to my uneven gait. The boys hustled ahead, grasshoppers in their grip. They didn't try to avoid the sidewalk cracks, didn't stop to admire Mrs. Lopez's gentle tabby, didn't skip, didn't slide and arc in the girlish ways my sisters and I echoed at their age. They raised closed fists over head, let captive insects greet the sun. Tobacco wings spread and flew, and for a moment it was summer, it was splintered sunlight through translucent wings, through the swung arms of young boys, it was the four-winged army of summer tossed overhead, tossed into a wind strong enough to blow it back to the past, to September, August. I stopped, zipped the warm navy cloth around me.

The boys stopped, too. They bent low, faces at their knees, eyes on some invisible fortune. I heard the slam of canine against brush as a flock of feral dogs flew behind me, cornered a sturdy hedge of holly and headed down an alley. I turned, but only caught the fading glimpse of four mangy tails on the run. Stray dogs love my town. They own the alleys, the dumpster sites behind Wal-Mart and Sonic. Animal Control doesn't bother to round them up. They'd fill a hundred kennels with one fell swoop. Better to save those cages for abandoned puppies, for pitbulls with an appetite for human flesh. My own neighborhood feeds ten strays, leaves scraps of roast beef and carne adovada in open used plastic sour cream containers after dark. I do this too, leave what little we have left over for the dogs who run like shadows.

My older son, 11, waited for me at the corner. He rested against a chain link fence, his eyes on a man kneeling by a motorcycle. My younger son, 9, leaned against his brother, his eyes closed to the wind. A scuttle of rolling leaves rolled past us, rolled brown and crisp and sure into the street.

"Mom. Gimme a brochure."

11 didn't wait for an answer. He grabbed my arm and twirled me like a rotating display rack, unzipped my pack and grabbed the top book. He knew where to find the samples, and fingered two from the side pouch.

"Hi! Hi! I like your bike! Can I give you an Avon brochure?"

Bike Man saw 11 approach him, a reflection in his shiny motor metal.

"Huh. Avon? What are you, an Avon Boy?"

The man's smooth voice richocheted off the bike. A limp gray ponytail hung beneath his gunpowder helmet. He didn't turn to meet us eye to eye. His hands pressed against the back wheel as if he were feeling for a heartbeat. The bike looked old, looked vintage, looked loved, small, impossibly shiny, perfect. 11 tried to hand the book to the man but he still didn't turn. His eyes shone from the bike's midsection - alive, vivid green. I looked tiny behind his mirrored face, an Avon Lady with stick legs and an oversized hoodie.

"You can just put that on the ground next to my girl." Bike Man nodded his head and 11 dropped the goods. "I'll bring it to work, I think one of the girls in the office might like that. No offense, you understand. I just don't use any Avon. I'm not that kind of man."

Bike Man said 'that kind of man' as if men like 'that' were no men at all. 11 stared at the biker and I saw a flash of anger travel from one eye to the other, land in his mouth.

"Avon is for everyone. Even men like you. Don't you use soap? And shampoo?"

9 stuck little hands on hip and added his two cents.

"Yeah. Don't you use soap? My mom's not a sissy. She has a past."

Bike Man and I both flinched with surprise! A past? What the hell was he talking about? 11 giggled but 9 kept red nylon-jacketed arms akimbo, dropped one more vocal bomb.

"No offense, you understand. But I can smell you from here."

"Apologize this instant!" I moved to man-handle 9 and 11 as far away as possible from the Bike Man with ancient attitudes, but he dropped his hand from the wheel and stood to face me. His nose rose one length above mine, and I noticed from its curve and span it must have been broken once or twice in the past.

"Really, I should be the one to apologize. I didn't mean it to come out that way. Besides, I like a woman with a past." He raised a thin gray eyebrow and it briefly disappeared under his helmet. I shook his hand, then shook my head.

"No problem, sir. But if I might offer a small suggestion? You sure have dry hands and I have some Avon that can help."

I started to shake off my backpack when they rounded the corner once more, the wild pack of stray canine fury. They shot across the street, from one alley to the next. My backpack fell to the ground with a thud. I didn't look at the running dogs. Bike Man's mouth fell open, and in the shine of his bike's flank I saw it. Saw him. Frankie! My pot-bellied pig! Running with the wild dogs!

11 and 9 saw him at the same time.

"Frankie! Frankie! Mom! That's Frankie"

11 tore down the alley, hot on the heels of seven dogs and one pig. 9 look at me, at Bike Man, at the bike.

"Well don't just stand there! Help my mom! Get on the bike and help catch Frankie!"

Bike Man grinned, clipped the loose helmet clasp under his chin as 9 and I ran after 11 running after the beasts. We heard him rev his engine, and as we hit the curb on the other side of the street he shot past us, into the alley, a blur of dirt and exhaust behind him.

The dogs and pig kept ahead of us. They shifted down one alley, then the next, past the free range chickens studding the side of Baca Road, into the square holes in an old adobe wall, across one yard, then two, three, four, five, twenty yards, twenty minutes, a flash of black and white and brown brindled fur, a patch of pink and black hide. Frankie ran with the dogs as if he were one of them, and them with him as if he belonged in that pack of fire and flea-bitten joy.

Bike Man passed us several times as I ran with 9 to catch Frankie. I lost sight of 11, then lost visual hold of the animals all together. I could hear them in the distance, a rumble of feet against brick walkway, a coarse yip and howl mixed with one lone porcine grunt. I stopped to catch my breath and realized my backpack felt lighter. Sure enough, all the Avon brochures and samples spilled through the alleys behind us, a trail of beauty crumbs no sane person would follow. I left them to wait, looked at 9, and started to run in the direction of noise.

The grunts and yowls grew closer, stronger, and behind them I heard the Bike Man's engine. A new sound added to the mix, a structured sound of wood against snare - the High School marching band practicing on the football field. 9 and I ran past the bleachers as the drums rolled a special cadence. I saw the students lift horn to mouth just as my elusive charges roared past, roared under the bleachers, on to the field! The band began to play "Louie, Louie" in formation. The dogs tore past the musicians, ran under the bleachers on the other side of the field. I ran to the field edge, and saw 11 approach the field from the other side. Bike Man zoomed behind us, I heard the idle of his engine as he sat and watched. The dogs disappeared, hell bent for Santa Fe, I figured. I could feel a tear breach my eye as I worried we'd never see Frankie again. But 9 pulled on the hem of my sweatshirt, pointed a trembling finger at the field and croaked one word.

"Look!"

The band continued to march. The front row split into two, then the second row, as if Moses himself were parting a musical sea. The next row followed, then another. The first row came back together as the students Louie Louie'd down the field. Something was in their way! Something lumpy and pink and black and white... Frankie!

Frankie sat in the center of the field, his snout turned toward the musicians in rapture. He let them march around him, didn't move until the music ended.

"Frankie! Fraaaaaaaaankie!"

Our pig trotted toward me, and 9 grabbed his collar. 11 ran across the field and held Frankie's studded collar, too. Bike Man waved and roared toward Macho Man heaven in a blaze of parking lot dust. We meandered home, picking up torn and dirty brochures. We didn't say much, all of us out of breath and exhausted, including our crazy pet. I did ask one question, though, as we stuffed another three broken books into my backpack.

"So what did you mean that I have a past?"

9 shrugged his shoulders, a true man of the world.

"C'mon Mom. You know as well as I do. In these situations you have to speak the language of the other person."

Frankie grunted as if to bark Hell Yeah.

Business Suit Trekkie

I met Jerry in the City of Sin. He stood behind me and my two young boys, stood waiting for a seat-belted seat on the Star Trek Experience Borg Encounter. He wore expensive jeans, the kind a trophy wife buys for her rich hubby - butter soft, well-cut, delicately rimmed with subtle black stitching, a fancy name emblazoned above the left butt cheek. His blonde hair hung in careless ringlets and just brushed the collar of a dusty rose polo shirt. I wondered if his hair color was natural. His eyes said No, said Old, said Tired and Grumpy and Three Packs 'o Day of unfiltered cigarettes. He caught me staring and extended a manicured hand sporting a square-cut ruby set in solid gold on his pinky.

"Hi. My name is Jerry. You on vacation or you live here in Vegas?"

I grasped his hand and flinched at the cloud of smoker's breath that hung between us. He somehow slipped me a business card. I didn't see him pull one from a wallet, from a branded pocket. I grinned and looked at the card, expecting it to say Magician.

Jerry Doyle, Attorney at Law, Divorce and Family, Phoenix, Arizona.

"Hi. Uh, thanks. I think! My name's Birdie. I live in the other Vegas. You know? New Mexico. The original Las Vegas. I just moved there from So Cal. I'm not married, so I don't need a divorce lawyer, but thanks. I'll pass it along."

I looked sideways before he answered, tried to evade the onslaught of icky breath while pretending to see if the line had moved.

"Honey, honey, honey. Honey. Every woman needs a fucking divorce lawyer. You might not be married this moment, but hell, you're in Vegas. You might play footsie with a guy on the ride and get married tonight in the Elvis Chapel of Love."

A gray plastic box above us shook to life, and an electronic announcement told us the lunch buffet had begun, better get in line, then rolled through a litany of the Hilton's upcoming events. Even the speaker sounded like it exuded tobacco, like a stripper half-way through her final set, full of cocaine and forgotten promise, all air and silicone and jaded reassurance. My older son, 11, whipped his head around. He glanced at me, then glared at Jerry. He didn't speak until the box shook silent.

"No way. My mom can't get married unless I say so. She's not even dating anyone! Besides, swearing is not only offensive, it shows a lack of breeding and character."

I swallowed a laugh. A lack of breeding?! Where the hell did he get that?

His younger brother, 9, kept his eyes on the gate and his left hand near his gold-colored Star Trek communicator pin.

"They swear in Star Trek sometimes. Dammit, Jim, he's dead."

9 did his best "Bones" impression, one finger up his nose. He mined the area, swiped his finger on his adventure shorts. 11 sighed - loudly - as if perfect point were made. Jerry laughed

"Hell, you'd make a fine lawyer, son. What's your name?

11 didn't answer, didn't talk to the stranger. I stuck Jerry's card in my purse and rummaged around, looked for one of my own cards, but only found a sample of the Anew Clinical Eye Lift.

"Sorry Jerry, I'd offer you one of my cards, but I'm all out. I'm an Avon Lady, but I pretty much stay in my district. I don't get out to Arizona much. Here, have a sample. There's a sticker on the back with my name and number if you're desperate for some Avon. So. Are you a Trekkie?"

Half the line around us laughed. A middle-aged man in tight chinos and an ivory Bill Blass button-down shirt smirked. I could see his reflection in the television screens surrounding us, a wall of Trek Trivia, of Enterprise Excess, all the numbers and names and locations of Star Trek, as if we were in line for a visit to a futuristic Smithsonian Museum, a place where only the real and substantiated are catalogued. My boys and I stood in this line the night before, the night we arrived in Las Vegas, and though we were tired from our desert drive, we rode the Borg Encounter over and over, six times over, until the makeup started to cake and fade on the faces of the paid aliens.

One woman at the head of the line wore pointed Vulcan ears. They stuck out of a brunette bob in stark contrast to her conservative black business suit and patent leather pumps. She waved in our direction. Her voice betrayed her East Coast heritage - loud and fast and nasal.

"Jerry's the president of our divorce lawyer association, and he's also the biggest Trekkie you ever fucking met. He's practically William fucking Shatner."

Jerry shrugged his shoulders.

"I know as much about Trek as I do about law. And I'm the best fucking divorce lawyer in Arizona."

11 stuck his fingers in his ears.

Two actors in Star Trek Voyager science officer uniforms unlatched the gate and began swiping tickets under a hazy red laser. Vulcan Divorce Lawyer held the line as she ran her hands through her suit jacket pockets in search of her admission. Chino Divorce Lawyer handed one of the actors - a young woman with zits across her forehead in the same shape as the Big Dipper - his business card.

"They got marriage in Star Trek? Call me when it goes bust."

11 turned to 9 and whispered sotto voce.

"What do you think is more annoying? These divorce lawyers or the drunk guy who barfed on the last ride of the night?"

I gave 11 a good elbow in the ribs. We filed inside the first part of the ride - a quiet hallway designed to look like a starship corridor. By now I knew the routine, knew actors would rush the set as dry ice explosions and flashing lights encased us in full-glass fantasy. The lawyers became passengers, too, screamed with shiver and delight as one Borg, then two, then five cornered us, forced us into the shuttle bay. I forgot about those divorce lawyers, to tell the truth. The ride spit us back onto the slot machine-laden sidewalk and my boys and I retraced our steps, back into line, back into the belly of one-armed beasts.

Six months later Jerry called. I didn't recognize his name at first, his voice.

"I'm sorry, Jerry? I don't remember who you are. Can you refresh my memory?"

He laughed, then did his best Captain Picard.

"Engage..."

Ah! Jerry the Arizona Divorce Lawyer. I pictured him in the endless Hilton line, my small sample in his bejewled hand. I grabbed my order pad, ready to take down what was sure to be a huge order. Why else would he call?

"Birdie, the reason I'm calling you isn't to ask if you've gotten married yet. Ha ha ha."

He chuckled, low and ready.

"You're not going to believe what I'm about to say."

I waited. Jerry breathed into the phone then cleared his throat. I couldn't imagine what he was about to do - order a case of Eye Lift? Invite me to the next Divorce Lawyer Association Convention in Vegas? Tell me he quit being a Trekkie and now follows Battlestar Galactica?

"I gave up cussing. I thought about it a lot after seeing your boy's reaction. Now, you tell him I did this, OK?"

I promised Jerry I would pass along his news and tried not to swear myself.

"So Jerry, that's such a great, positive step! I bet it's helped you with your business. Now. How did you like the sample I gave you? Would you care to place an order for a full-sized tub?"

I mentally patted myself on the back for such a suave segue from morality to commerce.

"Sure, I'd be happy to place an order. Maybe some men's cologne or something. But not that eye cream. That stuff didn't do shit."

Terrier Torturer

I completely forgot about the Show Dog Competition! This Saturday, I'm Canine Primper to the soon to be Terrier Star, and my young sons, 11 and 9, are my trusty assistants. We're getting paid $100 to fluff the little booger for the big ring. I said we could split the money three ways.

Anyone have any good doggy 'do advice?

Run, Frankie, Run!!

Run, Frankie, Run! has been delivered to all those who donated to Beauty Dish during the recent "pledge break." Here's the intro of the story as a teaser, so that you can see a taste of what you missed! This is a long story, what would have normally been a three parter at this site.

Run, Frankie, Run!

I follow the same simple ritual each time I cruise my neighborhood for new Avon customers. Backpack. Check. Brochures. Check. Extra skin care samples for bed-ridden Mrs. Gallegos. Check. Turn off the lights, fill my water bottle, one last pee. Check. Check. Check. The last item is the most simple, the one thing I never forget, the one thing my boys never forget, at least never until this morning. Lock the door.

My two boys ran ahead, left me carting fifty Avon brochures, a hundred samples, and three bottles of tap water. I must have been watching the boys chase half-frozen grasshoppers, the sway of my proud catalpa tree in the morning wind, the weaving swagger of the old cowhand with torn Levi's and a carefully brushed ten gallon hat. I didn't notice the unlocked door, the way it must have latched just shy of secure. I hoisted my pack against my sweatshirt-covered back, let it flap, flap in time to my uneven gait. The boys hustled ahead, grasshoppers in their grip. They didn't try to avoid the sidewalk cracks, didn't stop to admire Mrs. Lopez's gentle tabby, didn't skip, didn't slide and arc in the girlish ways my sisters and I echoed at their age. They raised closed fists over head, let captive insects greet the sun. Tobacco wings spread and flew, and for a moment it was summer, it was splintered sunlight through translucent wings, through the swung arms of young boys, it was the four-winged army of summer tossed overhead, tossed into a wind strong enough to blow it back to the past, to September, August. I stopped, zipped the warm navy cloth around me.

The boys stopped, too. They bent low, faces at their knees, eyes on some invisible fortune. I heard the slam of canine against brush as a flock of feral dogs flew behind me, cornered a sturdy hedge of holly and headed down an alley. I turned, but only caught the fading glimpse of four mangy tails on the run. Stray dogs love my town. They own the alleys, the dumpster sites behind Wal-Mart and Sonic. Animal Control doesn't bother to round them up. They'd fill a hundred kennels with one fell swoop. Better to save those cages for abandoned puppies, for pitbulls with an appetite for human flesh. My own neighborhood feeds ten strays, leaves scraps of roast beef and carne adovada in open used plastic sour cream containers after dark. I do this too, leave what little we have left over for the dogs who run like shadows.

Want to read the rest? The story has a biker, a pig on the run, and a pack of wild dogs! This story was sent to those who donated to Beauty Dish during the recent pledge break!

The Pennies You Hold You Can't See

A young Navajo man sits outside the most popular breakfast place in town. Niyol sits cross-legged most mornings as I walk my boys to school, sits with the same ripped jeans, the same black sweatshirt that speaks of a thousand nights near the river. Sometimes I raid my penny jar and give him a small handful. My penny jar sits nearly empty, reflects the morning sun off its thick layer of coins, reminds me my days are spent collecting these bits of copper, a hundred makes a dollar, five thousand makes a good day selling Avon. He begs for his pennies. I beg for mine. No difference between us.

I passed Niyol the morning after first frost. I didn't have pennies to share. I gave my last change to the checkout clerk at Wal-Mart, the one with hands skinny as death. She folded her arms and stared as I counted out six hundred thirty-five faces of Lincoln, handed them to her as I dropped five remaining cents in my back pocket.

"Why do I always get the ones with pennies?"

She spoke to the register as if I didn't exist. Time dropped her constant tug of invisible rope, and I stood a moment, a minute, all the linear vibrations of a century, my eyes dark and expressive, eyes of a homeless Navajo man, eyes of a thin-armed cashier, eyes on the consumer shuffle of those only slightly more content.

I saw Niyol as I crossed the street. I walked near the curb, left deliberate cowboy boot prints in the frost.

"Sorry, no pennies today, but here, have some Avon," I said, my hips near his head. I grabbed a few hand cream samples from my purse, let them float into his cup, and he reached out an arm and grabbed my moving leg just above my boot.

"Don't get lost!"

Niyol's voice cut the cold. I let him hold my leg. Sharp fingernails pressed through my tights. I felt them snag, rip. I towered over him, my leg frozen in place.

"I'm not lost. Not much, anyway. I hope you don't get lost, too."

His hand eased, and I shook my leg free. I reached back into my purse and grabbed all my samples, left them at his feet, some kind of guilt offering to a sweatshirt street buddha.

"Don't get lost!"

Niyol yelled as I passed the old pharmacy.

His name means Navajo wind, means change, means nothing because he's too poor. Selling Avon allows me to pass through a doorway carved far from comfort, allows me to erase concepts, projections, allows me to get lost, get lost.

I turned my head to see him once more as my feet turned the corner. He held an Avon sample up to his eyes, as if it were a holy monocle, an aperture to a land of pennies.

One Turk + Aliens + Avon samples = Chaos in the Alpha Sector! (Part 3)

Read Part 1, and then Part 2 first, please.

"I don't want to move. I like it here."

9 murmured, his voice as velvet as the antelope wind. I shifted down, fifth gear to fourth. The car shivered, let me guide her into the wind-shadowed plains north of Vaughn. I shifted again, fourth to third. I smiled as an unexpected gust slammed us against an invisible wall. The car shuddered.

"Ulak, the tribe has spoken."

I smiled again, this time in Ulak's direction. He knew my answer, my final decision, the ring I wouldn't accept years ago when we met, when I knew his life was a tiny cup of spiced coffee held in his aging mother's grip. He cleared his throat and opened the map.

"Birdie. Tribe or no tribe. I need to know where we are headed. What are the directions to Roswell?"

"Well it's pretty much one road, Ulak. New Mexico is a whole lotta dusty nothing at the moment."

I let the car tell me what to do, let her run ragged over sun-chipped road. Ulak folded the map. His tequila eyes couldn't take it. He pulled his hat over his face and groaned. A raven dipped low in front of us, her frayed stail feathers spread in excitement.

The raven is a harbinger, the message swoops behind her, I thought. We must be the message. I don't know why. What message do we bring?

"I'm hungry!"

9's demanding voice pierced my ears.

"Me too!"

11 mumbled agreement. I glanced in the rear view mirror. Two boys lay against the windows, each face red and sweaty in the noon sun.

"I'll pull over in Vaughn. Two roads intersect there according to the map. Maybe we'll find a gas station or something where we can get a snack."

I didn't expect to see anything. The population of Vaughn must be a hundred dried souls at most, a tiny outpost of shack and bramble between nothing and Roswell, many mile markers from water, from fresh newspapers, from pink flamingo suburbia. I tilted my mind, as if my shift in perception would tilt the car, bring it faster to Vaughn, closer to nourishment. A shimmering silver structure rose from the horizon, three rounded layers of studded aluminum, threw the New Mexico sun in our road weary laps.

"Hey! Is that the UFO museum?"

9 bounced to attention. He pointed over my shoulder. I leaned toward his hand and kissed his finger.

"No, it's something in Vaughn, not Roswell."

Ulak removed his hat. Salt and pepper curls stuck to his head. He squinted his eyes and tried to make sense of the mirage. Three tiers of metal sat off the road in the shape of a train engine, perhaps, or a gigantic bread box. Ulak squinted again, then shook his head.

"My God. Birdie. It's a diner."

His voice sounded sexier than I've ever heard it, a rumble of tomato juice lust, of mid-morning hunger after a night of drunken Scrabble tile war. I swung off the road and screeched to a stop in front of Penny's Diner, just missing a two foot lizard the color of bile.

"Holy shit. Birdie. Holy shit. I will drive after lunch."

11 unbuckled, straightened his t-shirt and reminded Ulak of the way he chastises me.

"Ulak, don't swear! It's unladylike!"

We piled into the diner, me and my secret Avon cache, 11 on my heels, Ulak and 9 dead last. Ulak walked with a chaotic lurch. He shielded his eyes from the pulsating sun. The wind lifted his hair this way and that, created an Einstein of Turkish tequila angst. 9 stooped toward the ground, watched a parade of black ants climb a granulated mountain. I ran to him, gently grabbed his elbow and man-handled him inside the door, to a formica booth accented with stuffed red benches.

"What kin I getcha?"

Our waitress leaned back, one hand on generous hip. She wore a sardonic grin and her hair in a teased blonde bouffant, though she couldn't have been older than twenty.

"A new driver. A sane woman. A large glass of tomato juice. Tabasco. Scrambled eggs."

Ulak continued, ordered toast, hashbrowns, bacon, sausage, ham, and a chocolate malt. The boys chose milkshakes and burgers and I added a large iced tea and a tuna melt to the feast. 11 opened his mouth the moment the waitress left the table.

"Ulak, do they have UFOs in Turkey?"

My Turkish friend raised his bushy eyebrows in surprised. He picked up a paper napkin and shook it open, spread it on his lap.

"Turkey is a modern country. Everything you have here, we have there."

11 nodded, his eyebrows raised in unknowing imitation. A semi roared past the diner, and our table shook in surrender.

"UFOs? You goin' to Roswell?"

Bouffant Waitress returned with our order. She leaned across the table, plunked plastic mugs at each place, a burger here, a tuna melt there. She smelled like cooking oil, like green chili, like a faded spritz of that Calvin Klein unisex fragrance. She stuck her tray under one arm and tilted her head.

"'Cause if you want UFOs, you need to stay here in Vaughn. We get 'em most nights. Just ask Charlie. He seen 'em, too."

She nodded toward the kitchen. I looked, but could see no Charlie. The boys looked, too. Ulak looked at his tomato juice. He opened a tiny bottle of hot sauce and shook three careful drops into the red liquid.

"I'm serious. We see them all the time out here. You don't need to go to Roswell. We got everything you need in Vaughn."

9 slurped his shake. He opened his mouth, head still dipped toward his drink, straw in mouth.

"No offense, but I personally have high expectations for that Roswell UFO museum. You don't have one of THOSE in Vaughn."

Bouffant Waitress laughed and meandered toward the only other occupied table in the diner. We didn't speak as we ate. Ulak poured a river of red over his food, and 11 whispered sotto voce to 9.

"They must have ketchup in modern Turkey."

Ulak took the wheel after brunch. He didn't see me sneak two Avon My Lip Miracle samples next to Bouffant's tip. He hummed a dated Britney Spears song as he drove, and I shushed 11 before he could point out that modern Turkey must have Britney Spears CDs. I didn't watch the horizon, didn't let rock and tumbleweed, rock and tumbleweed, endless rocks and tumbleweeds capture my attention. The miles churned like butter, made me feel soft, tired, melded with my boys, my pop-song-humming driver. And then I saw it! A whitewashed sign pocked with rancher's bullets welcomed us to the most mysterious location in all of New Mexico. The Roswell UFO Crash site.

To Be Continued...

(Non) Prank Call #2 to Avon's Rep Hotline

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again...

The other day I called the Avon Rep Hotline to ask whether a show dog, a prize-winning terrier, could safely use the Avon Astonishing Length Mascara during competition. From the response I got, you'd think I let loose the word "Bomb" in an American airport. So it was with not a little fear I flipped open my phone once more...

I stood in the same spot as my initial call, seven hours later. The sun bounced off my left shoulder, cast a fractured shadow of tired Avon Lady and backpack against a cracked adobe wall. A steady stream of students passed me. They carried books, homework, the disappointed expression of a lost Indian summer afternoon. A chipper voice greeted my ear, and I mentally crossed my fingers and opened my mouth.

"Hi! I need to know if you can use the Avon Astonishing Length Mascara on a show terrier! Is it safe?"

My stomach clenched as I waited for the response.

"Hon, is this your terrier? Or a customer's show dog?"

I paused, not sure whether to relax my tight muscles. A brown grasshopper landed on my flip-flop and I shook it, watched him jump, land on top of the wall.

"It's a customers show dog. I honestly don't know anything about terriers. Is this product safe?"

"Well, hon. If you're talking show dogs, what I would recommend you use is the Beyond Color Lash Fortifying Mascara. We have several champions using this product. It prevents lash loss and breakage. What else is your customer using?"

I held the phone away from my ear and looked at it. I wanted to pinch myself, see if I dreamed up this Avon Hotline Lady with the show dog knowledge.

"Uh, I don't know. She only asked about the mascara. What would you recommend?"

"Well, hon. You must have her try the new Avon Footworks Pedi Peel. Have you tried it? It will soften and condition a dog's calloused paw pads like nothing else. And of course she's using Skin So Soft for the coat?"

I don't remember much else, only remember grabbing my wire notebook and writing down a furious litany of Best Products for Show Dogs. I flipped the phone shut just as my boys met me at the corner.

"So, Mom! What did you do today? Sell any Avon?"

My older son, 11, ran his hands through his thick hair as his younger brother, 9, bent to the sidewalk and picked up a piece of rose quartz. The sun splashed our image, three connected beings, three levels, against the adobe, casting the lone grasshopper into shadow.

"Well. I didn't sell much Avon, but I learned how to make a terrier terrific!"

My boys didn't ask, didn't seem to know there was a question. We held hands, walked away from the sun, east, toward the great plains, toward our simple home.

More (Non) Prank Calls to the Avon Hotline

I thought calling the Avon Hotline to discuss the various sexual uses of Bust Sculpt would be my most embarrassing Rep Hotline moment. I was wrong.

I wore my trusty duct tape-enhanced backpack filled with Avon brochures as I walked my boys to school this morning. My boys ran ahead, shuffled their feet fast through the new piles of fall leaves. I left five stamped brochures at Gabriel's Filling Station, shoved another two through the Curves womens' workout joint mailslot. I waved goodbye as the boys rounded the school yard, then flipped open my cell phone and hit speed dial #5. The Avon Rep Hotline telephone tree didn't stump me, I knew the click responses by heart, entered my account number, said I had an important product question.

"Hi! Well, I have a question about the Astonishing Lengths mascara. Or any of the mascaras, really. Can they be used on a show terrier?"

Silence. I waited two beats. More silence.

"Uh, hello? Did I get disconnected?"

A young boy scooted past me toward the school. His sneakers had tiny wheels embedded underneath a higher than average heel, and he half-walked, half-slided across the uneven brick sidewalk.

"No, ma'am. I'm here. I didn't understand your question. Can you repeat it?"

She spoke with the broad accent of Indiana or Ohio, sounded like she still needed a strong cup of coffee to face the day.

"No problem. Can any of the Avon mascaras be used on a show terrier?"

Silence.

"Ma'am? Did you say snow barrier?"

I laughed.

"No! Show terrier! A show terrier."

I stretched out the words "show" and "terrier" as if they had nineteen syllables each.

"Snow carrier? Is this a joke?"

I could hear her start to move her hands toward the I've-Got-A-Nut-On-The-Line off switch.

"Show terrier! A show dog! A terrier, you know, those whisker faced lap dogs that yap all day? Terrier! Terrier! I need to know if I can slap some mascara on a terrier! For a big show!"

Click. I stared at my cell phone, at the blinking "disconnected" icon, wondered if she would notate my Permanent Record with "likes to make prank calls."

I think I'm going to try again, but I'm scared!

Once an Avon Lady....

More thoughts on being an unofficial Avon blogger

I'm working on my blog today, taking a day to reflect on Avon and what it has meant to me. I'm not sure, in this moment, what I feel and think about my nearly three years as an Avon Lady. Some days are like this. I see the red balance at the end of my spreadsheet, the customers who bounce checks, the homebodies who slam doors against my samples.

Sometimes I wonder if Avon HQ knows how much this blog has contributed to its own culture, how many Avon Reps have told me that Beauty Dish helped them decide to walk that door-to-door path. If I count my saved email, just the ones from bona fide new Avon Ladies who plunked down hard cash to get their kit after reading my adventures, it numbers over 200. And many of them sold like crazy, stamped brochure after brochure, left them here and there, enough places to raise their sample coffers to the level of President's Club, those who drop a cool ten grand and more in Avon's lap. And those are the women who took the time to email, to offer thanks. Customers number over 8000. Just the ones that took the time to email and tell me what they thought after they bought a product due to one of my reviews. It all adds up to incredible revenue for Avon, at my best guess a cool million bucks, and probably five times more, due to a blog from a dirt poor Southwest blogger who can't even pay her telephone bill most months.

Avon remains silent, a marble statue in some forgotten New York museum. The museum doesn't send a travel bus, doesn't send messages to the scarred adobe walls of New Mexico. I work on the fringes, share my experience because it feels right, somehow feels sacred. I never asked for recognition, for reward. I like being a lone beacon, someone who blogs the sorry damn truth about every product - the great ones, the ones that should have never seen the light of day. And my adventures, yeah, my adventures. I use Avon as a springboard, let it leap me into the arms of my fellow human, let it cast me out to sea, carry me home on waves higher, faster than anything you could imagine. I have a lifetime of memory and only two tired hands to relay it.

Two things keep me blogging. Those gentle emails from Avon Ladies, those emails from customers, the ones that tell me I changed their life, gave them some kind of beauty when they most needed it. And the fact that I can't stop writing, can't stop sharing my life, my deepest dark blue current with you. I can't stop.

I sat and thought these things, one, two, three, four, let them wash across my mind like salt kelp waters. And then my phone rang, the way it does when an Avon customer wants to break my concentration.

"Hi! This is Birdie! Can I help you?"

I tried not to sound the way my face looked, sound like a million weary tears.

"Birdie, this is Nellie Romero. I need to know if I can use that new mascara, the Avon Astonishing Lengths, on my terrier. We've got a big show this weekend and she has to look good."

I swallowed my tears, let them digest into laughter, swallowed that, too.

"I'll call Avon and find out for ya, Nellie. Give Ginger a squeeze, okay?"

This afternoon I'm not the world's best Avon Evangelist. I'm not even sure I like Avon today, like the culture of paid beauty. Tomorrow I'll feel different, the way I always do. But I'll help a woman's dog make the full breed finals, and somehow we'll both be the better for it.

Read and Shop!

I'm doing some blog housekeeping! It's time to freshen things up a bit. While I work behind the scenes why not:

Check out my favorite Avon adventures?

And hey, check out the Beauty Dish Cafepress Store today! I added new items! (Team Ulak!) I will be adding shirts and mugs with Comet's beautiful artwork sometime soon as well.

Big hugs to everyone today!

One Turk + Aliens + Avon samples = Chaos in the Alpha Sector! (Part Two)

Read the first part of this story here.

The next morning I packed snacks in a brown grocery bag. A few green apples, a half-eaten bag of Fritos, fourteen homemade chocolate chip cookies, and a bag of trail mix. I added a few bottles of tap water to the food box and stuffed it in the back bay of my mini-SUV. I heard the shower, the heavy sound of adult male feet against cool saltillo tile. My dog watched from the dining room window. Her nose pressed against the glass in hopeful anticipation, leaving a jagged slime scar.

"Sorry, Suzie." I spoke even though I knew she couldn't hear me. "You can't come with us. It's too hot for a doggie to wait in a New Mexican car." She seemed to understand. I saw a flash of long white fur fall from the glass to the floor.

The boys jumped into the backseat and opened comic books. I left the car doors open as I ran up the front steps and searched for Ulak.

"Ulak! Ulak! Where are you! We're ready to go!"

I yelled into the dark of the finished basement where Ulak set up home base with his simple canvas suitcase. A guttural groan climbed each carpeted step two seconds in front of its owner.

"Birdie. Please do not speak with such an echo."

I paused, let him rise from the darkness with his right hand shielding his eyes from the mountain sun.

"Birdie. Can you turn off this sun? Such things should not be allowed to burn after a night of your tequila."

I tried not to laugh.

"Ulak, do what we New Mexicans do! Blame the aliens!"

He didn't laugh.

"Birdie. The fly is small, but it is big enough to make one sick."

I helped him down the stairs and into the shotgun seat. I reached over and gently fastened his buckle, then handed him a wide-brimmed straw hat. He tried to smile in gratitude and tilted it against his face, the back of his head against the neck-rest. I couldn't see his expression, but his knees knocked together, one lime, one salt, told me everything I needed to know.

"Ulak, just rest."

My sons looked at each other as Ulak oozed into the seat. 11 cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows in grand Ulak fashion, spoke a solemn proverb, probably the only one he knew.

"You harvest what you sow."

The backseat exploded in giggles. So did half the front seat. My half, anyway. Ulak smacked my right arm and continued to moan. My purse lay in the space beneath his feet. I saw a bottle of Skin So Soft poke from its depths and I prayed Ulak was too hungover to notice.

I drove as if I were almost alone, as if my bald tires whispered sweet nothings as they hit pavement crack after bump. The boys kept noses in books, the Turk kept hat against forehead. I kept eyes against landscape, against the herd of antelope wilting in the sun. I took the small road, the tiny snake of black heat that separated ranch from arroyo, didn't want to forge the interstate. A skinny Australian shepherd darted across the road and I hit the brake, skidded from my lane to the other, but no ghost traffic met my bumper. The dog wagged his tailless rump on the other side of the road. I continued toward Roswell. My passengers didn't notice the jolt.

The canyons turned to tiny mesas dotted with the dry stitch of forgotten vegetation, to small rounds of parched mesquite and juniper. I kept one eye on the road, one on the sky, half expected to see a silver disk hover above the horizon. No UFOs greeted my watch.

"Look at the hawk!" I pointed to a dangerous creature circling the wind above a green depression in the ground where water gathered below the surface. The bird dipped one wing, sliced the sky with deliberate precision. He seemed to point the way to Roswell, seemed to know we wanted mystery, wanted rain, wanted a million dollars, a sure hangover cure. No one met my pointed finger. The boys fell into dreams against each other. Ulak snored.

C'mon, Mister Hawk. I'm alone now. You know the sky. If there's any secrets out there, point them to me, okay? I won't tell. He ignored me. I waved goodbye, as if a bird of prey cared for the occupants of an impenetrable metallic craft.

The road drew me closer to the desert, forced my wheels, my hands to experience the heavy effects of drought. My skin crawled with invisible dry ants. Dust devils swirled on both sides of the highway. More antelope watched me plow past. Skinny antelope. Tired animals. They struck the dirt with their hooves, tried to find refreshment. I wanted to stop, to empty our tap water on the ground. I felt Ulak's eyes on my profile, my forehead, my nose, my chin, my naked shoulders, my breasts, my legs stuck to the vinyl with sweat.

"Birdie."

It was a question. The question that hung between us all these years. I knew it, knew it from the tone of his voice, from the tequila I couldn't smell, from his tired slouch.

"Ulak, just sleep. We still have two more hours. Just sleep. Everything can wait. Everything."

Ulak held his breath. One, two, three, four. I counted. I knew him too well, knew how he calculated every word, knew he would respond when I hit eleven.

"Birdie. Why do you live in this place? It hurts my lips. They are too dry. The air is too dry. You should move back to California. You could move to my house. We could discuss the future tonight."

To be continued!!! You thought I was gonna finish it in two segments?! Yer crazy!

One Turk + Aliens + Avon samples = Chaos in the Alpha Sector!

I started telling you this true Avon adventure months ago and never told you how it ended! Here it is, a longer part one, part two tomorrow!

My Turkish friend, Ulak, drove from San Diego to visit me. He drove with the soft marine winds at his back, drove a day, a night, through the Mojave, past the City of Sin, into the sand art plains of Arizona, a hundred million cacti at his heels, until the winds grew dry, pushed him into the drought-ridden prairie grass surrounding my town. He pulled into my drive, pulled close to my car, and grunted as he stared at my license plate, at the yellow rectangle with the official numbers and the state slogan: The Land of Enchantment.

"Humph. What's so enchanting about it?"

I sat on my crumbling cement stoop and waved my arm like a television hostess bestowing a refrigerator, a bedroom set, and six cases of macaroni and cheese to a game show winner.

"What's not enchanting about it, Ulak? Just look at it! Look at it! And welcome, boy! Welcome to my crazy town!"

Ulak sat in his car and stared for a long time. I saw his dark eyes register the graffiti on my neighbor's cement fence, the dust bowl I called a front yard, the twisted catalpa tree that would not bear buds this Spring. He looked at me, at my neighbor's house, and I could hear him calculate the days we must have remained without rain, the brain cells I must have lost to choose a place even Mother Nature forgets.

So different from my old California home, I thought. He must think I'm crazy to move here, to this place of sifted dust and poverty. I gazed at the graffiti, the way the letters lurched along the ochre brick like boxcars on a fractal train, thought about the times my cowboy neighbors tossed lariats in the street. They don't care about the dirt, the noise. They live the enchantment, catch it with rope. Ulak shut the ignition. His car groaned, shuddered to silence.

"Hmmmmph. Every man has his own style of eating yogurt."

My two young boys ran to the car to greet him. They grabbed the door handle and hauled him outside.

"Ulak! Ulak!" My youngest son, 9, pulled a crumpled paper from the pocket of his jeans. "Ulak! We want to go to Roswell! Mom said you'd take us! Please, Ulak! Please!"

I tried to shush my boys but they didn't hear me. They kept their ears focused on the man standing in my driveway, a man with old world morals and overgrown back hair. He raised one bushy black eyebrow and eyed my boys. He took 9's paper, unfolded it carefully, and read the internet story about the alien archive two hours south.

"Hmmmmph. UFO Museum. Roswell." He paused, held the paper a bit further from his face, read the copy out loud in a slow, exaggerated voice. "See the famous Roswell UFO crash site."

My boys stood on their toes. A stray dog wandered past, unaware of the galactic history being made. Ulak cleared his throat.

"Well. There are many things mysterious in the world. We will go in the morning. And I will convince your mother to leave her work at home this time."

I stared, my mouth open in protest and surprise, but Ulak laughed.

"Birdie. You bring those little samples everywhere. This time I am a guest from a faraway land. You must not take them and embarrass us all. Now. Show me your house."

I tried to smile, gave my friend a hug, but the little monster in the back of my mind took control. Like hell, I'll leave my Avon at home, you big hairy Turk!

That night after the boys fell into dreams, Ulak and I labored over a game of Scrabble. I tossed back one shot of tequila, then two. Ulak added three tiles to a fourth on the board. Click, click, click. They slid like square UFOs over a faded, scratched cornfield, a fractal crop circle of archaic words their message, the word "omen."

Omen. Hmmmm. I wonder if Ulak knows I stuffed my purse full of Avon in anticipation of tomorrow, I thought.

"Ulak?"

I looked at the tiles resting on the wooden tray in front of me. J, Q, X, L, L, V, P.

"Yes, Birdie?"

Ulak watched me concentrate, watched me add a J and a L to spell "jail" along the upper right quadrant of the board. I lifted my eyes from the game and stared between Ulak's bushy eyebrows. His prominent nose almost twitched, almost gave away the secrets of the Turkish universe along with the contents of his Scrabble hand.

"Do you believe in UFOs?"

I grabbed two tiles from the pile and smiled. A, O. Good. I had a chance.

"Birdie. Why do you always label and sort things? I haven't seen you in six months, but you haven't changed. UFO means unidentified flying object. There are many such things unidentified. Many military vehicles. Sometimes a big bird can look like a missile. But I think you mean alien. From another planet. In Turkey we accept we are not alone. You Americans need to know things. You need to know where you stand. I tell you this, Birdie. We stand among all those in the heavens."

Ulak hesitated. I thought he meant to add something else, perhaps a lecture on galactic peace or the Bush anti-missile defense initiative. He can be a political and wordy guy. But he slid all his tiles into empty spaces on the board to form the only word that made sense.

"Unexpected."

"Birdie," he said, as he swept his hand over the board. "I win." He downed another shot of tequila, his seventh, as I shook the tiles from the game board into the old cardboard box. Three tiles fell to the floor. I picked them up, held them in my hand. I. F. O.

Identified Flying Object, I thought.

"Hey Ulak! IFO! Ha ha ha ha!" I exploded in laughter, pictured weather balloons, swamp gas, all things NASA sanctioned, all things non-alien. Ulak snorted.

"Birdie. Even alien spacecraft are identified if you know what they are."

to be continued tomorrow.... really!

Bless me Father, for I have Avon...

The local priest gave me a jingle this morning. He wants to place an order, and can I come by with some samples? I'm meeting him this afternoon!

What do you think the good Father will buy?

All Life (and Avon) is a gamble

My Avon delivery contained this "Top Secret lab sample" of the upcoming Avon Anew Clinical Lifting Treatment, along with two literature cards promising the tiny tub's contents will "painlessly tighten, tone and visibly lift your skin to new heights."

That's quite a bit of hope and promise. I'll let you know if my nose ends up between my eyebrows... and if the CIA shows up to confiscate my tub!

Ready... Set... GO!!!

I'm off to the races! I'm driving to Santa Fe in search of work and new Avon customers! I have two hundred stamped and sampled brochures and I'm dressed for success in a pretty floral summer dress with my best heels and Avon makeup and jewels. I'm takin' no prisoners, baby! Santa Fe is the land of wonderful woo woo metaphysics, Native American spirituality, and hot green chilis. Gotta be a reincarnated goddess in need of some summer fragrance somewhere...

Wish me luck!

Love Potion Number 9

My middle son attends the fourth grade. He's nine years old, but he stands taller than every nine, ten, and eleven year-old kid at his school. He takes after his father that way, and someday, I tell him, he will stand six-feet-four and see the world as a hair part sea beneath him. My other sons love me best, love me more than anyone else on the planet. But 9 loves his dad, walks in his dad's long hip-to-foot rolling way, talks like his dad in measured thoughtful pauses, and wants to play the same Baroque-era music, live like an unlikely neatnik musician. Both my middle son and his dad are strange renaissance time warp travelers. They whistle Bach and keep courtly manners, wear silly long white tube socks with sneakers, discuss Libertarian politics and play the ancient game of Japanese war strategy called Go. All my friends call 9 the "old man." I call him that too.

Mrs. M teaches my son's fourth grade class. She loves the way 9 offers to erase the board and collect the milk cartons and candy wrappers littering the school yard. Some of the kids think 9's a suck-up. But I know better, and Mrs. M does, too. She likes law and order, a neat and tidy room, neat and tidy homework. She lets him lead the class to flag assembly and asks him to help restless kids with math problems. Old men are patient. They know how to fix things. They know how to stand tall and explain fractions. They don't cut corners. They see things as they are. Mrs. M thinks my old man rocks.

Mrs. M called me during lunch break this week. My first thought was that 9 tripped and broke a body part. Old men can be forgetful, can trip over air molecules and run nose first into swinging tether balls and mangy soccer girls in pigtails. But no, Mrs. M said, no, 9 didn't have a playground accident. This is about Show and Tell.

"I just wanted to know if this was your idea," Mrs. M asked with hesitation. Her voice hovered in the air above me as I recalled the frantic morning rush, the slam of peanut butter sandwiches into paper bags into backpacks, the quick fumble way I signed the homework papers and scrounged the couch cushions for milk money.

"I have to be honest, Mrs. M. I have no idea what 9 brought for Show and Tell. He usually tells me ahead of time because he likes to practice his speech in front of me. What did he bring? Star Trek stuff? His stamp collection?" I scanned the room and noticed his cello still resting against the couch. Well, it wasn't that.

Mrs. M cleared her throat. I could hear her gather her wits, try to put them in order, the same silent creeping confusion vine that attacks those who interact with 9 over any length of time. And in the everlasting milisecond of quiet I perked my ears to listen and discern whether the parrot, dog, cat, guinea pigs and iguanas were still under my control.

"I warned the students that I had a meeting with the superintendent's office this morning, and so Miss Linda would be taking over for Show and Tell. I told them no funny business, no animals, nothing that would give her trouble. Everyone knows about last year's pizza party incident."

Oh crap, did he take the iguanas? It had to be the iguanas. I heard the parrot whistle and the scurry foraging of pigs and hamsters. I wasn't sure about this pizza party incident but I remembered something about a food fight and a secret bottle of hot pepper flakes some trouble maker brought to school. Oh man, what did my kid do?

"Yes? Just tell me. What did he bring. I have no idea." My voice sounded six octaves higher than usual. Maybe 9 shared his mild case of athlete's foot. Or the gay pride flag poster I keep meaning to frame. Or one of 17's music disks with adult lyrics and coochie mamas on the cover.

"He brought Avon." Mrs. M separated the words, accented "Avon" with a psychic drumroll, made Avon sound like rapping coochie mamas with athlete's feet.

"He did? Avon? Really? Well, that isn't bad, is it?" I laughed, pictured old man 9 handing out a brochure to the short girl with the wavy red hair who always picks her nose and eats the evidence. But Mrs. M didn't return my laughter.

"It wasn't just an Avon book or one of those Christmas ornaments. He brought some men's grooming product. The Pro Extreme Ab-Firm." I heard her pick up the tube, imagined her adjusting reading glasses to examine the label, read it out loud. This product arrived with my last Avon shipment, a demonstration tube of cream designed to make men's tummies look sleek, ripped, exciting.

Mrs. M continued her explanation in a world weary voice. 9 showed the class the silver tube and announced that childhood obesity was a growing problem in the United States. He read about it in the Los Angeles Times, he said, six out of ten kids in the fourth grade have a weight problem, and Avon has something that can help. He opened the bottle, squeezed out a dollop, lifted his shirt and applied the product, reciting a litany of the lotion's benefits. Get that six-pack girls love! Good for love handles too! Now everyone at school can be trim, he explained, and passed the tube around the class. Miss Linda sat still, a young substitute statue, mouth hanging open, as amazed at 9's eloquent discussion of childhood obesity as she was at the product demonstration. She confiscated the tube, held it for Mrs. M to see at lunch.

"Frankly, I'm happy to see children have an awareness about childhood obesity issues, but your son should not be bringing adult products into the classroom."

I apologized, promised I would talk to 9, make sure it would never, ever, happen again, and hung up the phone. I walked to my Avon storage pile and grabbed a stack of unlined paper and a red marker. Keep Out! Private! Mom Only! No Kids and That Means YOU 9! I covered my boxes with warning signs. I picked up the new Avon Men's Catalogue and looked at the Ab-Firm model, tanned flexed abs rippling and oiled, and pictured 9 leading Mrs. M's fourth grade class to the next flag assembly, shirts raised in solidarity, not a speck of baby fat among them.

You don't say?

I wasn't home when the Avon delivery man arrived this week. He left my stack of three stuffed - large - cardboard boxes on my front stoop. I found them leaning against the front door. A corner of my small sissal Wecome mat leaned against them, as if the delivery guy tried to cover an elephant with a postage stamp. On the door was a bright yellow AVON post-it note.

"Package is under the mat."

Every single one of us, take us home

My neighbors beg skin advice instead of cups of sugar, flag me down for drops of bath oil, a splash of blemish intuition, call me Avon Lady, Makeup Girl, anything but my real name. They know my life schedule, my order deadline, what doorbells I'll ring as the afternoon sky thinks about rain. They know they can catch me early evenings on my daily walk with the pot-bellied pig. They know my painted surface, all the scratches on my front door, my scrawled signature on their brochures.

I scrubbed my kitchen floor Saturday afternoon, my knees pressed against the linoleum, a bucket with hot soapy water to my right. My rubber gloves sought out footprint, pawprint, footprint. I wiped each one with a soft orange sponge, let them melt into echo.

Each of these prints is a memory, I thought. My boys ran here, my dog. I love the dust they leave behind. When I kneel on this floor I become one with them, their dirt coats my knees, I am part of their landscape.

I sat on the front stoop as the floor dried and watched my boys chase the neighbor's chihuaha back home. A pick-up truck idled across the street. A young man with a sparse goatee and a mud-spattered hat tapped the steering wheel. One more cowboy late for the rodeo.

Am I a footprint on this street? Do people see me and see a memory they'd like to keep?

Emilio opened his front door and jumped down the steps. He spoke to the man in the truck and waved him along. The truck lumbered down the road, a fine mist of black smog behind it. I didn't move. The wind moved for me, arranged my hair, my skirt.

"Hey, you ready?"

He yelled over the wind, pointed to his back.

"Yeah, come on over, Emilio. I want to talk to you."

I patted the cement next to me and Emilio sat. The Avon Skin So Soft Hair Removal Microwave Wax Kit lay open on my kitchen table, ready to inflict beautiful pain. I was prepared to remove his back hair, not prepared for the words that came out of my mouth.

"Emilio, don't do it."

"What?"

I paused. A housefly landed on my foot. I flinched my toes and the fly abandoned ship, flew toward the honeysuckle bordered my fence. I had no idea what I would say next.

"Look, Emilio. You're such a good-looking guy. And yeah. You've gotta lotta hair. If this new girl is the right one for you, she's going to love your hair, just love you, no matter what. I mean, don't get me wrong - first impressions are important, so take a shower and fix your hair and put on something snazzy. But don't wax your back. It's weird."

I continued talking, told him about the men I loved and lost, about their features, the things maybe they thought they should change but I loved with a passion, that I loved to touch, to trace. I told him about my Avon business, how I used to be so damn gung-ho, worked day and night and night and day and rose up those artificial levels with pride. I told him how I upsold my customers - suggested they add new items to their orders, got them to spend their extra cash.

"But now, man, I'm just an average Avon Lady. I'm not a big seller. I'll never make those lists again. I just share what I know, let my customers decide. So you decide, ok? Think about it. I think you're sexy the way you are."

Emilio gave me a hug and ambled home. He didn't return. I stood, stretched my arms to the first star overhead and yelled at the top of my lungs.

"I'm an average Avon Lady! Yeah! I'm average!"

My boys didn't hear my words, only heard the decibel level and ran inside the house. I followed them inside, followed their red dirt footprints on my good clean floor. I smiled.

Can't keep a secret in a small town

Emilio's rodeo buddies knocked on my door just a few minutes ago.

"Hey Birdie," the tallest one asked, "what's Emilio doing over here tonight? He won't say."

The men giggled. Giggled! As if Emilio and I were gonna get hot 'n sweaty under a low New Mexican moon while my kids, pot-bellied pig, parrots, dog, and lizards watch. Never mind the whopper zit and young girlfriend and wild age difference, the simple logistics were enough to nix any potential romantic deal.

"Uh, guys? I'm almost old enough to be your Mama! Emilio is just coming over to discuss some of the new men's Avon products with me. Leave him alone."

They're still laughing across the street...

Leaving a swath of smooth-backed men in my wake...

I opened my front door late yesterday afternoon. The house held the radiation of ten hours of captured sunlight. The cooler air rushed around my ankles, lifted the dust from the floor in graceful circles. I tried to push thoughts of a long day of work from my mind as my boys opened the fridge and surveyed our sad collection of wilting vittles. One of the cowboys across the street stood on my front stoop and cleared his throat. I stuck my head around the kitchen door and welcomed him inside.

"Come on in, Emilio. ¡Estás en vuestra casa!"

Emilio removed his straw-woven Stetson and set it on the kitchen table. He pulled out a wooden chair and swung one long leg over, sat backwards, his arms resting on the chair's carved back. His black hair stuck up here and there, and his face held a layer of rodeo grime and a good two days of unshaven growth... plus a big, festering zit perched high on one cheek.

"Birdie, you gotta help me."

I filled a pot with water and placed it on the stove, turned the burner to high, and wiped my hands on a fraying dish towel. My head pounded with a headache as big as his zit.

"Well, Emilio, you came to the right place. Wow, that's a real whopper, huh?"

I moved close to him, bent down to examine the boil. It seemed to have a life of its own, a tiny city of puss and fury. I tried to figure out which Avon product to recommend. Emilio didn't move, didn't seem to understand why it captured my attention.

"No, not that. That'll go away. I got a big date Sunday afternoon. You know, the ice cream social downtown. I got a new girl. Not the one you've seen coming by the house. A new one. I think she's the one. I heard she doesn't like hairy guys. So I want to get rid of this."

Emilio pointed to his back. I stepped away from his face and looked at his black t-shirt. A tuft of stray hair stuck out from the collar and I sighed, remembering my Turkish friend with similar genetics.

"Birdie, you can't tell my friends I'm doing this. I'll never hear the end of it."

My older son, Gandalf, stood in the kitchen doorway as I told Emilio I could wax his back the following night. Gandalf held a wooden spoon in one hand and a box of rigatoni in the other. He shook his head as if he were sixty-four instead of eleven.

"All I'm gonna say is I'm not watching this time. And no girl is worth that kind of pain."

Thief

I dressed in my best skirt and a beaded ochre halter top the morning I planned to meet with the thief who hijacked my brochures. I swiped an earthy gloss across my lips and smoothed my hair back into an elegant chignon. I added silver heels and fastened two strands of lumpy turquoise beads around my throat. I wanted to look powerful, exotic. I glanced at the notepad by my phone where I penned her name and house number. Just six blocks away, across the street from the convenience store. I teetered on my heels, contemplated driving but decided that would waste energy and headed out the door, my head three inches closer to the stratosphere.

I stopped in front of the closed Dairy Queen, put my hands against my face and pressed my nose to the dark window. No Avon brochures graced the counter. I continued on my way, past the impossibly small triangular park where saloon outcasts sleep off decadent nights. Two middle-aged men slumped in the lone bench, one on each side, their hopes and desires carried along alcohol breath into the dry ground.

I cut across the convenience store gas lot, skirted between pickup-trucks and their ranchers coated in sunflower pollen and manure. They stopped, stared the way lonely men appreciate any female form. I kept my eyes straight ahead, on my customer's matchbox adobe house, so square, so dirty, so forgotten. A rusted washing machine with its top sprung open tipped against the front porch. My right heel caught in a asphalt crack and my leg twisted, sent me flat on my ass against the hard black. I cursed, a good and noisy "Fuck" as my skirt flew above my waist. I sat there a moment, tried to shove my clothes back into delicate position, my eyes at the bottom of the convenience store window. The clerk leered at me, his black mustache wiggling with sexual suggestion. I wrestled to my feet, prepared to ignore the clerk and hurry across the street, but something caught my eye. A stack of fresh Avon brochures - the next campaign - sitting next to the cash register.

Maybe the thief hijacked these, too, I thought. I opened