Man, I'm having a night where I'm completely drained, but I feel so damn awake, grasshopper lightening bug awake, with that weird pulsating eye sensation and jittery toes. Too much caffeine. I am trying to get a family get-together organized, it's something I'll write and tell you after I process it, but I am tired of the family stuff, been tired of it for a little while, and I want to do something fun and cool and anti-Avon. Maybe kayak in the ocean. Or camp in the desert. I promised my boys we'd go camping this next week before the start of school, but family things happened, you know how that is, and I have to stay home, do Avon, and ride it out. Now I'm antsy and tired, awake and asleep, all yin and yang but no yinyang together.
This has been the summer of discovering how much I can handle, and I think I'm finding the limit.
What could I do? I extended my arms in the air, my clutch fell to the ground, and the bills floated to the bricks under my feet. As I turned, I saw Ms. Railway leaning out of her window, giving me an evil grin. One policeman stood two meters in front of me, arms on hips, one hand near his gun, head slightly cocked to one side, and I heard the crackle and pop of his walkie talkie.
"Ma'am, please step away from your purse and toward my car. Let's go!" His bald head shone in the sunlight, and I noticed a part of a blue tattoo on his wrist below the shirt cuff. I moved sideways, hands still raised, scared for my life, scared out of my mind, and I worried over who would make my kids dinner and tuck them in bed that evening.
"Please, sir, I'm just an Avon Lady, I didn't do anything, I just sold some hand cream to a girl. I don't even know her name. Please, sir, can I put my hands down, please?" I pleaded with him. My shoulders burned and I started feeling dizzy. "Please, sir, I think I'm gonna barf. Please."
The policeman picked up my clutch and the bills, squatting down, keeping one arm by the gun, both eyes on me. "Yes, you may put your hands down. What is your name?"
I told him my name, I told him my birthday, my age, my home address, answers to all the questions he asked, but he still didn't tell me why he took my things, took this action, made me squirm and sweat and try not to vomit. He motioned for me to sit down on the wood bench next to his car and he wrote scratch marks and letters on a pad of paper attached to a metal clipboard. He used his left hand, the arm with the tattoo. His eyes never left me.
"Wah wah wah wah brrrrsskk crackle crackle." The walkie talkie shook into life, someone slapping a message, an important message, asking for a response.
"Yes, I have her here. What'd you get?"
The little black box uttered more words, but I couldn't make half of them out, only heard "woman, Avon, bag, nothing." The contraption rattled on and on, but it took ears of practice and steel to make sense of the warble. The policeman grunted, answered a few questions with sentences I didn't understand, finally ending with "matches her story over here. Wrap it up." He clipped the walkie talkie back onto his belt and lifted his hand away from the gun.
"Sorry, ma'am, seems we've made a mistake. We received a tip that a drug deal was going down at this station today involving two women, and your exchange with the bags and money was suspicious. Your friend was apprehended on the train, and she's clean. She's carrying Avon, like you said. You're free to go." He handed me the purse, the bills, and shook my hand with a kind smile. "I'm very sorry to disturb you, but we have to take these steps."
"Oh yes, sir, I understand." My voice cracked with relief and I started to cry. I ran to my car and drove home, drove too fast, realizing I didn't ask the policeman for the name of my alleged accomplice. I thought about the drug sniffing dogs at the local schools and how children go through metal detectors and submit to frequent backpack checks. Life in Southern California. Life near the border. What's up with this world anyway, I thought. What's up with this world.
It's been a good month now, and until a few days ago, I hadn't heard from my lotion running friend. But I got the call again, another fifty tubes, delivery to be this Thursday. I'm sending my Turkish friend and my digital camera.
I once opened a fortune cookie that read "May you live in interesting times." My daughter rolled her eyes, red painted bamboo chopsticks in hand, and ate a piece of Thai eggplant.
"Mom, why is it that you always get yourself into trouble? I mean C'mon, you're the only person I know who goes to the Vons to get a gallon of milk and comes back with a broken toe and an autographed picture of the Pope. I mean really, Mom. You don't need that fortune. You're 'interesting' enough." She stabbed a piece of brocoli and paused. Her eyes took on that look I knew so well, that look of concentration and concern and unknowing, and she pointed the chopstick at me, the brocoli glistening, shaking, a small frog piece of dinner croaking along with her thoughts. "Why you, Mom? Why you? Why do you always attract this stuff?"
Why, indeed. Such a good question, one I never could answer. I dropped my eyes and stared at the rice on my plate, tiny grains like memories in a tower of dinner, a tower of a life, like memories of the time I skidded on black ice and crashed my car into a nine-month pregnant woman's van and started her labor, or the time I fell into the murky water of an alligator park, or the time I ran naked through my old neighborhood on a five-dollar dare. Even my first day of door-to-door Avon was Trouble with a capitol T, but that's a story I'm much too embarrassed to tell.
Those fortune cookie words rang in my ears when the phone jangled one week after delivering the three bags of hand cream to my mysterious lime-orange-ade customer.
"Yo, yo, home fry! It's yo mamma!" I rapped into the received, thinking the other ear was attached to my oldest son.
"Ummm, is this Birdie?" The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it.
"Yes, sorry, thought you were my son! Ha ha! Yes, this is Birdie, can I help you?" I cleared my throat in embarrassment and reached for my Avon order pad.
"I bought fifty tubes of Moisture Rich hand cream from you two weeks ago - "
"Oh man, I'm sorry, Avon shorted me two tubes but I didn't get a chance to tell you because you ran off so quick." I jumped into her words, assuming she called to take me to task.
"No worries about that. I need fifty more tubes. Can we make the same arrangements?"
We agreed to meet once again at the train station on Thursday, at the same four-ten time, under the same ticket counter, on the same bench, and I assured her the bags would contain exactly fifty-two tubes, but she didn't seem to care. She still refused to give me her name or number, and I didn't press. I remembered that thirty-five dollar tip, and figured she was paying for my bewildered discretion. I also gave a prayer of thanks as her order jacked me into the highest Avon commission sales level, a cool fifty percent.
I waited with three white tote bags filled with creams and samples and the fanciest Thank You card I could find, watching my nemesis Ms. Railway change money and dispense small square tickets. She wore the same mustard-stained shirt, and her right hand was stained with black ink. I wondered if she alternated weeks with the young man, if she attended her church regularly, if she had a husband or a lover at home, if her work satisfied her, where her Watchtowers went. The train whistle blew, and I turned around, watching for Lady Mystery to disembark.
As the passengers clanged down the uneven steps, I saw two police cars out of my peripheral vision. They parked next to the fountain, and a uniformed officer stepped out of each vehicle, hands ready by hips, So Cal vice, but the station seemed too quiet for police action. And then I saw her, my strange customer, in low slung jeans ripped at the knees and a v-neck t-shirt displaying bronzed cleavage and six gold chains. She wore the same little girl pigtails and barely any makeup, and she strode toward me with deliberation and speed. Her black leather boots tapped on the brick walk, my personal Avon High Noon.
"Here you go, no change, ok? I appreciate this, you're great." She grabbed the bags and ran for the train, leaving me counting two-hundred fifty dollars in tens and twenties, and I stood there, Avon clutch shoved under my armpit, organizing bills to fit my wallet, the train pulling from the station when the loud paternal voice of the police behind me barked like bullets.
"Ma'am! Drop the purse! Drop the money! Put your hands up in the air and turn around!"
