The City Council Kilt Man Mucky Mud Blues
I stuffed my backpack with samples and Avon books, donned the kilt and my Avon Mark sweatshirt, and headed out the door yesterday morning. I had to do it. Not just for the money, which is reason enough, and not because I have an electronic plate full of confused and deranged customer voice mail messages wondering where I've been these past few weeks. I headed out the door into the first rains in 180 days because I have to find my routine. Two weeks ago I was a mother of four with a skeleton, but it's Halloween month and that skeleton grew skin and hair and broke out of my closet. Now I'm a mom of five. I need the routine.
It never rains in my town, maybe once or twice in February, never in October, but I left under drizzle skies, under my gramma's ancient paisley umbrella. Souther California rain is never gentle. It's always hard rain, raise the mud rain, tom tom drum rain, the rain of your drunken nightmares, soggy, heavy, like alcohol sleep. I walked down my underwater street and into a wall rushing river of drain water and pine needles, six inches deep, red as the dirt of my canyon, spraying the undersides of the three junker cars parallel parked against the hill. Ah, rain. We need it, I thought. We need the rain and I need the rain, the way it feels cold against my feet in these worn Avon flipflops, cold and wet like birth.
I stopped by Kilt Man's home but his gate stood locked and fresh and washed clean dry. I could see my Men's Brochure hanging on his doorknob, faded and wet. I wondered if my inked message ran like blood into the ground. I doesn't matter, I thought. He doesn't have a river of water like I have. He doesn't know the feel of red clay and pine needles against naked feet. He lives on top of the pretty hill and his worries wash down to my poor neighborhood. I stood at the gate for a long time, let the rain pour off the back of my gramma's umbrella, past my backpack, into the heels of my feet.
I turned the corner and headed into the subdivision named after a Carribbean isle and a black and gold "No Soliciting" sign tapped into the soft wood of the entry pillar. I didn't plan on dropping brochures here in this neighborhood of mailboxes on metal rods inserted into wooden planter boxes like government shrubs. I just wanted to short cut through, run past all these unoriginal cheese sandwich houses with perfect red tile roofs and matching juniper bushes placed just so next to the front entry. So I ran, holding my umbrella behind me like a wind foil, ran and ran until I saw a familiar face with two bulging plastic bags from the Vons grocery hanging from one arm, the other fishing through a brown leather purse for house keys. Her lawn looked like everyone else's except for the addition of twelve City Council election signs, each with her name imprinted. Oh cool, I thought. I can yell Hey Lady and tell her I like her platform, I like her approach to our environmental issues.
"Hey! Hey! Mrs. Soon to be City Council Lady!" I held my umbrella high and waved franticly with my free hand, a huge grin across my face. She turned to look at me, her scowl increasing in size, and she squinted her eyes and I watched her read my shirt.
"Ma'am, there is no soliciting in this neighborhood. You will have to leave now. That includes Avon." She spat the name Avon like it was bad medicine. I left her fumbling for her keys, turned back past the mailbox sentries, back out of the subdivision entrance, and let the rain and mud carry me home.
8:28:21 PM 
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