"I'm Just a Pig on a Mission"
Some Pig
I had serious Avon Apathy this late summer. Sure, I knocked on doors, left satin smooth brochures and samples of beauty promise on beach cottage porches, under doormats, stuffed behind screen doors, balanced on mailboxes. But my heart didn't hold any Skin-So-Soft or Lift and Tuck. It carried the harsh reality of unpaid bills, children growing toward college, the grief of a dead friend, a drumbeat unrest with life and location, and my customers noticed. They started leaving me desperate messages. Hey, Birdie! Come play makeover with me! Give me diamond cut lips! Reduce my hips! C'mon, Birdie! I know you're there!
I ignored them. I left Avon bags of goodness in the moonlight, let them mail me checks as some customers faded to nothing, to other Avon Ladies full of lipstick lifeforce. The hell with Avon, I thought. I need a change. This ain't cutting it anymore.
My potbellied pig didn't care that I paced my yard calculating income and outflow. Frankie plopped his body into the dusky clay under the macadamia trees and pushed the round nuts with his snout most afternoons, let the sun and wind coat his hide with fine sand while my young boys sat on his back and hugged his bulging neck. I fed him bowls of piggy kibble and leftovers, and watched him grow fat and happy and sure of his place in my world of child management and bottled allure. He ballooned to 125 pounds of solid pack pork and I exchanged his small cedar pillow for a wicker Great Dane dog bed.
My boys fueled his fire, snuck snacks while I sat at my computer, stuffed graham crackers and peanut butter sandwiches under their shirts and let Frankie munch them under the shade of the deck. 125 became 140 turned 160, and I noticed Frankie developing an unhealthy obsession with the creak of the refrigerator door. His stomach started to sway from side to side as he walked, like the lurching swing of an old dancer's hips.
"Give that pig some exercise!" I pointed to the harness and leash hanging over the laundry room door, and made 8 and 10 saddle up, walk Frankie around the block, once, twice, three hundred times.
Good, I thought. He'll slim down and the boys will keep out of my hair.
A week passed. Then two. The pig enjoyed his exercise more than I anticipated. Frankie stood at the front door for hours, waiting for Walk Time, and I stared at his speckled gut, wondering why the damn pig looked swollen and impatient. My boys hustled down the street, tied pig in hand, and I shrugged my shoulders. A pig is a pig is a pig. They simply aren't small animals.
I didn't know that Frankie and the boys kept a delicious secret. My boys wandered my door-knocking neighborhood with long faces and a fat pet who liked to sit and scratch every sixteen feet. The Avon customers I loved, ignored, and lost spied the spectacle, called my boys close for gossip and sympathy, and 8 and 10 told the long sad story of the hungry pig and the demanding mother. The ladies along my street handed out Ritz crackers and processed cheese and hotdogs and packaged cookies... all for poor, starving Frankie and his indentured companions.
One evening I thought I smelled Oreos when I bent down to pat Frankie on the head. Hmmmmmmmm, I thought. Something is just not right. I grabbed the boys and gave them the evil eye until they spilled the beans.
"Mooooooooooooom. Frankie loves to eat! He's a pig! He can't help it." 8 sat on the tiled floor and leaned against the pig. "Plus Mrs. Caldwell gives us apple pie and Gatorade."
I banned the boys from their dinner-spoiling outings and cut Frankie's rations in half. The pig howled at the door. His ears flapped up and down as he tried to reach the doorknob with one hoof. I massaged his back and tummy, carefully explaining that even pigs need to be mindful of gluttony. He didn't care. He didn't stop, either, kept yodeling and pushing and pawing the door, with a determined and fatalistic grimace.
I rolled my eyes and headed for the kitchen. I ran warm water into the sink and added dishsoap. Frankie grunted twice. I scrubbed a pot, then some silverware. Frankie fell silent. I breathed a sigh of relief and finished my kitchen chores, making a mental list of the Avon deliveries I still needed to make. I dried my hands and turned the corner. The front door shook slightly in the wind. Open! Frankie was gone!
To Be Continued... read Part Two!
11:23:05 PM 
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