Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady! by Birdie Jaworski Read Free Book Online Page A

ran into the room, riled canine on his heels, skidded across the wood floor in tube socks and twirled to a stop, a startled look of sheer horror on his face.
    “Wow, Ulak. Your back is redder than your shirt!”
    Now I stood in the mirror, contorted, twisted in mind and body, as Black Sabbath played unlikely angels of peace. My hands hovered, my head turned in an odd angle to my body. I tried to tell Ulak about my mullet boy date, about the call from Catholic Charities but my mouth wouldn’t release any words. He bent over and flicked the music off. The wicker nightstand shuttered as the noise died.
    “Birdie. This is not music. This is garbage cans and a cat howling. What are you doing, Birdie? You worry me.”
    “Hey, Ulak?”
    I plopped face down on my bed and patted the comforter with one hand. Ulak sat on one corner. He rested his hands in his lap. He grunted some kind of response. I tried to pull my mind together. The afternoon sun poked through the blinds, cast horizontal shadows on my stucco wall. I tried to say Hey, Ulak, I gave a baby up for adoption . I tried to say it twice. Instead, my mind found some kind of easy common ground, a question Ulak could help me answer.
    “Ulak, what’s the right thing for a person to do when she doesn’t know what the right thing is? How can you tell what’s right?”
    Ulak didn’t act as if my question was anything other than our usual philosophical banter. He squinted and his hands fingered the lacy trim of my blanket, as if he were searching for good answers among the filigree. He took his time, and I almost fell asleep to the careful meter of his breath.
    “Birdie. Istanbul is found by asking and asking along the way.”

Lady Godiva
    One mile from the beach as the gull flies, at the top of a steep road carved into the broad side of a mesa during the 1970’s, my house overlooks all the others on my street. It sits at the apex of a short cul-de-sac comprised of small Spanish-style ranch homes and pepper trees. If you sit on the roof you can see an accordion-shaped lagoon stretching into the ocean, watch the sun sink and burp behind the power plant, and in the east on cool summer nights at 9:20 sharp, you can see the bloated fireworks display rising from LegoLand. It’s a nice place to live.
    I painted my house a gentle purple, a color that made me think of tropical gardens and the smell of lavender and the silly frilly dress I wore to my first prom. I fly a pirate’s flag from my poor woman’s panoramic rooftop view point, a ripped and faded Jolly Roger, and count construction workers and art teachers and line cooks as my neighbors.
    I sat at my computer and thought about ways to boost sales as the morning sunlight crept through the open blinds. My eyes tried to make sense of the words on the screen, but they kept returning to that bloody forest edge two decades ago. I stared out the window, into the cul-de-sac, and saw a neighbor boy chasing his pet Chihuahua. The dog ran under a row of tin-soldier Lombardy pines and stood on his hind legs as if to imitate them, barking from sheer joy.
    I have to be gentle with myself , I thought. If I decide to have contact with my daughter, this event will be one of the most traumatic and emotional experiences of my life, regardless of what else happens. I know no one else can understand this, can feel this, can ever in a million zillion years touch my mind and pull out the meat unless they’ve been through it themselves .
    How can you be you and not be you? How can you be a good and special Avon Lady and remember to call customers and write thank you notes and smile and laugh when three quarters of your mind climbs the evil trees of long ago? How can you find the trail of breadcrumbs you thought you left though counseling and tears? I think the owls swooped down and ate them. I think I have to make another trail, my own trail, ask for help along the way, just like Ulak said. I don’t know how.
    The boy grabbed the Chihuahua and