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

lunch.
    “Yes, Shanna, no prob. Mascara. I’ll bring the new Avon lash builder stuff. It really gives you that Runaway Bride look.” I waited to hear Shanna laugh, but she didn’t seem to hear me.
    “And Birdie! Bring all your black clothes. We need to look like biker chicks.” I could hear Shanna scratch a list of important things, could picture her standing at the Mexican tile counter I watched her install in her kitchen, a no-nonsense yellow legal pad under her arm, workman’s pencil in hand, stained t-shirt, grout-splattered leggings.
    “Black. Check. You got it, girlfriend.” I left the cordless phone resting on the kitchen table and wandered into the bedroom to finish gathering supplies for our date.
    I reached into the closet, wanted to grab something Shanna might like, but stood on my toes instead, felt the top shelf where I hid things from my boys. I pulled down a small photo album covered in fake red leather and rifled through the pages. My parents looked at each other in front of a historic church. They couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. My mom wore her hair in pigtails and she shyly smiled at my dad. A younger sister leapfrogged over another. My first dog waved her bushy tail in a field of sepia wheat. I turned the page, knowing what I would find, but the sight of it stole my breath anyway, the way it always did. I stood inside a metal photo booth – the kind you find at a state fair – smiling, so damn young, pregnant, holding my swollen belly, alone. I touched the photograph, rubbed my fingers over the belly, looked at the only picture I had of my daughter.
    I didn’t know what my future was, if one even existed. I only knew I was stuck in a parallel universe, a place between here and here. I didn’t care if I was stuck, it was all right with me. But I needed to know one thing, just one thing. What’s a mother who is a mother who isn’t a mother?
    All my life I’ve been a mother. I tended to my younger sisters growing up, when my mom had to work and my dad was always away at school. I ran away from home too young, didn’t know a life outside of caring for others. And in the middle of these things I got raped, got pregnant, gave up a baby daughter, handed her over to the Catholic Charities who shuffled her from foster home to foster home until she was two months old and the paperwork was ready for her new adoptive parents. The last time I saw her in person, she was seven weeks old, and I had to sign the final documents relinquishing my parental rights. A foster mom carried her into the room so I could see her, make sure I didn’t want to take up counseling and welfare assistance and take her home. I wanted to back out then and there, wanted to grab her and run across the country, but I took the pen and left my name in a blotchy mess at the bottom of the page. I could barely see my name through my desolate tears. I placed the album back on the shelf and willed it out of my head for just one evening.
    I arrived at Shanna’s beach cottage three hours before liftoff. I carried my backpack stuffed with Avon makeup and hair spray and carried a plastic bag full of clothes that might fit Shanna. I wore my favorite strapless dress, the skintight one with pretty spring flowers and my fishnet tights, black high-heeled boots. Shanna left her front door open, carved tiki standing guard beside the entry, a black roar of Metallica pouring out, over the star jasmine vines, over the sidewalk. A middle-aged surfer sat on his porch across the street, waxing his board. He leered at me, raised one eyebrow in hopeful greeting.
    “Never fear! The Avon Lady is here!” I yelled into the void, stomped inside, dropped my stuff on the floor, got right to work. Shanna’s hair stuck to her head with grout in places, and dark gunk covered her fingernails.
    “Girlfriend, what the heck am I going to do with you? Look at your hands! Couldn’t you at least have washed them first?” I dunked her arms up to her