"What Birdie discovered about people – and herself – went more than skin deep."
- Positive Thinking Magazine
"Her posts draw more than 1,000 hits a day from readers fascinated by the woman who buys antiwrinkle cream for her pet monkey Hubert or by the wife who orders Bust-Sculpt Contouring ointment for her husband, who ingests it as an alternative to Viagra."
- Time Magazine
For Birdie Jaworski, life as an Avon Lady was a bittersweet mix of embarking on gossip-worthy adventures, searching for Mr. Right, and making emergency lotion requests in the middle of the night... while managing as a single parent.
This collection of short stories - including “Mullet Madness,” “Fat Ass Evidence,” and “Wherein I Test a Product on an Animal” - captures Jaworski’s complicated relationship with the cosmetics giant (and her customers) and reveals a surprising and touching account of her personal life.
Excerpt
Bunion Lady opened the right side of the door and I stepped inside to face the oldest person I have ever seen.
"You the Avon woman?" Her voice seemed so much younger than her years, loud and strong, you could hear the vinegar beneath the surface. She sat on a green vinyl recliner with an aluminum walker waiting to one side. Her face and arms and hands were made from wrinkles, and I couldn't imagine a time when she danced with young men and wore rose blush on soft cheeks, when she didn't look like the oldest alligator leather purse in the world. She looked older than old people in cartoons, older than the shrunken apple-head people you can buy at holiday church bazaars.
But this was a visit of superlatives, and the smell was bigger than the house and she was older than the smell, and the flock of beasts surrounding her was even odder than her appearance. Dogs. Small dogs all wiry and spastic with black and brown and white painted fur. They ran and yelped and jumped and scratched, mostly scratched, and I think I counted sixteen, my mouth open and speechless.
"You the Avon woman? Cat got your tongue?" Nana barked the question and I nodded.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m the Avon Lady. Here." I stuck my hand out, still holding the Skin-So-Soft, and she grabbed it in old wrinkled hands much stronger than mine.
"Good. These bastards have fleas. My God do they have fleas. These are organic Jack Russells and I can't use Advantage." She spat as she spoke and picked up a pair of rhinestone-studded black cat’s-eye glasses and held the bottle inches from her face. "How do you apply this? It doesn't say how to get rid of fleas."
For a time, I perched myself on a flat rock, comparing my life with the Guyandotte River. Just as its tributaries replenish it daily, changing it in some small—sometimes great—degree, so have the day-to-day occurrences of life changed me. Like the ri
At the young of age of seven, Jill's mother Eve takes her for regular sessions to a child psychologist for treatment of her anxiety, which only makes her behavior worse. When she reaches her teens, she starts drinking and then smoking marijuana with
After a long awaited weekend visitation caused by false allegations of sexual abuse, Glen got to see his children for the first time in over two months. He promised them that they would never be apart again and then they disappeared.
