No Soliciting

Zenith Avenue South:

 It is starting to smell like raw ground outside on my first day canvassing for PBS. On this April day that melts the snow but not fast enough, my trainer, Wes, teaches me the F.A.B. Structure as we roam a Minneapolis neighborhood. I’ve learned so far that the F.A.B Structure is how we respond when people say no at the door.

“The F stands for friend,” he says. “Usually you say something like ‘Hey, I hear ya!’ acknowledging their apprehensions.”

Wes likes to repeat phrases over and over because he’s used to speaking from a script. He has a nervous energy and says, “very cool,” in response to most things I say. He looks like a door-to-door bible salesman, not a door-to-door canvasser. He’s the kind of guy who pours himself a cup of coffee, takes two sips, and then leaves it somewhere on his desk with four other half-full cups of coffee. I wonder if he’s ever sounded like a normal person, or if he’s always sounded like a script.

“The A stands for advocate,” he says. “The key word is ‘but’ like ‘Hey! I hear ya! But it seems like you value what we do.’ Does that make sense?”

“That makes sense,” I say, though I’m not sure it makes sense.

I follow Wes around the neighborhood as he slips glossy fliers into the doors of the new money homes. The glossy fliers have Elmo and Cookie Monster on them. They say Sorry we missed you! For the people who already give, active members, we give them a flyer with Big Bird on it that says We just stopped by to say THANKS!

“B stands for banker,” Wes says. “That’s where you retarget. Give them a number. Say something like ‘so go ahead and do $15 a month.”

We stop at a new build where a blonde woman answers the door. Her kids watch PBS every day, but she says she should check with her husband before giving, which to me seems like a totally reasonable objection. I watch Wes as he performs his F.A.B. response.

“Hey I hear ya!” he says, “But what’s great about giving today is you can pick a level that makes sense for you and then you can increase the amount after you talk with your spouse. So, go ahead and meet us at $15 a month.”

Even though Wes is persistent, she doesn’t seem like she wants to give.  

She agrees to donate, and we walk away with her money. Specifically, we walk away with a voided check. When people donate using a voided check instead of a credit card, there are no processing fees for PBS. This is what we tell people, but really it just means their donation won’t expire and they might even forget about their monthly donation. When we over-explain this to people, they don’t want to use a voided check.

“And see,” Wes points to his kindle. “We just made quota for the day. It’s that easy.”

“Oh cool,” I say, “What happens if you don’t make quota?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” He says, “It barely happens. You can make quota as long as you keep it simple and say the rap.”  

The rap is the script we say at the door. Deviating from the script is the worst thing you could do for yourself. This was our doctrine We repeated it like a prayer over and over for an hour before starting the canvassing day. The rap was also the answer for anything:

You came back with only $20 today because you didn’t say the rap.

You didn’t get a sustainer because you didn’t say the rap.

Kyle was fired because he didn’t’ say the rap!

The rap is The Lord’s Prayer. The F.A.B. Structure is The Ten Commandments. I must hold them Sacred so I can be successful and raise enough money and not get fired.

“You ready to do it on your own?” Wes asks me.

I walk away with a clipboard and my own set of addresses. I knock and wait and leave glossy fliers. I secretly hope no one talks to me and also hope I raise a million dollars. I remember my interview eight days before when Wes told me if I worked really hard as a canvasser, I could easily work my way up at PBS. I don’t see why you couldn’t end up here he’d said. Here being a real job in a real office making creative material for public television. I decide to push myself because I cannot lose this job and I cannot live in my mother’s basement anymore.

In the last fifteen minutes, I knock a door with a mailbox that has a colorful elephant on it. When the man answers, I greet him with a smile and a wave, saying the canvassing Lord’s Prayer to the best of my ability, at the end I ask him, “Can I count you in?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Awesome,” I say following the prayer, “our neighborhood goal is just a dollar a day, $31 a month.”

“Okay.”

Afterwards, Wes tells me that not everyone makes money on the first day of the job. Really, what I did was follow the rules. I said the things in the right order. With my first voided check in my pocket, I feel like something has awakened inside me.

39th Avenue South:  

The air has a sticky quality to it, stickiness, a norm in an area where there’s more than 10,000 lakes. Mosquitos nibble at my calves and ankles as I walk. I take a break every half hour cooling in the shade of a tree. I scroll job websites looking for anything else that pays me enough. When I get back to work, my sweaty legs rub against each other slowing my pace. Every step feels like ten years. Every knock feels like several decades. When I speak words at the door, I’m not believing what I’m saying. I walk away from each house with nothing. I’m more focused on how warm my pink cheeks feel. 

The house, more like duplex, is white. A pile of slightly decomposed newspapers line the porch shrunken from rainy days; sun-stained from neglect. The screen door is made of metal and my knuckles hurt when I knock on the bolt side of the door. I wait, and nearly walk away until an old man shouts from inside the dark crevice of his home.

“Hey,” I say, “How’s it goin?”

“Who are you hear with?” He’s a no-nonsense kind of guy.

“PBS.”

“PBS?” He asks, unsure.

“Yeah, like, Channel 2?” I say pointing to Sesame Street on my clipboard.

“Oh!” It clicks for him, “I watch it all the time.” Then he catches himself. “I’m guessing you want money?”

“Actually,” I say, “Yeah!”

He laughs, “I can’t donate sweetie, I’m too poor.”

“I bet that’s not true,” I say as if to comfort him.

“Oh, I’m poor. Look at me.”

He gestures for me to look at him. I do a full body scan. I do anything people at the door ask me to do as long as it feels like I’ll get a donation at the end of it. My eyes make their way down his body, stop at his shoes, which are covered in paint. In fact, most of him is covered in paint: his ears, his ratted shirt, the rips in his jeans. My eyes make their way back up pausing for a moment at his open fly which acts as a denim nest, his old man balls little robin eggs next to his purple penis, all three secured ever so gently yet exposed enough for a hawk with long pointy talons to snatch the eggs.

“I can give you twenty bucks,” he shrugs, though I’m not sure it’s for the cause.

“Okay,” I say. In my hand, he places a crumpled damp twenty. My feet are somehow moving to the next address, then across the street. Then down a couple blocks. It is then that I make a few rationalizations, and maybe that way I won’t lose my mind.

I think to myself that he must be so poor and broken the whole thing must’ve been an accident. Maybe he can’t afford underwear? Maybe he had just used the bathroom and forgot to zip up? Then comes the blame: my disarming presence—the same presence that patted housewives on the back as they agreed to hand over their credit card, my 26 teeth lined up in a row freshly brushed that morning, the extra blush on my cheeks from the summer heat, my English degree that made me an excellent conversationalist. The same English degree that leaves my wallet empty—leaves me standing at doorways asking for money so I can keep my job that pays me a decent wad of cash as long as I lose a little bit of humanity.

I want to stop, to go home, to go back to scrolling sites for a position indoors, but then I think of my managers, how disappointed they’ll be if I come back with nothing. I could stop. There is that option, but my parents raised me with durable Midwest work ethic. Everyone hates their job, and I’ve quit so many.

In order to keep moving, I force my mind to believe this was an accident. This way, I can continue asking for things, even a couple more twenties. This way, I come back with something instead of nothing.

Pierce Street Northeast:

There are days when I feel like there are two people inside me. One that is me, and one that can canvass. I call her Door Lindsey; she is not only good at canvassing but likes it. She feels like an alien or a robot. She speaks a different language than I do, a language that derives from the rap. Her key phrases are: “Hey! I hear ya!” and “very cool!” While I cry too much on the job, she collects money from innocent people inside their homes, and can ignore most social cues.

“I can be very brief,” Door Lindsey says to apprehensive people, “I can come back later? I’m here until like…” she checks an invisible watch, “…8?”

Door Lindsey can harness the power of the universe. The vibrations coming off her body are stellar. She helps me make quota every week, so I don’t get fired. She is never intimidated, but she’s hungry. Addicted. She gets high on dollar amounts and voided checks. As for me, I’ve never been addicted to drugs, but I’ve been addicted to being right, to convincing people to do what I say. Today, I’m not sure where she ends, and I begin.

We walk up the steps to the house passing beds of wilting hasta plants. Door Lindsey knocks, she likes to keep a positive mindset, the feeling that there’s no possible way to lose.

“Hey!” the man says, “We’ve been waiting for you!”

I’m thinking Bitch, you don’t know me, but Door Lindsey is thinking Hell yes you have bro! This is not the first time this has happened, someone at the door thinking I’m someone else. People confuse me with the babysitter, the pizza delivery driver, the vet doing a home visit to put down a dying Pitbull.

“Come on in!” he says. The odds of getting a donation increase by 50 percent when someone invites me into their home. Half of the time, I walk away with a voided check. Half of the time, they trap me in their living room, their MAGA hat on the counter, and tell me there is no way the earth is round. Door Lindsey will go inside even if she becomes subjected to political torture.

I walk through the threshold. When I turn the corner, I see two very ordinary people sitting at a dinner table. One man. One woman. It’s much less terrifying walking into a room when there’s a woman present.

“Would you like some tea?” He asks.

I say sure and sit down at the dinner table. I’m not sure they were waiting for me. Maybe they loves having canvassers around? Maybe they were drunk? Door Lindsey has gotten drunk people involved before. He hands me a mug.

“So, give me your speech.” He says, meaning the rap.  

This is where Door Lindsey takes over. She starts with, “We’ve been serving the community for over 60 years…” As she speaks, she makes eye contact without blinking. She only uses down-tones. While I say every sentence like a question, she says every sentence like a demand. At the end of her speech, she says five words that make or break a donation, “Can we count you in?”

“Yeah,” he says, “It’s good shit.”

“Great! Our neighborhood goal is just a dollar a day $31 a month.”

“I’ll give you a hundred bucks,” he says.

“That’s awesome!” I say. I would stop here, but Door Lindsey gives another response, “but it’s better to spread out your giving throughout the year. That way we can create new and exciting content. Does that make sense?”

He laughs, “I give to a lot of places and I want to give you one hundred dollars. Does that make sense?”

It becomes clear he’s fluent in our language.

“Hey I hear ya!” The other me says, “thank you for wanting to get involved, but I’m sure you can agree the best way to give is by spreading out your donation. Can we count on you at $10 a month?”

“I’m sure you can agree that $100 is also a great donation,” he says. “Does that make sense?”

Door Lindsey says nothing, stumped. I peak through the surface, “$100 is great.”

“I’ll give you $120 for dealing with me,” he says as he writes in his checkbook. Door Lindsey feels like she has lost, because it wasn’t the right kind of donation. When she loses, it makes me feel sick inside. It makes me nervous that the next day or the next day, she might give up too easily.  

He brings me a plate of pasta after he asks me to stay for dinner. I refuse a glass of wine, because that would be unprofessional even though I do want a glass of wine.

“So, what do you do?”

“This mostly,” Door Lindsey says.

“Yeah, but what else?”

It takes a moment for me to resurface. My shoulders relax. I don’t need a shield around me anymore. I blink. I know how to blink and might not make eye contact at all. When I think about the question, I stare at the ceiling and say um. I like authentic “ums” the ones that fit into my sentences naturally not the ones placed in the rap strategically to make it sound like I’m not speaking from a script.

“I guess,” I say, “I’m a writer.”

After the meal, they send me on the road with a bear claw pastry and Cuties. Maybe it’s these ingredients: carbs, wine, tiny oranges, and human souls that temporarily remove Door Lindsey from me.

20th Avenue South:

February has been brutal. Within these twenty-eight days, we’ve had apocalyptic snow and a thing called a Polar Vortex where it felt like negative fifty degrees in parts of Northern Minnesota. Today it feels like negative ten degrees outside, at least that is what the weather application on my phone says before it flickers and dies due to the unlivable temperatures.

My uniform consists of materials I’ve purchased myself at REI: three layers of thermal pants, a jacket that actually is a sleeping bag with sleeves, wool socks stuffed inside Sorel winter boots that are wrapped in snow cleats, a mask, a hat, and touch screen friendly gloves. The snow cleats don’t help that much because whenever I walk on a patch of ice I almost die anyway. The hair sticking out of my hat is frozen even though my hair was never wet. My fingers aggressively grip little bags of sand that generate heat for eight hours. These bags are also stuffed in my boots even though my toes cannot feel them.

By the middle of the month, the sun is starting to hover over the horizon, a couple more generous minutes of daylight, then sinks below rows of houses. The snow goes from white to pink then remains blue for the last two and a half hours of canvassing time. This is my favorite time of the year. Imbolc, a pagan holiday, resembles the end of the worst of it, but this year it feels like the worst of it is lingering. Tonight, I watch the snow shift through these different colors as puffs of breath fly into the air and disintegrate. The cold is silent much like the night I’ve been having.

Door Lindsey is weaker tonight. I’ve been trying to take care of myself and she hates it. She only thrives on too much beer and Flaming Hot Cheetos. Whenever I try to drink less or eat leafy greens, she suffers. She’s only good, when I’m destroying myself.

Most of the doors I’ve knocked are cold on the outside but warm on the inside. I can see soft white light in the homes shine through the windows and onto the snow. I can hear bodies shuffling, keeping warm, speaking to each other. When I knock, it is followed by silence. When I get to a conversation, it is followed by “not tonight,” or a slammed door, or “no thanks.” This potent mixture adds up to a very exhausted dad who is wrangling his kids. He could be going through a divorce, unemployment, a death, but it’s that look in his eye for just a moment. The look that says I’m not human. It’s the look, that, after he shuts the door, brings me to tears.

First, they start hot and almost warm my face as they drip down my cheeks and fall down my chin. When they’re no longer fresh, they leave my face icy and cold, the skin beneath chapped and red. I always wonder if the door will like me more if I cry while giving the rap, but Door Lindsey would rather hide my weaknesses, my humanhood, she doesn’t need the pity.

Before I knock, I look up at the sky with a wet face, eyelashes twinkling covered in ice. I stare at the magenta twilight clouds painted on the midnight blue canvas. I take in a full cold breath and exhale my own clouds.

“Hey…” I say to no one and the universe, “I need to know…I have an out.”

I knock the door and a woman answers. I can feel the heat of her home escape and dance around my legs. Even though she is a stranger, I want her to hold me like a mother would. I want her to invite me in and sit me on her couch and keep me safe.

“Hey!” I say half-heartedly. “How’s it goin?”

“What are you doing out here?” She says wrapping her sweater tighter around herself.

Door Lindsey is supposed to say something like, “It’s not that bad,” or “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood!” Instead, she’s quiet and my smile goes weak. My tears feel like they might return. My numb fingers puffy pads of nothing.

“Honestly,” I say, “I don’t know.”

I walk the path back to the sidewalk. The sky is dark now, the snow blue, the night seemingly endless. I’ve wanted to go home halfway through the forever night, and not come back. I stare at the icy vastness of the park across the street and think tonight’s the night I’ll be done. But even as I say that to myself, the promise feels empty, and after a few breaths of cold air, my boots turn and crunch onward to the next door.

Lindsey Wente is a Tater Tot Hotdish queen from the land of Minnesota. Right now, she is pursuing her MFA at The University of New Hampshire (New England is weird, there are Dunkin Donuts everywhere). She is the creative nonfiction editor for Barnstorm Journal. You can find out more about her on Instagram @lindseywente where she posts too many photos of her bathrobe, Cathy.