What Doesn't Kill You Read Online Free PDF Page A

this wasn’t just a business. Markson, her daughter and whoever else went with the package lived there too. It wasn’t like anybody’s home I’d ever been to. Then it occurred to me I’d never been to a white person’s home before, which explained why I was feeling a little jumpy. And this didn’t look like the ones on TV, but it was kind of cool. I’d only known Olivia a few minutes, but it suited her.
    She shoved books and magazines to one side of the wood-plank table, and we sat on mismatched chairs while she made up some kind of interview. When she got to the part about what I wanted to do after graduation, I had learned enough not to say “make money,” so I said, “I’m undecided,” which was definitely the truth. Olivia nodded her head like she could relate and after a few more questions, she led me to the kitchen—her laboratory.
    It was kind of industrial—no teapot collections, cookie-cutter displays or flowered dish towels. But it was as neat as the other room was chaotic. A stainless-steel vat and a scale sat at one end of a metal worktable, with wide-mouthed apothecary jars lined up nearby. Olivia reached into a carton on the floor and handed me a jar filled with shiny white cream. “Try some.”
    Definitely different from the ninety-nine-cent, no-name brand I used. The cream was smooth and thick and it smelled good enough to eat. She told me that when she and her husband lived in a village outside of London, there had been a field of lavender growing near their cottage. Cottage? She said it turned her on to the amazing scents in nature and she lost the nose for the toxic chemical perfumes in so many products. Olivia was the only person I ever met who could say stuff like that and make it sound normal. It also explained the sort of English accent she talked with, but there was something else in her voice I couldn’t quite place. Anyway, I was wondering how she felt about Jovan Musk, since I thought that might be natural, when she told me how she started making creams while she was pregnant. They had moved back to the States and she detested the stuff in the pink bottles. I had to agree with her. Baby lotion always made me kind of gag too, but it wouldn’t have occurred to me in a hundred years to make my own. Nobody I knew just made things like that—it was like making water. I said her cream was great. She told me to keep the jar, which I thought was really nice. People don’t just give you stuff.
    Then she passed me a stack of labels and a mug full of pens. She printed something for me to copy and explained she’d been so busy making cream to fill her first order that she forgot about labels. “Don’t know what your handwriting is like, but it’s got to be better than mine.”
    Now, I was never the greatest student, but people used to borrow my notes to copy when they were absent because they were always so neat. Handwritten labels sounded old-fashioned, but if that’s what she wanted…So I sized them up, figured out where the words should go. Then in my best script I wrote, “Markson & Daughter, Almond Ginger Body Crème, 8 ounces.”
    â€œ Brilliant. ” Olivia practically hugged me, but I’m sure I looked at her like I don’t know you that well. “Definitely destiny. Keep writing. I’ll go fill jars. The order is due tomorrow.”
    So I wrote and thought how this job was a piece of cake so far. Olivia worked in the kitchen and told me how she had made diapers, crib sheets and baby food for her daughter Hillary too, so I knew for sure she was a little off. That, and she didn’t eat meat, fish or anything with eyes. I told her I loved my burgers and fries and she didn’t hold it against me—said she’d make me a veggie burger one day. A few weeks later she did, with some soy cheese. It was nasty.
    I didn’t say much about myself. What was there to