Development

It was then that Layla knew her purpose in life.

She had been blessed, or so she thought, by having been born in the best country on earth. What's more is that she was unusually taking for Newburg, Missouri. Blessed, she wished now to share her gifts with the wretches and the lepers. True, she had done it many times before, when she greeted people she took for uglier, lowlier than herself. But now she needed something more.

She greeted them at the Central Methodist Church every Sunday, finding her work closer to that of the angles. Today she was dressed exceptionally well and the space between her and, say Tricia, with her buck teeth sticking out of her mouth like two tombstones, was quiet a difference. The preacher had finished with her favorite parable, the one about the rich man and Lazarus and she sat up straight as she heard Abrahams' words:

"Besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, that those who want to pass from here to you are not able, and that none may cross over from there to us."

Walking back alone to her mother's ordinary home on Route D she stepped over cracks in the sidewalk. Sure, they wouldn't really break your mother's back, but she just wanted to be sure. She was between the age of fairy tales and the sharpness of reality. Between having to choose between a princess or start thinking about a state school. She was sixteen. She walked on platform heels, twiddling her dirty blond hair between her digits. A car honked. At first she thought it a compliment, but then she realized it was just Randy.

"You coming to the rope swing today?" he said as he fidgeted with his beer coozy.

"Yeah, sure but maybe later. My mom is making look for schools but yeah, later. Save me something to catch a buzz on, ok"

"Sure thang" he winked at her and he and Joe ripped out of gravel shoulder.

Layla opened the door and kicked off her shoes She stepped onto the shag carpet and ran her toes through it. Her feet were killing her. But if bunions were what it took, she thought, then so be it. It was the price to pay to stand out. She let her hair down and went to the pantry. She filched out some slim-fasts. It was silent as a unanswered prayer in the house. Mom must still out at Catfish Bob's with her lady friends, she thought. She grabbed some vitamins and went to her room. On the door a poster of Teen Love read "only come with love!"

She flipped on her laptop and waited as she guzzled the chocolate shakes. She went straight to her mails. Layla had been waiting for a response from her father in California about coming out there for the summer. The thought of change had suited her like a pair of clean matching socks. She would get away and see what it was like, would see the ocean, maybe even some dolphins. She would brush up on other fashions and plus her absence around town would give her some more mystery. But deep down, she had the urge to do something...different.

She loosened her belt and cracked her knuckles. No mail from dad.

She read the subject line of another mail "those who help are those that are helped"

She clicked on it.

"this is a matter of life and death. this is not a joke.

roaring bear is our navajo leader. recently during a novena observance for our lady of guadalupe a fight broke out on our reservation about the sharing of the wooden statue. roaring bears house was burnt by another villager and now he has been badly disfigured.

instrumental in our community roaring bear was responsible for the building of the red-crow casino that has funded the navajo nation college for native americans. yet now with this case of disfiguration he is no longer able to fulfill his role as lead indian in the daily show.

roaring bear desperately needs your help! please, please help him get a skin graft. he needs the help of young skin. for more information write back asap! sincerely weeping owl

please send this mail to 10 people you know. if you do so a positive hex will be placed on a loved one of your family!"

She sobbed as she read the e-mail, the crushing plea being mixed with the burden of her new found calling was an epiphany. She had to cry to make it real.

She did some light research on the subject, passing through the wormholes of Wikipedia hyperlinks,  finally landing on "utilitarianism." The entry read"


"Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness". It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can only weigh the morality of an action after knowing all its consequences."




She was elated to know that she could spread her happiness around, and that the outcome could only crown her superiority. It would be her greatest work yet. 

It would be right to spare some skin on her butt. The birth mark always did bug her anyways. Layla would it interpret like a Rorschach test to mean something not unholy satanic, what with the horns and the way it smiled maliciously in the mirror. Anyway, it was slightly too bubbly as Randy had said last night when they had snuck out and she had told him that she wasn't ready.

She drafted a poignant if not genius email to Weeping Bear, with cut and pasted vocabulary from the American Burn Association. She found it genius because it was her voice, and she had finally found it. Layla promptly dialed the ABA up in Chicago and although they informed her that it was not a cost effective procedure it was not unheard of. It was not covered by most health care providers but their was a clause under Medicare, to be consulted in the coverage issues manual of October 2003, if that should be the case.

Weeping Owl invited her out to Window Rock to meet Roaring Bear "asap" she said again. Layla agreed and said that she was on her way to California shortly and that they should get the paperwork underway. She talked like her mother, Rhonda, a secretary at Rolla Regional Hospital, and knew how to "get it done." After a few pointed questions Weeping Owl "got to the guts" as Rhonda would have said. She spoke of the drop in attendance at the casino theater. She presaged something such as a mist in a dark woods for Window Rock. The yellow pine and spruce whistled in the night of fowl magic. Roaring Owl was, after all, practically the economic web of life on the reservation. Now they had resorted to selling candy bars and native jewelery at the casino entrance but these were no match for the nightly performances of the Squaw-Dance and Mountain Chant. She claimed that after the thunder slept, in winter, the theater was a big family of white tourists. "White Elders" she called them. He needed the skin graft to get back into the show and to continue spreading the Navajo legend.

As she sat there Layla thought about her little old self now playing a part in that legend. How her skin spread on that frame like a flag in the wind of the Arizona desert. She thumbed through the guide book entitled "Dancing Gods":

"Weeping Bear is thoroughly Navajo, for his moccasins are fastened with huge turquoise-studded disks, his hair is in a queue, fine bracelets gleam when he raises his arms, and he wears a scraggy, mandarin mustache. He speaks in sonorous phrases, with harsh undertones, and guttural inflections; it is a picturesque language, Navajo."

Although it hurt her rear, she sat up straight as she watched the spectacle. The lights shot down like plumed arrows into her heart.

Epilogue.

Layla finished her Masters at the Center for Human Rights at UC Berkeley and is now working for an undisclosed international organization in Darfour. 

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