Dragonfly by Jax Hill 

Shayla really was in a fix, the Dunker punk, Kurt explained. She lived with her grandma who was 60 years old and worked every day as a teacher’s aid so she could provide for her grand-kids, their mama having left long ago. Shayla herself was only 17; she had the baby at 16, and there was no daddy in the picture — not hers, nor her baby’s. As Kurt asked her about her life, this was the picture she painted: she wanted designer clothes for her little girl (and herself) plus the attentions of a man named Zeke, or the equally ghetto fabulous Mtrane. Was that so much to ask?

“Let me get this straight,” Kurt had said. “Your whole plan for your future is to dress nice, and dress your baby nice, and get with one of these two men?” Shayla admitted, these were the things that would make her happy; and maybe a car.

Kurt, wise beyond his punk years, told her, “Shayla, I think I see how the wheels came off. Your life is about shallow things. Really, it’s about nothing. We need to make your life about something. We need to make your life about love. Now, who in your life is really deserving of your love?”

“My baby and Zeke or Mtrane,” she responded readily.

“How about your baby and your grandma?” Kurt responded. “The baby, because you brought her into this world, you’re the only one she has, and she’s the only one that’s fully yours. And your grandma, because she has taken care of you, all your life. Zeke and Mtrane are certainly worthy of being loved, but I think you have to start closer to home, and build out from there.”

Wasn’t that what Torstein had told us? To love everyone, you had to start by loving the people closest to you, and then work outward.

“The problem you’re facing right now, that everyone’s dissing you because you’re a bad mama, that isn’t the real problem,” Kurt informed Shayla. “That’s just a symptom of what’s really wrong. What’s really wrong is that you’re wasting your passions where they’re not doing any good, you follow?” He could tell Shayla didn’t really follow; her whole mindset had been geared toward the clothes, the boys, and maybe a car, to impress all her friends. Now all her friends were laughing at her, uploading the awful video of her baby in the street to You Tube, and telling her she was an unfit mother.

“Even if you get the clothes and the man and the car at this point, you’re still facing a world of persecution,” Kurt said.

“Say what?”

“Your friends are still going to hold this against you. You’ve got to repair that breach, devote yourself to your baby, and helping your grandma, and then, when everyone can see you’re a good mother, and a good grand-daughter, then we’ll look back and see whether the things you think are important now are really so important to you.”

As Kurt was telling the story, he smiled, and I wondered: what made a girl like Shayla, who lived in a whole different world than the surfer punk Kurt, listen to him? And the only answer I could come up with was: love. She must have sensed that he’d been touched by Torstein’s love, and now he was showing her the way to put that love in action. He had nothing to gain from her transformation ... he just loved, and he wanted to share love.

He turned to us now, as he told the story, turned to Torstein, and, smiling, said:

“It worked. It’s working. She agreed to try it, for 90 days, to give up the party life, to stay out of the hunt for those two guys, to help her grandma around the house, maybe look for a job ... I mean, we can’t expect miracles, but this is kind of a miracle. Maybe that video of her baby in the street is just what she needed to open her eyes to the power of love, you know?”

Kurt’s partner, another surfer punk just as tan and blond, said, “We sent her to a pregnancy assistance center. I mean, she already has the baby, but they have continuing education and stuff. She’s going to try it, at least for three months. I know it’s going to work.”

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