The Wellness Pyramid

The papaya sat uneaten on Mara's desk, its skin freckled with brown like an aging hand. Outside, lightning fractured the sky over Scottsdale, each flash illuminating the corporate pyramid scheme she'd spent three years building—Omega Wellness, a multi-level empire selling overpriced juices to desperate women.

Her phone buzzed. Another text from David: 'Board meeting at 4. Don't be late.'

David, with his orange tan and teeth too white to be natural. David, who'd recruited her from a yoga studio in Santa Monica, promising financial freedom, sisterhood, abundance. Now she sat in his corner office, watching dust motes dance in the artificial light, wondering how her life had become this.

The pyramid structure had seemed elegant then—recruit three, they recruit three, everyone rises together. But somewhere along the way, the sisters became competitors, the abundance trickled up, and Mara found herself fifty thousand dollars in debt, pushing digestive enzymes to single mothers who couldn't afford groceries.

She picked up the papaya, its weight familiar in her hand. Her grandmother had grown them in their backyard in Hilo, had taught Mara to wait until the fruit yielded slightly to pressure, until its perfume filled the air. 'Gracious fruit,' her grandmother called it. 'It gives when it's ready, not before.'

What had she given to lately?

David knocked, then entered without waiting. 'You're eating again.' His eyes flicked to the fruit. 'That stuff rots your teeth from the inside.'

'It's just papaya, David.'

'Everything's just something until it's everything.' He smoothed his tie, already rehearsing his boardroom voice. 'The numbers are down, Mara. Your downline's not producing. You know what happens to non-producers.'

Outside, another flash of lightning, closer now. The storm would break soon.

'Actually,' she said, and something in her voice made David pause, 'I was just thinking about my grandmother.' She picked up her resignation letter from beside the papaya, smoothed it on the desk. 'She used to say that pyramids were built on the backs of the dead, but the living had to carry them.'

The thunder that shook the building masked David's response. When Mara walked out ten minutes later, the storm had broken, rain washing the orange dust from the air, washing everything clean.