The baby girl is called Lani because her mother, Nell, feels the name escape from her mouth like a child’s laugh when she says it aloud. She first saw the name in the issue of Seventeen, which she hid behind in her hometown’s only obstetrician office. It was November 1971, and Nell was sixteen and already eight months pregnant as she read about fashions from the previous July. There was a layout for swimsuits—bikinis and maillots in Hawaiian prints. A model with a glossy pink-and-white smile pretended to toss a beach ball. Her name was Lani.
Lani is a good baby. She sleeps as Nell sits alone and watches the ball drop on the muted TV in her parents’ family room. At midnight, she stares at Dick Clark’s frozen grin and earmuff headphones while voiceless revelers make peace signs and devil horns with their fingers and mouth, “Happy New Year” and “Hi, Mom” to people who miss them.
Come spring, Lani laughs for the first time, and Nell gives in to her parents’ demand to date Horace, the young deacon at church—the least she can do after the humiliation she caused them. That or get the hell out. With no alternatives, Nell imagines fates worse than a buttoned-up preacher in polyester highwaters.
Weekly, Horace takes Nell to the Sirloin Corral for tube steak, mashed potatoes, and all-you-can-eat salad. He’s drinking his usual “lemonade, no ice” when he proposes to her with a list of conditions: 1. He will only adopt Lani if her name becomes Esther. (Lani is a whore’s name, and God told him in a dream that He prefers Esther.) 2. His word is final on all matters of dispute, as he is the head of the household. 3. Last but not least, Nell (also per God) must do penance for her sin of premarital sex by sleeping on the floor for the first month of their marriage. Nell bites into a cherry tomato that pops quietly between her teeth.
The wedding is short; the months that follow are long. A few years pass, and Nell finds her little girl, Esther, staring at the pink frosting flowers and unlit candles on her cake. She isn’t allowed to touch it until after dinner. Horace tells her that Jesus is watching. She puts her hands on her tiny hips and asks, “Jesus, who?” For penance, she spends the rest of her birthday in the broom closet. At 12:01, Nell scoops up her daughter from the closet floor, brushes a dust bunny from her hair, and whispers “Lani” in her ear.
The years creep by like steps in an egg race. Navigating rules and whispers, Esther reaches each milestone. She studies hard, scores high on college entrance exams, and brings home brochures and scholarship applications. Nell asks if any of the universities are in Hawaii. Horace says they will discuss the matter. His word is final, so Esther goes to beautician school and works in the church office to pay for tuition.
After graduation, Esther makes decent money at the J.C. Penney salon and wants her own apartment. Horace says no, but Esther is twenty-one. She moves to the city, and Horace disowns her. He does not want God to associate them with a disobedient child.
The city is hard. Esther can’t get a stylist position at a salon, so she takes a front-desk job at a barber shop in a sketchy neighborhood. She spends days sweeping dead hair and emptying ashtrays. Her boss, Tommy, talks like a hitman and tells her she smells fresh. He wants her to dance at the club he has an interest in down the street. Under the right conditions, she could be a real money-maker. She’d just have to loosen up the goods, pencil in a Cindy-Crawford mole, and change that god-awful name. Esther declines.
For a while, her mother sends notes but stops abruptly. Lonely nights multiply, and the darkness holds Esther captive like a roach in a glue trap. She prays for whispers that never come. Still, she invites her parents to the city for her 22nd birthday. There’s no response, but she plans the day’s details, fantasizing that they will find her. With next month’s rent money, she buys a skin-tight dress in a loud floral print. She does her hair and makeup like a whore and arranges herself on her dingy bedspread.
Her parents don’t show, but Tommy does. Unable to find his shop key, he stops by Esther’s place to see if she has it and discovers her on the bed. Waiting for the ambulance, he watches her take shallow breaths and thinks her clothes and makeup look pretty good.
When she recovers, Esther tells Tommy she’ll work at the club under three conditions: 1. She will change her name to Lani. 2. She will do the dancers’ hair and makeup and arrange off-location assignments. (She knows they work as escorts and entertain at bachelor parties.) 3. Last but not least, she will not dance, escort, or entertain. (She is Lani—a hairdresser, not a whore.)
Lani dolls up his money-makers better than ever, so Tommy doesn’t understand why dancer turnover escalates. When new girls arrive, Lani livens their dead eyes with iridescent powders and turns their limp lips into glossy pink smiles. She finds joy in whispering to them about setting their own conditions, and her soft voice seeps into the girls’ skin like the smooth, liquid foundation she strokes on their cheeks.
As the dancers continue to quit and profits plunge, one of Tommy’s associates loses interest in the club. He riddles Tommy with bullets, catching Lani in the spray. Her teeth pop and shatter as she dies, mouth wide open like she’d been caught laughing.
When Horace and Nell receive the news, Horace says people make their own beds. Nell whispers, “Shut the hell up,” and spends the night of her daughter’s funeral in the broom closet.
~
Michele Alouf lives in Richmond, Virginia and holds a master’s degree in creative writing from Harvard Extension School. She is a founder of the new writers’ collective, Story Street Writers. Her writing is forthcoming or has appeared in Vestal Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, Bridge Eight, Drunk Monkeys, the Wordrunner e‑Chapbook Fiction Anthology–Salvaged, Grim & Gilded, and Sad Girl Diaries.