Page 4 of Lennox Lane

She would get out. She would become everything Jeanette swore she was not. And one day, when the world learned her name, nobody would ever be able to say Lane Sanders had survived because somebody saved her. She would survive because she saved herself.

At seventeen, Lane Sanders had learned that survival was a skill. One she practiced daily.

The years since that crumpled report card had hardened her in some ways and sharpened her in others. Jeanette’s cruelty hadn’t disappeared. If anything, it evolved. What began as resentment had fermented into something uglier and meaner. Despite every effort Jeanette made to break her, Lane kept growing like a rose forcing itself through concrete.

Seventeen-year-old Lane stood five feet seven with long legs, thick thighs, wide hips, a narrow waist, and a flat stomach. She had the kind of body women paid trainers to achieve, and men noticed whether she wanted them to or not. Jeanette hated it, and Lane knew she did because every compliment Lane received was met with a sneer. Every achievement was met with criticism. Every sign that Lane might become something more than the circumstances she’d been born into seemed to infuriate her mother.

The irony was that Lane had earned every curve honestly. Jeanette rarely gave her bus fare. She claimed she didn’t have it despite somehow always finding money for liquor, cigarettes, and whatever man happened to be occupying her bed that week. So Lane walked three miles to school and the same three back home. Rain, heat, or cold, it didn’t matter. Then she’d joined the cross-country team and discovered running would become her therapy since she wouldn't dare ask Jeanette about the possibility of sitting on a professional’s couch. Every mile was another argument she didn’t have to hear and another insult she didn’t have to absorb in that apartment.

Her part-time job as a page had her shelving books at the library, providing another solace for her to dwell in. She read and checked out so many materials that she knew she made the right decision keeping this completely to herself. Jeanette didn’t know about it, which meant she couldn’t ruin it. Her paycheck wasn’t much, but it was enough for toiletries, thrifted clothes, and bus fare when the weather was bad.

As Lane flourished, Jeanette continued to deteriorate. Alcohol wasn’t enough anymore. It had become routine for Lane to come home and find pills and powder on the ragged coffee table along with men who always seemed to know where to her mother find the next high. The apartment became a revolving door of strangers, and Lane learned to lock her bedroom door. She memorized which floorboards creaked and made sleep lightly a habit because in her life safety was often an illusion.

Though her extracurricular activities kept her away from home as much as possible, eventually she always had to go back. On a rainy October evening, everything changed. Lane had just finished a shift at the library and returned home later than usual, noticing the apartment was strangely quiet. No television, no music, no male voice she didn't recognize. Just Jeanette passed out on the couch with a pipe beside her.

That should’ve been her warning. She knew Jeanette’s latest boyfriend was there because, much like her mother, he didn't work. Lane couldn’t remember his name. Only that he smelled like cigarettes and the way he stared at her made her uncomfortable. She hurried into the bathroom before retreating to her room, barely having time to close the door before it pushed back open. Her stomach dropped as her mother’s creepy crackhead boyfriend stood in the doorway smiling, making her skin crawl.

“What the hell are you doing?” she yelled.

His gaze traveled over her slowly, and she felt herself getting into fight-or-flight mode.

“You all grown up, ain’t you?”

Lane moved immediately, trying to escape, but he blocked her path. What followed happened fast. He grabbed her, pulling her to him, trying to kiss her. She was fueled by adrenaline and refused to go down without a fight. Years of cross-country conditioning and carrying her own groceries mixed with fighting for every inch of peace she possessed. Lane drove her knee upward hard enough to fold him in half. She shoved past him and sprinted into the living room.

“Mama!”

Jeanette barely looked up.

“Your man just tried to⁠—”

The words died in Lane’s throat because her mother wasn’t horrified, concerned, or angry. She looked annoyed that her high was being disturbed, if anything.

“What now?” Jeanette slurred.

“He cornered me in the bathroom.”

Jeanette blinked and laughed. “Oh, please.”

Lane stared at her with tears in her eyes. “He tried to… he tried to touch me!”

Jeanette rolled her eyes. “You think every man wants you. You trying to take my man now?”

The room seemed to tilt as disbelief washed over me. The words landed harder than any slap I’d felt at her hands growing up. Her mother was looking directly at her and choosing him. Just like she always chose any and everything but her, including her damn self.

“You ain’t nothing but a fast little bitch,” Jeanette snapped.

Lane finally broke. It was like a rope that had been fraying for years finally giving way. The desperate need for her mother’s love left her with no hope for a happy, healthy life with Jeanette Sanders.

There was nothing to save, no love to wait for, and nothing that would fix them. Without another word, she turned around and walked to her room, pulled her old duffel bag from beneath the bed, and started packing. Clothes went into the duffel. Everything else went into a trash bag. Her books, notebooks, and college acceptance letters she’d already started receiving went into her backpack.

The life she’d built in secret was being uprooted to who knows where. As she packed, Jeanette never came to check on her or see what she was doing. Twenty minutes later, Lane walked out the front door carrying everything she owned. The apartment door closed behind her, and that was the last time she ever lived with her mother.

The first few months on her own were brutal. She slept wherever she could. Friends’ couches, cheap motels that didn’t care about I.D. as long as the money was green. Survival introduced her to choices she never imagined she’d make. Using fake documents and a fake ID, Lane became someone else at night—a midnight ballerina who pulled men into the fancies Lavender Haze sold them.

The stage lights didn’t care where she came from. The customers didn’t care about report cards or scholarships. Nobody cared about the bruises she carried beneath her smile. They cared about the fantasy, and selling the fantasy paid. Lane hated parts of the job, but she appreciated what it gave her. She no longer had to wonder where her next meal was coming from or if someone was waiting to corner her in the bathroom.

Her profession came with men trying to threaten her safety because they were dogs who assumed that shaking ass on a pole came with a side of cat. Men looked at her on stage and decided they knew her based on the way she moved beneath the lights—leading to them creating stories about what kind of woman she must be. Some offered money and most offered bullshit promises they wouldn’t keep, but they dressed it up romantically. Many of them shot their shot, taking her rejection in stride. A few got handsy, and security whooped their asses and tossed them out. Lane was thankful she’d never encountered a Myron ass nigga, but she still kept a razor blade under her tongue just in case.