Read Online The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - Free Book Online Page B

manic and confusing forty-five minutes that jumped without warning, and in no particular order, from the 1920s to the 1990s, from stories of her father to her grandfather, cousins, mother, and total strangers.
    “Nobody never said nothing,” she told me. “I mean, where my mother clothes at? Where my mother shoes? I knew about her watch and ring, but it was stolen. That was after my brother killed that boy.” She talked about a man she didn’t name, saying, “I didn’t think it was fit for him to steal my mother medical record and autopsy papers. He was in prison for fifteen years in Alabama. Now he sayin JohnHopkin killed my mother and them white doctors experimented on her cause she was black.
    “My nerve broke down,” she said. “I just couldn’t take it. My speech is coming back a little better—I almost had two strokes in two weeks cause of all that stuff with my mother cells.”
    Then suddenly she was talking about her family history, saying something about “the Hospital for Crazy Negroes” and her mother’s great-grandfather having been a slave owner. “We all mixed. And one of my mother sisters converted to Puerto Rican.”
    Again and again, she said, “I can’t take it anymore,” and “Who are we supposed to trust now?” More than anything, she told me, she wanted to learn about her mother and what her cells had done for science. She said people had been promising her information for decades and never delivering it. “I’m sick of it,” she said. “You know what I really want? I want to know, what did my mother smell like? For all my life I just don’t know anything, not even the little common little things, like what color she like? Did she like to dance? Did she breastfeed me? Lord, I’d like to know that. But nobody ever say nothing.”
    She laughed and said, “I tell you one thing—the story’s not over yet. You got your work cut out for you, girl. This thing’s crazy enough for three books!”
    Then someone walked through her front door and Deborah yelled straight into the receiver, “Good morning! I got
mail?”
She sounded panicked by the idea of it. “Oh my God! Oh no! Mail?!”
    “Okay, Miss Rebecca,” she said. “I got to go. You call me Monday, promise? Okay, dear. God bless. Bye-bye.”
    She hung up and I sat stunned, receiver crooked in my neck, frantically scribbling notes I didn’t understand, like
brother
=
murder, mail
=
bad, man stole Henrietta’s medical records
, and
Hospital for Negro Insane?
    When I called Deborah back as promised, she sounded like a different person. Her voice was monotone, depressed, and slurred, like she was heavily sedated.
    “No interviews,” she mumbled almost incoherently. “You got togo away. My brothers say I should write my own book. But I ain’t a writer. I’m sorry.”
    I tried to speak, but she cut me off. “I can’t talk to you no more. Only thing to do is convince the men.” She gave me three phone numbers: her father; her oldest brother, Lawrence; and her brother David Jr.’s pager. “Everybody call him Sonny,” she told me, then hung up. I wouldn’t hear her voice again for nearly a year.
          I started calling Deborah, her brothers, and her father daily, but they didn’t answer. Finally, after several days of leaving messages, someone answered at Day’s house: a young boy who didn’t say hello, just breathed into the receiver, hip-hop thumping in the background.
    When I asked for David, the boy said, “Yeah,” and threw the phone down.
    “Go get Pop!” he yelled, followed by a long pause. “It’s important. Get Pop!”
    No response.
    “Lady’s on the phone,” he yelled, “come on …”
    The first boy breathed into the receiver again as a second boy picked up an extension and said hello.
    “Hi,” I said. “Can I talk to David?”
    “Who this?” he asked.
    “Rebecca,” I said.
    He moved the phone away from his mouth and yelled, “Get Pop, lady’s on the phone about his wife