This is part two in a five part series.
Henrietta
Lacks, you find is the woman behind the infamous HeLa cells, the woman no one
knows of, and whose life, as extraordinary as it was, is forgotten. She grew up
in a small town called Clover where she was raised by her Grandfather on an old
tobacco farm, its roots tracing back to the time of slavery. It is in this town
that Henrietta grew up with the man she would marry – David Lacks – and from here would move to Baltimore, where
she’d first discover something was wrong with her. It all started with blood, a
bath, and a knot in a place a knot oughtn’t have been. Part One: Life of the book is predominantly set during the early
fifties, when the Civil Rights Movement was a dream, Dr. King had yet to march,
Rosa Parks hadn’t taken a stand, and Malcolm X was just getting out of prison.
To the most of the United States Segregation was law. If a black man or woman
needed to be treated medically they’d have to find a hospital that was dictated
to treat only African Americans and if they went to a white only hospital they
were likely to be kicked out, no matter the extent of their wounds. For
Henrietta, she’d either have to take the train in from Baltimore to Johns Hopkins
or have her husband Day drive her there around his working schedule. It was
inside the Segregated walls of Johns Hopkins Hospital that Henrietta would be
diagnosed with and treated for cancer, it would be weeks later until she told
anyone about it. Upon the instructions of Dr. George Gey, a portion of both of
Henrietta’s healthy cells and tumor cells were collected then shipped down to
his lab where his assistant Mary Kubicek “…were sure Henrietta’s cells would
die just like all the rest.” And her healthy cells did die in culture, but her
tumor cells, well they reproduced every twenty-four hours.
Now
normally I am not one for science of any kind, it is boorish and rather frankly
disgusting. Coming from a strictly Fascist/ Lutheran German household, I was
always taught that as a girl there were things a young lady ought to talk about
and things ladies never talk about. Intestates, bowel movements, and medical
journals were off-limits, how to dry potpourri, fold a cloth napkin into a
swan, quote the classics, and bake the softest Frankfurter
Kranz[1]
for birthdays however, was basically how large portions of my childhood was
spent. So when I got to the
section where Skloot details Gey’s
laboratory and how they grew cells, I got an instant sense of
fore-boding. I could practically hear my Grandma saying to me “Why are you
bothering with such brutish things Annie? Come supper is about ready, help fold
the napkins.” However, I had to read on and am glad I did, Skloot’s writing eluded
me at every turn, not entirely fluid, not so rigid or complex, and not as crud
as I though the book would be. I’ve never enjoyed the inner workings of a
laboratory before. Then she turned her focus onto Gey, where she dived into his
past as a poor man who took pains to put himself through Medical school with
the sort of dry wit the Bronte sisters would use. She has a way of making any
character relatable to a point where the reader would sympathize with them by
simply saying something like this: “George dug a small coal mine in the hill
behind his parents’ house. He’d crawl through… with a pick, filling buckets for
his family and neighbors so they could keep their houses warm.”
[1]
Frankfurter Kranz: A Buttercream filled Bundt cake basically. It would be
topped clusters of chopped nuts, have peeks of hazelnut frosting positioned
around the circle cut on the top of each peek would be a cherry. My Grandpa use
to call it the Frankfurter Crown, symbolizing Frankfurt which was known as the
crown city of the German Empire.
