Character Analysis
A Beautiful Child
Henrietta and Day's second child is little more than a few pictures in the Lacks family memory. Deborah doesn't even learn about Elsie's existence until well after her older sister's death at Crownsville State Hospital.
We do know a few things about her. She can't speak or hear and seems to have been affected by other developmental delays. Elsie also suffered from epilepsy. Skloot tells us that these conditions were likely caused by congenital syphilis, passed from Henrietta to her child. We also know that she was beautiful, like her mother.
In fact, this is the first thing that most people notice about Elsie from her childhood pictures. In them, she is lovely and clearly well cared for by her doting mother. But this isn't the only picture that we get of Elsie in this book.
Shocking Discovery
Nobody ever visited Elsie after Henrietta died. Deborah can't rest until she and Skloot find out what happened to Elsie at Crownsville, but what she finds is more than she bargained for. In Elsie's autopsy report—one of only a handful that survived from that time—they retrieve a photo of the young girl that clearly shows extreme abuse. Their image of a beautiful girl loved by her mother is shattered.
The story of Elsie Lacks' treatment at Crownsville is all too common: there were more than 2,700 "patients" at the facility in the year that she died, many of them subjected to cruel experiments and neglectful and abusive care. The distraught Deborah leaves the facility with another bitter truth: "[...] they didn't have the money to take care of black people." (275).