The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

The narrative returns to the present. A few days after speaking with Day, Rebecca drives to Baltimore to meet with Sonny, who has finally called her back. The plan is for Rebecca to page Sonny, at which point he’ll take her to meet Lawrence, Day, and maybe Deborah. Yet when Rebecca checks into her hotel, Sonny doesn’t reply to her page. She then decides to use the Baltimore phone book to look up different Lackses in the area. Before doing so, she reads an old Rolling Stone article from 1976 about the Lackses, by a writer named Michael Rogers. Halfway through the article, Rebecca realizes that Rogers too stayed in her hotel and used the telephone book to call the Lackses. Finally Rebecca digs up an old newspaper article with Henrietta’s former address and uses a map to find Henrietta’s old neighborhood, Turner Station.

Rebecca relates the history of Turner Station, explaining that in the forties, when Henrietta first arrived, “the town was booming.” By the end of WWII, though, more and more houses were demolished to make room for factories, leaving thousands of people homeless, most of them black. People begin moving out of the area, to Baltimore or the country, and the population fell by half.

The article that Rebecca’sfound refers to a woman named Courtney Speed who owns a grocery store and has created a foundation meant to build a Henrietta Lacks museum. When Rebecca arrives at the address of the grocery, however, she finds only an a mobile home with a few men loitering outside. Since Turner Station’s radius is under a mile, Rebecca continues driving around in circles to find the grocery. She finally arrives at the New Shiloh Baptist Church. When she stops, a man named Reverend Jackson comes to her aid. Although he hasn’t ever heard of Henrietta, he offers to take Rebecca to Speed’s Grocery Store.

The two drive back to the mobile home with the men outside, who turn out to be some of Courtney’s sons. Courtney herself warmly welcomes Rebecca. When Courtney hears that Rebecca has come to talk about Henrietta Lacks, however, she becomes terrified, asking if she’s come from “Mr. Cofield.” Rebecca tries to reassure her, telling her that she doesn’t know anyone named Cofield, and that she’s been trying her best to contact the Lacks family. Courtney tells Rebecca to “follow me” in her car.

The car drive ends at the local public library, where a now-excited Courtney tells Rebecca that “February first is Henrietta Lacks day here in Baltimore county.” She is still working on the museum, despite “the Cofield situation,” although Deborah is now afraid to continue. Courtney takes Rebecca into the library, and asks the librarian for “the tape.” The two women then travel to a small beauty parlor that Courtney owns. Courtney promises again that she will tell Rebecca everything she knows as soon as the family gives the okay. She then tells Rebecca to watch the tape, and not to “open this door for nothing or nobody but me.”

Rebecca watches the video: a BBC documentary about Henrietta called The Way of All Flesh. It begins with melodramatic narration and footage of a young black actress dancing. Soon after there is footage of Clover, Henrietta’s childhood home. It ends with an interview with Fred Garret standing near the family cemetery, where Henrietta is buried in an unmarked grave. He marvels at the “miracle” of Henrietta’s cells.

That night back at the hotel, Rebecca gets Sonny on the phone; he won’t meet her, and won’t say why. She asks him to put her in touch with the Lacks family members still living in Clover, but he refuses.