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Clover and Lacks Town
Henrietta’s relatives all remember her pristine fingernails and toenails, which she kept painted a vibrant red. Indeed, her female cousins only understood how sick she was once they saw how chipped her nails were becoming, as she was too weak to continue painting them. Meanwhile, the nails mean something quite different for Mary Kubicek, George Gey’s assistant. When she attends Henrietta’s autopsy, the sight of Henrietta’s painted nails makes her realize for the first time that HeLa came from the suffering of a real human being.
Henrietta’s Fingernails and Toenails Quotes in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks quotes below all refer to the symbol of Henrietta’s Fingernails and Toenails. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 12
Quotes
Mary’s gaze fell on Henrietta’s feet, and she gasped: Henrietta’s toenails were covered in chipped bright red polish. “When I saw those toenails,” Mary told me later, “I nearly fainted. I thought, Oh jeez, she’s a real person. I started imagining her sitting in her bathroom painting those toenails, and it hit me for the first time that those cells we’d been working with all this time and sending all over the world, they came from a live woman. I’d never thought of it that way.”
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Henrietta’s Fingernails and Toenails Symbol Timeline in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The timeline below shows where the symbol Henrietta’s Fingernails and Toenails appears in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5: Blackness Be Spreadin All Inside
...no one remembers Henrietta feeling ill. The author describes Henrietta’s beauty, especially noting her well-kept fingernails and toenails, which she always paints red. Sadie describes Henrietta’sfriendly nature. The only person who...
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Chapter 12: The Storm
...saving pieces of her tumors. As she watches Gey work, Mary is struck by Henrietta’s toenails with their chipped, red nail polish. In the present, Mary recounts seeing the toenails and...
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...and Fred, meanwhile, have spent the day digging a grave. When Sadie sees Henrietta’s chipped toenail polish , she begins to cry; “Henrietta would rather have died than let her polish get...
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Chapter 28: After London
...grows angrier, falling silent only when Deborah asks Mary to tell the story about Henrietta’s toenail polish .
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Chapter 34: The Medical Records
...from staying up with the records, Rebecca eats breakfast with Deborah, who has painted her fingernails red (just like her mother’s). Deborah reassures Rebecca that, “We’re okay.”
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