1951–1965

After Henrietta’s death, nobody told the young Lacks children what had happened to their mother. In the 1950s, serious illnesses were not discussed openly in families, and children were expected not to ask questions. Because of this, the disappearance of their mother remained a mystery to them for years.

Day had to work two jobs to support his family, so Lawrence, the oldest of Henrietta’s children, dropped out of school to take care of Sonny, Deborah, and Joe. At sixteen, Lawrence got himself a voter registration card that said he was eighteen. This helped him get into pool halls when he wanted a break—but it also got him drafted into the army to fight in the Korean War.

When Lawrence left for the army, Henrietta’s cousin Ethel and her husband Galen moved into Day's house to care for the three youngest children. Ethel had hated Henrietta, and she tortured the kids. She fed them next to nothing, and she kept the refrigerator and cupboards padlocked shut so they could not steal food. In the summers, she took them to Clover, Virginia and forced them to work in the tobacco fields all day with no food or water. If any one of them stopped for a break without permission, she whipped all of them for it.

Joe, the youngest boy, bore the brunt of Ethel’s anger. She whipped him more than the others and often locked him in the basement for long periods of time. He grew up to be an intensely angry person. One of his childhood hobbies was climbing onto the roof and shooting his BB gun at passersby.

When Lawrence came home from the army, he moved into his own house. For several years he did not know that Ethel was abusing his siblings. He found out around the time that he got married, so he and his new wife, Bobbette, took in Sonny, Deborah, and Joe.

This new living arrangement ended the life of abuse for Joe and Sonny, but not for Deborah. Ethel’s husband Galen sexually molested her for years, and more than once he tried to rape her. Once he saw her with a boy her age, and he punched her in the face out of jealousy. Deborah did not tell anyone about his abuse because she worried she would get in trouble. However, Bobbette knew that something was wrong, and she encouraged Deborah to fight off any relative who attempted to molest her. She said:

I know your mother and father and all the cousins all mingled together in their own way, but don’t you ever do it…Cousins are not supposed to be havin sex with each other.

After that, Deborah fought Galen and other boy cousins who tried to touch her sexually. This gave her a reputation for meanness, but she did not mind. She began to think more often about her mother and her sister Elsie, who was now dead as well. Deborah wondered if Henrietta and Elsie were ever victims of rape or sexual molestation. She often asked questions about them, but nobody seemed to know the answers.