Karin Slaughter - Skin Privilege

Hank telling them about their mother was that Angela had been unequivocal on the subject of drugs and alcohol. After years of watching her older brother slowly dig his own grave, she had finally cut him out of her life and vowed never to let him back in. Hank had not cared at the time. He was twenty-six years old. He didn't want family or sex or money or cars. All he was interested in was finding his next high.

According to Hank, the first promise that Angela extracted from her husband, Calvin Adams, was that he would never go out drinking with his fellow officers. Calvin adhered to this – they were very much in love – and seldom touched a drop; certainly, he never drank in front of his young wife. Of course, no one would ever know how long that would have lasted. The couple shared only three months of wedded bliss before Cal pulled over his last speeding violation. The driver shot him twice in the face and drove off, never to be seen again. Lena 's father was dead before his body hit the ground.

Angela's first sign that she was pregnant came at her husband's funeral. Not normally one to be weak-kneed or emotional, she passed out at Calvin's gravesite. Seven months later, she went into the hospital to give birth to twin girls and never came out. Septicemia is rare, but deadly. It took two weeks for the infection to overtake the new mother's systems, shutting down her vital organs one by one until, finally, a decision had to be made to take her off life support. Hank Norton, Angela's closest living relative, had made the decision.

It was, Hank often said, the most difficult thing he had ever done in his life.

It was, evidently, all a lie.

Angela Norton had been a petite woman, very plain looking until she smiled, then there was no way you could not notice her. She had the dark coloring of her Mexican-American mother, unlike her brother, who was pasty as a jar of buttermilk. Another quality Hank did not share with his sister was her extreme devoutness, courtesy of their mother's Catholicism. Angela was passionate about helping people while Hank was passionate about helping himself.

As an adult, Lena knew that every good story has its darkness and light, and now she could see that Hank had always painted himself in the blackest of hues.

Angela Norton had met Calvin Adams at a church fair. He'd been working the raffle for the sheriff's department and despite the fact that gambling was a sin, she wanted her chance to win the basket of baked goods being offered as prize. Angela was a shy girl, just a teenager when she met the dashing young deputy. She was bright and funny, and just about the kindest, most caring person to walk the face of the earth.

Angela and Hank's mother had died at a young age. Car accident. She had no other relatives, and her husband, career military, had been killed in Vietnam when the children were little. Cal was an only child. Both parents had died when he was in his early twenties. He had no other relations in town, no cousins or aunts or uncles that anyone knew of. No family for Lena or Sibyl to visit.

Calvin Adams cut a dashing figure. A bit of a nerd in high school, people had been surprised when he signed up with the sheriff's department.

He had turned into a good cop, though – firm, but fair. Always willing to listen to both sides of an argument. He wore the gun and badge with pride but never lorded it over anybody. Angela and Calvin were in love, very much in love, and what happened to them was tragic.

After watching his sister take her last breath, Hank had taken the newborn Lena and Sibyl from the hospital because he would not leave his own flesh and blood to be raised by the state. Woefully unprepared that first night, he had improvised cribs by lining two dresser drawers with sheets and pillows, nestling his young charges in for the night as he went around his house and systematically destroyed any traces of alcohol.

He often claimed that night was his 'turning point,' that looking down and seeing those two helpless baby girls tucked into his sock drawers, knowing that he was the only thing standing between them and the hairy-chinned woman from children's social services, had given him the strength to turn his back on an old friend.

This was the history Lena had been told. These were the lies she had been spoon-fed all of her life. She could remember rainy afternoons with Sibyl, playing games with Hank's stories. They acted out the tragedy of their parents' short lives, always taking turns being Angela, the best, the kindest, one. Oh, how their parents loved each other. Oh, how they would have loved to hold their twin daughters in their arms. Things would have been different, so very, very different, had they lived.

Or would they?

Hank often claimed that he gave up his addictions the night that he brought his nieces home from the hospital, but Lena had lived through it. She knew the truth. Eight years passed before he really gave it all up. Eight years of weeklong benders and parties that lasted for days and the police sniffing around, and lies… nothing but lies.

She had lived in this house, seen it with her own eyes: all those years and yet she had never suspected that a drug addict would tell her anything but the truth about her own mother and father. Why would he lie about what had happened? What did he have to gain by all those lies?

Lena dried her hair with a towel as she sat on the edge of her bed. She had changed into one of Hank's old dress shirts so that she could get in the shower with him and scrape off some of his filth. He was so thin that she could feel his bones through the rubber kitchen gloves she wore to clean him. What looked like rope burns circled his wrists and ankles, but she knew he had probably caused the damage himself, picking the skin with his fingernails, peeling it away like an orange.

Meth mites. Speed bumps. Crank bugs. There were all kinds of names for the phenomenon that caused meth users to pick, scrape, and dig at their own skin. As part of the police outreach program, Jeffrey taught a drug course at the high school twice a year. Lena could clearly remember the first time she'd been forced to tag along. She'd felt her heart race as she'd heard Jeffrey talk about the chemistry behind the sickness, give an explanation for the self-mutilation she'd seen.

Meth causes the body temperature to rise, which in turn causes the skin to sweat. When the sweat evaporates, it removes the protective oil coating the dermis. This process irritates the nerve endings and makes the addict feel as if something is crawling under his skin. He will do anything to stop the sensation, use any instrument he can find to relieve his suffering.

Lena had once watched Hank take an ice pick to his arm, scratching it repeatedly back and forth until the skin split open like a sack of sugar. Just now, she had seen the scar in the bathroom, the thick rope of flesh that had been sewn back together. There were so many marks on his body, so many painful reminders of what he had been willing to do to himself just to get high.

And still, in all those years, Hank had never, ever been this bad.

Why? Why had he gone back to that life after fighting so hard to leave it? What had made Hank embrace the very thing he despised? There had to be a reason. There had to be a trigger that made him take that first shot.

Was it the drug dealer? Was Hank buying drugs from the man who had killed Lena 's mother?

Lena finished drying her hair. She sat up, looking at herself in the mirror over the dresser. Dark curls sprung around her head, water still dripping at the nape. How could she be back in this place again? How could she be back in this room, on this bed, drying her hair after yet again hosing off caked shit from her uncle's emaciated body?

She was an adult now. She had a job, her own home. She wasn't under Hank's thumb anymore, dependent upon him for anything.