Karin Slaughter - Skin Privilege

Lena walked across the weedy strip of land between the motel and the bar, her shoes crunching on broken glass and other debris that had been swept off the road. She passed the motel lobby on the way to her Celica. Though the night air was turning cold, Lena could still feel herself sweating as if she was sitting back in Hank's hellhole of a house.

Grand theft auto. Felony assault.

The file was exactly where she had secreted it two years ago, black tire treads marring the State of Connecticut seal on the outside of the yellowing folder. Lena took it out and for some reason felt the need to hide the file under her shirt as she bolted up the stairs to her motel room. No one was watching her. There was no need for these furtive moves. She still felt guilty, though. Still felt as if someone, somewhere was disapproving.

Maybe it would be better not to know. Ethan may have been calling Hank for money or support or perhaps he'd simply wanted to get in touch with Lena. She had moved from Nan 's and had a new phone number now. Had he sent letters to Nan? Had Nan hidden them from Lena, hoping she could sever the connection?

Lena hooked the do-not-disturb sign on her door. She yanked the curtains closed and sat cross-legged on the bed, still holding the file to her chest. She could feel her beating heart thumping against the thick stack of pages, sweat making the manila folder stick to her skin.

Slowly, she slid the file out from under her shirt.

She ran her hand along the print, tracing the circle of the seal. Her fingers found the edge and she opened the file to find exactly the thing she never wanted to see again: Ethan staring back at her.

The mug shot had been taken a few years before Lena had met Ethan, back when he was eighteen. He'd kept his hair cut short when she knew him, but in the photo, his head was shaved bald. His lips curled into a sneer as he glared at the camera, and the little sign he held in his hand was askew, as if he couldn't be bothered to keep it straight. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, something he never did anymore – or maybe he had stopped hiding his tattoos now that he was back in prison. They would serve him well inside.

ETHAN ALLEN GREEN a/k/a ETHAN ALLEN WHITE a/k/a ETHAN ALLEN MUELLER.

Lena could remember the time Ethan had explained the origins of his name. They were both in his dorm room, squeezed together on his single bed. He was on his back and she had wrapped herself around him so that she wouldn't fall off the narrow twin bed. Ethan was fairly short – he was only a few inches taller than Lena – but his muscles stood out from his body as if they were cut from granite. She'd had her head tucked under his arm, and the sound of his voice had vibrated in her ear.

Sometime around the American Revolution, he told her, Ethan Allen had been the leader of the Green Mountain boys, a group that had pledged its life to Vermont 's independence. During the war, Allen and his crew had captured a British fort. By some accounts he was a military genius, by others an ignorant, cold-blooded killer.

She had thought then as she did now that the namesake was not far off.

Forcible sodomy. Rape.

Lena knew only a little bit about Ethan's life before he'd moved to Grant County. Ethan's father had run out on him when he was a kid. His mother, a rabid racist, had married a man named Ezekiel White, a preacher of some kind. Ethan had changed his name to Green when he dropped out of his skinhead family. Lena had no idea why he didn't go back to Mueller, his biological father's name. Ethan didn't like to talk about his dad.

When Lena had first met Ethan, he had claimed that he was working hard to change himself. Lena had accepted that, even respected it. As time passed, she had told herself there was no way he would be dating her if he still held on to his old beliefs. She was Hispanic – clearly so. She had become roommates with a lesbian – not just any lesbian, but Sibyl's lover. Ethan seemed not to care. He was more than cordial to Nan. He had said that he was in love with Lena, wanted to share the rest of his life with her. He had said that being with her was the only good thing he had ever done with his life. That his words from his mouth so sharply contrasted with the blows from his fists wasn't something she let herself think about too long.

HEIGHT: 5'6" WEIGHT: 160 SEX: MALE HAIR COLOR: BROWN EYE COLOR: BLUE RACE: WHITE

Race. His skin privilege, he called it. His white birthright.

TATTOOS.

There were so many – some Lena had even forgotten about. The arresting officer had documented them all, making notations about their origin, what they symbolized. Lena studied the photographs, really looking at the tattoos for the first time. She had always averted her gaze or kept her eyes closed when he took off his clothes. Even then, some of the images had managed to bleed through.

A row of SS soldiers on the left side of his chest saluted an image of Hitler on the right. Below this was a large black swastika that undulated across his ripped abs. His left arm was covered with scenes of war, soldiers shouldering rifles, their hats emblazoned with the double S. The other arm had barbed wire snaking up it, faint outlines of camp barracks in the background.

How had she touched this body? How had she let this body touch hers?

Lena turned the page, found yet another photograph, Ethan's thick, brown hair had concealed more tattoos. In an arc at the base of his shaved skull were the words Sieg Heil. On the top of his head was another black swastika.

Beside the photo, someone had explained, Hitler salute on back of head generally given after six years of active involvement. Swastika on head usual tag for leaders of North Conn, skinhead group.

The last photo was a close-up of the underside of his left arm. Just at the base of his bicep was the letter A with a dash beside it. A-negative. The cop

had written an explanation on the back of the picture, Hitler's Waff en SS, the Death's Head Battalion who guarded the concentration camps, all had their blood types tattooed under their arms. Symbolizes rank of general in white power movement.

Lena had never asked about the letter under Ethan's arm, never wanted to know the truth of his past. Now, she was confronted with the truth -overwhelmed with it. Every photo was like a slap in the face.

This was the father of the child she had left in some trashcan at the clinic in Atlanta. This was the man with whom she had shared her days, two whole years of her life.

After Ethan had been taken back to prison, Lena had tried and failed miserably to be with another man. Greg Mitchell had lived with her several years before, and it seemed like fate when he reentered her life around the same time Ethan was leaving it. Nothing worked between them, though. She was not that same person from before, something that at first Greg took as a good thing. Later he came to be almost frightened of her.

From the beginning, Lena had tried to hide her true self from Greg, to cloak her darkness and rough edges. She reined in her emotions so much that she spent most of her time with Greg feeling like a shell of what a human being should be. Sex between them was disastrous. After Ethan, she no longer knew how to be with a man who was gentle, how to kiss him and hold him and take pleasure from him instead of pain.

If Angela Adams had stuck around, if she had been a mother to her two young girls instead of abandoning them to Hank, would Lena have ended up with Ethan? Would that defect inside of her, the one that drew her to his violence, his ruthless control, never have been triggered? Or would Lena have ended up like Charlotte Warren, still living in Reece, raising a couple of kids, waiting for her husband to come home from work so she could put supper on the table?