removal just exchanges one disfigurement for another
Ewell decides this is what gives profundity to the tattoo-impulse’s profound irrevocability: Having a tatt removed means just exchanging one kind of disfigurement for another.
Context
The irrevocability doubled: even undoing the impulsive mark leaves a mark, the removed tattoo trading one disfigurement for the steel-wool scar of its erasure. It is the shape of the whole regret the House lives inside — some consequences of what you did under the influence cannot be erased, only exchanged, and the scar of the trying is itself part of the reckoning.