Red at the Bone

Music fills Melody’s grandparents’ brownstone Brooklyn home. At the top of the stairs, she takes in the Black bodies breathing life into the orchestra. Through the window, she sees White passersby pausing to listen to the musicians’ rendition of Prince’s risqué song “Darling Nikki.” The room is also filled with color; the colors of her grandmother’s sorority—that her mother would never pledge—and her grandfather’s fraternity. Melody is finally 16. She wears the dress her mother, Iris, was meant to wear during her own ceremony but didn’t because Melody was already growing in her belly. Melody’s eyes find Iris at the bottom of the stairs, but she quickly looks away to find her father—or just anyone but Iris.

Earlier they’d bickered over Melody’s choice as she struggled to pull on stockings, corset, and garters. At some point in their lives, everything between them had become stained. Iris’s disapproval of the music angers Melody; this is her ceremony, not her mother’s. As years of distance rises in Melody, the only word she can think of is “dissipate” (7). Instead, she vocalizes that Iris should have waited and that her mother regrets having her.