Red at the Bone

Chapter 1 establishes the major setting and introduces one of the main characters of the text. Melody speaks to readers through a poetic, first-person lens, describing the music filling her grandparents’ home in a melodic cadence. The opening lines’ focus on music is important; music—particularly characters’ relationships to music—is a motif used frequently by Woodson. In this scene, the music lifts Melody above the others in the room. It also serves as a source of conflict between Melody and Iris. Their relationship is clearly strained, evinced by Melody’s insistence in calling her mother Iris and their harsh words passed through clenched teeth. Melody’s choice of song, the risqué and beloved “Darling Nikki,” is an odd choice for the teen; when her mother tries to initiate a conversation about sex, Melody preaches abstinence, becoming flustered, and cannot even utter the word sex. The song, then, highlights the thematic importance of desire. Desire will be explored in many ways as the novel progresses, but Chapter 1 presents Melody as a product of unmitigated, naïve desire. She was born of youthful passion to two teens who didn’t quite understand what their bodies could do.

The chapter’s focus on Melody’s age centers the narrative as an adaptation of the bildungsroman genre; as Melody descends the stairs, she is ascending into adulthood. The ceremony is a marker of that and of her family’s’ expectations for her to inherit and continue their legacy. Legacy, inheritance, and narrative are examined throughout the text to articulate each character’s relationship to generational trauma and familial ties. The most important moment of Chapter 1 is the tense interaction between Melody and Iris as Melody dresses. The clothing Melody struggles to don, because it is the very outfit Iris was meant to wear at her ceremony, represents the roles Melody took on in place of her mother in their family. She has inherited her mother’s life and every expectation her grandparents have.

Iris’s comments reveal that being a mother was never something she wanted. Though she wanted Melody, her admission that she didn’t realize motherhood would follow pregnancy indicates more than teenage naivete. It shows that the distance between Melody and Iris stems from Iris’s resentment towards her unplanned pregnancy and Melody’s ability to detect this resentment to a degree. This sets up the novel’s consideration of parent/child relationships and how specific parenting styles have long-term effects on children.

Aubrey is introduced in Chapter 2, and so is his parenting style. His memory of Melody’s conception—his crying out and then apologizing to Iris—is a stark contrast to the profound joy he conveys in watching Melody. This paternal pride is permeated with uncertainty as he fidgets about, suggesting his actions have always been second-guessed in his family. The themes of inheritance and legacy are emphasized through physicality with Aubrey; Aubrey’s uncertainty in self derives from his inability to see himself in his mother, as well as not having a father in his life. Despite his powerful connection to his mother, Aubrey communicates a lack of roots and, therefore, an unstable sense of self.

Furthermore, the chapter introduces the gross disparity between classes represented by Aubrey and Iris’s relationship. Food, here, is used to denote class; by “dipping his fingers into cans of Vienna sausage” (34), Aubrey reveals a childhood about survival, dissimilar to Iris’s upbringing of catered buffets and tailored dresses. One’s relationship to food is an intimate, often vulnerable thing. Access to food is not equal and, consequently, results in associations created in childhood that mark class into adulthood. In this way, the novel marks Aubrey as an outsider.

Chapter 3 works to introduce the importance of ambition to Iris. Once at college, Iris can finally catch up to the goals she’d set long ago. This ambition highlights what little interest Iris actually has in motherhood; she can only see “a future with herself in it—alone” (38). This ambition creates a thread between class and education for Iris. The expectations she has for herself are those she’s inherited from her parents: go to college and get a good job. She also betrays a deep-seated class consciousness in that she associates success with degrees and capitol, but primarily—in line with Aubrey’s chapter—with food. The future she envisions never included Aubrey precisely because she doesn’t associate him with her class. He, instead, is marked by a “tiny darkened apartment” and “margarine” (41). When she is derisive about margarine, laughing and clarifying that it is not real butter, Iris is drawing a clear line between her and Aubrey—a line declaring that she will have access to things he never will.

The greatest source of conflict in Iris’s chapter, though, comes through her struggle with her identity as a mother. Though she asserts that she wanted Melody, cradling her pregnant belly as her mother screamed and beat down on her, Iris’s narration is tinged with regret: “Fifteen. I wasn’t even anybody yet” (44). At 15, Iris couldn’t understand what being pregnant truly meant. Though Iris, Woodson makes a careful distinction between what it is to want something now and to live with it later. Despite loving Melody, Iris’s decision to keep a baby when she is still on precipice of childhood herself had ramifications she could not anticipate. This introduces another major consideration of the text: the lasting impact of decisions made in youth. With that split-second choice to keep Melody, Iris altered her own life and the lives of those around her. This theme, then, ties into inheritance and legacy, demonstrating the generational impact Iris’s decision had.