Red at the Bone

Melody’s ability to recall her birth in Chapter 19 proves how formative early memories and early relationships are to children. What she does remember, particularly Iris’s fear, demonstrate how perceptive Melody has always been to Iris’s unwillingness to mother her. The bottomless hunger Melody describes is further emblematic of their early mother-daughter dynamic: Iris, hesitant and full of fear, and Melody, ravenous for her mother in any way she can access her.

The chapter significantly mentions the piece of caul left on Melody when she emerges. A caul is a remaining piece of membrane that can cover a newborn’s head during childbirth. They are extremely rare and consequently have supernatural associations. In some cultures, the caul is considered a good omen or even magical. Woodson’s decision to include the caul confirms Melody’s fate as intending to heal the trauma of this family. The novel studies how each ancestor’s decisions resulted in the birth of Melody and alludes to Melody’s birth as being a clean slate for so many. This caul, then, symbolizes the goodness Melody brings into the family, marking her birth as a profound shift in the family’s story.

In Chapter 20, Iris’s depression uncovers her sexual history, revealing the source of her emotional unavailability. She becomes sexually active extremely young, and that relationship dictates the tone of every sexual partnership she has for the next 10 years, aside from Jam. The rejection she experiences in seeing someone she’d been vulnerable with for the first time results in her inability to vulnerable again. The desire is natural to her, and she is empowered through pleasure she experiences, but her refusal to love anyone else is a defense mechanism. Even with Aubrey, her memories are stained with the impression that she enjoyed being with him but never loved him the way he loved her. With Jam, though, things were different, and she faces the pain of rejection again. The dazed disconnectedness Iris describes after her interaction with Jam implies that this heartbreak affects her similarly to her first. One of Iris’s greatest unhealed traumas, then, is her experiences with romantic rejection, which ultimately causes more rejection because she is unable to open up and participate in a healthy relationship.

Chapter 21, the final chapter, refuses to tie up all lose ends. Woodson offers no happy endings, nor neat resolutions, because her characters are embodiments of real lives. Some things can never be resolved, but healing can be possible.

First, the memory of Sabe’s final words are symbolic of the trauma she carried with her through her life: fire, representing the burning down of her grandmother’s shop, which had an economical and psychological impact on their family for generations to come; and gold, representing her hopes for providing for her family in the future in a way that can’t be taken or destroyed. Iris can’t decipher this meaning at the time because she, for all her life, ignored Sabe’s stories, neglecting her own connection to the trauma of the Tulsa Massacre.

Then, Woodson refers to the impossibility of healing for Aubrey because of his tragic, early death. Melody and Iris will never know exactly what became of Aubrey, though they have reason to suspect he died in the attack on the Twin Towers, and the uncertain element of his death hinders their pursuit of peace and healing. When Iris remembers Aubrey, she reveals her acknowledgement that she should have let him go early on. If they’d known then who they’d become, so much suffering could have been avoided. But what is important to this novel’s message is the distinction that they couldn’t have known—no one could. The future is unpredictable, and each choice has ramifications that, sometimes, only become apparent decades into the future. Iris loved Aubrey, though. That’s made clear in the agony she suffers the day the Towers fall. As she screams, covered in ash, it is essentially the trauma of Tulsa being relived, and the text implies that, like Tulsa, the pain of this loss can be passed down for generations.

In terms of Iris and Melody’s relationship, healing is still not achieved, but it is also not irrevocably denied. Iris has achieved the freedom she always hoped for; she’s been freed from her familial obligations permanently. However, her description of feeling untethered reveals how grounding familial and cultural ties can be. Losing her family has momentarily severed Iris from her roots, causing her to feel isolated and lost. The text, though, alludes to the possibility of healing if she can mend her relationship with Melody. Significantly, it is Melody who leads them to the stairs where Sabe’s gold may be hidden, and it is Melody that breaks them open with the hammer. Melody’s distinction that she will be okay when Iris asks if they will be okay suggests that Melody is not yet ready to accept Iris. However, Melody’s lead in tearing down an old family structure to find gold is the most powerful piece of symbolism in the text: Melody can heal this family and pave the way by dismantling the rigid structures of previous generations, while honoring their memory.

The final lines of the text are intentionally vague. On the surface, the glowing beneath the stairs is gold—the gold Sabe and Po’Boy left for them to inherit. But it also represents many forms of inheritances and the wealth that can be found in healing. Throughout the novel, these blocks of gold represent so much to the Black families who keep them. They promise a legacy, and they mark the myriad avenues Black Americans had to take to protect their assets. In this final scene, the gold is what ties Iris and Melody together as they move forward from their grief, and it forever connects them to their roots.