Melody’s Eve
“O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches,” Melody sang, even though Christmas had been over for a week. It was New Year’s Eve, and tomorrow would be the first day of 1964, her tenth birthday!
Melody loved the idea that having a New Year’s birthday meant that the whole world was having a birthday, too. Until now she’d been too young to stay awake past midnight, or to attend the special Watch Night service at their church. Now that she was turning ten, her parents had decided that she was old enough to do both.
“Dee-Dee’s almost double digits!” Her sister Lila playfully tugged at one of Melody’s braids, then reached into the refrigerator and got out the eggs.
“That’s right!” Melody said proudly. Lila was already thirteen, and Melody somehow felt as if she was finally catching up.
“Good morning, Melody,” her mother said, joining the girls in the kitchen. “I see you’re carrying on your calendar-changing tradition!” Bo, the family’s black-and-white mixed terrier, ran in at her heels.
“Yes, I am, Mommy,” Melody said, watching her mother tie on a colorful apron. “Are you about to make my birthday cake?” Her mother’s triple-chocolate layer cakes were so good that Melody couldn’t imagine celebrating anything special without one.
“We are.” Mommy set ingredients on the table: butter, sugar, baking powder, cocoa. Bo must have guessed that something good was coming, because he began to bark. Melody bent down to pet him, and Bo flopped onto his side, waving one paw in the air.
Mommy took out the large mixing bowl and started sifting flour into it. “Lila, will you separate the eggs?”
“Sure. Five, right?”
Mommy nodded at Lila and smiled. “Why, I think soon you’ll be able to make this cake on your own.”
“It’s more fun to bake with you,” Lila said.
One of the things Melody loved most about her family was that they always worked together—to set the table, do chores around the house, or even solve one another’s problems. Big Momma, Melody’s grandmother, called it “harmony.” She was a music teacher, and she said their family was good at putting their voices together to make one great sound. Melody knew that Big Momma didn’t just mean singing. She meant they helped and supported one another in all sorts of ways.
“If I weren’t going to help Poppa decorate the church hall for tonight, I’d help make the cake,” Melody said, standing up.
“Hey! You can’t help make your own birthday cake!” Lila said, cracking an egg against the side of a cup. Melody giggled as the egg almost slipped onto the floor. Bo scrambled up and began to bark again.
The soft swishing of the flour sifter stopped, and her mother looked at Melody. “My baby girl is going to be ten tomorrow!” she said. “Seems like it was just yesterday that you were born.”
“Mommy, I’m not a baby anymore,” Melody reminded her, skipping out to the living room. “I’m about to become double digits, remember?”
Melody glanced at the sunburst clock over the sofa. Her grandfather, Poppa, wouldn’t be picking her up for another half hour. She turned the TV on and waited while it warmed up. When the picture appeared, Melody turned the knob through all the channels, looking for something fun to watch. It was morning and there was no school, so she was hoping for cartoons, or at least a music show. Instead, every station seemed to be running a program that looked back on the year’s news. Melody didn’t really want to be reminded. She reached for the knob to shut the TV off.
“Wait, Dee-Dee!” Melody’s other sister Yvonne called out from the stairs. “Don’t turn it off. I want to watch.”
Yvonne was home from college for the holidays, and Melody was glad to have her back for a few weeks. Now, if only their brother Dwayne were here! This was the first Christmas he’d ever been away, and Melody really missed him. He and his singing group, The Three Ravens, were traveling around the country singing for Motown, the famous record company. Dwayne was a talented musician, but Daddy didn’t like his new career one bit. Dwayne was only eighteen, and Daddy and Mommy wanted him to go to college instead. It’s funny, Melody thought. Dwayne’s job as a singer isn’t bringing much harmony to our family.
Melody sighed, and together with her sister watched a grainy replay of the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, being sworn into office in November.
Yvonne shook her head. “I still can’t believe somebody shot the president of the United States,” she said, turning up the sound. They listened as the grim-faced newscaster told the whole story again: how President John F. Kennedy and the First Lady were in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on November 22. They were riding in the back of a Lincoln Continental convertible when a man with a gun fired at the car, killing the president and wounding the governor of Texas.
“The country remains in shock as our new president faces a grieving nation, problems overseas, and growing civil rights protests here at home,” said the newscaster. Then he began to talk about the bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama, church in September that had killed four little girls. Melody turned away from the screen. Somebody who wanted to frighten black people away from fighting for equal rights had set off the bomb on a Sunday morning.
Although it had happened miles and miles away from Detroit, Melody had been frightened—so much so that she’d lost her voice right before the big Youth Day concert. For a long while she’d even been afraid to go inside her own church.
“I’ll never forget that day,” Yvonne said, interrupting Melody’s memories.
Melody looked at her sister and remembered that Yvonne had been away at Tuskegee, her college, when it happened. Tuskegee was also in Alabama—only a few hours’ drive from Birmingham.
“Vonnie,” Melody suddenly asked, “were you scared?” She’d never really thought about that before. Yvonne had called to tell their parents that she was all right, but Melody had never considered that her brave big sister might have been frightened, too.
“Well, yes, at first,” Yvonne said. “I had signed up to go to Birmingham that very next weekend. We were going to sit in at a lunch counter to protest the fact that they refuse to serve black people. But after that Sunday I was thinking, What if something awful happens to me and my friends? Maybe I won’t go after all. Then I remembered Mom telling me that I should always stand up to wrong. Bombing that church was wrong. Treating black people unfairly is wrong. So I decided that I had to go to Birmingham and support what I believe in, you know?”
Melody nodded. “Big Momma told me something like that, too! She said we should keep our hearts and voices strong when bad things happen. I tried really hard to be strong for the little girls in Birmingham. I wanted to be, only I wasn’t sure I could.”
Yvonne smiled and gave Melody a hug. “You didn’t let fear turn you around, did you?” she said. “You went back to church to sing. You were strong.”
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