The Weight of Blood

The podcast’s host, Michael Stewart, quotes from a book an author named David Portman has written about Maddy, who killed more than 200 people on prom night by starting fires and other carnage that spread through town. He’s invited an anthropology professor named Tanya to be the cohost. Tanya is skeptical about the supernatural, but people say Maddy had telekinesis, which enabled her to kill so many people alone. The official story is that Maddy died in the massive fires she started, but Michael suspects she escaped and still lives.

Back in May 2014, Maddy waits to speak to the principal after being bullied about her hair in Mrs. Morgan’s class. Mrs. Morgan explains to the principal, Mr. O’Donnell, that racialized bullying occurred and that Maddy has been “outed” as biracial. Since Mrs. Morgan didn’t see who threw the pencil and Maddy won’t say, Mr. O’Donnell says he can’t punish anyone. Mrs. Morgan wants to reprimand the entire class due to their laughing and comments, or at least mandate sensitivity training. Mr. O’Donnell and Mrs. Morgan send Maddy out of the room and review her file, which reports her race as white (like her father) but doesn’t identify her mother, who apparently died in childbirth. O’Donnell and Mrs. Morgan agree to switch Maddy to a different class due to the hostile environment the other students have created.

Leaving the school, Maddy bumps into Kendrick (Kenny) Scott, a popular Black football player. He can tell she’s flustered and asks if she is okay. She pushes past him to exit. Wendy, Kenny’s girlfriend, soon finds him to discuss the new gossip that Maddy is Black. Kenny at first thinks she’s joking or mistaken until she recounts Jules’s pencil throwing, which disgusts Kenny. Everyone wants to ask Kenny about Maddy—whether he knew she was Black, what he thinks about her pretending to be white, and who her mother might have been. He tries to brush off these conversations and anything else of a racial or serious nature. Kenny believes that if he always appears unbothered and content, life will be easier. All of Kenny’s friends are white, popular, athletic kids, but he secretly wonders what other Black kids think about.

The podcast hosts discuss the incident in Mrs. Morgan’s class, which is the first known occurrence of Maddy’s telepathic powers. There’s a video of kids throwing pencils and laughing at Maddy. However, the camera glitched and stopped recording before the furniture moved, so they’re not convinced that really happened. The school nurse’s records reveal that many students from Mrs. Morgan’s class were seen that day for nausea, headaches, and vertigo.

Maddy walks home, dreading telling her father that everyone has discovered she’s biracial. Meanwhile, Wendy checks her email and learns she’s earned another scholarship, but she still needs more. She feels guilty about tormenting Maddy, but her friends don’t seem bothered. Wendy is secretly planning to attend the University of Alabama, where Kenny will be playing football, but she hasn’t told him this yet; he thinks she’s going to Brown. She plans to alert Kenny of her decision a week prior to them leaving for college once she presumably gets the rest of the scholarship money.

Maddy cooks a nice dinner for her father, hoping this will appease him. Papa is furious about her racial identity being revealed and accuses Maddy of not checking the forecast. He calls her disgusting and then demands she go pray in her closet, which he locks behind her. Papa has covered the closet walls with photographs of 1950s-era white women, which Maddy is supposed to pray to be like.

Later, Maddy goes downstairs, and Papa fixes her hair with a hot comb. He usually does this every Sunday, and she doesn’t wash her hair until the next week. While doing her hair, Papa quizzes Maddy about American history. She gives all the answers he’s looking for because if she doesn’t, he will purposely burn her with the comb. He has taught her some wrong answers and left out a lot of important details, but she doesn’t know that yet.

On the podcast, Tanya discusses how there are some high-pitched noises that only animals, children, and very young adults can hear, due to the gradual hearing loss that humans experience as they age. These sound frequencies have been used to keep animals and children out of certain areas, such as protests. Tanya thinks these noises might have been used at the prom protest because these sound frequencies can cause some similar symptoms to what Maddy’s classmates experienced, such as nausea, headaches, and malfunctioning electronics. When the local power plant permanently shut down shortly after prom due to “environmental concerns,” many people lost their jobs and blamed Maddy.

Wendy and Jules attend a cheerleading banquet to celebrate the seniors and mingle with new potential younger cheerleaders. In the bathroom, Jules and Wendy drink whiskey until a younger Black girl comes and speaks to them. Jules complains about the Black girl’s hair, but Wendy thinks her hair is nice even if it doesn’t match everyone else’s. The girls find Jules’s mother, who complains that they’ve let just anyone into the banquet and it now resembles a “soup kitchen” (56). Wendy worries about being separated from Jules when they go to different colleges.

Maddy’s father has a secret study that Maddy isn’t allowed to enter. Maddy usually cooks because Papa says cooking is a woman’s job, but on Fridays they eat microwavable dinners and watch television. They don’t use cable or streaming services, but rather Maddy’s father has recorded all his old favorites from earlier decades on VHS. He praises the women’s modesty and dedication to their housework. Maddy would like to move to Hollywood and work backstage on films, but Papa won’t allow her to attend college or move away. Instead, he wants her to help run his antique store (which she already works at part-time). After Papa falls asleep, Maddy watches a film called Imitation of Life that Papa must have accidentally recorded after one of his intentional recordings, where a biracial woman passes as white, dates a white man, and is beaten when he discovers she’s biracial.

At the gym, Wendy counts Kenny’s reps, thinking she is putting in work to help his career, which will help her as well since she plans to marry him. Afterward, they go to Sal’s, a popular downtown pizzeria. They bring the pizza home to Kenny’s house, where his sister, Kali, does homework. Kenny scrutinizes Kali for being so “loud” about her Blackness. Kali goes to her room, and Wendy encourages Kenny to watch videos that explain how to talk to the media.

Kenny’s father, Mr. Scott, reprimands Kenny for eating pizza—he’s on a strict diet for football training. Mr. Scott orders Kenny to do extra workouts. Kali returns and shows Kenny a video of kids in Mrs. Morgan’s history class racially bullying Maddy. The video goes viral and is posted on various news outlets, who also point out that the school still racially segregates its proms. The administration declines to comment at this time, citing students’ privacy as a concern.

The podcast discusses the segregated proms: Until 2014, the school’s seniors had separate proms, which weren’t sponsored by the school, called “white prom” and “Black prom,” but Black prom was for any people of color and LGBTQIA+ students. Additionally, white students were allowed to attend the Black prom, but Black students were not allowed into the white prom. The white prom was at the country club, and the Black prom was at a farmhouse called the Barn, a community space.

In 2014, Jules and some of Wendy’s other friends are furious that the video of racist bullying has gotten even more attention in the news. Charlotte panics that their colleges might respond by revoking their admission. Wendy says they should try to do something so good that it will overshadow their past mistakes. She comes up with the idea to integrate proms: This will make people think they’re not racist. Kayleigh and Charlotte like this idea, but Jules thinks it’s preposterous: Since they already have Black “friends” (actually only Kenny), they don’t need to “prove” that they aren’t racist. Wendy and Kenny have been planning to skip prom because they don’t want to attend separate ones. Regina, who is on the Black prom planning committee, wants to integrate prom, too. They decide to hold a vote.

Kenny’s family lives on the West Side of town, historically the white side. At first, they encountered some hostility, but after Kenny got very good at football, white people started being nicer to his family. Kenny’s mom thinks integrated prom is a good idea, but his dad thinks it is a “mess.” Kenny feels like no matter which way he votes, he’ll be making someone unhappy, which is against his general strategy. Mr. Scott, Kenny’s father, says Kenny should stay out of drama and focus on excelling at football so he can “win” life. Kali, Kenny’s sister, on the other hand, is outspoken about racism and started the Black Student Union at school.

The podcast reviews an old news story about Thomas Washington (Maddy’s father), who sold a rare comic book for $200,000, allowing him to purchase his antique store, which was on Main Street across from Sal’s pizzeria. Maddy was homeschooled until the state mandated that she attend middle school. At that point, she also started working at the antique store, but until then, nobody ever saw her in town because her father wouldn’t let her leave the house.

Thomas was obsessed with a nostalgic, romanticized version of 1950s-era American culture. After his father died, Thomas hired a nurse to help his mother, who had cancer. Ten months after his mother died, Thomas brought a baby (Maddy) to a local pediatrician to be examined, but he left her mom’s name blank on most documents. Now, no one can find Maddy’s birth certificate, so they don’t know who her mother is.

Back in 2014, Maddy works at the antique store and daydreams about being a normal kid hanging out at Sal’s, where she’s never been allowed to go. She notices a mistake in some paperwork and needs a pen; it starts moving on its own. She also somehow moves a table. Papa comes to investigate the noise, and Maddy claims she just bumped into the table.

At school, the seniors vote on whether to integrate prom. Debate erupts in Mrs. Morgan’s classroom, where Jason claims the issue is about tradition, not race. When Mrs. Morgan counters that the proms are literally called white prom and Black prom, Jason says she doesn’t understand because she’s not originally from the town. The country club has announced that they can’t accommodate an integrated prom due to the number of people, although they’ve hosted bigger, all-white events in the past. Jason announces that his father already put down a deposit for an all-white prom, so even if Wendy and Regina’s vote passes and there’s an integrated prom, there will also be a white-only prom.

At home, Maddy cooks dinner and then practices moving objects in her room. She moves her vanity and bed and discovers there’s an old journal tied to a slat under the bed. Papa comes to investigate the noise, and Maddy claims she dropped a Bible and a glass but cleaned it up. She reads the first part of the journal; it seems to be from her mother, telling Maddy she has special powers that have the potential to be destructive.