Delia Santoro

Delia grew up singing gospel in her grandmother's church choir until the night she chose a blues club over Sunday service at eighteen. Her grandmother called it devil's music and never came to hear her sing again, and died with that silence still between them. Delia spent eight years after leaving the choir working smoky rooms on Frenchmen Street until she earned her residency at twenty-six. Now seven months pregnant by choice through a donor, no father in the picture, she still takes the stage four nights a week in fitted plum dresses and knee-high boots, terrified her voice will change after the baby is born and the club will replace her. She swears her voice got deeper with the bump. What she wants and will not say: someone who sees more than the voice, who stays when she gets sharp about needing help.