A couple of weeks later, Rico and I were ready to head to Atlanta, Georgia. I walked around the house with a new sense of purpose.I was going to a singing competition. I was practicing my Aretha Franklin tone and my Patti LaBelle riffs and my Ella Fitzgerald scats and my own dance and church moves. My mother feared privately that I was setting myself up for a major disappointment, so she just walked around shaking her head gently.
The drive to Atlanta was pleasant because with Rico and me, it’s always jokes. We make fun of each other, imitate each other, and sing songs from the radio together. Other times we just talk about our family and our kids. We would always laugh at the stories that our uncles and aunts told us about drinkin’ and all the crazy things they used to do. The whole family thought those stories were so funny, and so Rico and I told them again and again. It was harder to tell them without acting them out, but we did the best we could while driving and being confined in our seatbelts. Other times during the drive, I would tell Rico stories about Zion and the cute things she would say and the way she would hang around my neck because she never wanted to be away from me, even when I was just going to the store.
When we arrived in Atlanta, we drove straight to the Georgia Dome. We were excited just to be a part of something so huge. The Dome seats seventy-five thousand people. All we knew about the Georgia Dome was that it’s where the Atlanta Falcons play football. When we arrived the first night at the Dome, I was shocked by how many people there were. Rico and I had no idea of the magnitude of this competition. They were auditioning seven thousand people in Atlanta that day alone. People had begun lining up two days before because they thought it was important to be the first in line. Most people don’t realize that Kelly Clarkson and I were both the last to audition in our cities. Being first means nothing at all.
The way that the audition was set up was that everyone was sleeping on the floor of the Georgia Dome on the concourse level, waiting on their chance to sing.
When we got to the building seven thousand people were singing, sleeping, talking on cell phones, and making sure that they looked good. There were beautiful black girls with long legs, big voices, and perfect teeth. There were handsome guys trying to be the next D’Angelo or Maxwell with their hair in braids and Afros and locks. They wore nice shirts and sunglasses to make them extra cool. There were gorgeous blondes, brunettes, and redheads. They had blue eyes, green eyes, and eyes that were dark as night. There were short girls, fat guys, even singing twins. I had never seen so many people in my life, and I could never have imagined that that many people thought they were singers. I was confident because those years singing’ in church choirs made me know that my voice was big and that people really loved to hear me sing. I was just overwhelmed that the world was so big and that so many people also thought that they could sing.
The morning of the audition was spent getting people into the building and into the bleachers in the stadium. Once we were seated, there was a huge TV screen that showed the images taken by a giant camera scanning the audience from overhead, showing how large the crowd really was. There were a lot of production assistants, which I learned meant anyone who was associated with the show but did all kinds of things, from little jobs like getting coffee to big jobs like trying to control a crowd of seven thousand desperate singers.
Someone on the production staff was giving us instructions and information about when the auditions would actually start and what to do in the meantime. The way that it was set up was that people could come and go as they pleased once they were checked in. There was a door on one side for entering the Dome and another door for leaving the Dome, in order to control the traffic flow and avoid the press. The production staff wanted to make sure that the press didn’t get any footage before the show aired. The production staff was also afraid that people who were told that they should go home, based on their audition, would then leave the stadium and try to come back in to audition again.
It was February in Atlanta, and so it was actually warm outside and sunny enough that people wanted to go outside. On the official Web site ofAmerican Idol they had mentioned what we could bring and what we couldn’t. They suggested sleeping bags, folding chairs, and water. The Dome also had a menu especially for all the aspiring singers, like Rico and me, who only had enough money to get there. The two-dollar burger special and the one-dollar nachos special that they offered was all we could buy, and we were appreciative that they had anything on the menu that we could get.
Rico had forgotten his identification, so I was the only one who could audition. I stayed with Rico for a minute after he realized that he had left his ID in his other pants. He was very upset but trying hard not to show it. Because I’m his sister and I know him so well, I knew that he was near tears, but don’t ever tell him that I told you that.
I went up to the registration desk and received the number that would
