There were three rounds of auditions to be held out on the enormous football field. Across the field there were about twelve tables with three judges at each table. There were three lines of singers in front of each table. The producer at each table was responsible for the initial selection. This selection process was just to narrow down the number of contestants. These producers are not musicians, they are TV people, so this initial round was just to create a group that would be ready for the executive producers to see. It looked like the other thing that these producers were doing was looking for talented singers as well as not-so-talented singers, but ones who would make good television. These auditions are the ones that you see on the outtakes of the audition process. It made me sad when I heard that they take some people just for the sake of making good TV, but then again, I’m not a producer and I have no idea what makes people watch a TV show. They must know what they are doing. With seven thousand people and only twelve hours, the first comments to the people auditioning were very brief.
There were two auditions before you actually got to sing in front of Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell, the show’s main judges. I was slightly nervous because there were so many people auditioning. All of them were practicin’ and warmin’ up their voices as well as primpin’ and makin’ sure that they looked good. I was just happy to be there. I was just happy to be doingsomething. I really hadn’t had time to consider how I looked or what I was wearing. I had been removed from the real world for so long that just getting there was a big deal and figuring out what to wear never really crossed my mind.
I was wearing a pair of tight jeans, a pair of black boots with high heels that I usually wore with my shorts in the projects, and a T-shirt with revealing holes in it. Three people at a time went up to individual microphones to be heard, each by a different producer. I went up and sang the classic Stevie Wonder song “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.” The producer listened to me and said, “You are going to the next round.” And that was that. I was expecting a little more from him considering the distance that I traveled and how important I thought that being on that show was.
I was relieved to have made it to the next round, but restless and needed to get out. After all, we were in Atlanta. Rico and I decided to go to the karaoke area that they had set up downstairs with the snack bar. We relaxed and had some fun. We hadn’t been too nervous about the audition, I guess because with so many singers there, I figured in the back if my mind, like my mother had, that I wouldn’t make it anyway. Rico and had made a serious bet in the car: If Rico won the competition, I would sing backup for him, and if I won, he would sing backup for me. Because he couldn’t audition, my audition would determine what the both of us would be doing with our future.
Rico and I started to dream. If you win, we’ll stay in hotels and order room service, he would say. And I would say if I win, I’ll be able to buy Zion all the teddy bears in the world. And Rico would say, If you win, you can buy us all a mansion, and I said, If I win, I will buy Mama some clothes. And Rico would say, If you win, I will be your bodyguard and backup singer on tour. And the dreams just kept going and going, growing and growing.
After we returned from singing karaoke, an older black security guard called me over and said, “I heard you singing. I suggest that you take the pierce out of your lip. You would be much prettier without it.” He looked like my uncle Jute, so I said, respectfully, “Yes, sir, I’ll do that.” People say I am old-fashioned to refer to people as “ma’am” and “sir,” but that is the country way in which I was raised, and it is one thing that was easy to remember and even easier to do. “Sir” and “ma’am” go a long way where I’m from.
The piercing was just one of the things I had done because I was so bored. I had gotten it when I saw an advertisement for a piercing place. I just went in there to ask about it, and I ended up having them pierce my face, just over my top lip. Someone in the piercing place recommended that I get the piercing exactly in the same place where Marilyn Monroe’s mole was, right above her lip.
Rico and I didn’t want to spend the night on the floor of the Georgia Dome, and our cousin, Junebug, lived in Atlanta. We decided to go over to his house, eat, and then come back early in the morning so we could at least get a good meal and a good night’s sleep. The next morning we arrived back at the Dome to find that the doors had been shut.Locked. The guards had been instructed to not let anybody else into the building. There were too many people in the Dome, and the producers were worrying about how they were going to keep order when so many people were coming in and going out.
There were about a hundred people outside the Georgia Dome, cryin’, cussin’, and yellin’ at the security guard, who just kept sayin’, “No one else is getting in.” We all had been told that we could
