The Day Elvis Almost Died
I was riding in the backseat of my parents' red Cutlass on a warm fall day in 1984. My only entertainment was listening to the sucking sound the back of my thigh made when I lifted it off the sticky vinyl seat. I remember seeing patchwork fields of rainbow-colored leaves resting on the yellow grass, wishing that I could rake them into big piles, so I could run through them, scattering them across the field again. I rolled the dusty window down to get a better look at the pastures as the hard wind rushed in over my face and through my hair. I stuck my head through the window and opened my mouth, so my cheeks would puff out like Dizzy Gillespie's when he played his trumpet. Slowly, my cheeks began to deflate, and the wind softened as my dad braked the car to turn into the driveway of my grandparents' home, the location of our annual May family picnic.
My whole family had already arrived when we showed up. All my uncles immediately bombarded the car, playfully snickering with my dad about always being late so he would not have to help them cook. My Papa Joe, with his Afro of white hair, and my Grandma Lee Lee, who limped like a peg-legged pirate because one leg was shorter than the other, were sitting in lounge chairs talking about how much I had grown. My Uncle Kelly, whose left arm was shot off by his ex-wife during an argument, was walking around, complaining about how he was going to starve if he didn't eat soon. My Aunt Rosie, who always wore a tiny pair of rose earrings and kept a wad of chewing tobacco in her mouth, talked with my mom between spits of brown, runny liquid directed into her plastic cup.
Including my cousins and a few distant relatives, approximately twenty-five people were there talking, laughing, and mingling. And there I was, all alone in the land of giants with only my cowgirl Barbie to protect me. I felt like a guppy trying to swim upstream with a school of trout. Even though we had only been there for five minutes, finding my dad and leaving were my priorities.