Yellow

Yellow surrounded us.

I tried to bask in its glow, but my gangly adolescent body was obsessed at what I’d just seen at Sally’s wedding.  

That sassy bride – my cousin - had entered the church just hours before and swished like a mermaid in her slinky dress, complete with proud tattoos and piercings, up to the altar to melt her life into a stunningly handsome man with a British accent and yellow mustache.  She was red, as red could be, as though she were on fire.   When they joined hands, it was like an asteroid had just smashed through the structure’s stained glass windows.  

Then we came back to the house and the porch and the yard.  Sally’s mother – my aunt Ellen - wanted everything yellow.  

“Yellow is the color of the sun,” Ellen beamed, over and over, rocking hypnotically in an ancient chair.  She was unstoppable about the magic of yellow.  The grass was greener than green and the sky was bluer than blue, and yes, the yellow sun was gleaming into our eyes.  

Yellow showed up in that black night, after so many of the adults drank it in at the house during the day.  We were driving home from somewhere; fast asleep; when the kids and teens and dogs curled up together went tumbling in Ellen’s massive vehicle.  It had screeched to a halt and we could not see but we could hear.   Ellen was yelling and running.  

“They are jacklighting,” she shouted as she left us, and ran right into those gleaming lights. 

I did not know what jacklighting was until much later and why we all had to hide and freeze and almost not breathe.  Jacklighting was when people broke the law with guns and they would put blinding yellow lights on the road to seduce animals so they could kill them.  Sometimes, we learned later, the hunters would make regrettable mistakes and shoot people instead.  At times, it was difficult in the blinding yellow lights to tell the difference between people and animals.  Sometimes people would go missing.  

Our uncle stayed in the truck and said, “she’s going to get shot.”  His words were grey, like a corpse.  He did not move.  He just sat and stared, enraptured by the jacklighters.  

Ellen’s father moved.  He flapped his left arm over the seats and made a pushing motion toward us.  He told us to lay down on the floor, even though we had already scrambled toward the back and we were laying on top of each other and the dogs.    

They started shooting outside.  The noise and the light screamed into the car and right into us.  

Some of us were quiet.  Most of us were terrified and I heard some voices praying.

They were praying that Ellen would not get shot in the yellow.