Zella called me on a Friday night a long, long time ago, but I didn’t have time to talk. Judy and I were headed to Hemingway’s bar over on North Druid Hills Road to hear this band everyone was raving about.
Zella probably understood that I was a young man in a hurry, so our conversation was brief.
She probably asked me about work and if I still planned to go back to school after Christmas.
To be honest, I don’t really remember much about that conversation except that Zella said she was going to bed early because she was tired.
I told her I was going to teach her to drive soon, but she dismissed the idea like she always had. I had been telling her that since I was a teenager.
When Zella was born, the automobile industry was in its infancy. Cars were considered luxury items, so she never learned to drive one. And nobody ever bothered to teach her.
I considered this a travesty that I was going to correct as soon as I got around to it.
Once I taught her and she got her license, I planned to install a water pump on the red Buick Wildcat my grandfather kept in his driveway and hand her the keys.
No more riding five buses to save a nickel on a loaf of bread, as my father claimed she sometimes did.
I owed Zella after all. She taught me to tie my shoes and tell time all in the same afternoon. She might have taught me even more, but she still had to invent recipes for the world’s best fried okra and lemon meringue pie.
What I wouldn’t give for a slice of that pie, right now.
It seemed like she was always in the kitchen, but on weekday afternoons, you’d find her sitting on the sofa watching her stories (commonly known as soap operas), including “One Life to Live,” which is where I first saw Tommy Lee Jones.
He played a character named Dr. Mark Toland for a while, but the show’s producers killed Toland off after Jones told them he was leaving the program.
I don’t think I knew Tommy and Zella had the same middle name.
When I was a boy, Zella listened to my endless ramblings in her kitchen as I paced the floor and told her how I would one day be obscenely rich and own almost everything.
She never ridiculed my ideas, only smiled and encouraged me. She may have thought I was destined for a career at Woolworth’s, but she never discouraged my wildest ambitions.
Zella and my grandfather watched Live Atlanta Wrestling every Saturday night, and when my parents needed somewhere to store me while they partied, they took me to their house.
My grandfather loved watching the Assassins, Mr. Wrestling, El Mongol, and Freddie Blassie grapple in the ring. Zella always seemed largely indifferent. She was probably thinking about the cornmeal-to-flour ratio she used to cook okra.
Zella, or Grandmother as I knew her, was the youngest of four children, including brother Wesley, and sisters Lola and Willie. All four were born in Hancock County, and Lola and Willie are buried in Sparta Cemetery.
Oddly enough, I wound up drifting out here close to the place they all once called home.
While I was in the Navy, Zella would write me letters, including the box scores and stories about the Braves she had cut out of the AJC. When you are far from home, little things like that still make you feel connected. I wouldn’t be able to do that for my grandchildren if I had any. I’d have to send them a link, which just ain’t the same thing.
Her letters were always very formal, as if she believed a letter should be written with a certain amount of decorum and dignity, as if it were an important thing to do, a special occasion almost.
All that gets lost in texts, doesn’t it?
Judy and I stayed at Hemingway’s way too long that Friday night, a long, long time ago, and the phone rang early Saturday morning.
“Who is calling me at this hour?” I carped.
But the news was bad. Zella had passed away in her sleep. I never got around to teaching her to drive.
Selah.