The Mystery of Zella Lee…

Note to everyone — I know I usually change the names to protect the innocent, guilty, and indifferent…. but not this time. These people were the real deal.

Zella Lee - circa 1933 - outside the Children's Hospital where she worked.

A hardy laugh floats from the open window of the old Austin Seven, a twenty-six year old, dark haired beauty behind the wheel. Her paramour Jimmie, in the passenger seat, laughs along, swept up in her enthusiasm and lust for life. It is approaching dusk as the little car zooms down the dirt roads, kicking up limestone and Florida sugar sand in its wake, daring the rest of the world to catch them.

It’s August 27th, 1936. Night falls as the lovers embrace on the landing outside of her apartment and the young man saunters down the stairs and into the warm night. Zella Lee looks after him and sees another man angrily striding across the street. He is tall and well dressed; an ever present boater hat sits jauntily on top of his black hair, green eyes flashing under the brim. ”Well, now I did it,” she says to herself. The unhappy man is Lonnie and she’s just been caught with yet another man. She and Lonnie get in his car and go for a ride, they talk late into the night and he leaves at 1:00 am.

I know all of this happened; know it for a fact – the names, the dates, the thoughts, the times — because she told me. Sort of. You see Zella Lee was my grandmother and I have her diaries.

“January 1, 1933 – The beginning of a New Year! If I can leave it as I start it off: happy, healthy, good job and all my family living. I have so much to be thankful for.”

That’s the beginning of the first entry. Twenty-three years old and blooming with life. For the next five and half years she rarely missed a day, filling in the detail and drama of her life in tiny, cursive script. I know when she got off work, when she bought a new dress, and what day she set and styled her hair. I know the days she fought with her sister Rosa Mae and the days she fought with her favorite suitor — Lonnie. Of suitors and boyfriends, she had an embarrassment of riches. Some she mentions with delightful disdain as she did poor Stanley on January 2nd 1933. “It is a paradise out here and such ritzy people! I am so satisfied. J.C. called me at 1:30. Mrs. Sug. went visiting. I got off at 7 and went to town. Got a letter from Stanley — I don’t know if I will answer it. He is such a bother.” She first met Stanley in May of 1928 when she was eighteen. She refers to him later as “My first real boyfriend.”

The names of the boyfriends change over the years – Dave, Bill, Dean — too many to count. Some come and go; some names show up again and again. March 12, 1935 ”I saw Jack tonight. I don’t know why I like him, but I do.” They went to juke joints; she mentions many including ones in Mt. Dora and Salt Springs. She writes about the times she has too much to drink. Movies of that era, with titles I recognize, that she goes to and I know the movie theater since it still stands in my hometown of Ocala. She writes about her work as a nurse with enthusiasm. She loved her little car that others made fun of. She and her sisters were very close. What a woman. What a life!

The life and times of Zella Lee

She also wrote about the not so good. On August 28th, 1936, the day after the incident with Jimmie and Lonnie - “Today has been so long and lonely. I wrote to Lonnie — I just had to. Told him I was sorry. Had a shampoo and set. I was so tired and sleepy I could hardly see.” 

Page after crowded page, line after tiny line, her life unfolds before my eyes. The hopes and dreams of young woman weave a rich tapestry of beauty and grace, pain and sorrow, confusion and triumph. Then in 1938, this:

June 28th – Tuesday it has rained all day. Eunice and I went down to the cleaners. Dave came tonight. We went to Lake Mohawk – he ask[ed] me to marry him.”

“June 29th – Slept late, on at 2:30. Had a sweet letter from Dave. Wrote to Lonnie, Mama, and Buddy (her brother) tonight. I am so tired.”

June 30th – Heard from Lonnie – worse [than?] some things six months ago. Today – memories. Will I ever forget?

July 1st – Got up at 7. Eunice and I went to Newark. I got a pretty white dress. Dave called tonight and we went over to Florham Park a while.”

July 2nd – Oh! I am tired. Went up and had my hair set. Feel so good this evening. Dave came tonight and we went to the Fireside.”

July 3rd – If I ever felt any worse I don’t know where or when. Got up at 12. Went in”

And that’s where it ends. After five and half years, day after day, pouring her heart into this little book, there is not another word. Six weeks later she is married — to Lonnie. Nineteen months later my father is born. Twenty-six years after that, I enter this world. By then, this Zella Lee is long gone. In fact, I had no idea she even existed.

In between the end of “Zella Lee of the Diaries” and the woman I came to know as “Ganny,” is a shadow world of rumor and innuendo. No one, including my father and mother or uncle and aunt, tell stories of laughter and wisdom from their childhood. In their place are veiled references to an unstable and abusive woman alongside allusions to alcoholism and drug abuse. Violent, Johnny Walker fueled incidents involving “the kids” as she and her siblings were often called, were apparently common as the weekend. As opposed to my mother’s side of my family, where tales of lives richly lead are the stuff of legend, my father’s side is a disconnected jumble of short answers and changed subjects.

What the hell happened? How, when, and where did Zella Lee — the happy, vivacious, hopeful, juke joint goin’, job holding, boyfriend collecting, beautiful, party-girl of the thirties – go? And what was the cause of her mysterious disappearance?

The shadow woman I knew.

The grandmother I knew was strange and silent and cold. In my memory, she never had a friend, barely left her house, and rarely laughed or smiled. Visits to “Ganny” and “Gamp’s” house were awkward events filled with long silences and uncomfortable, empty exchanges. Their marriage was separate bedrooms, separate lives. He was reserved, dignified, stern, and aloof. He worked as a crossing guard on the weekdays and went to church every Sunday morning and evening, and every Wednesday night. She sat in the house, day after day, week after week, watching Lawrence Welk, reading the National Enquirer, and smoking Viceroy cigarettes. To my knowledge they had no friends, no social life, and barely a home life.

To be fair, I remember some instances of childhood fun when she was around but in those moments it’s as if she was just ”there,” not engaged in the moment, sort of like the furniture. I only have one clear memory of her that I really recall fondly; I once overheard her say something to my parents when they were commenting on my weight. “It’s just baby fat. Leave her alone,” she said. It was one of the few times I remember anyone telling my mother, in essence, to back off. Other than that there isn’t much to remember. We didn’t talk. She didn’t babysit or otherwise take care us. Indeed, the lone bit of advice I recall was the repeated phrase, “Remember honey, it’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one.”

I found Zella Lee’s diaries in a storage room when I was about twenty-six, the same age she was that fateful night when my yet-to-be grandfather caught her with another man. I found the diaries in a small Christmas box along with a photo of her brother Buddy, who I’m told committed suicide at some point in the early 60’s. With the box was an ancient set of needle works, giving support to the rumor that at some point in her past she used them to shoot happiness or relief back into her veins. There were also some of the fantastic clothes — glamorous garments that looked as if they fell out of a 1930s black and white film — that she mentioned in the diaries as well. I put on one black wool suit with onyx buttons that cinched into a tight waist and it fit like it had been made for my five foot seven inch frame. That suit hangs in my closet even today.

By the time she died in 1993, three days before what would have been her 55th wedding anniversary, she was bedridden shell of a human being. During most, but not all, of my trips back home I’d stop in and with the arrogance that can only come from ignorance would smile and say “Hey, Ganny, how are you?” And she’d look at me with dead and dying eyes, the ever present Viceroy jammed between the second and third finger of her right hand, the skin so thin and fragile the slightest touch could make her bleed, and she’d reply, “Terrible. I wish I was dead.” Stupidly I’d answer back, “You don’t mean that.” And she’d look at me for a moment and then say, “You are such a beautiful girl.” If we played that scene once, we played it 30 or 40 times. At some point during the still meaningless conversations she’d look at me at say, “Is this it? Is this all a life comes to?” And every time I left, which was never too long after I arrived, I’d ask “Is there anything I can do for you before I go?” and every time, every single goddamn time, she’d say “If you won’t kill me there is nothing you can do.”

I was a fool; an ignorant, selfish, stupid, empty-headed moron without enough heart to see the bleeding soul before my very eyes. When I was six, I could’ve been excused. But at twenty-six — Jesus Christ! – I should have done better. Somewhere inside that too-soon-to-be corpse was a real flesh and blood woman… and I let her die without ever knowing she was there.

Back to the diaries: It’s nineteen thirty-three. Zella Lee is twenty-three and she doesn’t yet know how this journey is going to turn out. Her brain is lively, her body is firm, and the world lays before her like a beckoning wonderland, waiting just for her.

January 1933 - “Dear old diary, I have been planning on getting you a long time. Someone I can tell my troubles to. There isn’t anyone these days you can talk to and feel like they are interested. I am sensitive I guess, but I am afraid that I will bore people, so I will ‘take it all out on you.’ 

Graduated from High School at 18, trained in the M. M. Hospital in Ocala, three years. Came to Leesburg three days after graduation and been here ever since. Bought my Austin the first of February and do I like it? Every body makes fun of it, but I don’t any more care.

I have never cared anything special about boys. My first love, Stanley, I don’t think I care for him, especially now, but I’ll always get a little thrill being around him. He is oh so nice, then next maddening. He is so smart – almost too popular for me. Too many girlfriends. I can sincerely say he cared for me once if he never does again. However, I have done him dirty here lately. But he is still nice and I still get a thrill.

But there is one thing I don’t have any use for and that is — Girlfriends. They are all catty. You can’t trust any of them. Always forever doing something against you. None for Zellie. When I can’t be with Petunia or Easy Weasy, you’ll find me by myself.”

I don’t know if she was the cause or the victim of how her life turned out. Maybe she was a woman before her time. Maybe her life was the result of bad choices, bad karma, or bad luck. I know her children loved her but I also know she didn’t die in either of their homes. I know she spent almost 55 years married to “her favorite boyfriend” but I also know that they didn’t share a bed and barely a civil word for at least my lifetime, maybe longer. I know I never saw her with drink or a drug but I can also recognize the truth my parents shielded from me.

If you’ve been reading my blog awhile, you know that I believe life is a one way trip and that one go-round was all she gets. If I’m wrong and there is a merciful God in heaven I sincerely hope he threw open the gates of paradise to Zella Lee with the words “Come and find rest, my good and faithful servant.” Of course, if you believe in the biblical rulebook, heaven is not in her cards. I never heard the woman mention Jesus and I found no mention of church or god in her precious prose.

Rest in peace, Zella Lee. I’m so very sorry I didn’t know you. I’m so very sorry that I didn’t have the wisdom to even try to be the light at the end of your long journey. But I promise, because of your example, I will do better with the life that was given to me.