i have been in college for five years now and have yet to write any fiction. yet, in the closing act of my college career, i found myself desperate in the final hour of a deadline with nothing to show.
a sudden drive to atlanta last tuesday meant packing a surplus of underwear and pants while leaving the planner and syllabus behind. all this to say, i can't quite describe the panic when it finally dawned on me that i had an essay due in about nine hours. so alas, my first official piece of fiction came out of an assignment meant to interview a person of importance. i wrote the "interview" based on a next door neighbor of mine who has since then passed on, so im not certain on the political correctness of this essay.
The Grandmother Next Door
After eleven years as a next-door neighbor, Ella Greer learns that there is more to grandmothers than cookies,
porcelain figurine collections, and the classic five dollar check for
birthdays.
It was a rare
occasion when I walked past Joann’s house without a fierce, gimp-legged, six-pound
Chihuahua named Belle bravely yapping at me from the mailbox. Guardian of the front yard, Belle was as
synonymous with Joann as peanut butter is to jelly. I was visiting the
eighty-one year-old grandmother so I could put up the dishes and run the
washing machine, a few tasks that give Joann trouble in her old age. She has
kept the front door unlocked, a habit that makes me nervous, but she assures me
that Belle is all the security she needed. Her kitchen is messier than usual
and I can hardly see the magnolia printed tablecloth from underneath the mail
and folders strewn about. I am a bit of a snoop by nature and when I see a
business card from First Baptist Church of Woodstock’s prison ministry, I
immediately assume that Joann’s grandson has not been able to mow the lawn
because he has been in jail. Being a member of the same church, I decide to ask
Joann about the ministry in hopes to find out what Chris was in for.
She was a favorite in the prison, Joann
Cole. The officers knew her as ‘Ms. Library,’ a moniker contrived from the
wide-rimmed glasses she always wore. The prisoners knew her as one of their
own, a fellow inmate who proved there was life outside of the barbed-wire
fence. This camaraderie was a bit of a stretch however, for Cole never did hard
time per say, only about six hours in a holding cell at the county jail until a
school friend, Wendy, came to post bail and pick her up. The loneliness and
fear she felt in the cellmates stayed with her long after she was released and
when she heard about a Bible study that the First Baptist Church of Woodstock
hosted at the county jail, she volunteered to help out. For ten years, Joann
has dedicated an afternoon a week to visiting the jail with the other
volunteers in the ministry and directed a Bible study lesson with the inmates.
Joann often found herself connecting with the prisoners as they talked about
abuse or wanting to start fresh somewhere new. While she was not a lawyer or
able by any means to change their current situation, being there to treat the
women as women of worth rather than a jumpsuit was almost as helpful, if not
more.
When Joann divulged the meaning behind her
nickname, I was shocked. Here was the sweet, tiny, grandmother sitting across
from me, wearing a burgundy velour tracksuit and feeding her Chihuahua
FrostyPaws -a special ice cream for dogs-there was no way I could imagine her
sitting in the back of a police car or being finger printed for her criminal
record. Sensing my confusion, Joann smiled and I swear I could see a
mischievous glint in her eyes.
“My college sweetheart was a son of a
bitch. I knew it, but I did not want to be alone after my mom died, so I stayed
with him. Well, that and because he was by far the best-looking boy I have ever
dated.” Joann winks at me as she takes a sip of her Diet Coke with lime. “One
night I went over to his house, some friends were over to play cards, and he
was drunk. He was drunk most of our relationship, but that night was different.”
Joann did not know at the time, but Robert
(her college sweetheart) was fired from his job at the restaurant earlier that
day and his anger was elevated after a night of drinking and losing round after
round of cards to his friends. What seemed like a relationship heading for
marriage, what their friends could not see was the abuse Joann received when
the two were alone.
“He would call me
names and talk about how none of my friends liked me, silly stuff like that,
but the longer we dated the worse it got.”
Young and in
love, Joann tried her best to focus on how cute Robert was and how much they
enjoyed each other when he was in a good mood rather than the times he made her
cry or flirted with other girls in front of her. Everything changed that night
however, and as Robert pushed her into the wall and told her to “get the hell
out,” something inside Joann snapped; she had finally had enough.
“He did not have
to tell me twice, all I could think about was getting out of there, and then I
saw his golf clubs.”
It feels like a
scene out of a movie, listening to this story and watching Joann remember it as
if it happened last week. As Joann left the ill-fated card game through the
garage, she was too upset from what happened to have room for second thoughts.
She grabbed a golf club, walked to his car parked out in the driveway, and
calmly shattered the windshield.
The story
accelerates from there; Robert came out to check out the commotion, the police
was called, a report was filed, Joann was handcuffed, and the friends watched
as the police car sped out of the neighborhood. A few hours later Wendy,
Joann’s fellow teammate from when she played high school basketball, came to
take Joann home. The drama only lasted a few hours from the time she went over
to Robert’s that night to when she finally made it home, but its story left an
impression on the small town.
“I was
embarrassed about everyone seeing my picture [the mugshot] but all anyone could
ask me was how the hell I managed to get the damn thing [golf club] over my
head.”
The surprise was
well understood for Joann had spent the greater portion of her childhood
attached to an iron lung as she battled a severe case of the whooping cough.
She barely escaped the illness with the use of her legs, a stroke of luck she
is unable to forget these days as she is learning how to operate with a bad
knee, a new knee in recovery, and a new hip, Joann is not making dunks or
destroying property these days.
“They still joke
about it now when we go back to visit. They ask me if I have to hide my [golf]
clubs,” laughs her husband John. “She’s always been a good sport about it, I
poke fun at her every now and then, I’d warn her when I was about to watch Cops
[the television show] just in case she got flashbacks.”
Joann shocked the
community once again after defying the odds and not only graduating from
business school, the first Holloway to do so, but she also landed an interview
as a shorthand writer for Marietta Martin, now known as Lockheed Martin, an
advanced technology and aerospace corporation in Kennesaw, Georgia. She rolled
the dice and left her childhood home in Augusta, Georgia to chase down the
dream of proving to her father that her degree did serve a larger purpose than
being able to shirk the housewife chores. Thirty years later she proudly
boasted of being able to retire from her first and only job.
“We were all in
this one room with our own desk and we connected calls and typed office memos
all day. I got really good at short hand and typed the fastest so they put me
in charge of the rest.”
Three decades saw
many changes for the company and unfortunately the changes very rarely proved
to be positive or even neutral towards Joann and her career. Being a woman who
skipped marital bliss to go to college and then have the audacity to work at a
job was hard enough; Joann had to constantly prove her relevancy as technology
evolved. Even though society somewhat came to terms with women in the
workforce, typewriters and switchboards became obsolete, making the job that
many of the women were hired to do unnecessary; a cruel cosmic joke for someone
who just gained acceptance for choosing to get a degree first over a new last
name.
She was
successful in eventually finding and locking down that new last name however,
for one day John Cole came to her desk needing a signature for a delivery and
the rest as they say was history. John, working for Lockheed Martin part time
these days and managing their property of farmland in Fannin County, Georgia
(the Blue Ridge area), finds himself away from 548 Cross Creek more than he
would like. During one of these many outings, Brock Greer, Joann’s occasional
lawn mower and window shutter painter, taught her how to use the FaceTime
feature of her iPhone so she and John could keep in touch. For someone who
conquered thirty years of technology advances, however it appears that Apple
has officially stumped her.
“Biggest mistake
I’ve ever made. She would FaceTime me randomly sometimes and all the sudden the
entire class hears her yelling about needing help finding Belle or something. I
haven’t gotten her to understand that she doesn’t have to yell at the phone so
I can hear her,” laments Brock. “She’s kind of funny though, like I’ll never
forget the time she met Siri. Good times.”
“I couldn’t
believe that inside my phone was such a sensitive robot woman that didn’t like
being spoken to in such a harsh manner and wanted to know what she had done to
deserve my anger!”
Joann has stunned
neighbors for eighty-one years now. She defeated whooping cough and refused to
accept the partial paralysis the disease left her with. She found the strength
to escape an abusive relationship, was arrested, and volunteered for a prison
ministry. She was the first in her family to achieve a higher education, left
home with only the excitement of building a life of her own, fought for her job
at Lockheed Martin, and now lives a quiet life with her husband and cannot seem
to think of a single thing to complain about.
