Happy Birthday!

My grandmother is the youngest of 11 children, nine of whom are girls. I've been blessed to know 8 of my great-aunts.

Great-Aunt Zora, affectionately known as Auntie (pronouned ant-T, as if T was her name), was born December 12, 1912 in Mount Vernon, Georgia. She was 15 the year her mother died, the same year she gave birth to her first child. She is reported to have been married to Uncle Fred, but I have no occular proof.

I've heard from her sisters, when they didn't think anyone was listening, that their marriage was not the happiest. Why should it be? They were children. She even had a son outside of her marriage, who was adopted by her uncle and raised in Florida. It's told that Fred was mean and physically abusive to Zora, who would come home to her sisters. I imagine that one or all of them whipped his ass on more than one occasion. I believe my Aunt Letha cut him once with a straight-razor.

The abuse continued until the night he tried to jump bad while she was doing her hair. She beat him about the head with Madame Walker's invention, hot off the flame. Believing him dead, or at least brain damaged, Auntie left and was spirited out of town under the cover of night. She ended up in Long Branch, New Jersey.

In Long Branch, Auntie went to work as a domestician. She kept an apartment at 26 Grant Court that was a meeting place for all the girls who did domestic work. They would come together on their days off, cook, eat and unwind. Auntie's place was also a bit of a party spot that was famous for all-night card games.

By the late 1950s Auntie was involved in a relationship with Luther. They relocated to Plainfield, New Jersey, where she continued her work as a domestic. Luther was a little mean himself and not the model of a good husband, considering he had a wife and children in a neighboring town. It seems that Autie made quite a few bad decisions where men were concerned, but if you knew her daddy you would understand why.

She was diagnosed with colon cancer and died in 1969 when I was three years old. I remember her funeral vividly and have some recollection of her during her illness. My grandmother would drive to Plainfield to visit her and I would ride along. I remember her to be very kind and sweet. She made the very best dinner rolls and was famous for her banana pudding. She is rumored to have mixed everything by hand... literally!

Her father wished to have her remains shipped to the family cemetery in Georgia, but Luther had the rights of a common-law spouse and denied the request. Auntie still had the last laugh in that she did not name him beneficiary of a rather substantial life insurance policy. Because he would have received any remaining funds from the burial, her daughter put nearly every dime of it in the ground. Auntie may have had the most fabulous funeral in family history.

Auntie loved Christmas and if she was here, she'd be wrapping up little gifts for all her nieces and nephews. I wish she was here to celebrate her 95th birthday.