My Grandmother’s Secret By Emily Bleeker

My Grandmother’s Secret

By: Emily Bleeker

When I was seventeen, my paternal grandmother made the move from warm and sunny Pensacola Florida to the freezing winters of the suburbs of Chicago. Our two-bedroom townhome was already packed to the brim with our family of six. When Grandma Elizabeth moved in we turned our one-car garage into a bedroom by putting down throw rugs, plugging in space heaters, and placing mattresses against the wall-sized mechanical door.

I’d never lived close to any of my grandparents and I didn’t know what to expect having Grandma Elizabeth in our home. She’d always been sweet and kind with a soft graceful nature that made her easy to care about but as much as I loved my grandmother—I didn’t know her. 

Each night after dinner and her reruns of Golden Girls I’d sit in Grandma’s drafty room and listen to her recount moments from her life and the lives of my family members. At first, they were light stories about her life in Mississippi as a mother of three boys, ones that I’d heard from my dad or another relative.

But soon she became less formal, and told me about some of her greatest hurts, and some of her secrets, too. She told me my father was conceived in the hammock behind her house only three months after she’d given birth to my Uncle Bill. She told me how my grandfather used to call her fat and that’s why she still restricted her calories even though it’d been ten years since his passing.

She told me how my grandfather would flirt with other women in front of her and nearly got beat up by protective husbands on more than one occasion. She told me she never left him because that’s just not how things were done back in her day. 

Eventually, the cold grew too tiresome for my warm spirited grandmother and she returned to the South where she’d grown, lived, and endured. Years later, when I’d just become a mother myself, I learned of my grandmother’s passing. She was buried next to the two men who she’d watched leave the world: my grandfather and her youngest son, Edward.

Her stories stayed with me and I wished I’d thought to write them down but I didn’t yet know I was a writer. It took me five more years to admit I was secretly creating worlds and people who didn’t exist and then another three to let other people read what I’d written. 

Six books into my writing career, I took a research trip to Memphis and invited my kids, my dad, and my sister. Our hotel was only a short drive from where my grandmother was buried in Northern Mississippi so we decided to visit the family plot.

My only cousin from my dad’s side of the family met us and brought some of my grandmother’s belongings, the only remaining artifacts from her life. We looked through photographs and letters and announcements until my cousin passed me a stack of papers. 

“Here,” she said, “ I thought these might interest you.”

There were six or seven documents, neatly typed on stiff paper, each held together with a paperclip in the left corner. Small squares of cardstock accompanied each one. I examined them closer and found familiar titles: McCall’s, Reader’s Digest, Good Housekeeping, Life and Health. 

I sunk into a chair and flipped through the pages: two short stories, a few poems and a play, all written by my grandmother, all submitted for publication and all returned with a “no, thank you.” I knew exactly what they were– rejection letters. I should know, I’d gone through the same process when I was seeking an agent for my first novel. 

It’s a vulnerable, frightening process of placing your deepest thoughts on paper and then offering them to the world. I’d known my grandmother taught English at a girl’s college in Gulfport Mississippi when my dad was a boy and I knew he came upon his love of literature through her passion for reading but I didn’t know my grandmother and I had something else in common—we were both writers.

An unexpected feeling of kinship overwhelmed me. I had no idea she was a writer and she passed away long before I sold my first manuscript. She didn’t know I also had three little boys and that I left a bad marriage in a way she’d found impossible in her own days.  It was like a message from this beautiful, intelligent woman I’d known for too brief of a time reminding me she’d be proud of where I ended up in a way that went beyond book sales or magazine articles. 

On my third or fourth reading of the rejected articles, my cousin asked if I’d like to take them home with me.  I thanked her, gratefully. Once home, I placed the stories in a plastic protector and displayed them in my office as a reminder of the dedicated writer who came before me. 

So, as I wrote my next book, it only seemed right to let a truth from my grandmother’s life inspire me. I remembered a story about her work as a secretary in a POW Camp during WWII and the life-long friendship she’d forged with an Italian priest she met there. It was the inspiration for my seventh novel, WHEN WE WERE ENEMIES, and there are touches of my grandmother’s story weaved throughout. It’s a work of fiction but without my storytelling grandmother with a kind heart and wild imagination, I never would’ve written a word. 

To this day I reflect on one of her rejected poems titled The Masterpieces. In it she tells of the creations she dreamed she’d write and how they’d impact the world. She then talks about the weight of motherhood and how her creative ideals never became a reality, finally declaring that her three young boys were her true masterpieces.

It touches me that her poetic assessment was more accurate than she could’ve known. And though it pains me my grandmother felt she had to give up on her dreams, I’m grateful I can carry on her creative spirit and hopefully continue to pass it on to my own children. She may not have been able to tell all of her stories, but now, as a part of her legacy, we can.

WHEN WE WERE ENEMIES

Two women, generations apart, in the spotlight. A powerful novel about family secrets, devastating choices, and hope for the future.

Camera-shy Elise Branson is different from the other women in her matriline. Her mother is an award-winning actress. Her late grandmother, Vivian Snow, is a beloved Hollywood icon. But when Elise’s upcoming wedding coincides with a documentary being made about Vivian, Elise can’t escape the camera’s gaze. And even in death, neither can her grandmother.

It’s 1943 when Vivian, a small-town Indiana girl, lends her home front support to the war effort. As a translator in the nearby Italian POW camp, she’s invaluable. As a celebrated singer for the USO, she lifts men’s spirits and falls in love with a soldier. But behind this all-American love story is a shocking secret—one vital to keep buried if Vivian is to achieve the fame and fortune, she covets.

For Elise and Vivian, what’s hidden—and what’s exposed—threatens to unravel their lives. The heart-wrenching choices they must make will change them both forever.

BUY HERE

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Emily Bleeker is the bestselling author of six novels. Combined, her books have reached more than two million readers. She is a two-time Whitney Award finalist as well as being on the Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. 

Emily lives in the northern suburbs of Chicago with her husband, their kids, and her kitten-muse, Hazel. Along with writing and being a mom, she performs with a local improv troupe, sings karaoke like no one is watching, and embraces her newfound addiction to running. Connect with her or request virtual visit with your book club at www.emilybleeker.com.

Official Website: EmilyBleeker.com
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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing