My Granny Could Keep A Secret
But could she be an international spy?
7 — Pooja Vishwanathan Your sweet, cookie-baking grandma is secretly an international spy. What happens when her two worlds collide at the most inappropriate moment — like at a family reunion or bingo night?
My grandfather impregnated my grandmother’s 15-year-old sister 3 months before he impergnated my grandmother. Her sister didn’t marry my grandfather, but my grandmother did. The baby was cared for by my grandmother’s mother and father as their very own: a much younger brother to their five grown children.
My grandmother kept this secret for the next 75 years! She took it to her grave with her. None of the family knew she was pregnant when she married, let alone her sister was already pregnant by the same man. They say history repeats. It’s true. My mother was pregnant with me when my father and she married. (My father broke this news to me when I was 15, calling me an illegitimate child.)
Unlike my grandmother who stayed with her husband until he died, my father divorced my mother after 6 years. History wasn’t happy repeating just once in our family. I was 3 months pregnant with my first child when I married his father. I managed to last 10 years before I left him.
