My Great-grandfather, the Rapist

 S.E. Schaible

A week ago, I opened an email that fellow writers can relate to – the elusive, heart-stopping unicorn variety: “Your piece has been accepted for publication.” It was the 7th or 8th time I submitted this specific work – I’d need to cross-check the Duotrope and Submittable – approaching the maximum recommended by writers who know about these things, the notion being a story likely sucks (or at a minimum needs a re-write) if it’s been rejected that many times. I never re-wrote this one; I lightly edited it since I first drafted it in 2020 during a memoir class. Entitled My Great-grandfather, the Rapist, it is the story about a random night in 2002 when my mother told me how my grandmother was conceived.

Here is a segment from the piece, and the link to the literary magazine follows:

Over sips from a flask of rye, purchased with the coins they took from the dead man’s pockets – worn Barber Dimes and Liberty Head nickels – they made a pact and repeated the story that they would take to their graves, from which they would never deviate, for Bessie’s sake and for their continued freedom from incarceration: “We found him in some hamlet to the northeast. The bastard was already dead.” It’s what I would have done, so it’s what Occam’s Razor would suggest transpired. The pneumonia story was a plausible ruse; in the early 1900s it was the leading cause of death.

Anyone able to confirm what transpired – my Great-Uncle Allie and his crew – died with that information more than 60 years ago. I sometimes struggle with the elevator pitch describing my memoir when querying agents or speaking with peers at literary events, perhaps because I am sharing a part of me that doesn’t go over particularly well in civilized chitchat. I had a woman in a workshop ask me point-blank if I understood this was a memoir class – the way the snooty bus driver asked Forrest Gump if he understood that was the bus to school – when she couldn’t relate to my story about breaking the nose of a shoe store clerk when I was six years old. His crime? I overheard him ridiculing my mother about her weight, at an age before I learned to control my emotions and put retribution on layaway. Her insinuation? No first grader would ever head-butt a grown man. In the face.

I present as educated and polite, I send and receive over 100 Christmas cards every December, my friends invite me to their kids’ weddings and without blinking my daughters would tell you that I was the nurturer in our family. But since my girls were old enough to start going out to parties and places with friends, I have been consistent in my message to them: Don’t put yourself in situations where something bad could happen. I simply raised them to be aware of their surroundings, and to be smart. But underneath, what I’ve been saying all along is that if someone does something to them, I have no choice but to make it right. And that has nothing to do with going to a teacher, dean, HR or the authorities.

Anyway, here is the link to my latest published piece, a finalist in the Four Tulips Break the Rules Contest. Thank you for your support.