Buried Truths

This story is by Anne Jacobi and was part of our 2025 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

There is a haunting photo of my mother as a 4-year-old, standing on the lawn in front of the dead deer. The deer’s black eye is staring at the child, and at me, creating this silent, timeless space of connection. There are black shadows under my mother’s eyes, and all I can think is that no child should look like that.

I was born in a land of silence, where shutting down, concealing your innermost thoughts and feelings was the only possible mode of being. Estonian SSR. We were a normal Baltic family, with family members on different and often opposite historical fronts. My grandfather on my father’s side spent 10 years in a Russian labor camp; his oldest son died in the Russian military prison, while his youngest joined the Russian Special Forces. The first song I learnt in kindergarten was the one about Lenin, how He loved us children. The future belonged to us, and we were encouraged to talk about our parents, what they talked about, and how they felt about the regime. The silence and the fights at home were all about survival. I cannot say I know much about my father’s side of the family, but I know even less about my mother’s. It’s like a blank paper calling my name, and I cannot let it go.

I never met my grandfather; there were only shreds of whispers and an old, faded photo of the slender man with three hunting dogs sitting by him, looking straight into the camera. Vigilant. I was told he loved these dogs, cared for them more than for anything or anybody else. There is a shotgun on his right shoulder. Hunting was his true passion. Hunting and politics. He had been a prominent figure in the local politics at the time of independence in the 1930s. I could sense his pride.

My grandmother Juuli wasn’t a saint, quite the opposite. For me, she was the personification of a witch, the source of my nightmares. She chased me through the opening in the forest, but the tall grass was binding my feet, and I woke up horrified, just a moment before she could touch me. She owned half of the house in the countryside; with a vast garden, she won many awards for. Her roses were like burning fire behind the whiteness of lilies and the blue of the lavenders.

I was sent to spend most of my childhood summers with my grandmother. She wasn’t exactly a nice person. When somebody came for a visit, she often opened the door with: “No wonder you are alone when you look the way you do. Have you put on some weight?” I used to go for rescue when she got especially nasty, which didn’t exactly make me popular. She cursed me again and again as an answer, starting when I was around 12, saying that nobody would ever love me, as my feet were too short and my ears too big and worst of all – I resembled my father.

She became quite different, almost gentle, when somebody sought her help with intolerable pain. She would hold her hands over the person for a while until she could see that the pain was gone. She hardly said a word then, but also excelled in fortune telling and curses, which made her both respected and feared. I hated her sessions with candlelight and moving objects, her strange laughter. I used to hide in the shadows of the garden, but the sight through the window and the muffled sounds seeped into my bones.

I have no idea what my grandmother kept herself busy with in the winter. She never had an ordinary job. She said she got too bored and lonely in the countryside and insisted on staying with us in the city, where we shared one room for many years. I remember her putting on lots of makeup and going to a cafe or to the church, where she sang in a choir. She had a clear, high pitch voice and innocent blue eyes. She didn’t care that going to the church could get her in trouble, as religion was said to be an opiate for the people. God didn’t exist there, you know. But my grandmother didn’t care. Another strange thing about her was that she always had lots of money. I still wonder about it sometimes.

Four people in one room created a lot of tension. My father called her “Germans’ whore” again and again, but it didn’t mean much, as she would call him “the Russians’ butt-licker” and they continued like that, until my mother went between them. As if that changed anything. My grandmother and my father were equally stubborn and strong. She liked to dress up, put on makeup and walk around like some lady from a movie, while cursing like a sailor and having no regard for anyone. No wonder my father stayed out drinking more and more often and moved out when I was five, shortly after we got a bigger apartment. My mother never got over it, but my grandmother meant it was all for the better.

There was a woman ringing our doorbell one afternoon. I was around 10 years old then, had just come back from school and started my homework. I opened the door to meet a shabby middle-aged woman in a worn-out dark coat, with bad posture, tangled, poorly cut hair. Her restless eyes scared me. She asked to talk to my grandmother.

“She is not at home,” I said, but she pushed past me. “I will wait.”

“I don’t know when she will be back.” All I wished for was for her to leave.

“I have some news about your grandfather,” she said, sitting down in the living room. “I came back from America recently.”

I stared at her thick brown cotton stockings and heavy flat shoes. She didn’t look like anyone coming from America! People over there were well-dressed, and rich, right?

She asked for a glass of water. I heard her moving around as I fetched the water from the kitchen. My heart was beating too loudly. I was afraid of her, but to my relief, my grandmother came home a few minutes later. I heard her shout in the living room as I stayed in the kitchen. She threw the woman out, spitting angrily.

“Why on earth did you let her in?” By then, I was shaking all over.

“Did she tell you anything about grandfather?” I asked.

“No! Of course not!”

The woman was an impostor and a thief. There was a brief note about her in the local paper a few days later. She had never been outside Estonia. My ideas about America stayed intact.

My grandmother died when I was 15, and my mother followed two years later. As if they had kept each other in check. My grandmother was all passion; my mother belonged to another era, feminine, overly romantic introvert, and an artist.

When my mother died, I was flooded with visions, not least about my grandfather. Grandmother was sexy even when over 60, and she had always had many lovers. They had an open marriage. All was well until he fell in love with a woman at the city hall and wanted a divorce. But see, nobody left my grandmother! And one of her lovers was a German officer. It was a time of war. My grandfather was shot in the woods. This was a story I thought of as true for most of my life.

A few days ago, as I was trawling through the internet looking for old classmates and friends, I found a private ad from November 1965 in Homeland (Kodumaa) weekly:

“My husband, Elmar Leinjärv, went missing in September 1944. There were rumors that he had been taken to Gdansk by a ship. I am asking all Estonians living abroad who have met him to contact his family In Tallinn, Koidu Street 122.”

Signed by Juuli Leinjärv-Näripä, my grandmother.

Why did she wait 21 years?

I was reminded of the strange way she passed. In her final years, she bought an apartment. She had a color TV and nice furniture. She was never ill. But one sunny day in early summer, she went out, sat on the bench, and was gone. The police asked my mother to identify the body. Nothing strange about that. But when she went to grandmother’s apartment, she found out that it had been sold just a week before. And not only that. Grandmother had also sold everything else – the furniture, TV, all of it. She had cleaned up. There was only a mattress on the floor, one cup, a plate, and a spoon. She had given away all the money.

Why did she do it? Did she hate us? Why?

My mother had to take a loan for the funeral.