Guest Post: To All The Boys My Great Grandma Has Loved Before by Gabriela Martins

Hey everyone! How are you all doing today?

Today I’m hosting a guest post by Gabriela Martins, a queer brazilian author who’s debut Like A Love Song is releasing next year (2021). More on her book below but please read the guest post first. I read it with a smile on my face the entire time. It’s well-written, funny and also very touching.
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Guest Post:

TO ALL THE BOYS MY GREAT GRANDMA HAS LOVED BEFORE

by Gabriela Martins

If anyone should be regarded as the incarnation of romance, that person is Sarah Ramos Martins.

Also known as my bisa, my great grandmother.

Like in any person’s life, there are tragedies and drama in her life as well. As a story-teller, I reserve the right to ignore and omit all parts of her story that don’t match the vibe of this essay. Also as her favorite and only great granddaughter. Wink wink.

My bisa Sarah grew up on the countryside of Rio Grande do Sul, when almost everything consisted of countryside. She and her sister spent spent all day either playing or working in the small farm of their parents, and because my bisa was a few years away from becoming the most impressive woman I’ve ever met, she also spent a whole lot of that time flirting with the neighbor.

The neighbor was a few years older, and came from a different world. His life was a sad result of colonization, his people losing everything to the Portuguese, including their land. He was a troubled boy carrying family secrets and so much mystery in those haunted woods that surrounded their houses that one day I shall write a whole book about it.

But he was cute, you see. So she didn’t care much that he didn’t see her as a woman-to-be. He saw her as the tomboy next-door best friend who talked a lot and he just listened. But she had her eye on him from day one.

In Brazil, enlisting to the military is mandatory if you’re a man once you turn eighteen. So although there was nothing he wanted less than to be shipped off to Paraguay borders in World War I, he was forced to leave.

“Protásio,” Sarah said. “You better come back alive, because when you do, we’re getting married.”

He laughed. A very sure, Jan type of laugh. But didn’t I say bisa was about to become one of the most impressive women to ever live? Well so. While he was away, they exchanged letters. So many letters that he would no longer write to his family, only to her. While he was away, all that existed for him was her.

When he came back, they got married.

Let me tell you also right off the bat that Protásio Martins, my great grandfather, was one of the sweetest men I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. He was already very sick when I was born, but I have vague memories of me as a toddler playing with him nonstop. He was very jealous of his toys and of bisa. Mine mine mine. But in a quiet type of way. He spoke with his eyes a lot.

My grandpa tells me that once he went to their house to pick up my grandma and her parents (Sarah and Protásio) for a picnic. It was nearly midday and my bisa was still sleeping. Grandpa was upset; they had to leave soon! But nothing compared to my great grandpa’s fury upon discovering that his son-in-law fostered any thoughts that weren’t of complete adoration for my bisa.

To this sweet but quiet guy Protásio, Sarah was the most perfect creature in the world. Anyone who dared disagree would face his atypical but sure wrath.

Bisa wasn’t perfect. She talked over others, spoke loud, got annoyed if things ever didn’t go her way, loved nothing more than sleeping and eating, and if you didn’t sleep or eat enough, she’d force you to somehow. Sleeping and eating were her favorite things. But after these two things, it was love.

They loved each other very much. They had three daughters. Almost thirty years ago, my great grandpa became sicker and sicker until he passed away.

This was not the end of Bisa’s romances.

It was actually just the beginning.

I did say that bisa was the most impressive, didn’t I? She was also the liveliest. She’d travel around the country, a big fan of cruises with seniors, where she could date around. If I’m being honest, there was nothing about her that really jumped out. She had very black hair and dark eyes, lots and lots of wrinkles, a purple birthmark that covered almost half of her face, and her fingers were mostly crooked. Bejeweled, though, those fingers. As well as her ears and neck. She was always dressed to kill.

It was her self-confidence that had emerged as a teen, telling her crush that they’d get married, to being a senior adult in cruises going to the beach taking her pick at the best men that made her so attractive to everyone.

Magnetic, even. To everyone.

But especially men.

Before you’re like—I bet she was rich! That’s why these men were after, you fool! Dude, I kid you not, she wasn’t. We were always as broke as can be. Plus she didn’t let anyone touch her purse, much less her wallet. All she offered was good humor, a passion for life, and… for sex. Is it weird that I know this? I will get there.

She was well into her seventies when she met the second love of her life.

Bisa always took the same bus to go downtown, at the same time. And the driver was cute. She started flirting with him, and soon enough he was stopping the bus while she was still a block away, waiting for her. Eventually, she asked for his number. They started dating.

Silvio was a divorced man on his fifties. The family was immediately shocked when she started dating a guy twenty years younger than her. He could’ve been her son! But he wasn’t, and they were both adults. Personally, I don’t remember being shocked. I just remember finding it hilarious that everyone in the family was so offended. Had they met bisa?

The family had to sort of come to terms with it, because Silvio wasn’t going anywhere. At least for the next ten years or so.

One time, I was hanging out with my cousin in her apartment. She lived upstairs from my bisa’s apartment, in the same building. I don’t remember what we were doing when we heard screams and rushed downstairs to the apartment. My cousin had the keys.

Bisa had fallen, poor thing.

… but she was only wearing a towel. Also wet from the shower? Her boyfriend Silvio. Um.

My cousin tried to lecture her on like, at least doing it in a bedroom, but bisa just told her to shut up, and that she didn’t know what my cousin was talking about, in that order.

They continued dating until eventually their differences (his love for alcohol, her love for sobriety) drove them apart. I’m convinced that the illness that made her pass was heartbreak. She thought he’d choose her over his addiction, and he was quick to girl-bye her once she gave him an ultimatum that it was either the booze or her.

Bisa, who’d always been so extremely lucid, had her light extinguish as the months passed. One of her brief moments of clarity, when she was already sick, she held my hand tight, looked me in the eye, and made me promise, that when I fell in love, I’d live that love fully, with all my heart. However many times it happened.

Bisa had one last wish before passing. She wanted to see him one last time before leaving this world. Even though my family was opposed to their relationship at first, we really wanted to grant her this wish, but he was incommunicable. Nobody had his phone, nobody knew where he lived. Nobody had really made an effort to get to know him outside of when he was with her.

She passed in January 2018. As is common in Brazilian mourning ceremonies, the closest family mourned the body for twenty-four hours. During the day, her countless friends and extended family came to celebrate her and cry for her, and while I admit that me, my mom, my cousin, and her husband, we all cried at first and at last, we stayed in the chapel drinking chimarrão and eating cookies, making jokes about all the things she would’ve wanted us to laugh about. She laughed all her life, so it was only appropriate that we laughed at the absurdity of death.

We don’t sleep when we mourn our family. We stay awake, remembering them.

At about four am, the four of us are sitting next to her open coffin, tiredly retelling stories. My aunt had just come to check on us, had left us with more food to spend the night.

And then… something happens. Someone comes. Someone unexpected.

Silvio walks in.

He asks for a moment alone with my bisa. We’re all shocked, but we leave them alone. He cries, hugs the coffin, it’s tragic and beautiful at once. But we’re all just staring at each other. Who… called him? How did he know to come?

Then when he comes out, he tells us that he was at the funeral home by chance. His neighbor’s son had had a heart attack, and had asked him to come to the funeral home to start the paper work. When he was arriving, he saw my aunt’s car, and decided to ask at the reception if there was a chapel on my bisa’s name. Just in case.

There was.

And he came say his goodbye.

So, like, even dead, my great grandmother totally murdered this innocent guy so she’d get her last moment with her boyfriend. Cold, bisa.

But that was the joke we told all day. And we still think about that. About their connection, if anything. About what love meant to her. How she embodied love. For everyone and for life, yes, but especially romantic love. She knew how to make the world fall in love with her.

And we did. We loved her with our whole hearts.

I forever will

 

About Like A Love Song:

Hannah Allaman at Underlined has bought Like a Love Song by Gabriela Martins. The debut #OwnVoices YA romance follows a Latina teen pop star whose image takes a dive after a messy public breakup, until she’s set up with a swoon-worthy fake boyfriend and discovers she’s ready to reclaim her voice and her heart. Publication is slated for summer 2021; Chelsea Eberly at Greenhouse Literary Agency brokered the deal for world rights.

 

About the author:

GABRIELA MARTINS is a Brazilian kidlit author and linguist. Her stories feature Brazilian characters finding themselves and love. She was a high school teacher and has also worked as a TED Ed-Club facilitator, where she helped teens develop their own talks in TED format to present. She edited and self-published a pro-bono LGBTQ+ anthology (KEEP FAITH) with all funds going to queer people in need. Gabriela also used to host monthly webinars with themes ranging from Linguistics in Fiction to Self-Care for Writers. She was recently selected as a Pitch Wars mentor for 2020. Her debut, LIKE A LOVE SONG (Underlined/PRH) comes out in summer 2021. Find her on Twitter at @gabhimartins, on Instagram at @gabhi, and visit her website at gabrielawrites.com.