Nobody Will Tell You This But Me

by Bess Kalb

  I belonged to them.

  PHONE CALL, OCTOBER 2009

  GRANDMOTHER: Bessie, is he Jewish?

  GRANDDAUGHTER: Hello to you, too!

  Is he Jewish?

  He’s not. He’s from Maine. He’s a WASP from Maine.

  So he’s a Christian.

  He’s nonpracticing—I think he’s an atheist. We haven’t really gotten into it. He’s actually taking a class on Buddhism.

  Oh my god.

  Grandma, it’s not important to me.

  How long have you been going together? Your mother says a month.

  So you already have the whole story!

  I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

  Now I’m a horse.

  Don’t get cute. You know he’s probably never taken home a Jewish girl before.

  He goes to Brown. He’s done nothing but take home Jewish girls for four years.

  Can I tell you a true story?

  Why not.

  In the history of our family, only one person has ever married a non-Jew.

  Grandma, it has been one month and he’s probably moving to San Francisco after—

  Bessie. Listen to your grandmother.

  I’m listening.

  Only one person has ever married outside the religion. My brother George. He had his heart broken by a miserable woman, and so he joined the navy and was stationed all over the world.

  I didn’t know we had anyone in the navy in our family!

  Don’t get too excited—there wasn’t any combat. So he came home and showed up on my mother’s doorstep with a beautiful Portuguese woman who was pregnant. And do you know what my mother did? My mother from the shtetl?

  I can’t even possibly begin to imagine.

  She took one look at her son and one look at the girl, and she gave her a big bear hug and said in English, “Welcome to my home.”

  So you’re fine with Charlie.

  What’s his major?

  Business?

  Fine.

  OUR FACES

  Bessie, I’ve told you my mother didn’t speak a word of English when she got to Brooklyn—on the census forms they wrote her language was “Jewish.” Ha! She spoke Yiddish with my father but never in front of the children. So we didn’t talk much. She’d call me shayna punim, “beautiful face,” which made me laugh. I had her face.

  This was before the adjustments I made in the 1980s.

  She worked to erase her ethnic heritage, her shtetl. She would hold Shabbat and there’d be Hebrew and candles, but there was never any kosher this or kosher that. We ate what we could and we liked it. She shuddered at the Hassids in their wigs, and I turned my nose up at them, too.

  I always detested my nose—I looked in the mirror and I saw Russia. I paid for your mother’s nose and I paid for your “deviated septum.” Ha. I held frozen peas on your black-and-blue eyes and the Russia melted out of you. I don’t know if all the procedures I had were to erase the aging or the shtetl. A little of both, I suppose.

  I look at my wedding picture and your grandfather hasn’t changed, but I barely recognize myself.

  PHONE CALL, 2010

  GRANDMOTHER: You know, it’s not really California.

  [LONG PAUSE]

  GRANDDAUGHTER: I’m pretty sure it is.

  Well, I think you’ve got the wrong idea. I don’t want you going out there thinking it’s going to be sunshine and palm trees and la-di-da.

  I know.

  If you want that, come to Palm Beach. Stay as long as you like!

  I know.

  I’ve never heard of a muggier place than San Francisco. Cold and muggy.

  Well, it can’t be as bad as Providence.

  It’s worse.

  What?

  What I’m saying—and nobody will tell you this but me—is that your hair is going to be frizzy. All of the time. You’ll be beside yourself.

  Well, if it becomes unbearable I can get a spray or something. Or a hat.

  A serum. I’ve already FedExed you a serum.

  Okay. Thanks.

  You see? What would you do without me?

  I have no idea!

  Bessie?

  Yes?

  You’d be gorgeous if you went a little blonder.

  GEORGIE AND LEO

  My mother lived a very long life and she would have lived longer if it weren’t for my brothers. First there was David, then Jesse, then the twins, Georgie and Leo. They tortured her—but what was she to do? “Four boys,” the neighbors would say. “A blessing.” She’d snort and say, “You want ’em? You take ’em.”

  She was married at eighteen and had David at nineteen, and then Jesse and then the twins shortly after that, and then me at nearly forty. Can you imagine? Georgie and Leo were teenagers when I was born. Never a break, even when she thought she had a break. As soon as I could walk, she sent me off with them. “Take the girl and get out of my house,” she’d say. So they did. And oh, would they have fun.

  They’d play stickball in the street and take turns changing my diaper on the sidewalk.

  They taught me how to crawl by all standing on one end of the living room cheering and hollering while I lay helpless on my stomach on the rug.

  They all competed to see whose name I’d say first. Georgie won. Leo swore it was only because he’d stand over my crib chanting his name over and over again until I cracked. He never forgave Georgie for his name being the one I said first.

  In the summers, they’d take me to Coney Island to the ocean. They pooled their money and bought me a real swimming suit, but they would strip down to their undergarments and jump off the end of the dock. It was full of bodies in the summer, and everyone was so poor in those years after the market crash, nobody minded swimming with Jews. So they’d have their fun and swim up to girls. Georgie and Leo were identical twins, and this was very convenient. Georgie would make a girl laugh and swim away, and Leo would pick up right where Georgie left off and quote a poem and lay on the charm. Together, they were a real catch. They’d be at it for hours until they got someone’s address. They’d divvy up the girls depending on who liked which one the best. They always had girlfriends.

  Meanwhile, I’d sit on the edge of the pier on the hot concrete looking at them having their fun and my skin would blister—I’m very fair, like you—and how I’d cry. “Please, please let me swim!” and they’d look at each other and say, “Bobby, you’ll drown.” And I’d say, “I don’t care!”

  But Leo had an idea. Leo always had an idea—he was the smarter one, almost as smart as he thought he was. He sweet-talked a woman into lending him her black rubber inner tube, and he found some rope and tied it to a post and said, “All right, Bob, hop on!” And so I did. Every day for a week I’d sit on an inner tube tied to the post, terrified, with the cold water making me numb below the waist while they swam around. I could have slipped through and nobody would have known, and that would have been it. But I never slipped. I owed it to them to stay afloat. I sat there for hours, bobbing on the water.

  All of my brothers could read and write, and all of them went to college except for Georgie, who joined my father on the picket line as soon as he could. They were full-time protesters who were too angry at the whole world to get any kind of work. They protested anything—after the terrible factory fire they protested for workers’ rights. It was always something.

  But Georgie and Leo were very smart. They were always reading—it was a competitive sport. Leo memorized the U.S. Constitution, and Georgie would add up numbers in the phone book. Leo would quiz me, and I was a little girl—I hardly knew how to spell my own name—but he bullied me into reading the great books, and Georgie ran multiplication
tables with me. They would show off to each other depending on how fast I learned their lessons. If I got poor marks in school, they wouldn’t look at me. “They want the Jews to stay behind while they go off to great schools and become rich men.” So every night I read until I was nearly unconscious, and Leo would come into the room I shared with my mother (my father came home late and slept on the living room floor) and he’d pat me on the head and blow out the gas lamp. “Good night, good night, don’t let the monkeys bite.” I don’t know why it was funny but I’d laugh every time.

  Leo followed in David’s footsteps and set off to become a lawyer. Leo graduated from college with honors and went on to Fordham Law School. He was going to be a great litigator. And then right before his last semester of law school, he fell terribly ill.

  He’d kill me if he knew that I’m telling you what I’m about to tell you. So would Georgie. My mother didn’t know the story as long as she lived. She would have bludgeoned them both with a frying pan. But I knew. I watched the whole thing happen. I was eight years old.

  Leo got sick in early January, and by the end of February he was near death. It was a stomach infection that spread throughout his whole body. Now, Leo was the great scholar, but Georgie wasn’t dumb. He was a whiz with numbers and a fast learner when he wasn’t getting drunk with my father and my zayde. So he sobered up, put on Leo’s gray wool blazer, took three buses up to Fordham, and strode confidently into Leo’s class and signed his twin brother’s name into the attendance log. For weeks, he’d sit in lectures, take notes, and stay up all night reading and memorizing all the cases. When he was called upon by a professor, he’d drop his Brooklyn accent and use the same “goyish” voice he’d relentlessly mock Leo for using. He passed the final exam with flying colors, in Leo’s name.

  As for Leo—as the illness progressed, he became certain he’d die. He lay up in his bedroom with the curtains drawn, sipping broth and sleeping off his fevers. Every day he became skinnier. His eyes sunk and his skin turned yellow and his hair started falling out. When Purim came, I brought home a poppy seed hamantasch from the temple potluck and took it to his room. He looked at it and laughed and then coughed and winced, and blood came out of his mouth. I dropped the cookie on the floor and ran. I found my mother in the kitchen, scrubbing a pot. “Ma, is Leo going to die?” She didn’t pause to think: “Leo is going to graduate.”

  Leo still hadn’t recovered by graduation day in June, so Georgie put on the cap and gown and walked across the stage in front of thousands of people and received Leo’s diploma. He brought it home and told everyone he’d been by the school and picked it up. Nobody had any idea what was really going on except for me. Not even Jesse or David.

  Then, in a month, it was time to take the bar. The New York State Bar is notoriously tough. John Kennedy Jr. failed twice, which’ll show you what pedigree can and can’t buy. But it was near impossible—it still is. And Georgie went to Leo, who at this point after five months was skin and bones; they didn’t look anything alike anymore. Georgie said, “Leo, I’m going to take the bar.” Leo protested—he was sure Georgie would fail—and the boys got into a terrible fight. Leo barely had his strength back, but he almost knocked Georgie to the floor when he told him he’d signed Leo up for the exam. “You’ve been a lawyer for half a year and you think you can pass the bar?” And Georgie looked at him with a grin and said, “No, I know I can pass it.” This was the one time in our lives Leo asked me for advice. I was eight years old—I’ll never forget it. “Bob, what do I do?” I told him, “If you die, you may as well die a lawyer.” He was very amused by that—he’d tell it back to me all the time for years. So Leo gave Georgie his blessing and Georgie sat for the bar.

  He passed the first time.

  Two months later, Leo was better and he opened a law practice. My mother never asked how.

  A few years later, after I’d recovered from my own illness, I was deaf in my right ear and I was very upset. It was permanent. I was beside myself, and I refused to get out of bed one morning. My mother sent Leo to me. When he walked in I blurted out, “I’m an invalid! What am I going to do?” So he put his face very close to my face and looked me in the eye and he shouted, “Use the left one!” Oh, how I laughed.

  TWO VOICE MAILS, DECEMBER 30, 2011

  Oh, you’re probably asleep—it’s early. Can I tell you a true story? You know your mother was working full-time when she had you. She took a few weeks off, but she went right back to finish her psychiatric residency. There were hardly any women in the program—there wasn’t any precedent. And of course your father was in the same boat, and there were scheduling issues. Your mother cried. And I was in Florida! So what was she going to do? Leave you with a stranger? Oh my god. You couldn’t hold your head up. Hello? I have a call waiting.

  [END OF MESSAGE. NEXT MESSAGE.]

  * * *

  —

  So anyway, so I’d get on an airplane every Tuesday and fly to LaGuardia and turn around and fly back every Thursday, because I loved you. I wasn’t young. I was an old lady! But I loved you. And I’d sit there in their terrible apartment by the hospital and I’d watch you. We’d watch TV, we talked, it was fine. Every week for the first year of your life. Can you imagine? You started talking at nine months. You said “hi.”

  [LONG PAUSE]

  Bessie, no serious person moves to San Francisco.

  NEIMAN MARCUS DRESSING ROOM,

  PALM BEACH, FLORIDA, 2010

  GRANDMOTHER: Excuse me, miss! The two is too snug on her, we’ll need a four!

  SALESLADY: I’ll be right back with a four!

  GRANDDAUGHTER: Grandma! Not everyone has to know.

  You’d be a two if it weren’t a shift. You carry your weight in your hips like me.

  I don’t need a whole new dress for the wedding. I’ll just wear the black one I wore to Rachel’s.

  No! It was too low cut.

  I thought you liked that dress!

  It wasn’t right. You’ll get a better one. Nobody will be wearing black at a daytime wedding.

  SALESLADY: We have the four!

  [HANDS OVER A PALE BLUE EYELET SHIFT DRESS]

  My granddaughter wants to wear a black dress to a daytime wedding.

  SALESLADY: Oh?

  [STANDS IN SILENCE, UNSURE WHO HOLDS THE CARDS]

  I’m just saying I have a black dress I know I like and I’ve only worn it once.

  It’s vulgar.

  SALESLADY: We just got in some really pretty new prints from Diane von Furstenberg!

  No! They’re always cheap polyester year after year. She’ll look like a secretary from Yonkers. Why should we all wrap ourselves in kitchen wallpaper just because Diane von Furstenberg married up and got handed a fashion label?

  [EVERYONE STANDS IN SILENCE]

  [A FEW MORE BEATS OF SILENCE]

  Thanks. I’ll try on the four.

  If it doesn’t fit I’ll light my hair on fire.

  [SALESLADY EXITS]

  PHONE CALL, 2009

  GRANDDAUGHTER: Grandma, I’m going to Maine for Christmas to meet Charlie’s family.

  GRANDMOTHER: To Maine?

  That’s where he grew up.

  I thought you said he went to boarding school.

  Right. Yes. But his family lived in Maine.

  Well, they kicked him out.

  They didn’t kick him out! It’s just how they do things. His whole family went to that boarding school.

  Mm-hmm.

  What?!

  In this family, we don’t send our children away.

  It wasn’t like that at all!

  Bessie?

  What, Grandma?

  You will not send your children there no matter what Charlie says. There are plenty of good schools where you don�
��t have to abandon your child.

  Grandma, we’ve been dating for three months.

  I know.

  We don’t even live together.

  You will.

  I don’t know that.

  I do.

  Oh really? How do you know?

  Because it’s the middle of December and you’re going to Maine.

  THE MOTHERLAND

  It was when I was ten years old and fighting for my life in that hospital bed with meningitis, when my mother told me about Russia and how she left. How she escaped.

  We never spoke about it after that. I would see it in my dreams, though, for the rest of my life. I’d wake up certain I was there, in the crowded berth of a steamship, alone. If you must know, I’m fairly certain the only reason she told me about it all is she was sure I was going to die, and she had to make sure I knew the story before I crossed over and met her mother and father and all her brothers and her sisters. It’s possible she resented that I lived, that I carried around her horror, reflecting it back at her across the dining room table, scared of the woman cooking me eggs.

  People then didn’t talk about the journey, Bessie. There wasn’t any “sharing” between parents and their children. If I brought it up, she’d say, “What’s the point?” or pretend she hadn’t heard, humming a song to drown me out. I knew Russia was there—she wore it in her sunken eyes, her clenched jaw, and her heaving sighs when she lay down at night. She’d allude to it if I complained: “You don’t know how lucky you are, Barbara.” Shaming me for the life she gave me: “You have it so easy, Barbara.” Accusing me of existing in my own circumstances. I knew what she meant, and I’d bite my lip.