Nobody Will Tell You This But Me: A True (As Told to Me) Story

by Bess Kalb

All of a sudden everyone becomes very religious on behalf of the deceased.

“Bubbalah, when the earth is cracking behind your feet, you go forward. One foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other.”

She’d tell me, “If you’re having a rotten day, go buy yourself an ice cream soda and a new hat.”

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.

“Every hundred years they find a new reason to hunt the Jews.”

Bessie, if you try on a dress and you don’t immediately want to parade outside the dressing room and show it off to everyone in the store, take it off and forget it ever existed.

And there was one thing I could do about it: nudge. Remember, you can always nudge.

“Bobby! Another book?”—as if I’d tucked my leg behind my head.

My bathroom. You want to know the secret to a long marriage? Separate bathrooms. So your grandfather

This was before they had a name for the malaise and the torpor and whatever it was that takes hold of a woman trapped by her own circumstance. There wasn’t lithium. There was the Ritz.

Promise me you’ll never wear the same thing two days in a row, even if nobody will notice.

He worships the ground you walk on and he’s exactly right.

Bessie, beware of men who have gone their whole lives without hearing the word “no.”

Imagine being as smart as your mother and not seeing a single warning sign?

You can buy as many clothes as you like, Bessie, but you can’t buy style.

And then she said, “I don’t know. I think I’m just difficult.” And I closed my eyes and felt the ground drop beneath me.

Wear a bra. You’ll thank me.

It happened all week. By Friday, you didn’t knock. That’s when I cried.

I cut it off, put it in a Ziploc, and it stayed in my handbag for a year. I took it to every appointment at every beauty salon. “Match this.”

I raised you as my equal so I’d have a friend. Birds of a feather.

If you’re born a man and halfway decent at something, everyone will tell you you’re great.

Everyone needs the dress that makes her feel like she’s able to do anything she wants.

You’re like me. Easily upset. Easily stuck. Easy to cry. Easy to mope. Easy to lie through your teeth, to swallow the blood in your mouth and laugh.

When the earth is cracking behind your feet and it feels like the whole world is going to swallow you up, you put one foot in front of the other and you keep going. You go forward.