Nobody Will Tell You This but Me

Written by television writer Bess Kalb, this memoir takes the unusual form of an oral history narrated almost entirely in the voice of Kalb's deceased grandmother, Bobby Bell (born Barbara Otis Bell), who speaks from beyond the grave. Structured around four generations of women in a single matrilineal line, the book weaves together family stories, phone calls, and voice mails to reconstruct Bobby's life and her fierce bond with Bess.

Bobby opens by describing her own funeral, critiquing the rabbi she never met and noting that Bess refused to shovel dirt onto the coffin per Jewish burial custom. She watched Hank, her husband, tell the coffin, "I wish it was me, Bob." Bobby then recounts how her daughter Robin, Bess's mother, was hospitalized in Paris with viral encephalitis; doctors said she might never walk. Bobby flew overnight and told Robin to get up. Robin did. This establishes the book's central pattern of fierce maternal intervention, guided by a maxim Bobby inherited from her grandfather: "When the earth is cracking behind your feet, you go forward."

Bobby reaches further back to tell the story of her mother, Rose, a Russian Jewish immigrant who fled Belarus alone at 12 or 13. Rose shared this story while Bobby lay hospitalized with meningitis at age 10, wanting her daughter to carry the family history. Rose grew up in Pinsk during the pogroms of the 1880s, when the tsar's forces terrorized Jewish communities. After the tsar's assassination, rumors blamed the Jews, and Rose's mother ordered her to go to America. Rose saved $20 over the course of a year, traveled smuggled routes across Europe, and boarded a steamship in Hamburg under horrific conditions. At Ellis Island, she carried one slip of paper with the name "Otesky," a family acquaintance whose name had been changed to "Otis," which became Rose's married name and Bobby's birth name. Bobby tells Bess that her Hebrew name, Shoshanna, means Rose: "You're named for her in the tribe."

In Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood, Rose presided over Shabbat dinners, the Friday night Jewish Sabbath meal, at the table where she had given birth to all five of her children, lighting brass candle holders she had brought from Russia. Bobby's father, Samuel, was a labor organizer who brought union men home for meals the family could barely afford. Bobby was the youngest, born when Rose was nearly 40, and her four brothers treated her as a beloved pet. Identical twins Georgie and Leo were particularly devoted. When Leo fell gravely ill before his final semester at Fordham Law School, Georgie impersonated him for weeks, attending lectures, passing the final exam, and sitting for the New York State Bar in Leo's name.

Bobby met Hank Bell on a city bus, where she deliberately flubbed her math homework to catch his attention. They eloped at the marriage bureau after Bobby's father disapproved, then held a formal wedding years later. They began in a cramped attic above Bobby's parents' house. Bobby refused the three careers available to women: secretary, teacher, or nurse. She pushed Hank into business, offering to be his bookkeeper. Hank discovered a GI Bill provision offering tax abatements for veterans' housing, raised capital, and built homes on Long Island. He later pioneered prefabricated housing and earned a faculty position at Columbia University after helping defeat the university's plan to displace Harlem residents.

Bobby's relationship with Robin forms the book's emotional core. Bobby had three children by 32 and felt trapped in suburban domesticity, unable to give Robin the warmth she needed. When Robin developed crippling headaches, Bobby pressured a pediatrician into prescribing phenobarbital, a powerful sedative, which Robin took daily for three years starting at age 10. During medical school, Robin retrieved her records and discovered the actual diagnosis: hyperosmia, an abnormally acute sense of smell.

Robin rebelled fiercely. At 15, she organized on behalf of the Chicago Seven, the group of political activists charged after the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and nearly got expelled. She drafted an inflammatory manifesto but called Bobby in Mexico City the night before posting it. Bobby used reverse psychology until Robin decided not to sign, telling her mother, "Because I want to get into college and get the fucking hell away from you." Bobby replied, "Good. Go." Robin earned a perfect SAT score, entered Brown University as part of the first class of women, and left home at 16. Bobby wept in a gas station parking lot for an hour.

Robin later married James, a wealthy medical student who expected her to abandon her premed studies. Bobby recognized the signs of abuse, the same pattern she had witnessed in her closest friend Estelle's marriage. When Robin hinted she needed to leave, Bobby drove to her apartment with a suitcase and took her to the airport. That night, Hank confronted James and wrote a check for $5,000 to end the marriage.

Bobby narrates Bess's birth in two contrasting versions: one in which Bess was unplanned, another in which Robin deliberately chose motherhood. Both converge at the same moment: Robin's water breaking at Popover Café and the birth during a nurse shift change. When Bobby held the newborn, she recognized her own features and called her "angel." Robin woke, sent Bess's father into the hall, and asked, "What do I do now?" Bobby answered, "All you have to do is keep her alive." Robin rested her head on her mother's shoulder for the first time in her life.

The book traces Bobby and Bess's bond from infancy onward. Bobby flew to New York every week during Robin's residency to care for Bess. When Bess developed school anxiety in third grade, Bobby picked her up every Monday for lunch at a local restaurant. They continued for a year until Bess forgot she was afraid. Bobby took Bess to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Plaza Hotel for high tea, always treating her as an equal. Bobby could also be sharp: At a dinner on Martha's Vineyard, she criticized Bess's weight, and Bess walked out crying. Bobby said something she had never said to Robin: "I'm so, so sorry."

Phone calls and voice mails are interspersed throughout, revealing their intimacy. Bobby interrogates Bess about her non-Jewish boyfriend Charlie, warns about humidity ruining her hair, and pushes her to leave a fact-checking job at Wired magazine, asking, "What would a man do?" When Bess landed a writing job on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Bobby's only advice was to get a blowout before her first day.

Bobby's health declined over years of smoking. She and Bess shared a pattern of concealment: When Bess was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, a chronic inflammatory bowel condition, in college, she hid its severity, just as Bobby let her phone go to voice mail after intubations until she could say "I'm fine." In her final days, Bobby refused the phone. The last time Bess saw her was on a FaceTime call: just the top half of Bobby's face. Bobby said, "Oh, Bess," and then, "Put it away, Robin."

Bess received the news from Robin while parked alone in Santa Monica. She howled, caught herself, and comforted her mother: 'She's your mom.' Bobby described Hank's devastation and listed the objects Bess took from the apartment during shiva, the seven-day Jewish mourning period: handkerchiefs, a lipstick, a compact, a blue pen.

More than a year later, Bess visited the grave on Martha's Vineyard. Bobby declared she was not there but lived on in Bess's body, face, laugh, rage, and stories. Bobby distinguished Bess's fantasy of rescue from her own wish: to fall into a deep sleep and die with every memory alive, leaving those memories in Bess. In the epilogue, Bobby told Bess, 'I'm in a box in the ground. You're putting words in my mouth.' Bess did not deny it. Bobby recited her grandfather's maxim one last time: When the earth is cracking behind your feet, you put one foot in front of the other and keep going. When Bess asked what happens if you don't, Bobby laughed: 'Neither do I, angel. Neither do I.'