When I was sixteen a stranger drew a swastika on my paper. Still, we were strangers. I think that’s when being non-white sunk in, that I was different, not the apple-pie American. As far as censuses go, I checkmark "white," but I first learned in sixth grade, that I wasn’t what the rest of the world called "white."

I remember thinking: why wasn’t I blonde haired and blue eyed--the all-American look--then I’d just blend in and I wouldn’t be different. Being an American Jewish kid with dark hair and tan skin, as a child I got 
lumped into this random non-white group. The blondes thought I wasn’t like them, the Asian and Mexican kids didn’t accept me either. That left 
me in sixth grade not belonging. I withdrew into myself. 

Then breasts came along. Suddenly, I was a woman. The blondes wanted to be my friend; I was cool: I had knockers before them. I found out they 
weren’t so different than me; neither were the Asian or Mexican kids. We were all American, life was good. I belonged. I was friends with everyone. 

I breezed through junior high not thinking about race or even that I was a Jewish American. Sure, I went to religious school on Saturdays, but I also went to Girl Scouts and dance class and that’s what mattered: I chose them; not society or birth or family. They were my choices. Then, in high school, everything changed. 

I remember walking into a Law and Society class and this guy with black hair that stuck straight up five inches off his head, just stared at me 
for the longest time as roll call was read. The minute he heard my name, he jotted something down onto his notepad. 

That day we exchanged papers. When I got mine back, I found a swastika drawn underneath my name. Suddenly, thoughts of the Nazis dragging me 
away filled my head. I thought, 'The guy’s a Nazi. He wants to kill me, he wants me dead, he hates me, and he’s in my class.'

I didn’t know what to do. 

By this point my friendship circle had widened. I was friends with what were called the 'lawn people': The prepster crowd with their sights on ivy league colleges nuzzled up to me in honors history class hoping for help on the tests. The punk crowd with Mohawks took me in, 'cause I didn’t quite fit in with their idea of what belonged; and the drama crowd 
latched onto my poems--my philosophical ramblings were cool, they fit in with their obsessions about past lives. Life was good: I belonged. 

I surveyed this crowd about what to do about the swastika. The lawn people told me to stop hanging out with losers. The drama crowd screamed there was nothing I could do, the guy hated me, was I nuts to even think I could do something? "Are you kidding? You’ll get yourself killed.”

The best answer, and the least likely one, came from the Mohawk kids; they told me the guy was just doing it to be cool, probably thought I had 
a nice rack. They invited me to a punk party in the guise that he’d be there. 

I didn’t know what I was up for or what I’d even do.

I went to that party. He didn’t show up. Some punk kids from his crowd flirted with me and cracked jokes about Jews. I told them I was Jewish, and they said they never met one before and continued talking; like I’d mentioned some rock band, whose song they wanted to listen to. They didn’t hate me. I was different like them, I was cool. 

That’s all the mark had been about, just shocking someone. I know it could have been worse. I was lucky.

The next day when I went to school, the Mohawk crowd was real silent. I didn’t know what was wrong. No one wanted to talk about it. I learned from the drama crowd, the guy who drew the swastika got killed. "Car accident," they said. 

I am sad now, and its twenty years later. I never got a chance to talk to him, to become friends, to tell him how his mark hurt. To show him not to write hateful things, that a mark’s just a mark, that's why there are erasers.

Author's Biography

I'm a freelance writer in San Diego. Featured short stories have appeared in Mega Era Magazine, Millenniumshift, Orgease Journal, PacificNWpotpourri, Alternate Species, Story South, Science Fiction and Fantasy World, Word Riot, Universal Personality, Seven Seas Magazine, Green 
Tricycle, and All Things Girl.

E-mail Julie at julie@gotdot.com 

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