My kindergarden teacher, a tall white woman with long blond hair billowing to her elbows, sharp blue eyes beckoned me to stand at her desk in front of the classroom, after my mother had left. She leaned over to sternly tell me and all the kids that I was NOT special, even though my people think they are the chosen ones.

Maybe months, maybe a year, maybe that same day, on the playground a couple boys started shouting at me “dirty jew, dirty jew”. I took off to the forbidden side of the playground, where I hurled myself up and over the chain linked fence, chased by the loud shouts of the kids ordering me to stop, warning me I’m going to get into trouble. I hit the ground, running across the parking lot, up the driveway, charging blindly across the busiest street in our small, white, rural, christian town to bang hysterically on my front door.

Today I wonder what it cost my mother, a refugee from hitler’s germany when she was just 15, to fling open her door to find her baby girl, knees scraped and clothes crumpled, sobbing and afraid to speak. What it cost her to get on her knees on the doorstep, level with my tears and snot to tell me that I’m not a Jew but half German – her half.