Hate

Living with hate is an arduous task. I had to confront it daily throughout my childhood and adulthood. At the beginning of my school years, I could not understand why I was different in a class of forty children.
            At seven, it was hard for me to figure it out. I looked just like any other first grader in my class. I wore the same uniform and carried the same school bag to school. My skin tone was the same as the rest of the pupils. The only thing that stood out in my appearance were the curly, dark locks. My Mama refused to let me grow my hair long so she could braid it. She had this superstition about curls. She thought that by braiding my hair, my curls would disappear. And Mama loved them. I was the only one among my siblings who inherited them from my father.
           Papa’s hair, just like mine, was curly and beautiful. He had one unruly lock that would not stay still on his head. It escaped and fell down his forehead, blocking his vision. I can see it in my mind each time it happens. Papa patiently ran his hand through his thick mane to secure it on top of his head, but he failed miserably at his task, and the darn lock escaped again and again. In my class, I was the only one with curls, even though we had four other Jewish children.
            I still wonder why my first-grade teacher singled me out on the first day of school. I could only assume that she hated Jews. In Ukraine, antisemitism was rampant. It went back to the mid-seventeenth century when Bogdan Khmelnitsky massacred Jews, continued to the brutal killing fields during World War I, and the blood lands soiled by Nazi murderers in the operation Barbarossa in 1941.  
           When my teacher selected me as the scapegoat, she sent a signal to the rest of the children and split our class. Children are intuitive. They pick up on emotions and use them to their advantage. Those who wanted to be liked by the teacher became her pets, and the rebellious ones ignored her signal. They became my friends. They fought my battles and spoke up against prejudice. I used different techniques to win the haters in my quest to belong.
          At some point, I noticed some students who did poorly in class come over to the nerds asking to copy homework, I decided to become the best pupil in my class. I figured they would have no choice but to beg me to help them with homework, and I hoped that they would eventually discover my true self and like me for who I was.