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The first time someone told me I looked like Anne Frank was also the first conversation I had about pubic hair. All the same, this is how I remember it: We were still living in Israel. I was nine. It was a hot day in Jaffa, but the school hallways were cool. The teachers had set up a display of books by the entrance, and a friend of mine was examining one of them. I was bored, because books were boring. My friend looked from me to the cover of the book in her hand and back to me again and said, You kind of look like Anne Frank.
I have another memory from that time, of standing in front of a full-length mirror for a good hour trying to figure out how the parts of my face fit together. I got so close I fogged up the glass. It must have been around then that my mother, bless her heart, made an earnest attempt to turn me into a reader. The book had been overdue for a year or more, something I worried about a lot.
I gave it a try, which to me meant staring blankly at the first page for about ten minutes while vividly daydreaming about flying.
Then I put it down. When my mom asked about the book a week later, I handed it to her with the explanation β and this is a direct quote β The letters were too small. Anytime I remember my childhood in Israel, the images are always sun drenched, always an inch away from what feels like reality: The chocolate factory at the end of the street, which, if the wind blew just right, made the smoggy breeze sickly sweet.
