When I was at the precocious age of seven, I discovered – with the aid of a well-placed mirror – that, on the back of my left shoulder, there was a birthmark. It was a decidedly brown blotch on my pale skin, much darker and bigger than the freckles on my face, and it was in the shape of the letter “b”. I looked at it in the bathroom mirror, ruminatively chewing a strand of my dirty-blond hair. Then I hopped off the counter, knocking over a toothbrush holder and a bottle of mouthwash in the process, and pulled my shirt back on.
     The birthmark was neglected for much of the remaining school year; I was much too preoccupied with such activities as going to school to learn my numbers and letters, searching for ladybugs in the garden, searching for worms in the garden, and searching for my younger brother in the garden. It was only at the start of an otherwise uneventful summer that I remembered its existence, once more on the counter in front of the bathroom mirror, which was now covered in smeared handprints and – inexplicably – footprints. This time, I did not forget about it.
     “What does 'b' stand for?” I asked Mama at the dinner table. She sneakily tried to ease more green beans onto my plate, only to be foiled by my sneakily placed glass of water. The water spilled, though, and I hopped up to fetch a paper towel, and Mama took advantage of my absence to pile the rest of the green beans onto my plate. She turned to Papa. “Hold this plate, will you?” she asked, then took the paper towels from my hand to clean up the spill.
     After the spill had been cleaned, the green beans passed out, and everybody – including my squirming little brother – situated at the table, I asked again. “What does the letter 'b' stand for, Mama?”
She chewed on her chicken; I noted, disapprovingly, that she hadn't touched her green beans, either. “Well,” she said, “it can stand for… let's see… ball. Ballerina. Ballet. Butterfly.”
     “Bugs!” squealed my little brother, and started guffawing. He snorted green beans all over the tablecloth, and Mama got up again to fetch paper towels.
     “Blue,” added my father. “Berries, balance, buildings, billow, brown, beagle -”
     “Like Sara's doggie?” I interrupted.
     “Yep,” he said.

     As I lay in bed, I considered my birthmark. Birthmark, I thought. If the letter “b” was on my skin, what did that mean?
This caused me some trouble, and I rolled from side to side. It didn't seem to help my brain, though. Brain starts with the letter “b”, too…
     I fell asleep.

      When I asked my best friend, Beanie (a nickname), what having a birthmark meant, she had trouble with it, too. But Beanie was smarter than me; she read a lot. After a while, she told me, “If you havva birthmark, then you're probably special. Like, if your birthmark's a crown, then you're a princess!”
     “I don't wanna be a princess. You havta wear dresses 'n stuff.”
     “I didn't say you were a princess, I said if you havva crown birthmark then you're a princess. You'd be a bad princess, anyway.”
     “Hey!”
     “It's true!”
     We squabbled for a bit, then quickly made peace, aided by popsicles brought in a timely manner by her mother. As I sucked on the intensely sweet, cold, vaguely grape-flavored treat, I continued to follow my train of thought. “See, I've got a birthmark, I looked inna mirror, an' it's a letter. It's,” I paused for dramatic effect, “it's a letter 'b'.”
     Beanie looked thoroughly impressed. “Show me!”
     “No,” I declared, for I didn't feel much like taking my shirt off; it was a very pretty shirt. I stuck my tongue out at her, but this only caused her to giggle. “Your tongue's purple!”
     “Well, so's yours! Anyway,” I continued, “so does that mean that… do I havta… be something that starts with the letter 'b'?”
     Beanie thought about this for a while. She was very good at thinking, even though her mom spoke in a funny accent and Beanie's skin was darker than mine – Beanie said that in Indja, wherever that was, everyone looked like her. She had nice black hair, though, and she was good at thinking. “I think,” she finally said, “that you should only like stuff with the letter 'b'. See, I'm your friend, right, and my name starts with a 'b' – well, my nickname,” she said defensively. “It still counts.”
     I wasn't totally convinced. “Does that mean I can't like things that don't start with the letter 'b'? I mean, I like grape stuff… and I like purple.”
     “Kinda – well, no, see,” Beanie started to say, then I interrupted her again. “And I don't like broccoli, an' I don't like beans, espeshly green ones.”
     “That's okay, you'll start to like 'em anyway, when you get older and stuff. The sooner the better. You should just start wearing blue, and do 'b'-stuff!”
     “I don't much like my brother, either,” I continued. “He smells funny.”
     But, in the back of my head, I had already decided that it was my destiny to love all things 'b'. I started by changing into a blue shirt after my mom dragged me home from Beanie's house. Then I thought about what else I could do to fulfill the requirements of having a 'b'-shaped birthmark.
     I looked hard around my room, which was – to my disapproval – painted green. There was a shelf, with a few picture books on one side, but mostly buried beneath a mountain of stuffed animals and dolls. There was a little, low table, all covered in scratches, dents, pencil marks, paint splatters, and other stains of mysterious origins. There was a closet. There was a bed.
     I walked over to the shelf, and unloaded my stuffed animals, lining them up on my bed in neat, military-style rows. The rabbits, horses, pigs, unicorns, hippopotami, rhinoceroses, parrots, dragons, lions, and platypuses all stood to attention. I adored my worn-out, ratty stuffed animals; I knew them all by name, and I wouldn't part with them for the world.
     But now that I had a “b”-shaped birthmark…
     I went down the row, starting with Bunny, my creatively named pink rabbit. She got tossed back onto my shelf. Then came Brownie – also the shelf. Curls, a pig, stayed on the bed. So did Acorn, Pampidoo, Diddles, Sandywandy, Gerfuffle, and Yellow. Billy went to the shelf, Bowkie-girl went to the shelf, Alex stayed on the bed. And so on, until all my named dolls and animals had been sorted out into two piles – one, rather smaller than before, on the shelf, and the other on my bed.
     I felt myself to be quite generous, and quite a good representative of the “b”-shaped birthmark clan, as I gathered up the outcasts in my arms and marched down the hallway into my brother's room. He was reading a comic book out loud and chewing gum, and still managed to stick his tongue out at me when I stepped in. I returned the favor, then dumped the load onto his floor. “You can have these,” I pronounced, then turned on my heel and walked back out the room.
     I tried to suppress the pang of this unceremonious parting with my stuffed animals by thinking about how good a girl I was being.
     The rest of the day went by in a similar fashion. Out went the few picture books I had; off my plate went my beloved strawberries, to be replaced in short order by blackberries. I opened up my paints and began to repaint the walls of my room in blue, black, and brown. When Mama was out of sight, I snuck all of my pink, white, and yellow clothes into the big trash can in our garage. I had committed myself to this philosophy, and I was going to follow through.
     The trouble came when I tried to modify our garden; there was a blueberry bush, which was all right, and my mother's hard-earned beets could stay, but I determined that the marigolds, spinach, and carrots had to go. As I began my project, my brother joined me in energetically tearing up the spinach. Then he paused. “Wait,” he said, “did Mama say you could?”
     My answer didn't matter. He ran, trailing mud and dirt behind him, wailing, into the house. “Ma-maaaa! Sissie's tearin' up the garden! She's tearin' up the garden!” Mama hurried out, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “What are you doing now?! What did I say about touching my plants? You know better!”
     “But he was doin' it, too -”
     “Never mind that! What do you have to say for yourself?”
     At this point, I burst into tears, for I had only been trying to do my job as a person with a “b”-shaped birthmark. With great, heaving sobs, I was dragged into the house and into a corner to sit and consider my sins; instead, I pondered the unfairness of it all as I wiped the streaming tears from my eyes, blackening my face with the garden-dirt. When my mother, a few minutes later, decided to bring me a change of shirts, she discovered the missing clothes; this further extended my time-out. And when she went back to my room and finally noticed the paint, she realized something was amiss.
     At the dinner table, I sat quietly, not touching my plate; there wasn't anything that started with the letter “b” on it. Anxiety caused my seven-year-old appetite to dwindle, anyhow; Mama was consulting with Papa in the living room about my behavior. And my brother wasn't eating either, too busy picking his nose. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of staring at a slowly cooling plate of mashed potatoes and coleslaw, Mama entered the room.
     She came over to my chair, and knelt. I stared at my plate, saying nothing. In a low, calm tone, she asked me, “Is something the matter, honey? Did something happen? I promise we won't get mad at you; this just isn't like you, and I'm worried.”
     I still didn't speak, but Mama didn't, either; she just waited. So after another eternity of more staring at mashed potatoes, I realized she wasn't going anywhere. Trying very hard not to burst into tears again, I said, just as quietly, “It's cause of my birthmark.”
     “Your birthmark – what birthmark? The one on your back? Why -”
     “Beanie said,” I added, a bit louder; I could see Mama wasn't angry, just confused, and Papa wasn't paying attention anyways. He was trying to get my brother to eat some of the mashed potatoes. “Beanie said that, because my birthmark's a letter 'b', I have to like only 'b'-stuff and I didn't wanna have stuff that didn't start with 'b' because that wouldn't be right, see, and – and -”
     Mama started to laugh. She laughed louder and louder, and Papa – who'd heard me after all – started laughing too. So I stopped talking. I was annoyed at their amusement for my sincere preoccupation with my birthmark. She finally caught her breath, still smiling and tee-heeing a little bit. “Sshh, it's all right, honey. But look, you can't believe everything Beanie says. She's a very nice girl, and she is quite smart for her age, but she's not always right. And – how exactly did you find your birthmark?”
     “In the bathroom - I used the mirror,” I told her.
     Mama sighed a little bit. “Have you ever looked at a book in the mirror, honey?”
     “Nah, I haven't...”
     “Your birthmark is shaped more like the letter 'd'.”

     And that was that.
     I never did get those stuffed animals back from my brother, though.