The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

Allison and I traded gossip about the day’s events. Not seeing his car in line only validated my decision to round out the afternoon with a food excursion. By the time we reached the restaurant, ten minutes later, the line for ordering pizza snaked outside. That’s when I started to get nervous. We’d be there for at least another thirty minutes just getting through the line. But the smell of pizza dough, garlic, and marinara sauce was enough to soothe my worries. Even if my grandfather was down there, he could wait. Where did he have to go anyway?
    Forty-five additional minutes passed before we each got our order of a slice of pizza, a drink, and fries to go. By now, the sun had unexpectedly started to set. I’m always too lazy to figure out whether it’s daylight saving or not. (All I know is I’m not a fan of the time change that has the sun right in your face when you wake up and takes it away at five o’clock in the afternoon. I don’t give a damn if it gives me an extra hour of sleep; it is not worth the productivity of which it robs me.) As we made our way down the darkening hill,I got a dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach. The line of cars was long gone, and I could only see a few cars parked in the parking lot in the distance, one of which was the golden Mercedes that had once been my father’s, the first car he had bought with his new eighties ob-gyn salary. If only I could walk up to the car and find him inside. He’d probably take some of my fries as punishment for being late and that would be that. But no, my dad had long since “upgraded” to a gray Saturn.
    This would be my best frenemy’s first time meeting my grandfather, and it began to dawn on me that they’d make a horrible first impression on each other.
    Perhaps it was the way that I greeted my grandfather, with a smile and a peppy, “Hey Papa!” that sent him over the edge. Or maybe it was that I hadn’t been considerate enough to get him anything to eat or drink. (Although he wouldn’t be able to taste it anyway, as he had lost his sense of taste and smell during some odd sickness that he caught decades ago.) Or maybe it really was just the fact that he had probably spent over two hours in traffic, coming all the way from Inglewood, only to wait an additional hour for his greedy, greasy-faced, non-resisting-pizza-ass granddaughter. Yeah, that was probably it.
    I opened the door and he didn’t even bother to greet Allison, which was highly unusual for him since my grandfather was known for four things: his New Orleans drawl, his love of bow ties, his docile friendly charm, and his overreacting temper.
    “Ah, where were you? Do you know how long I been waitin’?” he asked, skipping the charm and going straight for the temper.
    “I’m sorry. I just went to get some pizza. I didn’t know you were here.”
    “You went to get some pizza?!”
    His pent-up irritation made his voice thunder with disdain. My grandfather was all for buying us fast food when we deserved it. “How ’bout some MackDonald’s!” he’d offer my siblings and me whenever we’d come to visit. But if we asked for McDonald’s or any other type of fast food, he’d shake his head violently and take to the kitchen, announcing, “We gon’ make our own MackDonald’s,” as he added green peppers and onions to his homemade hamburger patty. Yuck .
    Allison sat in the backseat, sipping her drink and watching in amusement as she munched on her fries like they were a bag of popcorn. My grandfather took a look at my plate of food, and then he said the unthinkable, confirming all the suspicions I had about myself yet was too afraid to admit.
    “That’s how come you gettin’ to be so FAT,” he declared, starting the car with disgust. In fact, the way he pronounced “FAT” sounded like he was clearing a clot of Russian phlegm out of his throat, readying to spit it on my slightly protruding seventh-grade gut. I was hot with embarrassment and shame. I