The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl

by Issa Rae

  I played dumb. “Quest-ce que tu veux?”

  More Wolof from him, then the word, “coupe,” as he made room for me on the couch, flexing his feet and pointing his toes.

  I couldn’t believe this mess. I didn’t know what to do. I knew what I didn’t want to do, but if I refused, would that be a grave sign of disrespect? Would I cause some family drama between him and my father? Or a confrontation of some sort? On the other hand, if I did do it, wouldn’t I be disrespecting myself? Why did I have to be the only one home today? Why did this jerk feel so comfortable asking me to perform this task? At fourteen, did I look like someone who did man feet? Why couldn’t I have been one of those roughneck Latina girls I went to high school with, who constantly disrespected authority figures without any remorse? (“I ain’t doin’ dick! F!@# yo’ toes!”)

  I was far too polite and I hated that about myself. I didn’t even know where to start. So, without touching his feet, I slowly started with the big toe. His feet weren’t completely ugly, which I appreciated, but neither were they nice-looking enough to change my perspective on the matter.

  Clip.

  I looked at Cherif, who checked his toe. I guess that was good enough for him. He lay back and allowed me to continue. On to the next.

  C-lip. C-lip. I felt my dignity and pride chip away with each nail that dropped to the towel he’d set below his feet. By the time I got to the fourth toe, which was kind of small, I tried to position the nail clipper just over the nail without putting his skin in the danger zone, and again without putting my hands on his feet. I could feel Cherif tense up, which made my hands shake out of nervousness and insecurity, which was enough for him to hold his hand up and say, “Ça va. Ça va.” We both exhaled as I gave him the clippers, and he finished the rest of the job himself. I didn’t know what was worse, being asked to cut his toenails in the first place or being stopped because I wasn’t doing a good enough job.

  Fortunately, all of our other houseguests were far more considerate. Sure, we’d be relegated to sleeping in the living room as our beds were given away, but that inconvenience was mostly left to Lamine, who had his own room (Elize and I shared a room). Many of our guests would cook us delicious Senegalese food, give us rides to places we needed to go (including school), and do the chores we didn’t want to do: dishes.

  Up until my high school trip back to Dakar, practicing French with our guests by way of pleasant conversation and eating Thiebou dien and Yassa was enough to make me feel like I was still in touch with my culture. But, within the first day of my visit, I realized how wrong I was and how much I’d been missing out on, first and foremost, camaraderie with family.

  One thing that had remained constant since we lived there when I was very young was the family house, the structure of which was unlike any other house I had ever seen, much less lived in. It resembled a single-story motel, in that there was a courtyard terrace with rooms surrounding it. The pathway at the entrance of the house led to an outdoor center terrace, off of which was a kitchen on the right, and then a family room. Most of our quality time was spent in one of two rooms, the family/living room (which held the youthful portraits of my grandparents) and my Tantie Ndeye Fatou’s room, which held one of the bigger televisions in the house and a VCR.

  We came with suitcases bearing many gifts, piled on by some of our aunts back in Los Angeles for their children, and medicine for my grandfather, but I’d say the most coveted item we held was the compilation of music videos I had recorded over the course of a week before we arrived. Before international internet, American music hits didn’t come to Senegal until six months to a year later. What I held in my hand was pop culture currency, and the opportunity for my cousins to be ahead of the curve in their social circles. We must have watched those music videos every other day that summer, emulating the dances of Nelly and the St. Lunatics, learning all the lyrics to Ray J and Lil’ Kim’s “Wait A Minute” and rewatching the same Freestyle Friday battle on AJ and Free’s 106 & Park. Later, I’d find out that none of the songs I had recorded would be huge hits in the United States (so much for my A&R career), but they were mega hits around the house.

  It was, perhaps, during one of these bored bouts of rewatching music videos that I expressed a desire to go out and do something fun.

  “Do you want to go to the club?” my cousin, Pape Amadou,7 asked.

  The club? Did they know I was only fifteen?

  “I’m only fifteen,” I suggested.

  P’Amadou, who was seventeen, shrugged. “That doesn’t matter. You can get into the clubs at sixteen here—they don’t care.”

  I had yet another brief moment of panic as I considered my inability to dance, but then I realized I was among family. Plus, the club would probably be playing mostly Senegalese music anyway, and I wasn’t expected to know how to do those moves.

  “Niani plays really good rap and R&B,” he added.

  Oh. Well, still . . . I was among family, and why not?

  “Let’s go!” I exclaimed.

  We took two cabs to Niani. P’Amadou rode with some of his neighborhood guy friends in one cab, and I rode with Skinny Ndeye Awa and my older cousin Khady in another cab. I had “dressed up” in my Nike Prestos (shoes that were the envy of all my guy cousins), blue jeans that I had rolled up to the ankle, a red tank top, and a red bandanna that blew in the wind as I sat in the backseat, by the window. I looked like I was auditioning to be a Jet in West Side Story, but I thought I was cute.

  We got inside the club at around ten o’clock, and it was nearly empty. As we took seats at one of the many vacant booths, DJ Eduardo played a song by a Brit named Craig David that I had never heard before, “Walking Away.” Craig David had released only one song in the United States that I’d heard, called “Fill Me In.” The Senegalese were way more familiar with him than we were. I bobbed to the song as I took it all in, the fancily lit dance floor and the adult ambience that made up the décor. By the time eleven thirty hit, the club started to fill up with teens and adults in their twenties, alike. My cousins and I hit the dance floor, with P’Amadou busting the “Big Pimpin’ ” dance at every opportunity. I was enjoying myself immensely, dancing in a way that felt comfortable, which consisted mostly of upper-body and hand movements.

  I was mid–hand dance when I caught the eye of a tall, dark, handsomely thuggish-ruggish-bone-looking guy who was watching me dance. I looked away and continued dancing near Ndeye Awa, who by then expressed that she was ready to sit down with Khady, who at twenty-six was acting closer to forty-six. I told her to go have a seat without me, as I was still dancing with P’Amadou and his friends. I looked back at Thuggish-Ruggish, who continued to look my way and smiled. Now confident that he was actually looking at me, I smiled, nodded back, then turned away and waited. As I started feeling the music and myself a little bit more, I turned back to see a shorter, darker, nicely-dressed-but-not-who-I-was-looking-for gentleman come my way, smiling. He started dancing in front of me, mimicking my dance moves, making them look way cooler. I smiled, impressed, and we continued to dance as I looked around for Thuggish-Ruggish, who had disappeared. Dance Chameleon saw me looking around and whisper-screamed into my ear, “Denga Wolof?”

  “Non, mais je parle Français.” I saw his expression reflect slight disappointment before he smiled again. “Je m’appele Moise. Et toi?”

  “Jo-Issa,” I said, introducing myself.

  We continued to dance in silence as DMX’s “Ruff Ryders” came on and we both started singing along. He whisper-screamed again, “I love the way you dance.”

  A man after my heart. “Thank you!”

  He continued, “You remind me of Missy Elliott.” I tried not to stop dancing and restrained myself from showing offense. I’m sure he meant it as a compliment, but he immediately made me think my “sleek, sexy dance moves” instead looked like large, bouncy hops. In a move that sparked my déjà vu, he asked if I
wanted to go outside. I looked around and made eye contact with my cousins to tell them where I was going.

  Outside, he introduced me to some of his friends, all of whom were dressed in FUBU, Rocawear, Enyce, and Phat Farm—all the cool brands my mother refused to buy us at home. One of his friends, Kader, was the tall Thuggish-Ruggish I had been eyeing earlier. As we grew closer, Moise would later reveal to me that he thought I was looking at him the entire time; I never denied it. Kader and I shook hands, for far too long, as I realized that I was far too nice to ditch Moise now.

  The summer I fell back in love with Senegal is also the summer when I fell in love for the first time. I wasn’t looking for Moise, or even checking for him initially, but it was through him that I reenvisioned my heritage through eyes I’d never opened before. He gave me my first uninhibited Dakar experience and taught me so much about what it meant to be Senegalese. I returned to Los Angeles with a new appreciation for who I was and from where I had come. I felt culturally validated and significant in a whole new, confident way. That summer made me realize why my parents, and my mother especially, made sure to abide by the customs and traditions that my father had introduced to her. And I was certain that I would do the same for my children and the children who come after me.

  My parents were absolutely pleased with my new appreciation for my family and my country, until they discovered that I had run up our international phone bill by over one thousand dollars in just a month. If only I had had the good sense to develop a program akin to Skype. Maybe dad was right and a computer science degree would have come in handy.

  * * *

  7 Yes, I have a brother named Amadou and about ten cousins named Amadou. My grandfather’s name is also Amadou. I have a brother named Malick, and I have about ten cousins named Malick. Both names are like the equivalent of John and James, respectively.

  Fashion Deficient

  Some lack common sense; my grandfather lacked two of his five senses, taste and smell; and I lack fashion sense. One needn’t feel sorry for me. I was born this way, so it’s not as if I knew what I was missing. My ailment was pointed out to me by others, some of whom dropped subtle hints; still others were too disgusted to even bother. I was never fazed by it until my social life was affected.

  For a brief period in middle school, T.J.Maxx saved me from complete pariahdom. The day my mother took my younger brother and me there to buy spring clothes, I thought I had found a secret, designer loophole for how I might improve a certain look. “Do people know about this place?” I wondered aloud. It was a stupid question, considering the hangers and marked-down clothes left in disarray everywhere around the store. Tons of people knew about T.J.Maxx, but none were as grateful for it as I.

  My introduction to the Los Angeles fashion scene wasn’t friendly, by any means. Within the first few weeks of moving from Maryland and meeting my first L.A. friend, Ashley, I committed my first fashion faux pas, and it was a dangerous one. My idea of good fashion was “matching.” If my shirt matched my bottoms, and I had a hair scrunchy and maybe shoes that all matched in some way, I was obviously killing the game. In my younger days, if my average outfit was a paint-by-numbers game, it would consist of one to two numbers, maximum. Solid colors were my best friend. So when Ashley invited me to hang out at her house one crisp summer afternoon, I put on a red shirt, red cotton shorts, red tennis shoes, and a red scrunchy and walked to her home, which stood just on the west side of South Central.

  When I knocked on her door, she pulled me in by my arm while she guffawed in her foyer, closing the door behind me.

  “What? What’s wrong?” I asked, searching her line of sight for the joke.

  She pulled herself together enough to point at my torso, tears streaming down her eyes. “Are you crazy?!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re wearing all red in a Crip neighborhood!”

  I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. Word association. Context clues. Tales from the Crypt. Crypt keepers. Cemeteries. Dead people. Funerals. Was my outfit somehow disrespecting the dead in some L.A. way? I didn’t ask. She was already laughing at my expense and I didn’t want to give her more fodder.

  I shrugged. “So?”

  Her eyes widened, incredulous, “So?! So? You want to get shot?”

  “If they want to shoot me because I happen to like the color red, then so be it.”

  Ashley’s laughter now turned to concern. It was the kind of look you give a puppy missing one leg, or a homeless child begging on the street. I didn’t know it then, but though she felt sorry for me, she didn’t think I was entirely hopeless until the school year started.

  Palms Middle School taught me how important name brands were to young black kids who didn’t even have an income, much less enough money to afford designer clothes themselves. But in the mid-nineties, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Nautica, Phat Farm, Donna Karan, K-Swiss, The Gap, Jordans, Sanrio . . . these names held the key to high status and I wasn’t acquainted with any of them.

  I learned quickly, when one of the many boys I had a crush on started making fun of me for reasons I can’t remember. When egged on by one of his friends to “check her tag, check her tag,” he reached behind my neck, pulled the tag from my youthful blouse, and chuckled with superiority. “It’s not even name brand,” he announced, at which point the kids in my class laughed.

  Ashley and I didn’t have any classes together, but she was very much aware that her help was needed. She wasn’t very subtle in offering fashion advice. It started out rather intimately: “You need to start wearing bras.”

  I was eleven, and my mother had bought me a training bra. I didn’t think I needed to wear it, because I was overweight and my “breasts” weren’t noticeable and were only the slightest bit convex. But clearly, they were more present than I had assumed. Then, on a bus ride back home from school, she paid me a half compliment. “You should wear more shirts like that, but not as old-lady looking.” The shirt I was wearing was accidentally midriff-y, and it belonged to my mother. My mother’s closet was massive and she had tons of clothes that back then didn’t appeal to me, but came in handy when I was desperate for something to wear. My mother’s fashion sense was impeccable. She would consistently receive compliments for some element of her ensemble at every outing. I never really paid attention to this fact, and was only reminded of it whenever my mother would have to insist to me that she knew better about what I should wear than I did.

  My mother was particularly invested in my lack of fashion sense, emotionally so. When I was born, the first girl after two boys, my mother was delighted. She would finally get to dress her daughter in cute little dresses and wrap her hair in pretty little bows. Except that due to growing up around boys, I started taking on their traits and coveting their toys and clothes and games, until soon enough, I was repulsed by dresses and bows. My mother tried her best to force me into cute clothes as long as she could, but she could put up with my resistance for only so long. I was a certified tomboy, and she could only hope and pray that I’d grow out of this phase.

  I never did. In fact, as her first girl, she was disappointed and even disgusted that I never wanted a sweet sixteen, or to go to the semi-formal or even prom, and that my senior pictures—pictures that were supposed to serve as aesthetically pleasing visual announcements of my transition to adulthood—were a disaster. I got my senior cap-and-gown pictures in the mail and hated them immediately. I went to show my mother, hoping for some empathy or sympathy at the very least, and I was met with antipathy, “What did you expect? You don’t even try!”

  While Los Angeles was successful in making me “name brand” aware on a small scale, my move to Palo Alto for college cleansed me of my materialistic burden. Being among other broke college students meant I didn’t have to care about name brands, because nobody else did. The illusion was over and my designer shackles were released. It was suc
h a relief!

  Though within months, when the weekend “black” parties would hit, I’d still feel terribly underdressed. Some of these girls were making Ross and Rainbow work for them. Showing up to a party in sweats and a Stanford T-shirt, while acceptable for athletes, was not for a regular black girl who claimed to be from L.A. I befriended a group of girls—Megan, Akilah, and Desiree—who took their wardrobe quite seriously. They were always very complimentary of one another, too.

  “Ooo, girl, you look cute!”

  “Thanks, girl. I’m loving that top.”

  “Thanks! I’m stealing those shoes.”

  Then an awkward nod of acknowledgment as they laid eyes on my outfit, and a quick subject change. “Y’all ready to go?”

  Don’t get me wrong: on the rare occasion that they could compliment any element of my outfit (accessories included), they were more than willing to, but I didn’t give them much opportunity. And whenever we’d go out, either collectively or one-on-one, it was pretty clear that I was the “confidence booster” friend, the one girl in the group that you look at and think, “Well, at least I look better than her.” There’s one in every group and during my first two years in college, I didn’t care enough to shed that title. Worrying about what clothes I was going to wear to class and what outfit to wear to a party that featured the same people I had seen on campus earlier in the day was a stress I wasn’t willing to take on. In my later years, after returning from a brief Stanford hiatus with my braces shed and money from a job I’d had, I decided I could afford to have a “fresh start” and give my appearance a bit more of an effort. You would have thought I’d removed a goiter from my throat the way the compliments rolled in. “Jo-Issa, you look great!” “Wow, L.A. did you good.” “Thank God you’re not wearing those stupid-ass Stanford sweats anymore.”