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I knew I was dead meat. There was no way Michael wasn’t going to tell his sister about seeing me coming out of the girls’ room after school in lipstick and panty hose. No way.
And Grandmère’s was HORRIBLE. She said the lipstick I had on made me look like a poulet. At least that’s what I thought she said, and I couldn’t figure out why she thought I look
ed like a chicken. But just now I looked up poulet in my English-French dictionary, and it turns out poulet can also mean “prostitute”! My grandmother called me a hooker!
Geez! Whatever happened to nice grandmothers, who bake brownies for you and tell you how precious you are? It’s just my luck I get one who has tattooed eyeliner and tells me I look like a hooker.
And she said that the panty hose I had on were the wrong color. How could they be the wrong color? They’re panty hose color! Then she made me practice sitting down so my underwear didn’t show between my legs for like two hours!
I’m thinking about calling Amnesty International. This has to constitute torture.
And when I gave her my essay on the ten women I admire most, she read it and then ripped it up into little pieces! I am not even kidding!
I couldn’t help screaming, “Grandmère, why’d you do that?” and she went, all calmly, “These are not the sort of women you should be admiring. You should be admiring real women.”
I asked Grandmère what she meant by “real women,” because all of the women on my list are real. I mean, Madonna might have had a little plastic surgery, but she’s still real.
But Grandmère says real women are Princess Grace and Coco Chanel. I pointed out to her that Princess Diana is on my list, and you know what she said? She says she thinks Princess Diana was a “twink”! That’s what she called her. A “twink.”
Only she pronounced it “tweenk.”
Geez!
After we’d rehearsed sitting for an hour, Grandmère said she had to go and take a bath, since she’s having dinner tonight with some prime minister. She told me to be at the Plaza tomorrow no later than ten o’clock—A.M. 10 A.M.!
“Grandmère,” I said. “Tomorrow is Saturday.”
“I know it.”
“But Grandmère,” I said. “Saturdays are when I help my friend Lilly film her TV show—”
But Grandmère asked me which was more important, Lilly’s TV show or the well-being of the people of Genovia, who, in case you didn’t know, number in the 50,000 range.
I guess 50,000 people are more important than one episode of Lilly Tells It Like It Is. Still, it’s going to be tough explaining to Lilly why I won’t be there to hold the camera when she confronts Mr. and Mrs. Ho, owners of Ho’s Deli, across the street from Albert Einstein, about their unfair pricing policies. Lilly has discovered that Mr. and Mrs. Ho give significant discounts to the Asian students who go to Albert Einstein, but no discounts at all to the Caucasian, African American, Latino, or Arab students. Lilly discovered this yesterday after play rehearsal when she went to buy ginkgo biloba puffs and Ling Su, in front of her in line, bought the same thing. But Mrs. Ho charged her (Lilly) five whole cents more than Ling Su for the same product.
And then when Lilly complained, Mrs. Ho pretended like she couldn’t speak English, even though she must speak some English, or why else would her mini-TV behind the counter always be tuned to Judge Judy?
Lilly has decided to secretly videotape the Hos to gather evidence of their blatantly preferential treatment of Asian Americans. She’s calling for a school-wide boycott of Ho’s Deli.
The thing is, I think Lilly’s making a really big deal about five cents. But Lilly says it’s the principle of the thing, and that maybe if people had made a big deal about how the Nazis smashed up Jewish people’s store windows on Kristalnacht they wouldn’t have ended up putting so many people in ovens.
I don’t know. The Hos aren’t exactly Nazis. They’re very nice to the little cat they’ve raised from a kitten to chase rats away from the chicken wings in the salad bar.
Maybe I’m not too sorry about missing the taping tomorrow.
But I am sorry Grandmère tore up my list of the ten women I admire most. I thought it was nice. When I got home, I printed it out again, just because it made me so mad, her tearing it up like that. I put a copy in this book.
And after carefully reviewing my copy of the Renaldo-Thermopolis Compromise, I see nothing about princess lessons. Something is going to have to be done about this. I have been leaving messages for Dad all night, but he doesn’t answer. Where is he?
Lilly isn’t home, either. Maya says the Moscovitzes went to Great Shanghai for dinner as a family, in order to grow to understand one another better as human beings.
I wish Lilly would hurry up and get home and call me back. I don’t want her to think I’m in any way against her groundbreaking investigation into Ho’s Deli. I just want to tell her the reason I won’t be able to be there is because I have to spend the day with my grandmother.
I hate my life.
The Ten Women I Admire Most in the Whole World
by Mia Thermopolis
