On Rotation

by Shirlene Obuobi

Chris’s reaction to the Knocking traditions had been immediate acceptance, and he had merged into our household so seamlessly that Momma had taken to joking that he probably had Ghanaian ancestry. “He looks like a village boy from Obosomase,” she teased, watching him pile his plate with waakye at one of the Naperville Ghanaian shindigs. She’d made her preference for the ethnic makeup of her daughters’ future husbands explicit long ago, down to a ranking system: first, a Ghanaian boy,* then Nigerian (“the alata fo are like our cousins”), then assorted West African, followed by Black American or the larger African diaspora, and finally, reluctantly, an oborɔnyi,* with no consideration for anyone else. Once, during Tabatha’s short-lived fling with a sweet, very eligible bachelor named Adesh, Momma had called me up in hysterics. “You have to advise your younger sister against what she is doing with this boy,” she had said. “Sri Lankan? That is too many traditions!”