On Rotation

by Shirlene Obuobi

Big asses were glamour if you were Kim K or a light bright Dominicana, but on a dark-skinned nappy-headed ho like me they were too jungle, too much Saartjie Baartman and not enough Marilyn Monroe.

Small victories, Angie, I thought. You dated a lawyer and still managed to get the last word.

I stepped around her and gave Auntie Abena, who had come to Chicago for a short trip that, so far, had lasted four months, a nod.

He was respectful, tall (which Daddy liked), African American (which Daddy liked a little less),

I smiled. Old Black people were always proud of me. It felt undeserved; my parents had grown up free.*

Daddy didn’t stand until Chris and Mr. Holmes stopped in the center of the living room. He regarded them with a cool smugness for a half second before languorously getting to his feet, moving with the syrupy slowness of a man who considered himself a great benefactor.

Any photographs we took would likely be circulated through WhatsApp groups across the country,

I’d passed, but barely. I stared at the number in numb shock, feeling the tears I had held back all morning prickle the corners of my eyes. I had gotten 240s on all my practice exams.

Harrumph

I lay in bed, facedown and unmoving,

Parkview High School’s class of 2010’s salutatorian.

Tabatha’s bedroom was much more typical, covered in Twilight posters and clippings from Seventeen magazine, but Tabatha had grown up with a chiller, saner version of Momma who had allowed such trivialities.

But I’d found our lack of chemistry comforting. With Frederick, there was no haze of hormones to cloud my judgment, no rose-colored lenses for red flags to hide behind.

When we first moved to America, I buckled under the weight of my otherness. The abrupt transformation from being an individual to just another “African booty scratcher”* shattered my first vestiges of self-esteem, and I spent the next nearly twenty years picking up the pieces.

“You know, you’re always saying shit like that.” I could feel her glaring. “That it’s easier for me, or something.” Because it is, I thought. Like it or not, Tabs checked off all the boxes for “universally hot Black girl”: light skinned enough to pass the paper bag test, slim-thick, with hair that was always laid and makeup that was always tasteful.

Awww

“But at least come out and eat with us. Auntie made nkatenkwan . . . and if you make me wait any longer for it, I’m gonna steal all of your meat.” “Like hell you will,” I said, launching myself out of bed and onto my feet. Quick as a cat, Tabatha sprang for the door, muscling me out of the way, and for a moment, in pursuit of the best cut of goat, I left my grief at the door.

“Y’all don’t have to go to work?” I muttered, grinding my teeth as I drove farther and farther away from the festival, looking for a free parking spot.

Somehow, I had forgotten that a world existed outside my sphere, one that consisted of city noise and summer color.

At first, I thought it was our little joke. I would hunt around my apartment for the most ridiculous container for them—empty coffee canisters, Diet Coke bottles, and, once, a whole saucepan—and put them in a place of honor in the living room for him to find. At first, Frederick had played along, egging me on . . . but after a few weeks, the flowers stopped coming. And then one day, when we were out to eat, he’d told me that I was ungrateful. “I bet every woman in this room would love to get flowers from their man,” he’d insisted, and I realized that, all along, he hadn’t been getting those flowers for me. He’d been getting them for himself: to prove that he was the kind of guy who got girls flowers. And deep down, I’d known that.

Ugh

“Excuse me,” a voice said. I yelped in shock, my hands flying instinctively to cover my face.

He had his longish hair pushed back and secured with a thin headband; his inevitable girlfriend was probably desperate to cut it.

Now that the initial shock had worn off, I was wary. That a boy had approached me in the wild was not particularly unusual. I was still my mother’s daughter, after all. Men finding excuses to stop me in the street had ceased being a compliment and become more of a nuisance not long after I hit puberty, and I had since perfected the art of wheedling myself out of unwanted conversations.

Cute Boy seemed to have used up all his bravado on his initial approach, because now he could barely meet my eyes.

He smiled so widely you would’ve thought I’d offered to pay his rent. And he had dimples. Christ.

The places where the sun touched my skin felt warm and light, and I took in a deep, cleansing breath.

“What the hell, Ricky,” I said, dumbstruck. By cross-hatching the primary colors together, Ricky had managed to bring a new, shimmering dimension to the garden, merging and blurring the flowers and leaves into a mere suggestion of themselves. And the image of me—it emanated peace and contentment and none of the turmoil I was feeling in reality. He’d made me so beautiful, and so effortlessly. My throat tightened, and I felt my eyes well with tears again.

“No offense, Ricky,” I said with a snort. “But why do you care?” Ricky’s expression didn’t change. Instead, there was a flicker of strain behind his eyes, like a light being turned off and then back on again, gone and back so quickly that I might have missed it if I hadn’t been specifically searching it out. But then his smile disappeared altogether, and he leaned back on the bench, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“Didn’t work on your dad?” I asked. “My dad,” Ricky said without skipping a beat, “is a piece of shit. So . . . no.”

I slid my hand out from between his and nestled it between my thighs. I watched Ricky’s eyes track the movement. Then they ticked back up to mine, his lips curling into a smile. “Charming me will get you nowhere,” I said, even though it was getting him everywhere.

What the hell is going on?

Six months with a partner who ducked his head with embarrassment every time I showed more than lukewarm interest in anything “childish” had made me a dull girl indeed, but after only a few hours, I could feel Ricky drawing me out.

Ricky gave me a curious look, then broke off a piece of cake and popped it into his mouth. “You’re not used to people doing things for you, are you?” he said matter-of-factly.

“I think we’ve seen everything,” I said. The Water Tribe pendant, though cool to the touch, felt hot against my clavicle. “Yeah?” Ricky said. He sounded almost mournful.

The song changed to a bluesy cover of “In the Pines” that I recognized from my playlist of TV show soundtracks.

“My girl, my girl, where will you go? I’m going where the cold wind blows,” I sang back, just a little louder. Ricky’s eyes brightened with delight, so genuine that it made my chest hurt.

To think that I’d thought of him as sweet, childlike, even, when he was really just another fuckboy wasting my time.

“On second thought,” I said cheerfully, “please lose my number.” I shoved the rest of the funnel cake into his hands.

My eyes bugged out

It was the office of a true academic, meaning that it was only about three years away from being featured on an episode of Hoarders.

“Sorry about the mess,” Dr. Wallace said, as if the mess were new.

Disappointing my parents sucked, but at least it was par for the course; disappointing Dr. Wallace made me feel like a failure.

“What about community service?” I asked, hopeful. I’d spent much of my first and second year coordinating free clinics, an experience that had continually reminded me why I was torturing myself into this field. Dr. Wallace smiled. It was the same smile you gave a child who told you that they wanted to be an astronaut when they grew up.

If I couldn’t be smart, goddammit was I going to be cute, and my whole squad too. We had “Partition” on. We been dranking.

“Diamond gon’ have to chill,” I said. I reclined on the sofa, satisfied with our work. We looked good. Faces beat for the gods. Hair laid. Bodies right. Diamond was going to be mad regardless. She was, of course. When we opened the door, Diamond was right behind it, her smile strained as her eyes flickered from girl to girl. I refrained from rolling my eyes and opened my arms for a hug instead.

A petite girl in a gold sequined dress stepped out in front of us, her steps certain in her spiked stilettos. Her long black hair swished and shone as she walked, and I marveled at just how pretty everyone in attendance was.

No one pees faster than a bunch of girls terrified that they’re going to miss “their song” at a Bey concert.

She smiled brilliantly, revealing the tiniest, most charming gap between her two front teeth.

Our eyes met, and Ricky’s expression went blank. I wondered whether mine mirrored his, whether our friends could trace the path of our gazes and catch wind of the tension between us.

Ricky’s eyes flitted up and down my body as if he couldn’t help it, and I praised whatever Higher Powers There Be for at least ensuring that I looked fine as hell on the day that I ran into him again.

“Pretty sure it’s the opposite,” Ricky said. Camila swatted his shoulder, but I only stared coldly, taking pleasure in the way his smirk slowly lost its luster.

But then the stadium lights were dimming, and the jumbotrons surrounding the stage lit up with an image of Queen Bey’s eyes, her lips, her thighs. It was impossible to stay upset then, not with the excitement pulsing through the stadium. I screamed as loud as I could manage, my voice melding with those of the thousands of other stans in attendance.