On Rotation(37)

“Not really. Just did a lot of people watching back then. Gotta imbibe in moderation, considering I’m genetically predisposed to like it too much,” Ricky said. Then he gestured for me to continue. “So. You give the gin, or maybe the schnapps, and that’s it?”

“We send the rest of the liquor to the head of the family,” I explained. Tabatha’s bottle of schnapps had already been shipped to my great-uncle’s house in Tema. “And then, most times, the groom gets a list.”

“A list?” Ricky asked. Done teasing, he now looked intrigued.

“A bride price,” I clarified. “Stuff he has to get. Like cloth, jewelry, sometimes cash—”

When I glanced back at Ricky’s face, his jaw was practically on the floor.

“Hold up. What you’re saying,” Ricky said, “is that you get sold?”

Now my indignation was real. I closed my laptop with a sharp snap, knowing that I was wont to knock it off the table if I gesticulated any harder.

“No!” I said. “Of course not!”

Ricky was not convinced.

“The guy exchanges money and goods for a woman,” he said, “and that’s not a sale?” He pushed his hair out of his eyes, and I realized that his concern was now genuine. “Angie, I get that it’s tradition and everything, but—”

“You’ve got it totally wrong,” I asserted. I’d really only come to understand my own culture’s engagement practices in the last year, and, though I’d reacted similarly when I first learned about them, I now felt the need to defend them. “It’s the exact opposite. It shows that the woman has value. She’s precious, and whoever intends to marry her needs to earn her first. And it’s not like the family blows the bride price! They put it aside for her in case the guy turns out to be a dud and they need to help her escape.” I scowled. “It’s better than a dowry, where they treat the women like a burden.”

“Okay, okay,” Ricky said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t mean to imply that your traditions were misogynistic, or something.”

I sucked in my bottom lip, dropping my gaze to the timer. Two minutes left. Suddenly, I wished that Tabatha’s engagement hadn’t come up, that Ricky hadn’t pressed me for details, that I hadn’t provided them. 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 obor?nyi,* 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!” If Ricky’s first thought about the Knocking was that it was misogynistic and antiquated, then he wouldn’t stand a chance against Dorothy Appiah’s assessments.

I must have been quiet for a long time, because across from me, Ricky sighed. Then, unexpectedly, his hand covered mine. I looked down at it in shock, then back up again, focusing just over his shoulder so I wouldn’t meet his eyes. He hadn’t touched me on purpose in a long time. The places where our skin met burned like live wire. It took all the discipline Ricky claimed I lacked to not pull away.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m sorry. That was rude. You just taught me something really neat about your culture, and I shouldn’t have been judgmental about it. Thank you for taking the time to explain.”

I slipped my hand out from beneath his under the guise of picking up my ob-gyn review, my heart hammering away in my chest.

“It’s fine,” I said, wondering if he could see my hands tremble as I turned the pages. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ricky smile, slow and syrupy, like he knew exactly what effect his little flirtations were having on me. The pretty ones, I thought, are the worst.

“What I want to know, though,” he mused, “is how much you’re worth. Four cows? Sixty yards of cloth? Your weight in gold?”

I huffed, even as I willed my pulse to slow.

“Don’t worry about it. You couldn’t afford me,” I said. “How much time is left on that clock?”





Twelve




It had been two and a half months since my last meeting with Dr. Wallace, a short interim for an audience with someone of her station. But Dr. Wallace had a vested interest in my matching into a residency program. As the face of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, she had fought tooth and nail for every Black student who had walked through the hallowed halls of our medical school over the last fifteen years, and her ability to continue doing so was at least in part contingent on our success in the Match.* So when she called for a check-in meeting, I wasn’t entirely surprised. Besides, I had something else I wanted to discuss.