Summary

“Chapter 1” takes place in Nattetta in June of 1934. The narrator switches focus from Kirabo and goes back in time to when her grandmother, Alikisa, and Nsuuta were ten years old. The girls made a pact that they would marry the same man so they could be best friends forever. If either of them broke the pact, either they would die or the person they loved most would die. Alikisa was worried she was too ugly and poor to marry the same man as rich and beautiful Nsuuta.

In “Chapter 2,” Alikisa and Nsuuta did not know their exact birthday or even what year they had been born in. Their families did not keep track of their births. When their religious school needed a date of birth before their baptism in 1931, Alikisa asked her mother, who guessed she was born...