From where she sat on the front steps of the administrative building, Aine had an unobstructed view of the wide path from the towering school gate with the white banner arching above it: “Welcome to #CareersDay at Pike Girls’ Boarding School.”

It had been nearly two hours since she began her stakeout. She had ignored the supper bell and now her stomach grumbled, tying a hungry knot. Each time she heard a boda boda driving alongside the wall of tall cypress trees that surrounded the campus, her pulse kicked—but so far, no one had come through the school gate.

Earlier in the school term when the headmistress, Madame Kyaligonza, had told Aine that her sister would give this year’s Careers Day commencement speech, Aine had stared at her, unbelieving. “She’s confirmed this, Madame?” she’d asked. She knew it wasn’t the first time the headmistress had invited Mbabazi, a distinguished alumna, to Careers Day. But Mbabazi was a busy woman.

“The world shines wherever Dr. Kamara touches it,” Madame said.

All Aine needed was a straight response, yes or no, but Madame frightened her. The woman always looked at her with an expression of anger, making her wonder if some other student had pissed off Madame and she mistook Aine for that student. Nonetheless, Aine gathered up all her courage for a confession. “Do you know, Madame, I haven’t seen my sister in over two years.”

Madame chuckled. “How do you think I managed to convince her this time?”

A joyful overture surged through Aine. “She’s coming because of me!”

“And me!” Madame said in a too high voice that tickled Aine. “You’re welcome to spend as much time with her as you like at my house. That was her only condition, and I was more than happy to grant it.”

It was all Aine could do not to throw her arms around her headmistress, the woman whose nickname was “the Copper” on account of her perpetually sour policewoman-like demeanour. After Madame disappeared around the corner of the library, Aine squealed into her hands, tightly cupped over her mouth. Her sister was coming to see her

***

A car horn beeped. Aine looked up to see Vipsa, the askari, exiting his gatekeeper’s office not much bigger than a telephone booth. Of course Mbabazi had opted for a special hire taxi. More than two years’ worth of anticipation tightened Aine’s chest; she could hardly bear the flood of emotions. She felt her heart pushing against the walls of her chest.

A medium-sized vehicle the colour of chocolate rolled through the gate and stopped, the out-of-view driver talking to the askari. Weren’t special hire taxis usually smaller? But consider Papa’s Landcruiser. A luxury suv, yet he drove tourists in it for a living.

Aine put Chinua Achebe in the kangaroo pouch of her jumper as the vehicle curved along the elbow bend in the gravel path kicking up dust. She stood on jittery legs.

The passenger window slid down, revealing her big sister’s face. “Kanyonyi!” Mbabazi shouted, giving Aine wings, the sensation that she could leap up and fly.

“Mbabazi!” Aine matched her sister’s high note of excitement. She bounded to where the car was pulling up. Mbabazi slammed the passenger door and ran to meet her, her hands waving above her head as if she were rearranging the clouds. Aine threw her arms around her sister’s narrow waist and squeezed. She breathed her in, resting for a while in her embrace.

Now Mbabazi tilted Aine’s chin, her thumbs tracing across Aine’s cheeks to her ears as though she were reminding herself of how the parts of her face fit together. “How’s it possible you haven’t changed at all?” she asked in Rukiga, the language of their birth.

“How is it possible you have changed so much?” Aine spoke Rukiga, too, though English was mandatory on campus. Mbabazi had trimmed her hair and permed what remained into short wet-looking curls tinted burnt yellow, like the sun rising. It had made her already fair skin look even lighter

“Have I?” Mbabazi said doubtfully, raising her right hand to the back of her neck.

“It suits you, this look,” Aine said. “The short hair. I’m not sure about the relaxer, though. The smell of cooked hair.” Weren’t there any salons for Black people in Toronto? People who knew how to install braids?

Mbabazi patted the air dismissively. “You get used to it.”

Aine grinned. All that mattered was that her sister was here. Her sister who’d inherited every bit of Mama’s Tutsi loveliness, so that by the time Aine came along more than a decade later, all that remained were Papa’s indelicate Bakiga features—a large nose and skin darker than the richest loam.

“You did these yourself?” Mbabazi was running her hands over the bumps of Aine’s chunky cornrows.

“Zai,” Aine said. “My bunk mate.”

“Speaking of friends.” Mbabazi gestured toward the driver, who had just closed the car door and was crossing toward them on the paspalum lawn. She had the shape of a mother: big bones and soft curves. Widely spaced fawnlike eyes, a smooth complexion of the blackest black. “This is my roommate, Achen.”

A name from the north, possibly Acholi. Achen flashed a brilliant smile, teeth like the sun on white paper. “Delighted to finally meet you, Aine,” she said, pumping Aine’s hand. “M talks about you all the time.”

“She does?” Then why was this the first time Aine was hearing of this roommate who spoke English with an accent too bbc to be genuine?

“All the time,” Achen confirmed.

“I’m sorry,” Aine said, “but I can’t say the same.”

Achen massaged her massive afro: chunky tufts dyed a cola colour, black with a bit of red trapped inside. She cast a sideways glance at Mbabazi, who fixed Aine with a look.

“I could’ve sworn I told you about her,” Mbabazi said.

“Achen?” It was not a name Aine would have forgotten easily. It conjured a very specific image and smell—the mineral scent of charcoal just doused with water. Aine stared back at her sister, shook her head. “Uh-uh.”

Aine knew she’d somehow let her sister down. Mbabazi scrunched up her face, as if caught in a lie. She turned to her roommate. “I’m sorry.”

Achen smiled. “It’s all right, love. You know it’s fine.”

“I meant to,” Mbabazi said. “I should’ve.”

Achen squeezed Mbabazi’s shoulder. “I promise. It’s nothing. Sure, you know that.”

And now Aine knew too. She understood the thing that was announcing itself to her: the strange electricity between Mbabazi and Achen. They were looking at each other in that way lovers had, communicating in a language they thought impenetrable, as if they were the ones who’d invented it. Aine suppressed a gasp. What to do with this knowledge?

—

Preorder Everything is Fine Here | House of Anansi

Excerpt from EVERYTHING IS FINE HERE published by House of Anansi Press. Copyright © 2025 by Iryn Tushabe.