Olivia and Tashi's mutually supportive, sisterlike friendship

Olivia and Tashi’s mutually supportive, sisterlike friendship gives the two young women a source of care and belonging within the restrictive customs of Olinka Village. Their closeness is shown less through declarations than through ordinary tending, anxious searching, and a quiet embrace after Tashi’s initiation rites. When Tashi fears that life in America will leave her without family or community, Olivia answers by naming herself as the sister Tashi will still have.

Shared Life and Everyday Care

Olivia and Tashi’s friendship emerges in the village, where expectations around women’s bodies make mutual understanding important but difficult to discuss openly. After Corrine’s death, Olivia begins menstruating. Nettie guesses that Olivia and Tashi look after one another during this change, but stresses that she does not know for certain: the subject is not discussed with her. Olinka customs discourage menstruating women from being seen, and parents would be annoyed if Nettie raised the subject of a girl’s private parts. Olivia also cares about not being regarded as an outsider. The friendship thus appears within a tension between intimate, practical support and the silence imposed by social convention.

Nettie’s account is deliberately tentative, and that qualification matters. She cannot claim knowledge of what the girls say to each other; she can only infer care from their closeness. The relationship is presented through the limits on adult access to their private lives, rather than through a narrated conversation between the two friends. That reserve gives their friendship a particular significance: it is a space of companionship that Nettie can recognize without being able to supervise or fully describe.

Distance, Concern, and Tashi’s Return

The friendship becomes more explicit during the family’s time in London. At a simple church ceremony, Olivia and Adam stand with Nettie and Samuel. After the wedding dinner, Olivia tells Nettie that Adam has been troubled by missing Tashi. He is also angry because Tashi had planned to have her face scarified before the family left. Olivia’s disclosure makes her a channel through which the family learns what Adam has not told his parents, while her concern extends beyond his distress: she later says that she, too, misses Tashi.

When Nettie’s family returns, Tashi has undergone both facial scarification and the female initiation rite. Her friends’ report that she had deliberately hidden makes clear that the rites took place while the family was away. Tashi appears weakened and tired, her face swollen around the small incisions on her cheeks. Adam looks at the scars and turns away when she reaches for his hand. Olivia’s response is different. She and Tashi hug, but their embrace is quiet and heavy, unlike the boisterous, giggling behavior Nettie expects from them. The changed quality of the greeting registers the pain and estrangement surrounding Tashi’s return without erasing their attachment.

Sisterhood and Belonging

Olivia’s friendship matters again when Tashi explains her fears about the future. She worries that Americans will look down on her scars, that she and Adam’s possible children will be shunned, and that colorism will make her vulnerable to rejection. She also fears that Adam might be distracted by other women and leave her with no country, people, mother, or husband. Olivia answers that Tashi would still have a sister. Her reassurance does not dismiss Tashi’s fears or promise that discrimination will disappear; it identifies a relationship that can endure as she faces an unfamiliar country and uncertain acceptance.

Adam then apologizes for his initial response to the scars and initiation, and tells Tashi that he loves her and will share whatever life in America brings. Olivia’s assurance stands alongside his commitment but is distinct from it: she offers sisterhood, not a marital promise. The friendship therefore gives Tashi a form of kinship not dependent on her being Adam’s wife. At the later family reunion, Nettie introduces Tashi as Adam’s wife among the returned family, placing her within that wider household as well. The novel’s closing recognition of her marital tie complements, rather than replaces, the sisterly bond Olivia had already promised.