Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening: How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart (15 page)

M
y cell phone almost never rang when I was at school. But just after lunch, I heard it bleating from the bottom of my purse.

As I fished it out, I heard the new boy, Sam, reading his favorite quote from
Our Town
. Each student in the class was supposed to pick one, and then give a presentation about how it related to the overall theme of the play. Sam delivered his chosen lines well.

“Hello?” I whispered into my phone.

It was Sarah. “Carol? Oh, I’m sorry to disturb you, but . . .” Her voice was shaky. She was usually so steady.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“Giles has had a stroke.” She struggled to control her
emotions. “It’s serious. He collapsed at home. Paralysis. Loss of language skills. They’re still assessing.”

I sat down in an empty student desk. Just like Mama. Only two months ago, Giles had helped me with her casket topper.

“Mrs. Wall, are you all right?” A thoughtful girl named Maggie touched my arm.

“Yes. Fine. Just tired,” I said.

My gaze found the narrow bank of windows at the back of my classroom. Cars and trucks raced by on the expressway. They moved too quickly, weaving in and out. Why must they be in such a hurry? The outside world seemed unreal. We were having a perfectly good day, and then . . .

I heard Sam’s voice reciting his lines. “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?”

•   •   •

After school that day, I sat at home awaiting word on Giles. Unable to concentrate on anything else, I stared out at the yard. Everywhere I looked, Giles’s handiwork was evident, and simple to identify. Whatever looked especially beautiful had been nurtured by his hand these past three years.

Sarah phoned to ask if I had heard anything from Bienta.

“That’s what I was going to ask you,” I said.

“We’ve heard nothing more,” she said. “Listen. I’ve got a high-maintenance client on Wildwood Mountain who wants some plants delivered in time for a party tonight. Why don’t you come along with me? I’d love the company and I could use the
extra pair of hands. Plus, this client adores Giles and I dread telling her. She’ll be so upset.”

I agreed to go with her. It would be better than sitting here by myself, stewing.

When she arrived, Sarah’s van was stuffed to the gills with ferns and hanging baskets of red geraniums. We pretended to be cheery, but lapsed into quiet for most of the drive. I thought of how many people depended on Giles, of Bienta and the children, and especially of Lok, who was an ocean away. I was terrified for them—and for him.

Sarah steered the Shoppe van up a winding drive that led us through a riotous display of wild dogwood, scrub pines, and a scattering of mountain laurel. “The Blue Hills Mansion is the last house on Wildwood Drive. Have you ever been inside?”

“No,” I said, “but I’ve seen pictures in the newspaper. I hear it’s quite the showplace.”

“That’s our client. She’s lived there for forty years, and wants things just so.”

We passed several other stately homes, all built in the railroad boom of the early 1900s, all made of the same dark brick, and featuring expansive covered porches. We reached the top and parked in the driveway of the Blue Hills Mansion. I watched from the van as Sarah rang the doorbell and a well-dressed woman with a helmet of lacquered white hair answered. A younger woman, possibly her daughter, came out, too.

I couldn’t help noticing the sleekness of the younger girl’s figure and the Hollywood perfection of her healthy, flowing hair.
There was a time, not very long ago, when I would have identified more with the daughter than the mother. I would have looked at the younger woman through narrowed eyes, wondering how I compared, and most likely overcome with envy. But I had undergone a slow transformation over the last year. I had come to a gradual acceptance that I was “that lady”—the one who drove slower than all the impatient younger folks on the highway, the one who younger men found invisible, and who reminded younger women of their mothers. But instead of resenting that shift, I decided to embrace it. In our youth- and health-obsessed culture, it was either win or lose, and I decided not to play that game at all. The contest was rigged anyway—because everyone, sooner or later, was going to age out of the running. So I decided to just get over myself. The world would not end if I had a bad hair day or didn’t monitor every bite of food that went in my mouth.

This young girl in the bloom of youth was not my enemy, and I was just happy to be alive and to have some hair. Though it was only a few inches long, it was beginning to have some style potential.

As Sarah and I unloaded the plants and arranged them as instructed by the lady of the house, I allowed myself a moment of optimism. If I could get well, then surely Giles could also. It would only be fair.

•   •   •

When some days later Bienta called me with an update, she was subdued. She offered few details about Giles’s status, and I was
cautious with my questions, knowing how protective I had felt of my mother in those early days. She told me that a family friend named Blake had offered to coordinate communications, so I would be hearing from him.

Blake called that very evening, saying that Giles had been moved to a room on the sixth floor of the hospital. He was scheduled for speech and physical therapy, starting right away. At this point, visiting was very much discouraged, Blake informed me.

“Have you seen him?”

“Yes,” he answered carefully. “He’s through the worst of it, I think, but isn’t saying much of anything. It’s early, the speech pathologist has said.”

After I hung up with Blake, I mulled over his words. A rule-follower by nature, I took myself by surprise when I decided to ignore his admonition not to visit. I simply decided, wrong or right, that I must be a notable exception to that rule.

The next day, I eased my van along the narrow road that took me by the river, toward the hospital. I stopped my van to snap the parking ticket from its metal slot, recalling how Dick and I drove through this very place the morning of my surgery, almost a year ago, a mingling of fear and hope sustaining us. The course we followed through this concrete, belly-of-the-beast garage was too familiar to me now.

At room 605, I placed my hand against the door and gave a gentle push. A small sign reminded me, “No Visitors,” but I ignored it. The door fell open and a slice of light illuminated a bed.
There was Giles’s unmoving body, covered completely by tight-stretched sheets. Another sheet was draped over his head. I felt all the dread and horror that I now associated with hospitals. My hand went to my throat protectively.

A nurse came in and whispered to me, “He won’t communicate. Everyone has given it their best, but he is taking no food, drink, or pills. Do you know him well?”

“You could say that.” I raised my voice. “Giles Owita, this is the worst gardening student you have ever had.”

There was no answer, and I feared two things at once—that he couldn’t understand me and that he’d slipped away from all of us. So I prayed.
Oh please, God, don’t tell me he has died.
I called his name again, “Giles.”

He brought one hand up into the air, fingers curled. He grasped the sheet and pulled it off his face. “Eh!”

He was thinner and more frail than I’d expected, but relief washed over me when he greeted me with his dawning smile, however dim.

The nurse leaned toward me and said softly, “Do you mind if I stay and take some notes on your conversation? He hasn’t spoken for several days.”

“You’re kidding. This is the friendliest person I have ever known,” I said. “Of course that’s okay. Have a seat over there. This man has a Ph.D. in horticulture. Maybe he’s just been in shock because of the pitiful condition of some of the plants around here.”

The nurse laughed and Giles smiled.

I looked back at Giles. The fingers of his right hand fluttered slightly. In my memory, I saw them healing my azaleas.

“How are you doing?”
I said.

He tried to speak, but only garbled syllables came out. His voice was rusty, as if all it needed were exercise. When I softly grasped his nearer hand, it was limp and lifeless, just as Mama’s had been. I remembered her futile efforts at communication and her anger.

“Just listen to me,” I said to Giles. “You will be stronger, and we’ll stand beside the creek again. I need some sound advice on subdividing because my yard is overflowing with so many things, like ornamental grasses and a thousand vibrant blossoms, thanks to everything you’ve done.”

His eyes were eager and he pushed out more syllables, yet none of them made sense. I pretended to understand, although it was difficult to overcome the growing awkwardness I felt. This brilliant man was fluent in so many languages and yet now he was rendered speechless. I wanted to cry.

Suddenly, I felt another presence in the room. My suspicion was confirmed when Giles looked quickly to the left of me. I turned around to see Bienta standing in the doorway. She, too, looked exhausted.

“Oh, Bienta!” I exclaimed.

I walked toward her, offering a hug, and she seemed pleased.

“I hope I’m not intruding. Remember how you helped me when Mama had her stroke? I wanted to be a friend to you, the way you’ve been to me.”

There was a beat of silence. I wondered if she truly thought of me that way.

Giles tried his best to speak. What came out was more gibberish. But then I was astonished when a look of joy transformed Bienta’s face.

“Did you not know that Giles is speaking to you, very clearly, in Swahili? His voice was strong! I heard it, coming down the corridor. Now he’s telling you even more.”

I looked to Giles, who blinked a few times—in relief, it seemed.

“He’s concerned about those ‘things.’ He says he cannot remember the names of them. The ones he planted by your fence, out back,” Bienta translated.

“You mean the white impatiens?”

“Those,” Giles said in English, as his fingers fluttered at the sheet.

Bienta spoke to him in Luo. I recognized its cadence in the clean economy of phrasing, and I saw Giles nod, confirming certain phrases.

“He wanted to tell you it’s a little sunny, where he planted them, and so . . .” Bienta trailed off.

“A dose of water wouldn’t hurt,” I finished for us all.

Giles smiled, a look of satisfaction relaxing his features and quieting his fluttering hand.

“These are the first sensible words he’s spoken to anyone in any language whatsoever,” Bienta said softly. “Thank you, Mrs. Wall. For being his friend.”

I searched her face. Emotion threatened my composure and I struggled to hold myself steady. It wouldn’t do to break down in front of two such strong people who had withstood so much.

“Lok will call tonight,” she said to Giles, in English. “Mrs. Wall has given us good news to tell her.”

I patted Giles’s left hand and told him that I would continue my prayers for healing.

Then I turned to make a quiet departure.

I could hear Bienta’s voice as I walked away, speaking again in Luo, the language of their younger days.

T
he bell rang for dismissal, and in less than thirty seconds, I was alone. Every teacher lives for that moment.

An early-turning apple tree swayed in the September breeze. I admired its sturdy branches through my classroom window. Peering through the burnished canopy of leaves, I saw houses near the airport many blocks away. In one of them resided my friend and favorite gardener. It had been a year since his stroke, and I visited him often. His gait remained unsteady, even with a cane, but the liveliness in his speech patterns was slowly returning.

I crossed the empty classroom to retrieve my marble gardening notebook from the desk drawer. Sitting down, I flipped the pages, trying to find the notes I’d made on the first of our
“gardening seminars”—which is what I had come to call our visits. I remembered the way I had stepped cautiously across the tilted wooden slats of the ramp that had been installed for Giles’s wheelchair. Arriving at the door, I heard his rusty-sounding voice call out through the screen:

“Eh!
Amosi!
Come on in!”

I’d been worried about what I might see when I opened the door. Giles’s health insurance had cut off his physical therapy abruptly, and we all worried that it was too soon, that Giles was far from restored to health. But that day I was surprised to find Giles sitting in his wheelchair with his smile restored. He wore a zip-up nylon running suit. Some sort of college text lay open on the TV tray in front of him. Still, despite his liveliness, I couldn’t help noticing that his legs seemed thin, and his knees too prominent.

“Please sit,” he had offered, pointing to a chair across from him, as I pulled the marble notebook from my purse.

“You have brought . . .” he said, a pointer finger spinning in the air, in my direction. “Your notebook!” he at last confirmed, his expression brighter for the modest triumph of a successful word retrieval.

“Here is where you wrote the notes when Mama passed away.” I showed him. “Now we’re starting on a brand-new section. Every yard must have its flowers,” I reminded him.

“Exactly right,” he answered, open to the plan. “I see my student has been studying.”

Since that first seminar months ago, Giles had put on needed
weight and there was new enthusiasm in his voice each time I saw him. And each time, he gave me new tasks to perform. September was to be a busy month:

Week of September 14—Mount Vernon Road—1. divide irises, transplanting some to fence line.

Week of September 21—same location . . . deadheading of roses/pruning of rosebushes. Height to be reduced by one-half to two-thirds to prevent swaying in winter breezes, which can lead to breakage.

I closed the notebook, grabbed my purse, and raced to my van in the faculty parking lot. I had a laundry list of errands to run, but visiting Giles was first on the list. My other tasks would have to wait. Still, I was conscious of feeling rushed and impatient.

I brought my hustle and bustle into Giles’s house with me. Giles was quiet, and I asked after Bienta and the boys as I always did.

“The boys are on a soccer trip,” he said.

“That’s right. They left from school.”

“They did,” he said. “I hope they win. They’ve worked so hard.”

“They have.”

Giles definitely didn’t seem himself. Perhaps, I thought, he just wasn’t up for a visit today. “Are you okay?” I said. “You look stressed.”

“Oh, we are fine,” he quickly answered. “There are just a few things which have gone awry.”

“Awry? What do you mean?” I asked the question, but no
answer came. I should have pressed him. I should have forgotten my errands and attended to my friend with due respect, an open mind, and my listening skills tuned to the maximum. Instead, I took the easier course. I rushed out, and continued with my errands.

The following Monday, I came home from school to find a voice mail.

Giles’s voice was strong, his message blunt.

“Mrs. Wall . . . this is Giles Owita. They are going to cut our water off today. Bienta doesn’t know that I am contacting you. Thank you very much.”

•   •   •

Speeding as I drove to Giles’s house, I pondered weighty questions. Why was I such an idiot? How difficult were certain things to calculate?

Instead of fussing over garden plans, I should have made a column in my notebook for the steady stream of medical expenses that always flowed in the wake of something serious, especially with intensive care involved.

Giles had health insurance. That was why he took the Foodland job in the first place. But even after the insurance had paid its portion, overwhelming amounts remained. Just a fraction of a bill like that would have been too much for any family. A few dollars here and there and some casseroles delivered by concerned friends weren’t even a scratch on the surface of all that debt.

I wished we had all thought of it sooner, but recrimination wouldn’t help Giles and Bienta now. Instead, we gathered in Giles’s living room to formulate a plan. Dick scribbled figures on a notepad while Sarah, Blake, and I brainstormed. For the first time, Giles revealed to all of us that his insurance coverage had been cut off several months before. A lifetime’s savings in the tens of thousands that he and Bienta had set aside to pay for the children’s education was tapped out, too. And bills were still coming in. No wonder Giles had looked so helpless and hopeless the other day.

Our reassurances that he and Bienta were not alone seemed to buoy him. Within the hour, the phone began to ring with support—from the church, the school, clients, and friends. One particularly well-connected customer of the Garden Shoppe corralled his wealthy friends who gladly offered donations. We like to idealize small towns and the values that go with them, but I had truly never seen an outpouring like that, and I don’t expect that I ever will again. I thought I knew how loved this family was, but clearly I had no idea.

It was a Monday afternoon, but nonetheless, the atmosphere at Giles’s house began to feel downright festive. A Shoppe customer who heard about the brainstorming arrived with a bag of burgers and fries and handed them out to everyone. Giles ate nothing, but he beamed relief. I asked him if he recalled a lesson he gave me as we stood beside the creek one afternoon before his stroke.

“You explained how certain plants are known to propagate
by sending seeds out on the breeze or on the rushing waters,” I reminded him. “Your friendships are strong, like those plants. The word has been passed, and as a result, your family’s needs will be met.”

A car pulled up. Conversation ceased. It was Bienta. She trudged up the ramp on heavy feet. When she walked into the living room and caught sight of us, the expression on her face grew puzzled and her body language was defensive. She sat down and shifted her eyes from face to face. While Sarah explained to her why we were all there, Bienta’s face turned into a mask of surprise, her mouth in a round and startled O. She pulled her arms together and her fingers curved into a tiny double fist, as if she sought to make herself as small as possible. My heart broke for her.

I thought of all of Giles and Bienta’s dreams—that they would get their Ph.D.s and get jobs at the finest universities, save lots of money and send it back to their families in Kenya. Giles had told me once that they’d planned to go back to Kenya eventually to start a farm. Now here they were, their daughter stuck on another continent, Giles’s body broken by illness, both of them working multiple jobs to make ends meet and yet still their savings were exhausted. It was easy for me to imagine that Bienta had always been the responsible, dependable one. The one whom friends relied on for her wisdom, her resources, and her generosity. And here she was, sitting in her own living room, forced to accept charity. No wonder she looked like she wanted to disappear into her own skin.

I decided that I would go to Bienta later and assure her that I understood. I knew what it was like to feel that the tables had been turned on me. Yet even as I thought this, I knew that my words would be of little help. The horrible shame of illness and need was too big to be dissolved with a few gentle sentences, no matter how well meant.