Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening: How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart (18 page)

F
or a long while, I’d thought that Daddy’s condition couldn’t possibly grow worse—and yet he continued to drift further away from me. When I visited him, I searched for signs that he remembered me, but eventually I had to admit that I had become a stranger to him. Over the course of his long and cruel illness, it was as if my father had been taken from me in pieces, bit by bit.

Then one day, he was gone entirely, and not even his shell remained.

We placed him on the hillside next to Mama. Although I’d often recoiled from the overly sweet and optimistic greeting cards that had come my way after my cancer diagnosis, I cherished each sympathy card I received after Daddy died. I knew
how pleased he would be by every gesture. In Radford, he was often called upon to be a pallbearer if someone died without a family or friends to give a proper send-off. I pictured Daddy, free in death, to be that kind, expansive, generous, and loving man again, and that was the greatest comfort I’d had concerning him in quite a while.

A few days after Daddy’s funeral, I woke up slowly. I was conscious—I wasn’t dreaming—but I felt a transporting sense of peace. I blinked my eyes, reached across the mattress, and confirmed that I was alone in the bed. Everything seemed solid, real, authentic. Dick was downstairs in the kitchen, making coffee. Light fell at a familiar angle through the narrow spaces in between our bedroom blinds. I looked toward the foot of my bed, and standing there was a little boy—brighter than the sunlight, almost golden.

He was maybe eight or ten years old, not any more than that. And as real as he appeared to me, I realized that I wasn’t seeing him with my eyes, but with my being.

Perhaps he was an angel. I studied him for several seconds. His hair was blond and parted on the side. He wore a pair of denim overalls that brought to mind the Depression and life on a farm. I thought of him as being barefoot, but I couldn’t see his feet.

There was another person with him, taller and protective of the boy. The gender of this taller being wasn’t clear to me, but that fact seemed oddly unimportant. The taller being looked out
across the room while the little boy faced me. It was this child who had come to see me.

By the time I scrambled out of bed, they were gone.

In my next moment of clarity, I resolved that I wouldn’t tell anyone about the incident, not even Dick. He’d surely think I’d finally, once and for all, lost my mind.

•   •   •

All day, I was simultaneously shaken and comforted by my morning vision. I wondered how I could feel both ways at once. On the one hand, something told me that the blond-haired boy at the foot of my bed was there to comfort me. On the other, I thought that sane people were not visited by spirits from the great beyond.

That afternoon, on my regular visit to Giles, I felt jumpy and anxious. Finally, and despite my promise to myself, I decided to confess my secret to Giles.

“Giles, do you believe the dead can visit us?”

“What Kenyans call the ‘Earth Above’ is always reaching down to us,” he said. He sat in his wheelchair opposite the picture window, and his voice was casual, as if he were talking about a visit from a neighbor. “Our ancestors, who live below and furnish our foundation, bring us dreams. Those who have flown are with us every day. This is a part of life. We accept such things as natural and normal.”

“Waking up this morning, I saw someone beside my bed.
And I can’t really explain why or how I know this, but I’m pretty sure that little boy was my father.”

“Okay.”

“Daddy grew up on a farm and I have pictures of him wearing denim overalls, just like that little boy wore.” I produced a faded photo from my purse and showed it to Giles.

He studied it, his eyes reflecting a keen appreciation of the situation.

“Now, listen, Giles. I usually hate when people tell me things like this. It always sounds made-up, like wishful thinking. At first, I promised myself I wouldn’t tell a single soul, but then I thought of you. Could I be going crazy?”

He laughed. “You are not crazy. Quite the opposite. You are one of the least crazy people I know. I am glad to hear of this. Your father chose to come to you. It shows the closeness and respect you have with him, on either side of the river.”

Once again I began to cry in front of Giles, and I noticed his eyes were full of emotion as well. Then tires on the driveway pierced the moment. Bienta was home.

As she entered through the kitchen door, I slipped the photo of Daddy into my purse.

“How are you, Mrs. Wall?” Bienta said.

“We’re doing fine. And thank you for your card of sympathy.”

“Of course,” she sighed. “So many things have happened, haven’t they?”

“We’ve all had some difficult times these past few years.”

“Mrs. Wall, it has been so long since we have had time to speak,” Bienta said. “I wonder if you might be free for lunch on Saturday?”

I tried to keep from showing my utter surprise. “Yes,” I said. “Of course. I’d love to.” I hoped my smile came across as friendly and laid-back, and not shocked and deeply curious. I couldn’t help feeling that there was something Bienta had been keeping from me—something she wanted to tell me. I mentally ticked down a list of what it might be—something about Giles, medical bills, the boys’ tuition. Possibly something to do with her relationship with Giles. I’d often sensed they were at odds, and if so I could certainly understand. I knew from personal experience how tough on a marriage it is when one spouse is sick and the other is well.

I scanned Bienta’s face for clues. Her expression was pleasant and reserved as always, and once again she’d hung the “closed for business” sign. I wasn’t going to get any more out of her until she was good and ready.

•   •   •

Bienta and I met at a café in town. We made small talk and placed our orders, which turned out to be exactly the same. I was determined to let Bienta bring up her mysterious subject, and not to ask any direct questions. So instead we chatted about our children.

The subject of sibling rivalry came up, and she shared the
Kenyan wisdom that when two children want a parent’s attention, you always tend to the older one first. “That one knows you better and would be more hurt by having to wait,” she explained.

“Really? That’s fascinating,” I said. “We generally do the opposite.
You’re older. You can wait.
That’s our philosophy. But what you say makes perfect sense. Where was such wisdom when my kids were growing up?”

We laughed a bit over that, and I was happy to see that Bienta seemed a bit more relaxed today. Then she sighed, and sadness settled over her features. “I’m afraid my daughter feels she’s been forgotten.”

“I’m sure she knows that isn’t true, and yet I’d worry, just as you do.”

Bienta pressed her lips together, as if to seal in her emotions. She nodded.

“We mothers bear the blame for many things,” I said.

She rested one fist on the table. “Yes. I feel foolish for relying on the workings of a vast machine to bring her to me. Not everyone is honest, Mrs. Wall. In fact, the well-placed person can be bribed—with chaos and delays resulting. Do you see?”

“I do. And I’m embarrassed to admit that had never even occurred to me. I’m so naïve, and I haven’t really traveled much.”

“The world is wide,” she said. “And with Giles’s situation, we are simply here,
and cannot go to her . . . not even for a visit. Still, there’s progress, lately. I am almost sure of it, and ask the saints to help us.”

“I wish I could do something to help somehow. Remember how you helped with my head wrap at a time when I was feeling so low? That was such a loving thing to do, and I will always be grateful.”

She nodded acknowledgment. Her expression was pained. “Things are more complicated than you can ever guess, Mrs. Wall.”

“I’m here to either listen, help, or back off. I won’t be chasing you down to find out more or passing on gossip to others.”

“Of course not,” she said. “I think of you as one of my truest friends.”

Now it was my turn to feel emotional. One of her truest friends? I had always wanted that to be true, but I felt so inadequate to the task.

We settled into silence again, and despite my better intentions I rushed to fill the void. “How do you think Giles is doing?”

“Why do you ask?”

But as open as she was before, Bienta had now shut down on me again, her face a closed mask. “I ask because I care.” My voice betrayed more impatience than I meant to show, and I sensed Bienta receding even more. What had started as a pleasant ladies’ lunch unraveled before my eyes.

When our waitress delivered the check, Bienta and I reached for it at the same time.

“I invited you,” Bienta said.

Not wanting to insult Bienta further, I drew back my hand
and managed to topple over her water glass. The puddle spread across the table and then rushed off into Bienta’s lap, drenching her light blue skirt.

Bienta studied the situation in horror for an instant, and then jumped up with a tiny cry of anguish, shoving her chair backward. The scraping of its legs on the floor created a high-pitched echo. Other diners turned to gawk. I grabbed an extra napkin from the table next to us and flailed madly at the mess I’d caused.

When the restaurant manager came over to offer Bienta a clean towel, instead of accepting it she wove her way through the tables toward the exit, as if fleeing the scene of a crime. I paid our bill and then rushed out to find her.

Outside, Bienta leaned against a lamppost, sobbing, a lacy handkerchief covering her face.

“I’m so, so sorry,” I said. “I’d so hoped to have a nice lunch with you and then I went and threw cold water all over it.”

She nodded. “It’s not your fault. And it’s not the water that upset me.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Bienta? I truly just want to be your friend. I hope you don’t mind that I visit Giles so often. He’s your husband, and I have my own, if that’s the problem. Look, I don’t have to stop by every
week. We’ll put a space between us, if you’d like.”

Almost instantly, her crying ceased. She looked surprised, and then regretful. “Oh, no,” she answered in alarm, her earnest eyes on me. “In fact, we do appreciate, and need . . .” Her voice trailed off. “You are already a better friend to me than you know.
When you are helping my husband, you are helping our household. Someday we will explore the topic more.”

Bienta reached out and put her hand on my forearm. I looked at her and said, “Well,
wabironenore
. Giles taught me that.”

She squeezed my arm. “Yes, we will see each other later.”

I watched as she walked uphill to where she was parked. Once again I felt shortchanged, and I wondered if Bienta would ever confide in me. I so wanted to be deserving of her trust.

My steps were slow as I found my own van. “One of these days,” I said to myself, “I will know more.”

D
ays later I arrived home from school to a stunning voice mail.

Listening to the message, I briefly doubted my ears. In an irrational moment of optimism I thought,
There must have been some sort of mix-up. That awful news wasn’t intended for me.

Yet I knew that it was. The female caller, an assistant in my Handsome Oncologist’s office, started with words I have already, in my journey as a cancer patient, come to dread:

“This message is for Carol Wall . . .”

I listened again. Disbelief was all I felt.

No. Impossible. Not me.

Not me, again.

I put the phone down gingerly, as if my every action posed
hidden dangers and bombs lay all around me. It had been three years since chemo ended, and my most recent routine checkup had been good. My Handsome Oncologist and I discussed a host of unrelated topics, in our usual, friendly way. He assured me that everything looked fine. The only thing left to check were my tumor markers, and I chatted with the nurse the way I always did while she drew the blood. I wasn’t worried. My tumor markers had never varied in the slightest.

Until now. The new results were in, and the numbers were creeping up.

The room seemed to tilt. I called Dick at the office. He didn’t answer, and I told myself that this wasn’t the kind of news I should leave him in a message.

I was seized with an urge to run away, as if I could outpace my own cancer markers. There was only one person I could imagine talking to right now, and I yearned for his calming presence. Giles. I needed to see Giles.

I was terrified and angry as I drove along the back roads to his house. I thought how it would not be too much of a tragedy if, at the intersection, I forgot to brake and let a truck make simple work of me. It was a sin, I was pretty certain, to think this way. Yet trying to be virtuous had gotten me nowhere, so I gave in to bitterness.

It was a gray and blustery spring day, close to the dinner hour. The light was just fading when I arrived, and I saw Giles taking halting steps toward his garden shed, cane in hand.

The one thing I had prayed for in the past few minutes was
now close at hand. And then I heard it, the melodic voice of Giles addressing me, the sound of it a blessing on the breeze.

“Eh! Mrs. Wall!” he called to me.

We walked toward each other, meeting at his fence. His living workshop stretched out behind him, all the little plastic pots beneath the tarp. I hadn’t noticed how high the magnolia had grown. I remembered how sad and frail it looked to me when I first saw it.

I struggled to keep my voice calm. “I’m glad you’re here, because I thought you ought to know . . .”

He turned his head and narrowed his eyes. As always, he looked toward me but not at me. “What is wrong?”

“I don’t know how to say it. I . . . well, that is, judging from some tests I had the other day, and unexpectedly, to say the least, considering results supposedly obtained . . .”

“You’ve learned . . . ?”

“My breast cancer markers are rising, Giles. It might mean nothing . . . or it might mean . . . anything and everything.” My voice broke. “The worst. You know?”

With his cane, it took him three tries to flip the latch on the gate. “Come in,” he said, “and tell me more.”

“I’m going to have to have some scans. Repeated scans, the doctor said when I returned the call.” I looked up at the wispy clouds that alternately raced and idled as they shifted their gears across the sky. This is exactly what I had feared all of the years since Mama and Daddy told me about the radiation treatments I’d received as a baby—this feeling that I could never, ever get
free, and that it would just keep coming back. I had never told Giles about the radiation. Dick was the only other person who knew. I wasn’t sure who I was protecting more by keeping this from everyone else—my own privacy or my parents’ feelings. But both of my parents were dead now. “For years, Giles, my parents kept a terrible secret from me. And I’ve learned that secrets can be damaging to the soul.”

I told Giles everything then—how I’d cried all the time as a baby, and how desperate Mama and Daddy were.

Giles looked alarmed. He turned his head as if listening for incoming artillery.

“I was only five months old. We lived in Radford then. They took me to the big city of Roanoke for three full treatments of radiation to my thymus gland.”

Giles shook his head. “Radiation exposure. That is very, very bad. Especially for a baby.”

“I know. Mama and Daddy meant well. We all know that now. They already had one baby with serious health problems, so I guess this doctor wanted to help them or something. In any case, it was a gross overreaction. I feel sorry for them now, and I’ve tried so hard to understand what they were going through, but I’m also angry. I had a small benign tumor removed from my neck when I was twelve, and another when I was seventeen. But my parents never told me why, not until Dick and I were already married. And ever since then, I’ve felt like my own body was booby-trapped, and it was my job to examine every inch of its terrain, like it was enemy territory. Now my worst fears are coming true.”

Giles nodded, taking in everything I said, rolling my words around in his head the way he always did.

“You know, I’d like for everyone to just go away,” I said. “I really would. The prodders and the pokers. The experts trained to peer and stick and cut. The ones who read charts and type up notes. The ones who train their X-rays on the innocent and hold their glowing film up to the light before surprising you with secrets you’ve been keeping from yourself. I feel so alone, Giles. Like I’ve been marked—singled out.”

“I understand,” Giles said. “Whenever we must carry a health legacy from the past, it can be too much to bear.”

A cold wind swept across the yard just then. Instinctively, we turned to face the mountains, but in pivoting, Giles became unsteady on his feet.

“Oh, Lord,” he said. His cane slipped from his grip. I tried to grasp it as it fell, but missed. The grass received it, shuddering. His cotton shirt blew up against his chest. I saw how thin he had become.

“I’ve upset you. That was selfish. I’m so sorry, Giles.”

One of Giles’s neighbors checking mail across the street called out to ask if we needed any help. She lingered at her mailbox, pretending to inspect the hinge, when all the while I sensed that she was just one of those people who had radar for gossip of any kind. I told her, no. We were fine. Giles and I dropped our voices to a whisper.

“This morning, we received some news as well,” Giles said, while I retrieved his cane. “Lok’s visa is going to come through.
We’ve known this was a possibility for quite some time, but now it is confirmed. It is a matter of days.”

“Oh, Giles! That’s wonderful. We’ll have a celebration when she gets here.” I stepped closer to him, hoping to convey how excited I felt about Lok’s arrival.

If only I had known about the good news, I would have waited to share my burden with him. But his troubled expression persisted. I expected him to be overjoyed, but instead he looked sadder than I’d ever seen him.

“There is something which I have not told you,” he said. “It is regarding my condition.” He paused. “It is something that makes Lok’s arrival a matter of the greatest urgency. I have wanted, many times, to tell you . . . of the underlying reason for this stroke and my decline . . . but we were always working in the garden and the moment never came.”

His eyes shone in their earnest way, and I waited patiently for him to continue. A plane was descending toward the airport, a view that always reminded me of Lok. I watched its birdlike profile sweep along, decelerating, stretching out its belly for the landing. Giles waited until the neighbor disappeared into her house before he spoke again.

“I will not get better,” he said.

“Of course you will. My mother was much older and her stroke was worse.”

“No. It is not the stroke. Please listen for a moment.”

He turned his face away from me. The clothesline bobbed up and down, reminding me of the jump ropes we used as children.
I noticed that Giles had finally made a key for the garden shed, but he’d left it hanging on a nail right next to the lock.

“I am HIV-positive,” he said at last. “It has been this way for many years. I have lived a long time since my diagnosis, but the doctors do not believe I have much more time left.”

I couldn’t help myself. I gasped. Then just as quickly I thought that I must have misunderstood him. Speechless, I handed him his cane and then led him to the fence so he could grasp it for support.

“I was diagnosed in Blacksburg, fourteen years ago. My shame was profound, and the counselors made no attempt to alleviate our pain. At the time, they told me I had three more years to live. The boys were small, and they urged us to make a will, as if it was a given that Bienta would be taken, too.”

“Oh, Giles, I’m so sorry.” Words failed me. I thought of this awful secret that Giles and Bienta had kept tucked inside them for so long. I remembered all the times that Bienta had been on the verge of telling me something, how vulnerable she must have felt, how sick with worry and fear.

“It doesn’t matter how they treated me, back then,” Giles said. “You recall the hysteria in those years. Such a diagnosis was perceived as a death sentence. There was no effective treatment available. There was one person in our apartment complex whom we suspected may have intercepted a message from the doctor’s office. We watched this person every day. Did he know? If so, what might he do? Call the health department? Spread the word on campus? We lived in constant dread of discovery.”

I raised my hands to my face. “Oh, God, I can’t believe what you have been through.”

“The stigma has been almost as bad as the disease itself. Bienta has had to live with that, and worried that word would spread and the children would be treated as lepers. We told no one at Virginia Tech. And no one here in Roanoke knows, except for you, Mrs. Wall. One cannot trust many people in this life of ours.”

My heart broke for Bienta. How often I’d misunderstood her diffidence. I’d thought her reserved and distant, difficult to know.

“Bienta has proved strong,” Giles said, “and has been spared. Her tests are negative for the disease. The children, too.”

“I’m glad for that, but I am so sorry, Giles, that you have had to keep this awful secret.”

“Had Bienta sent me back to Kenya,” he said, “away from the treatment available here, I would quickly have died. This is why I could never go to Lok. Who knows what obstacles might be encountered when traveling outside the country? I have not felt free to tell Lok. It would only have added to her pain. But recent blood counts have introduced a sense of urgency. She must come to me, to say goodbye. The end could quickly come.”

I had no idea what to say, and I wanted only to reach out to Giles physically, to show him that I was here with him and that he was right to tell me. But I knew it would have been considered rude in his culture, and would only have embarrassed him. Instead, I grasped the fence and struggled to keep my balance.

I looked up and discovered that Giles was staring at me. He looked directly into my eyes, something he had never done before. The sky didn’t fall, and he didn’t turn away. I had always known that his eyes were the same deep, dark brown as mine. I wondered if he knew it, too, before this moment.

We held our gaze, and I made sure that he was the first to look away. I wanted him to know that I would never reject him. I would never turn away.

He did not tell me how he contracted the disease, and I didn’t ask—nor would I ever. Each of us was too respectful of the other to cross the careful boundaries we’d kept all through the years, a man and a woman happily married to others but finding unique joy in our friendship.

“What can I do to help?” I said.

His answer came without delay. “The minute we are notified that Lok is on her way, you must assist me. You must take me out to meet her. I will be there, even at the airport, because in every moment, there exists a lifetime. Will you do this, Mrs. Wall?”

“I will.”

•   •   •

I took my place beside Bienta in an empty corner of the bleachers. The Owita boys were playing soccer, and I had offered to keep her company.

After Giles told me his secret, I decided to abandon my random fears about the numbers someone had divined in the oncology lab. Instead, I focused on the joy of anticipating Lok’s arrival.
If Bienta and Giles could celebrate at a time like this, then certainly I could as well. Meanwhile, I hoped our friendship would strengthen all of us.

Bienta’s relief that Giles had confided in me was palpable, as if a thick layer of guilt and shame had been chipped away from her, and she could finally breathe and move freely.

She said that for a long time she had pleaded with Giles to tell me, and that she had so often wanted to tell me herself. But she felt both too respectful of Giles’s privacy, and also too ashamed. “At first, we thought he had malaria. Early symptoms may be similar. But we were wrong. And when this came to light . . .” Her soft voice broke. “His diagnosis came when antiviral drugs were in their infancy and a pronouncement of AIDS amounted to a death sentence. Remember the quilts mothers used to sew in memory of their loved ones who were carried off by AIDS? At that stage in the research, such a loving gesture was all that could be offered. Even family members stood in danger of becoming outcasts should the secret be disclosed. We lived in fear, Mrs. Wall. We felt like criminals. Life was a nightmare.”

“Yes, I do remember how it was back then,” I said. “We were all so stupid, as if being in the same room with someone, or shaking their hand, might expose us. And the judgments people made. The blame. The rest of us are the ones who should be ashamed, not you.”

“The stigma at that time was great,” she said. “As I sent our older son to the bus each day for kindergarten, I would quickly
check the door of our apartment to see if anyone had defaced it with AIDS graffiti or splashed blood across its surface.”