by Wall, Carol
On the bookshelf just behind him was a leather-bound copy of his dissertation. Giles Owita: Doctor of Philosophy in Horticulture was stamped in gold on the spine.
These few words captured so much of the dream Giles had prepared himself to transform into reality. His education was the one part of his plan that he could control. But he couldn’t account for other people’s prejudice or limitations. And he couldn’t make himself well. I prayed that he didn’t think he had failed. I thought of his children, and how beloved he was.
“Your life is bearing fruit, as well,” Giles said, as if he were channeling my thoughts. “Whatever comes, you must continue working in your garden.”
“Of course,” I promised him. “Whatever comes, I will keep going. And you must promise, my friend, that you’ll continue working right beside me.”
Giles smiled and nodded, but he didn’t reply.
20.
Seedlings
As fall grew chilly and gave way to winter, Giles and I developed a regular schedule for our seminars. I went to his house every Wednesday after school, and from time to time, and when weather allowed, he came to my yard. Our garden lessons were always mixed with discussions of more wide-ranging topics. We started with our children, especially Lok, who had just taken the photo for her visa application. Then, inevitably, our conversations veered all across the map from science to philosophy and religion.
To my great delight, Bienta joined the choir in the loft for rehearsals on Thursday nights. She was welcomed warmly as we started our second week rehearsing Advent music. She sang her notes beautifully and laughed at jokes along with everyone. But I had sensed a distance between the two of us ever since the day we’d become aware of her and Giles’s financial hardship. And I just couldn’t seem to cross that great divide. Bienta was such a strong woman, and intimidating in her own way. I so wanted to talk to her about Lok, and ask about Giles’s health, which seemed so frighteningly fragile to me—he’d even taken to using his wheelchair more often again. But I felt as if Bienta hung a “closed for business” sign over her face whenever I came near. Conversation beyond the shallowest pleasantries was rendered impossible.
So I shared my fears with Sarah instead. One Saturday when I was browsing at the Garden Shoppe, I pulled her aside. “Do you think Giles is losing weight? Dick says I’m imagining things. But I don’t think I am. I’m worried he has cancer and he doesn’t want us to know.”
“Cancer?” Sarah said, surprised. “What makes you think he has cancer?”
I thought about mentioning Giles’s melanoma diagnosis, but then I stopped myself. Had I become one of those people I’d always complained about, who treat other people’s illnesses like gossip? “Well, anyone could have cancer,” I said.
“I don’t know, Carol. I’m inclined to agree with Dick on this one. I don’t think there’s any big secret there. I just think Giles is under a lot of stress, and recovery from a stroke is so long and arduous. I’m sure it’s terribly depressing for him not to be able to do the things he once did so easily.”
Driving home, I racked my brain for ways to cheer up Giles. Then an idea came to me. The snake plant he and Bienta had given me suffered terribly from my total incompetence with houseplants. So I made an appointment to speak with Giles at his earliest convenience about an urgent gardening matter.
“This is my confession,” I told him. “I have been equally negligent through overwatering and under-watering, and that’s the truth.”
Where lesser gardeners might have chuckled, Giles found nothing to amuse him as his eyes took in the horror of the situation. The succulent whose upright, green-and-golden glory used to please had faded to a withered stalk the color of a brown paper grocery bag.
“It must be severely pruned. That is the only answer,” he decreed.
He sat a little straighter in his wheelchair. Then he grasped the sofa arm to pull his chair across the rug to save the poor plant from my deadly clutches. He seemed energized, in fact, to see the plant’s neglected state. He asked me to go into the yard and bring his pruning shears inside. I zipped up my jacket and started for the back door.
He called after me, “Look under the tarps and choose a specimen you like. Bring it in to me and we will work on that, too.”
Outside, I stooped to lift the garish tarps I’d disrespected so many times. Underneath, I found a sight whose quiet beauty took my breath away. In the shelter of the covered chairs and benches were a host of tiny seedlings, clearly thriving. They’d all been rescued, Giles would tell me later, from other people’s curbside trash. Falling to my knees to get a better look, I saw how all this while, beneath the unattractive surface, the gears of life had been turning, nature ticking beautifully along like the mesmerizing works of an expensive watch.
Dr. Giles Owita’s backyard rescue project had flourished despite illness and cold winds. Finding this felt like a Christmas morning discovery of a shiny new bike under the tree. That feeling intensified as I looked under each and every tarp throughout the yard and uncovered treasures everywhere. There were countless scores of tiny pots containing little conifers, fledgling sprigs of holly, and myriad green things rescued from obscurity and tended by the greenest thumb in Roanoke.
“Mrs. Wall? Have you found what you were looking for?” Giles called to me from his back door.
I chose a tiny conifer as my specimen, grabbed the shears, and went back inside. I helped Giles roll his wheelchair to the kitchen table, situated in a charming alcove off the living room. Then I pulled out a chair and sat beside him, feeling as I always did when I watched him work—like a lucky student basking in the reflected brilliance of a gifted professor.
Hideous debris fell away from the ailing snake plant as Giles performed his regimen of snips and clips, his movements all but automatic. “This will be fine,” he said. “Please take it back home with you.”
Then, under Giles’s instruction, I added peat moss to the soil around the feathery pine tree seedling I had chosen. When I hesitated at any point, Giles couldn’t restrain his hand from reaching out to help me. Once we’d finished he said, “Let me keep this one for a little while. I will let you know when it is ready.”
We settled in Giles’s living room again, and as always our conversation meandered, and I waxed philosophical. “You know, I was reading the other day about Einstein’s theory that space and time are elastic. What does that mean to you, Giles? Do you think it could mean that we might pass this way again?”
“This is a mystery,” Giles said. “What do you think?”
“Are we speaking science, or religion?”
“Einstein said that they are one.” Then he looked in my direction with that old familiar twinkle in his eye. “But I can always take the matter to my Virginia Tech doctoral panel for some further answers and get back to you.”
• • •
After Christmas, Giles called to say that my little orphan tree was thriving and it was time for me to take it home.
When I stopped by Giles’s house to pick it up, I found myself growing emotional as he handed it to me. I thought about how it had been thrown away as trash, then rescued to a place of nurture underneath the tarps. Now it had an opportunity to become everything it had been created for—and all because Giles had seen the potential in a scrubby little seedling.
“I want to thank you, Giles,” I started to say. “Because without your expertise and patience . . .” My tears welled up and I was reminded of our son Chad, and the learning disability he’d struggled with in school. I told Giles how one of Chad’s teachers had breezily informed us that he would never be college material. Now he was working on his Ph.D. dissertation.
“Oh, many, many people speak too soon,” Giles said. “And those who know a little less speak even sooner. Perhaps I’ll help you, one day, find that prophesying teacher with her sour-milk approach to children. She cannot be very happy. More unhapp
y still are the little ones who look to her for nurturing.”
“Yes.” I blotted my eyes and held a tissue to my nose.
Then, to my surprise, Giles’s eyes filled with tears as well. “Perhaps I should not be the one to criticize. I often wonder if I have been too strict with my boys, too apt to point out the bad instead of the good. But they have always been such good boys. Now I see this more clearly. Why was I so insistent about small things that didn’t really matter?”
I had never heard Giles sound so unsure of himself, so regretful. I wished I could rescue him from his uncertainty the way he’d always done for me. “Oh, Giles, there isn’t a parent in the world who hasn’t asked that same question. I certainly have. Half the time I thought I was being too strict, and the other half of the time I thought I was being too lenient. But you have to look at your intentions, Giles. I think that’s what the Good Lord does, don’t you?”
“Yes, He sees and understands all of that, and more.”
Moments later, the spell of our conversation was broken when Bienta and their two sons arrived home. Giles brightened, and I excused myself to leave them to their dinner. That night, after I returned home, I placed my growing pine tree on the gate-leg table in our living room. I hoped that I had brought Giles some comfort with my visit. And I prayed that he might heal and thrive like that treasure trove of seedlings hidden beneath the nondescript blue tarp in his backyard.
21.
The River
For 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 wisdo
m 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.”
