I Built No Schools in Kenya

by Kirsten Drysdale

  I open it cautiously, hoping we’re not about to walk in on something we shouldn’t, but in no way prepared for the absolute shit tip we encounter.

  A layer of white dust blankets everything. Broken pieces of plaster board lie scattered across the bed, my desk, the floor. Chunks of wood sit atop a pile of swept-up dirt and cobwebs. The painting of a gerenuk (from the Somali word garanuug meaning ‘giraffe-necked’ antelope) has fallen off the wall and lies smashed in the corner. Goddammit, I loved that painting. Such a funny little creature, standing on its hind legs to eat the leaves off an acacia tree.

  Esther freezes, wide-eyed, dustpan and brush in hand. She stares at me in anticipatory terror, like a child caught trying to cover up smashed china.

  I haven’t quite figured out what’s happened yet but know enough to shut the door quickly behind us so that no one else need know. We don’t need Walt in here thinking someone’s fired a cannon through the window. We don’t need Marguerite shrieking about the filth on her duvet.

  Esther says nothing, but slowly raises a finger to the ceiling. We look up at a hole the size of a bathtub in the gypsum board and see four sets of eyes peering back down from the darkness. As my eyes adjust to the light, I make out James’s and David’s faces. Two other men are huddled beside them. One of them I recognise is the fundi (handyman) Michael Kirby arranges for us, to fix bits and pieces around the house. The fourth guy must be his offsider. Turns out they’re up there to repair the hot water tank, which has been leaking. They appear to be shitting themselves.

  ‘Hello, Kirsten, hello, Ruby!’ David says, nervously. ‘Sorry, pole – we had an accident.’

  ‘But is everyone okay? Nobody’s hurt?’ Ruby asks.

  ‘No, we are fine!’ James assures us. ‘David landed on the bed!’

  We look back at Esther, and explode with laughter. We can’t stop laughing. Then Esther laughs, and James and David and the fundi and his mate laugh, and I feel terrible that these guys were bracing themselves for a serve.

  ‘Let’s get this all cleaned up before anyone else sees it,’ I say. And together we sweep and vacuum and pick up the pieces and laugh until the room is back together, and it’s only if you look up that you see a big hole in the ceiling and wonder who or what fell through it.

  Later that afternoon, I hear Michael Kirby yelling in the kitchen. I assume he’s here to talk about the intruders on his property last night. But he’s not.

  He’s tearing strips off the fundi and his offsider, and James and David. What-the-bloody-hell-were-they-doing and how-utterly-useless-could-they-be and how-many-times-does-he-have-to-tell-them.

  A hot fury ignites in my stomach and works its way up my throat. I find myself storming through the house until I’m standing in front of him, tingling with rage.

  ‘Hey! There’s no need to speak to people like that! It was an accident. These things happen,’ I say.

  ‘This is none of your business,’ Michael says, as seemingly shocked to have been spoken to like this by a young woman as I’m shocked at myself.

  ‘Actually, it is my business,’ I say. ‘It was my room. No harm’s been done. No one was hurt. It’s all cleaned up and we’ll be able to fix the ceiling.’

  ‘Does Marguerite know yet?’

  ‘Not yet. We’ll tell her when she gets home.’

  ‘You just wait and see how happy she is about it,’ he wags his finger in my face.

  ‘I’m sure she won’t be happy about it but I’ll explain what happened.’

  Michael glares like he wants to punch me. I glare back, daring him to.

  ‘Righto, then. You take care of it.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And tell Marguerite I’m done helping you lot.’

  ‘Okey-dokey. See ya,’ I say, faux cheery, waving him out the door, enjoying – just a bit – that I’ve made him as angry as he’s made me.

  The staff are silent, staring. I realise I might have put them in an awkward position – maybe they’ll face repercussions for my little outburst, and it may seem like they’re partly responsible for the transgression.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, guys, I’ll sort it out with Marguerite.’

  Still, they just stare. I realise they might also think I’ve been terribly disrespectful, even if it was in their defence.

  ‘I’m really sorry about all that,’ I say.

  Ruby and I are stoned. She managed to score a joint at the dress-up party and stashed it for ‘emergency use’. We’ve just shared it outside after dinner, standing between dew-damp sheets on the washing line, gazing up at an enormous full moon. After the night of waking terror, and the incident with the plumbers and Michael Kirby, and another long day with Walt, we felt we could do with some help unwinding.

  Marguerite is out. Jade’s on duty. Why not?

  When we go back inside, all the details of our small, bizarre world are suddenly more consequential.

  Walt is sitting in his green velvet wingback chair in front of a roaring fire in the hearth. He’s holding a crystal whisky tumbler full of soda water stained amber with Angostura bitters; he thinks it’s Scotch. He’s smiling and laughing and shaking his head at us. He’s wearing his paisley silk robe – the one Sean wore to the dress-up party.

  Ruby and I are sitting on the couch across from him, in flannelette pyjamas. It’s not a couch, actually. It’s a ‘sofa’. It’s one of those rosewood ones, with lattice panels on either end, covered in beige upholstery with a moss and maroon floral pattern. A burgundy Persian rug is spread across the parquetry floor between us. Chiku stretches out with her tummy towards the fire.

  Jade looks at us from her chair beside Walt. We blink back, smiling like dolts. She knows we’re high.

  We say we’ll watch Walt for Jade while she has a shower. We don’t really mind – in the state we’re in, it doesn’t feel like work. And Walt is having a grand old time. He finds our Australian accents very amusing. He thinks we’re at a raucous dinner party.

  ‘Go on, then – why don’t you pair sing something for us?’ he dares.

  ‘Righto!’ Ruby says. She pulls the opera CD out of the player and frisbees it across the room. Walt loves that move almost as much as I do. We’ve already heard the overture from The Marriage of Figaro three times tonight.

  Ruby plugs her laptop into the stereo, and I turn the lights down until it’s just the soft glow of flickering firelight.

  ‘Oooooh,’ Walt coos, all camp and corny, leaning forward in his chair, ‘this is starting to feel very cabaret!’

  A swirling, swelling string section starts up. I recognise it immediately as the introduction to ‘A Whole New World’ from Disney’s Aladdin.

  ‘Yes!’ I scream. ‘Great choice!’ I know just where Ruby is going with this.

  We push the coffee table to the side, turning the space into a stage. Ruby takes the part of Aladdin, and I sing Jasmine’s lines.

  And Walt bloody loves it. He’s clapping and laughing and cheering. ‘Very good, I say, that’s very good indeed!’

  We drop to our knees and pull up the end of the Persian rug, steer it around like we’re on our ‘magic carpet ride’, peer over the edges in mock terror. Neither of us is hitting the notes; it’s all just atonal wailing, now with Chiku howling along, though whether in protest or solidarity I can’t be sure.

  Jade emerges from the bathroom just as we bring in some interpretive dance. I attempt a somersault. Ruby does a cartwheel and knocks a vase off the bookshelf. The fallen flowers become props – we tuck them into Walt’s collar and carry on, crescendoing through to the end then bringing it right back down for the gentle, intimate finale, with Ruby slowly lowering herself into the splits, while I bend over and look back at Walt through my legs.

  Walt gives us a standing ovation as we collapse in a sweaty heap, out of breath. ‘Bravo!’ he says. ‘Bravo!’ He tosses the roses from his neck at our feet.

  Fiona would have an absolute fit if she knew about this.

  ‘What the actual fuck
?’ Jade says, standing at the doorway with her wet hair wrapped up in a towel. She puts her hands on her hips in mock outrage, as though we’re naughty children, but is smiling, appreciating the fun.

  ‘We’re broadening Walt’s musical horizons,’ Ruby says, lining up the next track on her laptop.

  ‘It’s Aussie hip-hop, Walt!’ we shriek over the Hilltop Hoods.

  ‘It’s bloody awful, is what it is!’ he says, wincing as we garble-rap the lyrics to ‘The Nosebleed Section’.

  ‘Alright, guys,’ says Jade, sensing it’s probably time to shut this down. ‘Bedtime, I reckon?’

  I guess there are some cultural barriers that can’t be crossed.

  Next morning, head a little foggy, still humming the refrain from ‘The Nosebleed Section’, I’m kneeling on the tiles in Walt’s bathroom, having just helped him dry off after a shower. The cold, hard floor presses sharply against my bones as the old man sits wrapped in a towel on the chair in front of me. I pat down the slack between his knees, rub creams all over his body, and change a bandaid on his elbow where he nicked it on a rosebush.

  After making sure I’ve wiped out all the moisture from between his toes so that the webbing doesn’t rot and split, I notice that his nails need to be filed back. They’re starting to curl into the skin; they must be pressing against the end of his shoes.

  ‘Just bring your left foot forward a little for me, would you please, Walt?’ I ask, cradling it beneath his heel.

  ‘No!’ he spits from nowhere, kicking out so that I lose my balance and throw a hand down to steady myself. It lands on the pointy end of the nail file. ‘Get your hands off me!’ he snarls.

  A reflexive anger rises sharply from the pit of my stomach, partly from the pain and partly from the unexpected nastiness. I push it back down, reason it away. He doesn’t mean it, I remind myself. It’s the disease.

  I take a deep breath, pull the file out of my hand, and cautiously lean away from him as I wipe the blood onto the bathmat. I’m in a vulnerable position – he could kick me in the teeth if he wanted to. ‘Please, Walt, look how long they’re getting! You’ll get an ingrown toenail if we don’t sort them out soon. We don’t want that.’

  ‘Don’t you dare touch me, you nasty little bitch!’ he says, pulling both feet back under the chair. ‘I’ve had a gutful of all you people and your constant interfering.’

  The viciousness feels too personal, so ungrateful that it stings. I wonder whether this is, in fact, a moment of clarity – a genuine response to what’s been happening around him, not just a symptom of his unravelling mind.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, defeated. ‘We’ll leave it for another time. Come on, let’s get you dressed.’

  Walt stands up from his chair, clutching the ends of the towel together at his waist, and takes a menacing step towards me. ‘I don’t need your help – get out!’ he says. ‘Go on, get out of my bloody sight!’ The venom in his voice belies his frail, shrivelled body.

  I leave him alone in his bedroom. I sit at the end of the living-room couch, so that I can see down the hallway to his door. On the monitor I watch him pacing, opening and closing drawers, clutching his head, muttering to no one.

  An hour later he emerges, agitated and disorientated, wearing his dirty clothes. He looks distraught. ‘Excuse me,’ he says, holding out a scrap of scribbled paper, ‘could you help me make a phone call? I need to speak with my mother.’

  He is desperately lost and, in the weeks that follow, only becomes more so.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ says Fiona over Skype.

  I’ve taken Walt in for his monthly check-up with Dr Andrews, who suggested – on being apprised of Walt’s deteriorating mental state and increasingly aggressive behaviour – that we consider placing him on a low dose of Risperidone, an antipsychotic sometimes prescribed to dementia patients.

  ‘He is not to be put on any form of psychiatric drug whatsoever,’ Fiona says. ‘It’s bad for his heart, for one thing.’

  ‘But Fiona, his ECG results are excellent,’ I say. ‘Dr Andrews says it’s the best he’s seen Walt – physically, at least – since he came back to Kenya. He can’t believe how much he’s improved. All his blood results too. Everything is looking great.’

  ‘No. I don’t care. We saw what happened last time, with the Citalopram. It’s too great a risk.’

  ‘Fiona,’ I beg, ‘we need to try something. He’s becoming unmanageable. It’s dangerous for him and us. Yesterday he threatened Patrick with a kitchen knife because he wouldn’t open the gate for him!’

  ‘Well, that’s because he’s feeling trapped. And he is trapped, when you think about it. He obviously feels that on some level. He’s very perceptive, you know. You must tell Patrick to open the gate for him next time!’

  ‘And then what? Just let him walk all the way out to the main road?’

  ‘He won’t get that far. Just let him stroll for a bit and he’ll come back soon enough. Follow at a safe distance to keep an eye on him. Look, I am very aware that we need to do something to improve things, but I think we should take a step back first to try to see what’s gone wrong. Has there been a change in his routine or sleep patterns? If Marguerite is keeping him up at night, she might have to sleep in the study. Have you all been on top of avoiding triggers?’

  ‘Yes, Fiona,’ I say, exasperated. ‘As much as we possibly can – but we can’t control everything. We can’t stop other dogs in the neighbourhood from barking. We can’t stop passing cars from beeping their horns. We stick to the routine, we stick to sleep patterns. None of it makes any difference. I don’t know what to tell you. He is highly anxious pretty much all the time these days. He’s not happy.’

  ‘You know,’ Fiona says, sounding like a new theory has dawned on her, ‘it could be his prostate playing up. If he’s not emptying his bladder properly, he’s at risk of getting a UTI and that’s known to cause sudden changes in behaviour in the elderly, especially dementia sufferers.’

  Annoyingly, I know she’s right. My family went through the same thing with my grandmother. She’d have sudden episodes of severe confusion, which would be miraculously cleared up with a course of antibiotics. There’s some bizarre connection between bladder health and cognition in the elderly.

  ‘There are some sample pots in the cupboard,’ Fiona tells me. ‘Get him to wee in one for you tomorrow and take it in for testing, just to be sure. It’ll be a bit tricky, though – you’ll need to get it midstream.’

  Early the next morning, I hide behind Walt’s bathroom door. I wait to hear that splash. Then I dart in with a plastic jar to intercept his piss.

  Walt’s wee isn’t great.

  There’s no sign of a UTI but there is too much creatine in it, which Fiona says means his kidneys might not be processing protein properly. This, she says, is likely to be the cause of his recent distress and difficult behaviour, as confusion is one of the symptoms of kidney dysfunction. So, we are to cut red meat out of his diet entirely, and in addition to having his urine sampled we are to start getting his bloods done twice a week. Walt loves steak and hates needles – this is going to be fun.

  Fiona has me enter the results into a spreadsheet, including all past results from his medical file, so that we can generate graphs and identify any long-term trends. Within a week or so, Walt’s creatine levels drop and he remains UTI free – but Fiona now has an entire data set to play with. She decides we should ‘be more responsive’ to his metabolic profile with strategic dietary adjustments.

  When his blood glucose creeps up by a fraction of a percentage point, Fiona warns of impending diabetes and tells us to cut down on sweets. When Walt’s ‘hs-CRP’ results go up – whatever that means – we’re told to cut back on salt. When his phosphate goes up, she worries it’s another sign of failing kidneys, and tells us to cut down on cheese and milk. But she doesn’t want him to become deficient in calcium, so we are to introduce more broccoli and almonds to compensate. But then she worries about the almonds getting stuck in his
teeth and causing cavities or gum disease, so we have to stop that and reintroduce dairy products. Unfortunately, natural Greek yoghurt is the only type that’s high in calcium but low in phosphorus, and Walt won’t eat it unless it’s covered in honey, so we’re back to fretting over blood glucose again.

  Marguerite is getting the shits as she tries to keep up with our constantly changing dietary demands. I don’t blame her. Fiona refuses to communicate with her about anything to do with Walt’s health, so she’s being told what she can feed her husband by three unrelated Australian girls fifty years her junior, and none of it is making him any happier.

  Physically we have Walt humming like a fine-tuned vintage car (albeit one being slowly eaten away by rust), but despite his five-star piss and first-class nutrition plan, his violence and aggression increases.

  I’m sitting on the patio with Walt one morning, reading the papers. So far, so good. He took his tablets at breakfast without protest. He even brushed his teeth of his own accord. We sit, with the birds and the sunshine and the breeze.

  Then a slow but steady rhythm begins to permeate the air. Chiku’s ears prick up. A drum beat. Growing stronger, closer. Coming over the fence. Then voices – whooping, cheering. Singing?

  Walt hasn’t seemed to notice yet, so I duck inside to where Jade – on back-up duty – is sitting in her room on her laptop.

  ‘Are you playing music?’ I ask, and she shakes her head. ‘Can you hear that?’

  She looks down, eyes shut, concentrating for a moment. Shakes her head again. ‘Nope?’

  From inside the house, we can’t hear anything.

  ‘Never mind,’ I say, racing back out to the patio. A newspaper sits draped over the arm of Walt’s empty chair. He’s gone. Shit, shit, shit.

  I hear Patrick at the gate. ‘Pole, bwana, pole – I am not allowed.’

  I run out the front.