The Green Book

The Keeper of Hours

Chapter 17: The Green Book

Curtis Wells called at three o'clock on Friday afternoon, May twenty-ninth, and Mama Tate took the call in the front room with Yvonne sitting two feet away, because Yvonne had been the one to hand her the phone and had not, in the handing, left the room.

"Curtis."

"Mother Tate. Grandma went on hospice this morning at home. The cardiologist came at ten. The nurse from the hospice service got here at one. Grandma is asking for you. She says now. She says today. The nurse says we are looking at days, not weeks."

"I will be there in forty minutes."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Curtis. You bring me the green book when I come."

"Yes, ma'am. She told me. It is on the bookshelf where she said. I will have it ready."

"I am coming, son."

She hung up.

She did not, for a moment, set the phone down. She held it in her lap. She looked at her daughter.

"Yvonne."

"Yes, Mama."

"You drive me. You stay in the car. I am going to be in there an hour. Maybe two. You sit in the car and read your book. You do not come in. I want this hour to be between Mother Wells and me. Curtis will keep me. He knows."

"Yes, Mama."

"And Yvonne."

"Yes, Mama."

"I am going to come out of that house with a green book in my hand. The book is going to be the thing the Lord is asking me to carry from now until the day He calls me. I am going to need you and Tiana to carry it after me. The book is forty-three names. It will fold into ours. I will tell you about it tonight at the kitchen table. I am telling you now so that when I come out of the house with the book, you do not need to ask me what it is. You will already know."

"Yes, Mama."

"Get my hat. The dark blue. The one for sick rooms."

"Yes, Mama."

Mother Wells lived on Saratoga Street, four blocks east of Park, in a small white frame house her late husband Brother Wells had bought in 1962, the same year Eldridge had bought the house on Park, on the same block where two other Mt. Calvary deacons had bought houses, in the small steady migration of the Mothers' Board generation into Orange Mound that had defined the neighborhood for half a century.

Yvonne pulled into the driveway at three forty-six.

She turned off the engine. She did not, immediately, get out. She looked at the house.

The house was small and clean and well-kept. The porch had a wheelchair ramp that had been installed last fall. The front yard had the small careful tulips that Curtis had planted, in front of his grandmother's chair view, at the end of March. A blue Honda was in the driveway — Curtis's. There was no other car. The hospice nurses, Mama Tate would learn in a moment, came in shifts and parked across the street.

"Mama. You ready?"

"I am ready, baby. You stay in the car. You read. You roll the windows down. The wind today is good."

"Yes, Mama."

Mama Tate got out. Her hips made their announcement. She acknowledged them. She walked up the path to the house. The path was concrete. The path was not shaded. The path felt, on the small careful walk, longer than it had felt on any of the dozen Sunday afternoons Mama Tate had walked it in the years she had come over for tea after church.

Curtis met her at the door.

He was twenty-six. He was tall and broad-shouldered and had been, in the last year, the only consistent caregiver in his grandmother's house. He had been studying for the LSAT in the second bedroom and giving up on every test date because his grandmother needed him for something, and he had told no one — including his mother in Atlanta, who called once a week — that he had been postponing his own life for a year because the postponing was the right shape of the year.

He was in a clean white T-shirt and gray sweatpants. He had been crying. He was not, at this moment, hiding it.

"Mother Tate."

"Curtis."

"Grandma is awake. She is — she is having a clear afternoon. The nurse said sometimes they get a clear afternoon at the end. She said it is a kindness. Grandma has been talking since after lunch."

"I am ready, son. You walk me to her."

He walked her to the small back bedroom where his grandmother had slept since Brother Wells had died in 1989. The bedroom was painted the same pale yellow it had been painted in 1971. The curtains were the same curtains. The bed was the same bed. The bed had been moved, in the last week, away from the wall, so the hospital rails could be set on both sides. The hospital rails were down now. A small portable oxygen concentrator hummed in the corner. Mother Wells was in the bed, in a clean white nightgown and a small headwrap, and her eyes — when Mama Tate came through the door — turned.

"Sister."

"Mother."

"You came."

"I told you I would, Mother."

"Curtis. Bring Mother Tate the chair."

Curtis brought a small armchair from the front room and set it beside the bed. He set it close. Mama Tate sat. She took Mother Wells's hand. The hand was thinner than it had been three weeks ago. The veins were closer. The grip was still there, in the small first squeeze with which Mother Wells acknowledged the company.

"Curtis."

"Yes, Grandma."

"Bring the book. Then go sit with Yvonne in her car. She is in the driveway. She is reading. You go sit with her for an hour."

"Grandma."

"Go on, son. Mother Tate and I have to talk about a thing that you do not need to be in the room for. You will know about it after. Go take a break, baby. You have not had a break in a year. You sit with Yvonne. She is good company. She will tell you about her school. She has been wanting to see you for six months and you have been busy with me. Sit with her."

"Yes, Grandma."

He went and got the book. It was a small green hardcover, about the size of a paperback, with a thin elastic band around it. He brought it to the bedside. He set it gently in his grandmother's hand. She did not, immediately, give it to Mama Tate. She held it in her own hand for a moment.

He kissed his grandmother's forehead. He nodded at Mama Tate. He walked out. The screen door closed at the front of the house. After a moment, Mama Tate heard the small sound of him saying Mrs. Brooks? in the driveway, and Yvonne's voice answering, Curtis. Get in. I have water. Sit.

The bedroom was quiet.

Mother Wells held the green book in both her hands.

She did not, for a moment, speak. The oxygen concentrator hummed. The afternoon light through the yellow curtains was the soft amber of a clear May afternoon at four o'clock. The room had the small specific quietness of a room that had been prepared for a death — the smell of clean sheets, the small lavender Curtis had been putting in the corners, the faint medicinal note from the nurses' supplies on the dresser, the absence of the small radio that had played gospel in this room for thirty years and which Curtis had turned off this afternoon because his grandmother had said she wanted the room quiet for the company.

After a while Mother Wells said: "Sister Tate."

"Mother."

"I want to tell you about every name in this book before I give it to you. I do not have the strength to do all of them. I am going to give you the first three. The first three are the ones that are oldest. The first three are the ones I want you to know about from my own mouth. The rest are notes I have made in the back of the book. You will find them when the time comes."

"Tell me, Mother."

She opened the book. Her hand was slow but steady. She turned to the first page.

"Lillian Wells."

"Mother?"

"My mother. She has been on this list since 1953. She died in 1971 in Mississippi from a stroke. I have kept her in the book because she was my first keeper, and she had no one to keep her after she went, and I have been keeping her name as a way of returning the keeping. I want you to keep her too. I want her name in your book. Lillian Wells of Greenwood, Mississippi. She kept me well. The Lord can keep her in your book the way He has kept her in mine."

"I will keep her, Mother."

"Brother James Wells. My husband. Gone since 1989. I have kept him on the list for the same reason. He was a good man. He kept me well too. I have not stopped praying for the dead. I do not know if it counts. I have done it anyway. The Lord has not, in thirty-five years, told me to stop. So I have not stopped."

"I will keep him."

"And — Sister." She turned to the second page. "Tamika Wells. My daughter."

Mama Tate, who had not in many years heard Mother Wells say the name of her daughter, kept her own face still.

"Tamika has not spoken to me since 1998. She lives in California. She is fifty-three. I have kept her on this list since the day she stopped speaking to me. I do not know where she lives now. I do not know what she does. I do not know if she is married. Curtis was raised by her sister Pamela in Atlanta — Pamela was Tamika's older girl, Curtis is her son — and Pamela has tried, twice, to make contact with her aunt. Tamika has not answered. I have prayed for Tamika every morning for twenty-eight years."

She paused.

"Sister. I am going to die without seeing my daughter again. I have made my peace with that. I am asking you to keep her in your book until you die too. I am asking the next keeper after you to keep her. I want my daughter to be kept by the keepers of Mt. Calvary until somebody, in some generation, hears that the Lord has reached her. If the hearing comes after my time and after yours and after the next, that is all right. The keeping is what counts. You hear me, Sister?"

"I hear you, Mother."

"You will keep Tamika Wells."

"I will keep her, Mother. I am going to write her name tonight in my own book. She will be on every morning."

"Thank you, Sister."

Mother Wells lowered the book to her lap. Her breathing was the shallow careful breathing of a woman whose lungs had begun to fill with what they would not be able to clear. She rested. Mama Tate held her hand through the resting.

After a while Mother Wells said: "Sister."

"Yes, Mother."

"You have something to tell me about your book."

"I do, Mother."

"Tell me."

Mama Tate told her. She told her about Patrice and Camille and Ruth. She told her about Naomi and the porch and the red sneakers. She told her about Dr. Akinyele and the Saturday morning and Mama Funmi and Adebayo. She told her about Daphne Crenshaw and Loretta and the box and the picture and the line through the name without the word Free.

She told it short. Mother Wells did not have the strength for long telling. But she told the shape of all of it, because Mother Wells had asked, and because Mother Wells, of all people in the city, was the woman who had the right to hear the receipts before she went.

Mother Wells listened with her eyes closed.

When Mama Tate finished, Mother Wells did not, for a moment, open them.

When she did, her eyes were wet.

"Sister."

"Mother."

"The Lord has been pouring on you for six weeks."

"He has, Mother."

"He poured on me too, before my time came. I had three return between November and February. I told you about them in the pew. I have had two more since, that I did not tell you about. One was a letter from a woman in Louisville I had been carrying since 1966. One was — Sister, this is the strange one — one was a phone call from a man in Tupelo who said he had been told, in a dream, that there was a woman in Memphis named Wells who had been carrying his mother in prayer when his mother had been a teenager in our church in 1971, and that the keeping had reached him through his mother, and that he wanted me to know that he was alive and that he had a wife and four children and that they were a Christian household. The mother had died in 1989. The man had been three at the time. He had been told about me, in a dream, last week."

"Mother."

"I do not understand it, Sister. I do not understand the timing. I do not understand why the Lord is letting us see what He has been doing. I have wondered, for a year, whether it is because He is calling us home and is being kind. I have wondered whether it is because the next generation needs to see, with their eyes, what the keeping was for. I have wondered whether it is just that He is the Lord and the Lord does what He does. I have stopped wondering. I have started thanking. The thanking is the only response that fits."

"Yes, Mother."

"Sister. Take the book."

She lifted the green book. Her hand trembled. Mama Tate took the book from her hand. The book was small. The book was warm from Mother Wells's hand. The book had on the cover, in small gold letters that had nearly worn away, the imprint of the publisher of a 1953 edition of a book of common church prayers — Mother Wells had repurposed the book, when she had begun her list, by writing over the printed pages of the introduction and using the back two thirds for the names. The book had been kept this way for seventy-three years.

Mama Tate held it in her own hands.

She set her hand on the cover the way she had been setting her hand on the cover of her own prayer book for fifty years.

She did not, for a moment, speak.

After a long while she said: "Mother. I receive the keeping. I will carry your forty-three names. I will copy them tonight into my own book. I will pray them every morning until I cannot. I will tell Tiana about them. I will tell my granddaughter that the green book she will one day inherit came from a woman named Mother Wells of Mt. Calvary, who had been carrying these names for seventy years. I will not let your work die. The list lives. The keeping continues. I take it. It is yours and it is mine and it is the Lord's. The carrying does not end."

Mother Wells closed her eyes.

She did not, for a long minute, breathe in the way of a woman about to speak. She breathed in the small slow way of a woman who had heard the sentence she had been waiting to hear for a year, and whose body had finally, in hearing it, allowed itself the small private rest.

When she opened her eyes she looked at Mama Tate for a long moment.

"Sister."

"Mother."

"The Lord put us at the same prayer-floor for a reason."

"Yes, Mother."

"I am going to die in a few days. I want you to come back. Curtis will call you. You come and sit with me at the going. You bring no book. You bring only your hand. I want a keeper at the door."

"I will come, Mother."

"Sister."

"Yes, Mother."

"I love you, Sister Tate."

"I love you, Mother Wells."

She closed her eyes again.

She was, after a few moments, asleep.

Mama Tate sat by the bed for another forty minutes with her hand on Mother Wells's hand and the green book on her own lap. She did not, in the forty minutes, speak. She prayed. She prayed for Mother Wells. She prayed for Curtis. She prayed for Tamika Wells in California, who had been added to her own list in the moment Mama Tate had said I will keep her. She prayed for Pamela in Atlanta and for the man in Tupelo whose name Mother Wells had not given her and whom Mama Tate would, accordingly, pray for as the man in Tupelo who got the dream until the Lord — or Mother Wells's son Curtis after the Lord called her — provided a name.

The light through the curtains turned amber and then gold and then began to lose its edge.

At five-twenty Mama Tate rose.

She set Mother Wells's hand back on the quilt. She set her own hand for a moment on Mother Wells's forehead. She bent — slowly, carefully, the way an eighty-two-year-old woman bends — and she kissed her oldest friend on the forehead.

She did not, this afternoon, say goodbye.

The keepers of Mt. Calvary did not say goodbye in sick rooms. The keepers of Mt. Calvary said Lord be with you, Sister, which was both a benediction and a sentence the speaker could honestly mean whether or not she would ever see the listener again.

She said it.

Mother Wells did not, in her sleep, respond. The breathing was steady. The room was quiet. The green book was in Mama Tate's hand.

She walked out of the bedroom. She walked through the front room, where the radio Curtis had turned off was still off and where the small lamp on the side table had been left on for the afternoon. She opened the screen door. She walked down the porch steps.

In the driveway, Yvonne was sitting in the driver's seat with the windows rolled down. Curtis was in the passenger seat. They were laughing about something. They did not, at first, see Mama Tate come out.

When they did, both of them stopped.

Yvonne got out. She came around the car. She put her hand under her mother's elbow.

"Mama. You ready?"

"I am ready, baby."

"You want me to take the book?"

"I will hold the book."

Curtis got out of the passenger side. He came around. He stopped on the path.

"Mother Tate."

"Curtis."

"How is she."

"She is sleeping, son. She had the conversation she needed to have with me. She gave me the book. She knows you went to the car. She will sleep a few hours. The going is — Curtis, the going is close. But not tonight. I think tomorrow night or the next. You stay close. You eat tonight. You sleep when she sleeps. You call me when the time begins to move."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And Curtis."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Your grandmother told me about Tamika."

He did not, for a moment, react.

"Mother Tate."

"I have her now. I have your great-aunt's name in my book. I am going to keep her with the others. The keeping continues. You tell your mama, when she comes from Atlanta tomorrow, that Mother Wells handed Tamika to me before she went, and that the keeping does not end with your grandmama. Your mama will need to hear that. Pamela has been carrying her own version of this for years. She will need to hear that the older keeper passed the name to the next."

"I will tell her, Mother Tate."

"Now. Go inside, son. Sit with your grandma. She does not need you to say anything. You just sit. You hear?"

"Yes, ma'am."

He kissed Mama Tate on the cheek. He went inside.

The screen door closed.

Yvonne walked her mother to the car. She helped her into the passenger seat. She closed the door gently. She walked around. She got in. She did not, immediately, start the engine.

She looked at her mother.

"Mama. You all right."

"I am all right, baby. Drive me home. We have work to do tonight. I want to copy Mother Wells's first three names into my book before we go to bed. Lillian. James. Tamika. Then the rest can wait until tomorrow. Tonight I want the first three to be in my book before the night is over. The Lord has put them in my hand this afternoon. I want them on the page before the day is done."

"Yes, Mama."

Yvonne started the car. She backed out of the driveway. She drove the four blocks home. The May light went the green-gold of evening.

In her lap Mama Tate held the green book.

She did not, on the drive, open it.

She held it the way she had held Stephen Pruitt's letter on Sunday April nineteenth. The holding was the receiving. The reading would come later.

The keeping continued.

The cloud of witnesses around the small brick house on Park Avenue had, by the small evening light, grown by forty-three names — most of them strangers to Mama Tate, all of them now hers — and by one daughter in California whom Mama Tate would never meet but who would be on every morning of every remaining year of Mama Tate's praying, and by the next keeper, Tiana, who would inherit the green book in the next inheritance, and by the keeper after that, who would inherit it in the one after.

Mother Wells was sleeping in her yellow bedroom four blocks east.

Curtis was at her side.

The Lord was the Lord.

The going was close, but not yet.

The work, tonight, was the small careful work of copying three names into a book, and Mama Tate would, before she slept, do it.