Denise

The Keeper of Hours

Chapter 25: Denise

Denise Cole-Harper came up the path on Sunday, August twenty-third, at four-eleven in the afternoon, and she stopped at the bottom of the porch steps the way church women had been stopping at the bottom of Mama Tate's porch steps for sixty years, which was the small hesitation of a woman who was not going to climb until the woman in the wicker chair invited the climbing.

"Sister Cole-Harper."

"Mother Tate."

"Come up, baby. I have been expecting you since June. Sit down."

Denise came up the steps. She was fifty-two. She was tall and heavy-set and wore her hair natural in a style she had kept for thirty years, and she taught sixth-grade English at a middle school in Frayser. She was in a plum-colored suit from that morning's service. She carried a small leather notebook under her arm and a pen clipped to the notebook the way a woman carries a notebook when she has decided, several days ago, that she will ask to take notes.

She sat in the second wicker chair.

"Mother. Thank you for seeing me."

"Baby. You did not need to ask."

"I did. I have been trying to come here since your testimony at Mother Wells's service. I have driven past this block seven times since June. I kept turning around. I told myself you were tired. I told myself you would not want company. I told myself many things. This week I decided the things were all small lies I was telling myself because I was afraid."

"Afraid of what, baby?"

"Afraid that you would confirm what I have been feeling."

"Which is?"

"That I have been called to the prayer-floor, Mother Tate."

Mama Tate smiled. It was a small dry smile. It was the smile of a woman who had seen this exact conversation walk up a porch many times in her life.

"Denise."

"Yes, Mother."

"You have been called to the prayer-floor."

"Yes, Mother."

"You do not need me to confirm it. The Lord has been confirming it for a year. What you need from me is something else."

"I — Mother Tate, I do not know what I need."

"You need me to tell you how to begin. That is what you need. You have the feeling. You do not yet have the practice. You want to know how a Mother of the Board begins the keeping. That is a legitimate question, baby. That is the question you came to ask. You can set the notebook down. You will not need to take notes. The beginning is not that complicated. What is complicated is the continuing. The continuing I cannot teach you in one afternoon. The continuing you will learn over the next thirty years from the Lord Himself."

Denise set the notebook down.

She folded her hands in her lap.

"Mother Tate. Teach me the beginning."

Mama Tate looked at her.

Mama Tate looked at her for a long moment — the small assessing look she had been giving people at her own porch since 1974 — and then she looked out at the pecan tree.

After a while she said: "Denise. The beginning is one sentence. I am going to give it to you. You are going to take it home. You are going to do it tomorrow morning. The beginning is: Lord, I am here. Who do You want me to carry today."

"That is the sentence?"

"That is the sentence, baby. You say it in the morning. You say it before you pick up the coffee or the phone or the calendar or whatever thing you pick up in your house to get the day started. You say it in the kitchen. You say it in the bathroom. You say it in the bed. You say it in whatever room the day begins in. You say it out loud or in your chest — it does not matter. You say the sentence. Then you wait."

"How long do I wait, Mother?"

"As long as you need to. The first week you may wait two minutes. The second week you may wait five. The first year you may wait twenty on some mornings. You wait. You are waiting for the Lord to put a name in your mouth. The names come. The names always come. The names come in the order the Lord wants them to come. You do not organize the names. You do not alphabetize them. You do not put your own family first. You receive the names in the order the Lord gives them."

"Yes, Mother."

"When the name arrives, you hold it. You do not move on to the next until you have held the first. Holding is letting the name be in your mouth while you breathe three times. That is all holding is. Three breaths. The Lord knows what you are asking even when you do not. You are not the one composing the prayer. You are the one giving the name to Him. He composes the prayer. That is the division of labor. You are the intake. He is the engine. You do not need to know the theology of it. You need to know the practice."

"Yes, Mother."

"After you have held the name, you wait again. You wait for the next name. You hold it. You wait. The keeping goes on until the Lord lifts the sentence off your chest. When the keeping is finished for the morning, you will know. You will feel the lifting. The lifting is the Lord's signal that today's floor is covered. Some mornings the floor is three names. Some mornings it is thirty. Some mornings it is the same three names for a year. Some mornings a new one comes. You do not question the length. You receive what you are given."

"Yes, Mother."

"Now. Denise. You write down the names you are given. You keep a book. The book is between you and the Lord. You do not show the book to anyone, including your husband, unless the Lord tells you to. You write the names in your own hand. You underline the ones that return to you three or four mornings running, because the returning is the Lord telling you the name is a long carry. You cross out the names with a date when the keeping ends — when the person dies, when the prayer is answered, when the Lord lifts the name off of you. You do not, under any circumstances, tear pages out of the book. The book is the ledger. The ledger stays."

"Yes, Mother."

"You begin the book in a cheap notebook. Any notebook. The composition books at Dollar General, the spiral ones at Walgreens, whatever you have. The book does not need to be fancy. I started in a composition book in 1974. I have used composition books and leather notebooks and moleskines and what-have-you over the years. The notebook is not the keeping. The hand is not the keeping. The keeping is between your chest and the Lord. The book is only the record for you."

"Yes, Mother."

"And one more thing, baby."

"Yes, Mother."

"You do not tell anyone you are doing this. Not your husband. Not your best friend. Not Pastor. Not your children. You do not tell anyone for at least a year. The keeping is a private practice for the first year, because the Lord needs to form you in private before the practice is ready to be known. You will be tempted, after the first three months, to tell someone. You will want to tell them because you will be surprised by what the Lord does through the keeping, and you will want to share the surprise. You do not share it. You hold it. The Lord shares it on His timing. When He wants the practice known, He will tell you. Usually it is much later — five years, ten years. For Mother Wells it was never fully known. Her practice was private until she handed her book to me on her deathbed. For me it has become semi-public this spring through no doing of my own. The Lord has arranged it. I did not arrange it. You will not either. You will hold the practice in private, and the Lord will, in His own time, decide what becomes visible and what stays hidden. You do not decide."

"Yes, Mother."

"And the last thing, Denise."

"Yes, Mother."

"If you ever, in the middle of the morning — any morning, this morning or ten years from now — are visited by the sense that the practice is too much for you, that you cannot carry another name, that the weight is more than you can hold, you stop. You do not push through. You do not martyr yourself. You stop. You drink a glass of water. You go outside. You call a friend. You call me if I am still here. You call Tiana if I am not. The practice is not a test of endurance. The keeping is the Lord's. He does not need you to break yourself on it. If the weight is too much, it is because He is asking you to rest. You rest. The rest is part of the keeping. Your rest does not abandon the names. The Lord continues to carry the names. You are only on relief. You hear me?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Good."

Mama Tate sat with the teaching for a moment.

Denise sat with it too.

The pecan tree shifted. A car went down Park. Somewhere down the block a child on a bike was ringing a bell.

After a long minute Denise said: "Mother Tate."

"Yes, baby."

"There is a name I have been carrying in my chest without writing it. I have not said it out loud, because I was afraid I did not have the right. I want to tell you. I want to put it in a book for the first time, in your presence, tonight, before I leave this porch."

"Tell me, baby."

"My granddaughter is in foster care."

Mama Tate did not, at first, speak.

"My daughter — my younger one, Danielle; she is twenty-nine — has been using fentanyl since February. My husband and I have been trying to help her. It has not been working. In May the state took her daughter. My granddaughter. Her name is Brielle. She is three. She is in a foster home off Summer Avenue. We have visitation on Sundays after church. We have been cleared for adoption. The paperwork is moving. It will take another six to eight months. Brielle will come to us in March, God willing."

Mama Tate closed her eyes.

"Lord."

"Mother Tate. I have not written her name anywhere yet. I have not, I think, been able to bear to. My own daughter — Danielle — I have been writing her name on a small piece of paper and putting it in my Bible every morning for six months. But Brielle I have not written. I think — Mother Tate, I think I have not written Brielle because writing her would have been admitting that I am in this the way I am in this. I have not been ready to admit it. I am sitting on this porch because I am ready to admit it. I am ready to write her."

"Yes, baby."

Mama Tate opened her eyes.

"Yvonne!"

Yvonne opened the screen door. She had been in the kitchen with Tiana and had — as was the new household pattern — been listening to the porch through the screen. She came out with a small composition book she had pulled from the pantry where Yvonne had kept a stack of six in reserve since July, because Yvonne had decided two months ago that anyone who walked up this porch and began to speak like a keeper would be given a composition book on the way out.

She brought the book to Denise.

"Sister Cole-Harper. This is yours. Mama has been telling us for a month that there would be a new Mother sooner or later. This book was set aside for the first Mother who came. That is you."

Denise took the book.

She held it in her lap.

She could not, for a moment, speak.

Mama Tate said, gently: "Denise. You open it. Right now. You write the first name in my presence. I will not read what you write. Yvonne will not read it. We are only in the room with you. You write the first name. Then you close the book. You carry it home. You start tomorrow morning at your own kitchen table with your own sentence and the next name the Lord gives you."

Denise opened the book. She uncapped the pen. Her hand was shaking.

She wrote on the first page, in a careful schoolteacher's hand that was, Mama Tate registered without reading the page, the hand of a woman who had been teaching sixth-graders for thirty years and had been writing names on seating charts every September for as long as Mama Tate had been making cornbread for deacon meetings:

Brielle Harper, age 3. In foster care on Summer Avenue. To come home March 2027, Lord willing.

She closed the book.

She set her hand on it.

She closed her eyes.

After a long minute she looked up.

"Mother Tate."

"Yes, baby."

"I feel different than I did ten minutes ago."

"Yes, baby."

"That is normal?"

"That is normal, Denise. The writing is the first small acceptance of the keeping. The body feels it. You will, over the next thirty years, feel it many times. You will feel it smaller each time, because the first time is the one the body remembers most. Do not be discouraged when later writings do not feel like this one. This one is the threshold. The later ones are the ongoing work. Both are real."

"Yes, Mother."

"Now, Denise. One more thing. You ask me if you can put Brielle's name in my book too."

"Mother Tate — you do not have to —"

"I want to, baby. I am asking. I want the child in my book. I do not have much room. I have stopped writing. But my granddaughter is writing for me. She will add Brielle tonight. Brielle will be in two books from tomorrow forward. In yours. In mine, which is becoming Tiana's. Two keepers is better than one. The Lord's arithmetic holds. Brielle will come home in March. She will have had two keepers praying her home every morning for seven months. That is what I am offering. You say yes or no."

Denise's eyes filled.

"Yes, Mother Tate. Please."

"Tiana!"

Tiana came through the screen. Mama Tate did not, this time, need to explain. Tiana had been at the screen too, and Tiana had already picked up the composition book from the side table and a pen. She crossed to her grandmother's chair. She opened the book to the active list. She found the next blank space. She wrote, in the careful block letters she had been writing in for three months, under her grandmother's dictation:

Brielle Harper, age 3. Foster care, Summer Avenue. To come home to her grandparents Denise and Keith Cole-Harper in March 2027. Daughter of Danielle Cole. Also held by her grandmother Denise in a new book started today.

She underlined Brielle.

She set the pen down.

She looked up at Denise.

"Sister Cole-Harper. She is in."

Denise could not speak. She nodded.

Mama Tate took her hand.

"Denise. The keeping is mutual now. Your book will have names mine does not. Mine has names yours does not. We share the one name today. Over the years the two books will overlap in some places and not in others. That is how the prayer-floor works. Many Mothers. Many books. One Lord. He sorts."

"Yes, Mother."

"And Brielle will come home."

"Yes, Mother."

"The Lord has been, for the last four months, moving that child through the paperwork. He has been moving your daughter Danielle too, though the movement looks like standing still. He is the Lord. You trust the movement you cannot see. You keep the book. You come home on the porch to me when you need counsel, for as long as the Lord leaves me on the porch. After me, you come to Tiana. Tiana will inherit the counseling too, in her own time, in her own way. The line holds."

"Yes, Mother."

Denise left at five-thirty.

She walked down the porch steps with the composition book under her arm and her face wet and her plum-colored suit slightly rumpled from an hour of leaning forward. At the bottom of the path she turned back. She did not speak. She only lifted her hand. Mama Tate lifted hers.

Denise walked down Park toward the corner.

Mama Tate sat on the porch a long time after she was out of sight.

Yvonne came out. She sat in the second wicker chair.

"Mama."

"Yes, baby."

"That was a thing."

"It was, Yvonne."

"Are you tired?"

"I am, baby. I am the tired of an eighty-two-year-old woman who has spent the last hour teaching a sixth-grade English teacher how to pray for her own granddaughter. I am the good kind of tired. The Lord used me well this afternoon. He always uses me well when He sends me someone with a notebook and a question. I have not gotten that kind of tired in a long time."

"Mama — do you think there will be more like her?"

"Baby, I am counting on it. I told the church from the pulpit in June that the next Mothers were being called. Sister Doris came home that afternoon and began her list. Sister Linda Briggs had been quietly keeping for ten years. Stephanie Edwards in Houston began hers in June. Now Denise. I am guessing — I am guessing — that there will be two or three more before the Lord calls me. I am not calculating. I am trusting. The next Mothers are being called. They are already, some of them, in our pews. They will come to the porch. I will teach whoever comes. Tiana will teach after me. The floor will not go empty. That was my fear last fall. That fear has been put down."

"Yes, Mama."

"Now. Carl is grilling tonight."

"He is."

"I want a small piece. I want to be on the porch with all of you at six-thirty. I want to sleep well tonight. The Lord has been generous today. I want to receive the generosity by sleeping it."

"Yes, Mama."

She sat a moment longer on the porch with her daughter in the late August light.

Down the block, somewhere she could not see, Denise Cole-Harper was driving home to Frayser with a composition book on the passenger seat and a name written in it — her granddaughter's name, three years old, in foster care on Summer Avenue — and she was, for the first time in her fifty-two-year life, carrying herself home as a woman who had been called to the floor and had answered.

The Lord was the Lord.

The keeping continued.

The long evening, which had been settling into its middle hour all of August, grew another generation. The keepers of the next decade — Denise; Sister Doris; Sister Linda; Stephanie Edwards; others Mama Tate had not yet met — were, tonight, taking up the long quiet work.

Mama Tate, in the wicker chair, rested. Her hands were folded over her purse. Her eyes were closed.

She was not praying, at the moment. She was receiving.

The Lord had been generous today.

She was old enough to receive.