Thanksgiving

The Keeper of Hours

Chapter 30: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving morning she did not wake at three.

She woke at six, which was the latest she had woken on any morning in the past decade, and she lay in the bed for a moment and listened to the house. The house was full. The kitchen, from the sound coming down the hall, was full. Yvonne was at the stove. Tiana was at the counter. Carl was in the kitchen too — she could hear the small low rumble of his voice answering something — and Marcus, who had flown in last night from Atlanta, was at the table. The smells were the smells of a Thanksgiving kitchen at six in the morning, which were the smells of turkey already in the oven since four-thirty and the first pies in at five-thirty and the cornbread dressing waiting on the counter for its final assembly.

She had not been in the kitchen at five-thirty on a Thanksgiving morning in sixty-two years.

She had always been the first one up.

This year she was not.

She lay in the bed and she did not, at first, move. She had decided, last night, that she would let her body tell her when to get up. She had promised Rosa she would. Rosa had said, on Tuesday at the intake, ma'am, you don't need to be at the stove. You are the grandmother. You are the one the family is feeding. You stay in bed. You come out when you come out.

She stayed in bed another twenty minutes.

Yvonne tapped on the door at six twenty-three.

"Mama."

"Come, baby."

Yvonne came in. She was in jeans and a blouse with an apron tied over the blouse. She had flour on one cheek. She sat on the edge of the bed.

"Mama. I am not asking if you are up. I am asking if you are coming out. No pressure. You stay in bed if you stay in bed. Tiana is going to bring the breakfast in here for us if that is what you want."

"Baby. I am coming out."

"Are you sure, Mama?"

"I am sure. Help me up. I want to see the kitchen. I have not been in a Thanksgiving kitchen in the morning in — I have not, ever, been in a Thanksgiving kitchen that someone else was running. I want to see it."

Yvonne smiled. "Yes, Mama."

She helped her up. She helped her dress. She walked her slowly down the hall.

The kitchen was the kitchen she had been preparing Thanksgiving in since 1962.

It was also, this morning, the kitchen she had not organized.

The turkey was in the oven. The dressing was being mixed in the blue bowl Tiana had lifted down from the cabinet Mama Tate could not, in October, reach anymore. The collards were in the big pot on the back burner. The candied yams were prepped and covered. The cornbread was cooling on the counter. The pecan pie — Eldridge's favorite, the one he had loved — had come out at five-forty-five and was on the cooling rack. The sweet potato pie was beside it.

Marcus was at the table peeling apples for the crust of the apple pie he had, three weeks ago on the phone, asked his mother if he could be allowed to bring. Yvonne had said yes. The apples were going fast under his hands.

Carl was at the counter cutting onions for the dressing.

Tiana was at the stove.

Mama Tate stood in the doorway, in the wheelchair Yvonne had brought up so her mother would not have to stand, and she looked at the four of them, and she did not, at first, speak.

Marcus looked up.

"Mama Tate."

"Baby."

"You did not have to come out here."

"I wanted to, son. I wanted to see the kitchen. Let me look a minute."

They let her look. They kept working. The small Thanksgiving-morning music of a kitchen in full operation — the onions, the whisk, the oven door opening briefly as Yvonne checked the turkey — was the music she had been making, solo, in this kitchen for six decades.

This year she was the audience.

She let herself be the audience for two minutes.

Then she said: "Tiana."

"Yes, Grandma."

"The dressing — you are using Mama's recipe."

"Yes, Grandma. I pulled the card from the recipe box last night."

"Good, baby. You do not change anything. Not the sage. Not the broth-to-cornbread ratio. You do not get creative on Thanksgiving morning."

"No, Grandma. I am not changing anything."

"Marcus."

"Yes, Mama Tate."

"You are making the apple pie."

"I am, Mama."

"That is new. We do not usually have apple pie. I was not consulted."

Marcus laughed.

"Mama. I asked. Yvonne said yes. I wanted to bring something. The apple pie is — it is what I have been learning to make in Atlanta. I want to feed you my own pie, one time, while you are here."

Mama Tate looked at him.

Her face did a small thing.

"You make your pie, son. You make it well. I will eat a piece."

"Yes, Mama."

She sat in the wheelchair in the kitchen doorway for another ten minutes. She watched them. She did not, in the watching, try to correct anything. The correction was not, this morning, her job. The kitchen was running without her. The kitchen would run without her when she was gone. The kitchen would, if the Lord granted it, run the way this morning ran — with her daughter and her granddaughter and her grandson and her son-in-law each at their own station, each having learned their part from her over the course of the years they had been around her — and the small continuity was the one she had been teaching without knowing she was teaching.

At six fifty she said: "Yvonne. Roll me to the front room. I want to sit in Eldridge's chair. I want the book before the people arrive. I want one small piece of the morning to be mine."

"Yes, Mama."

Tiana brought the composition book.

Tiana had been doing the morning since August. She had, Mama Tate noted with the small peace the Lord sometimes granted her in the chair, become a reader. The reading was, now, a thing Tiana did in her own voice and not in an imitation of the grandmother's. The voice was Tiana's voice. The voice was a good reading voice. The Lord had made the voice.

"Grandma. I am going to read a short version this morning because the kitchen has me. Is that all right?"

"Yes, baby. You read the short. We will do the long tomorrow morning."

Tiana read.

She read the active list fast today — faster than usual, but clean — and she skipped the legacy pages at her grandmother's nod. She added, at the end, two names: the Hightowers, who were coming at noon, and Denise Cole-Harper, who was coming at one.

Mama Tate listened with her eyes closed.

She said, when Tiana finished: "Baby."

"Yes, Grandma."

"I thank the Lord for you."

"Yes, Grandma."

"I thank Him every morning. I thanked Him this morning before you got out of bed, I expect, because I was in bed at five thinking about what you would be doing downstairs in an hour. That was my prayer at five. I prayed for every person coming to this house today. I prayed for the ones on the phone. I prayed for the turkey."

"Grandma, you did not pray for the turkey."

"I did, baby. I have been praying for the Thanksgiving turkey since 1965. The turkey is part of the keeping. The Lord knows. The turkey has been prayed over."

Tiana laughed — a small real laugh, the first of the morning for both of them — and kissed her grandmother on the forehead.

"Yes, Grandma."

The people arrived in waves.

Pamela Wells-Brown and her husband Terry and their two sons came first, at ten-thirty. They had driven in from Atlanta the night before and had slept at a hotel. Pamela had called at seven to confirm she would come early and would help in the kitchen. Yvonne had said yes gratefully. Pamela's two sons — fourteen and sixteen — had been in the living room at eleven playing the small card game Marcus had brought from Atlanta in his carry-on because Marcus had decided, a week ago, that teenagers at Thanksgiving needed a card game in case the adults ran out of things to say.

Curtis came at eleven with a small covered dish of his own.

"Mother Tate."

"Curtis."

"I brought Grandma's sweet potatoes. The way she made them. I have been making them every Thanksgiving since she went."

"You sit down, son. You put the dish in the kitchen. You tell Tiana to warm them at twelve-forty-five. You come back and sit with me."

He did.

He sat beside her in the second chair in the front room. He did not, for the first minute, speak. He was, Mama Tate thought, a grown young man now in a way he had not been at the funeral. Grief had done its work on him. So had the last five months.

"Curtis."

"Yes, ma'am."

"How are you, son."

"Mother Tate, I am — I am all right. I have been looking at the LSAT for January. I am going to take it. I talked to Pamela. I am going to apply to law school for the fall. Grandma always said I should. I am going to try."

"Good, son. You take the test. You go to the school. You will be a lawyer who is a keeper. The profession needs keepers. You will be one."

"Yes, ma'am."

He sat with her another five minutes. They did not need to talk.

The Hightowers came at eleven forty. Reggie had driven. Sheryl had made a small bowl of the pickled green beans Aliyah had loved, which had not appeared on this porch before, and which she had been canning since June because she had decided, in June, that the beans would come to Thanksgiving. Naomi had been promoted to chief greeter and had been told, in the car, that she was in charge of welcoming every person who arrived. She took this seriously. She met each guest at the screen door with the small grave hospitality of a four-year-old in a burgundy dress.

She had a name now, on her own, for Mama Tate.

She had not introduced the name to the family yet. She had been trying it out on herself since September. Sheryl had texted Yvonne two weeks ago about it: Naomi said "Great-Grandma" for the first time last Thursday. She did not explain. Reggie and I are not pushing. She will use it with Mother Tate when she is ready.

She used it this morning.

She came through the screen door at eleven forty-one. She walked straight to Mama Tate's chair. She stopped. She looked up.

"Great-Grandma."

Mama Tate did not, for a moment, breathe.

"Yes, Naomi."

"I am here for Thanksgiving. I brought the beans."

"You brought the beans."

"Grandma and I did it together. The beans are for you."

"Thank you, baby."

Naomi climbed into the second chair. She sat beside Mama Tate. She put her small hand on Mama Tate's arm the way a four-year-old puts her hand on an arm, the small steady pressure of a child who has decided which adult in a room is the center of gravity.

Mama Tate did not, for a long moment, turn her face.

She said, after a while, quietly: "Naomi."

"Yes, Great-Grandma."

"Great-Grandma is a good word."

"I know. Grandma said you would like it."

"I do, baby."

"Can I sit with you while you look at the other guests?"

"Yes, baby. You sit."

She sat. The small weight of a four-year-old beside her was the small weight Mama Tate had been receiving all year and had not yet, at eighty-two, fully gotten used to. The Lord had been kind.

Dr. Akinyele came at twelve-ten.

She came alone, in the small dark green Subaru, with a small pan of Nigerian jollof rice her sister Folake had taught her to make last spring in Atlanta and which Tobi had decided — at the intake conversation on Tuesday — to bring. Mama Tate had said Tobi, you bring anything you want, and Tobi had brought the rice.

Denise Cole-Harper and her husband Keith came at one, with a small basket of rolls Denise had baked that morning in Frayser.

By one-fifteen the house had fourteen people in it. The kitchen, the dining room, the front room, the porch — each had its small cluster. Yvonne had, weeks ago, announced the seating. The dining room had its regular eight chairs and Yvonne had brought two card tables into the room to make room for the overflow. The tables had been covered with the good cloth. The good china was out. Mama Tate had been warned at breakfast that the good china meant the day would be slower and she had said baby, the good china is the day.

At one-thirty Yvonne called them to the table.

Mama Tate sat at the head.

She did not, this year, sit in her usual chair. She sat in Eldridge's chair, which Carl had brought from the front room and had set at the head of the table with two small extra cushions arranged the way Rosa had shown Yvonne to arrange them. She was in a pale blue dress Yvonne had ironed at six. The small gold cross was at her throat.

Around her, the fourteen:

To her right, Yvonne. Beside Yvonne, Carl. Beside Carl, Marcus. Beside Marcus, Naomi in her burgundy dress on the small booster Yvonne had borrowed from Pamela. Beside Naomi, Sheryl Hightower. Beside Sheryl, Reggie. At the foot of the main table, Terry (Pamela's husband). At the card table nearest the foot, Pamela's two teenage sons and Pamela herself and Curtis. At the second card table, Dr. Akinyele and Denise and Keith Cole-Harper and Tiana, because Tiana had decided two days ago that she would sit at the card table with the adults she had gotten to know this year and whom her grandmother had brought into her life, and she would be the family's representative at that table because the family's representative was part of the welcome.

Mama Tate looked around the table.

She did not, for a moment, speak.

The moment lasted longer than Yvonne expected, and Yvonne, who had been about to prompt her mother for the blessing, did not. She waited. She had learned, in eight months, when to wait.

After a long moment Mama Tate said, quietly, to the room:

"Babies."

"Yes, Mother," the whole table responded, because the whole table had trained themselves, over many years, to answer an elder who began with babies, and even the guests who had not been trained had, in the room, instinctively joined the answer.

"I have been cooking Thanksgiving in this house for sixty-two years. This is the first year I did not. Today was the first Thanksgiving of my life that I was fed by the people at the table. I was not, this year, the feeder. I was the fed. I do not know how to describe the smallness of that reversal. It is not small in the body. It is not small in the chest. It has been — Lord forgive me the pride of saying so — one of the longer private events of the morning, to be in a front room while my own family ran the kitchen."

She paused.

"I want to tell you one thing before we eat. I am going to tell you one thing and then I am going to ask Carl to bless the food, because I do not, today, have the breath to say the blessing. One thing. Look at this table. Look at who is at this table. My daughter. My son-in-law. My grandson. My granddaughter. My great-granddaughter. The grandparents of my great-granddaughter. My oldest friend's daughter and grandchildren and grandson. My doctor. A new Mother of Mt. Calvary and her husband. Fourteen. This table, today, is a table the Lord has built over fifty years of keeping. Some of you I have been praying for since the seventies. Some of you I met this year. Some of you — Naomi, baby, you I met in May — I have known less than a year. The table is the table the Lord has made. I did not make this table. He did. I am the woman at the head of it. I am eighty-two. I am not — I am not going to see many more of these, babies. This year is probably the last one. The Lord has not told me. My body has told me. So what I want to say to this table is — what I want to say is only this. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you for the life you have let me receive in this house. Thank you for being my people. I have been — Lord. I have been a blessed woman."

Nobody spoke.

Naomi, in her burgundy dress, said: "Great-Grandma. I love you."

Mama Tate's voice cracked.

"Baby. I love you too."

She could not, for a moment, continue.

After a long second she said: "Carl. Bless the food."

Carl blessed the food.

He blessed it briefly. He blessed it the way Carl blessed food — plain, small, full. He ended with the line he always ended with, which was the line he had added to his blessings in April after the porch conversation about Eunice Holcomb: And Lord, we lift up those who are not at this table but whose names are in this house. You know who. We ask You to let them feel, in Your way, that they are remembered. Amen.

Amen, the whole table said.

They ate.

The meal went for an hour and forty minutes.

The carving was Marcus's, because Carl had quietly passed the carving to him three years ago and Marcus had been practicing. The pies came out at three-twenty. Naomi, at the third piece of pie, fell asleep in Sheryl's lap.

Three phone calls came in during the afternoon.

The first was Patrice, from Houston, at two-forty. Yvonne handed Mama Tate the phone. Patrice, Camille, Ruth, and Maurice were all in the same kitchen at the other end, and the four of them took turns saying Happy Thanksgiving, Mother Tate, with Ruth — now eight, six months older than when Mama Tate had last seen her — speaking last, and saying, in the small seven-year-old voice that had grown into an eight-year-old voice since May: Mother Tate, my name is still on my list. I have twelve names. I have been holding them. I wanted you to know. Mama Tate had cried quietly into the phone and had said baby, you are doing the work. Keep it up.

The second was Folake, from Lagos, at three-oh-five. It was ten at night in Nigeria. Folake had called to say that Ifeanyi Chukwuemeka — the eleven-year-old boy whose name had gone into the book in August — had, on Monday, entered a small remission. The neuroblastoma had, unexpectedly, stopped growing. Dr. Akinyele in Memphis had, at the card table, overheard the call. She had put her hand to her mouth.

Mama Tate, on the phone, had said Lord. Folake. Tell his grandmother. Tell his mother. The keeping continues.

Folake had said I have been telling them since Monday, Mother Tate. They want me to thank you. They do not, in Igbo, have a word that means exactly what I want to translate. The closest is you have carried him. They know.

Mama Tate had wept.

The third call was from Stephen Pruitt, in Detroit, at four. Stephen had called to say he had been thinking about her all day and had wanted to say so, and to say that Brenda had put her and Yvonne on her own prayer list in the fall, and that Ola, twelve, had been asking about her. Mama Tate had said tell Ola I have been holding her. Tell her my great-granddaughter Naomi is in the house today. Tell her my Ola and her Ola are both in the book. Tell her the line holds.

Stephen had said I will, Mother Tate.

After the three calls she had rested in Eldridge's chair for an hour while the younger guests cleaned the kitchen. Naomi had crawled onto her lap at some point and had stayed there through the last twenty minutes of the rest. Mama Tate had slept with her hand on the small back of her great-granddaughter and with the low warm weight of a four-year-old across her knees, which was the last weight the Lord would, she would later think, ever lay on her lap on a Thanksgiving afternoon.

She had not, in sixty-two years of Thanksgivings, ever slept during one.

This year she had.

It had been a good sleep.

The guests left in waves.

The Hightowers at five, with a sleeping Naomi in Reggie's arms. Pamela and Terry and the boys at six. Curtis, who had stayed longer, at seven. Dr. Akinyele at seven-thirty. Denise and Keith at eight. The kitchen was clean by nine. The leftovers were divided. Yvonne had packed a small cooler for each guest to take home, because Yvonne had inherited the cooler distribution from her mother.

At nine-thirty the family was alone.

Marcus, Yvonne, Tiana, Carl, Mama Tate. Five.

They sat in the front room. The lights were low. The pecan tree was bare against the dark. The house had — Marcus would later say, to Yvonne, over the kitchen sink — the small peaceful exhaustion of a house that had housed fourteen people all day and was now grateful to house only five.

Mama Tate sat in Eldridge's chair with the quilt over her knees.

She did not, for a long while, speak.

Then she said: "Babies."

"Yes, Mama," they said.

"That was the Thanksgiving."

"Yes, Mama."

"I do not know if there will be another one. I am not asking the question. I am telling you. I do not know."

"Yes, Mama."

"I want you to know — if this was the last one — that it was a good one. I want the four of you to remember it. I want you to tell Naomi about it when she is old enough to remember the sitting-at-the-table and not just the pie. I want you to tell Ruth in Houston about it. I want you to tell Ola in Detroit. I want the keepers after me to know that the last Thanksgiving in this house, if it was the last one, was a full one. The Lord did not short me. I did not lack."

"Yes, Mama."

"Now. I am going to bed. I want Yvonne to sleep in the spare room. Tiana, you go home tonight. You sleep in your own bed. You have done enough. Marcus, you go to Cordova with Carl. You stay with the truck. You sleep in your old room. I want the house to be Yvonne's and mine tonight. I have been — Yvonne, baby, I have been wanting a quiet night with you in the house. Tonight is the right one."

"Yes, Mama."

Yvonne walked her to bed.

She helped her undress. She sat on the edge of the bed while her mother said her short evening prayer — Mama Tate had been praying a short version of the morning prayer at bedtime for a month, because Tiana's morning reading was the long one and the bedtime one was Mama Tate's own small closing — and Yvonne pulled the quilt up.

Mama Tate caught her wrist.

"Baby."

"Yes, Mama."

"I want to say one thing tonight."

"Yes, Mama."

"Today was a gift. I did not deserve it. I received it. The Lord arranged the guest list. He arranged the calls. He arranged the little girl on my lap. He arranged the Lagos call. He arranged the Houston call. He arranged Curtis coming in. I was the woman at the head of the table. He was the woman's host. Tell Him I said thank you, baby. You pray it for me tonight before you sleep. My prayer was used up by the afternoon. I have no more in me tonight. You carry it for me."

"Yes, Mama."

"I love you, Yvonne."

"I love you, Mama."

Yvonne kissed her forehead. She walked out. The door closed softly.

Mama Tate closed her eyes.

In the front room Yvonne — who had promised her mother one thing and who did not break her promises — stood for a moment by the window and said into the room, the way she had been learning to say things into the car for two years: Lord. Thank You for today. Mama asked me to say thank You for her. I am doing it. Thank You for the table You built her over the last fifty years. Thank You for the fourteen. Thank You for the three phone calls. Thank You for Ifeanyi in remission. Thank You for Naomi on her lap. Thank You for letting Mama sleep during Thanksgiving for the first time in her life. Thank You.

She stood a moment longer.

Then she went to the spare room and slept.

The house held them.

Outside, the November night was cold. The pecan tree was bare. The porch was empty. In the kitchen a small light over the sink burned quietly the way it had burned, in some form, since 1962.

The Thanksgiving, which had been the fullest one the house had held in years, and which Mama Tate would, on a day in the coming winter, not have to remember because she would no longer be here to, ended.

The Lord was the Lord.

The keeping continued.

In the small brick house in Orange Mound, four of the five keepers slept — Tiana at her own apartment, Marcus at Cordova, Carl at Cordova, Yvonne down the hall — and the fifth — the oldest one, the one the others were carrying — slept the clean sleep of a woman who had been fed.