The Watch

The Keeper of Hours

Chapter 32: The Watch

Rosa called Yvonne at six-oh-eight in the evening on Monday, January fourth, from the bedside of Mama Tate in the front bedroom, with Yvonne standing in the doorway.

She did not, technically, need to call. Yvonne was ten feet away. But Rosa had been in the room since three on a quick check, and Rosa had, over the last forty-five minutes, seen the small breathing changes she had been telling Yvonne to expect since the pneumonia on the eighteenth of December, and Rosa — who knew that a phone call to a daughter was sometimes the only way to create a small formal transition that the daughter could later, in the telling, mark the beginning of — called Yvonne.

Yvonne's phone rang.

Yvonne, in the doorway, answered it.

"Yvonne."

"Yes, Rosa."

"It has started."

"Yes, Rosa."

"Call everyone. I am going to stay. I will not leave. My shift ends at eight. I am not going home at eight. I am staying. I will call my supervisor."

"Yes, Rosa."

Yvonne did not, for a moment, move. She was in the doorway. The phone was at her ear. Her mother was in the bed. Rosa was in the chair beside the bed with her hand on her mother's hand. The oxygen concentrator was going quietly. The small lamp was on low. The curtains were closed against the early January dark.

Yvonne said, quietly: "Rosa."

"Yes, Yvonne."

"How long."

"Tonight or tomorrow morning. I would not travel, if I had to. I am saying you have hours, not days."

"Yes, Rosa."

She hung up.

She stood for another three seconds.

Then she walked into the room. She sat on the edge of the bed. She took her mother's other hand. She said: "Mama. Rosa says it is time. I am going to call the family in. You stay with us tonight as long as you can. We will be here. I love you, Mama."

Her mother's eyes were closed. The breathing was shallow. The hand under Yvonne's hand moved — a small answering squeeze, faint but real — and Yvonne felt it, and she knew her mother had heard.

She rose. She went to the hall. She called.

Tiana was at the house in twelve minutes. She had been at her apartment. She was in scrubs when she arrived because she had been at the unit until five. She came through the door without knocking and went straight to the bedroom.

Carl was at the house in twenty-six minutes. He drove from Cordova with his cap on and a small duffel bag on the passenger seat. He had been preparing the bag, he would later tell Yvonne, since November. He had, since November, been keeping a bag by the kitchen door in Cordova with a change of clothes and his Bible and a small framed photograph of Mama Tate and Eldridge from 1974 that had lived on his dresser since 2009. He brought the bag inside. He did not, in the first hour, open it. He set it on the kitchen counter.

Marcus was at the house in four hours. He had been in Atlanta. Yvonne had called him at six-fifteen. He had been in his apartment. He had packed in nine minutes. He had been in the car, southbound on I-85, by six-thirty. He had driven the four hundred miles in four hours and five minutes, which was a speed Yvonne would not, later, ask him about. He arrived at ten-twenty-three. He came through the door with the small face of a grandson who had prayed the whole way down that he would arrive in time, and who had been answered.

Dr. Akinyele came at seven-forty. Yvonne had not called her first. Rosa had. Rosa had called her at six-fifteen, and Tobi — who had been in her own apartment — had come.

The Hightowers came at eight-oh-five. Yvonne had called them at six-thirty. Sheryl had said, we are coming. Reggie and I. Not Naomi. She is asleep. I will not wake her tonight. We will bring her in the morning if — if she is still here. Yvonne had said, yes, Sheryl, that is right.

By eight-thirty the house held eight.

The bedroom became the room.

Mama Tate was in the bed. The quilt was up over her shoulders. Her hands were on top of the quilt — Tiana had arranged them, gently, at six-twenty — and Yvonne had placed in her left hand, under the thumb, the small gold cross she had been wearing since 1971, which Yvonne had unclasped an hour ago and had set in her hand for holding. The cross was warm from her mother's palm.

Around the bed:

Yvonne on the right, in the chair Rosa had brought in at six-oh-five. Yvonne's hand was on her mother's right hand.

Tiana on the left, in the small armchair. Tiana's hand was on her mother's left hand, below the gold cross.

Rosa at the foot of the bed in the small wooden chair Carl had brought in from the front room. Rosa had a cloth in her hand. She had been, every ten minutes, gently wetting Mama Tate's lips with a small sponge. She did this without comment. The sponge, Rosa had taught Yvonne on Tuesday, was mercy. The body did not need water. The mouth needed moisture. The moisture was a kindness.

Tobi on the other wooden chair Carl had brought in, beside Rosa. Tobi had her small portfolio with her. She had not, since coming, opened it. She was present as a doctor and as a friend. The presence was the reason she was in the room.

Carl on a small folding chair by the door.

Marcus, when he arrived, took the other side of the foot of the bed.

The Hightowers had been given the front room. They did not, Sheryl had said at the door, want to crowd the bedroom. Sheryl sat on the couch with Reggie. They held hands. They did not speak. They were there. The small prayer they were praying was their own.

Rosa had dimmed the lamp to its lowest.

The oxygen concentrator hummed.

The bedroom became the room the way Mother Wells's bedroom had become the room on the first of June.

Tiana read.

She read, quietly, at her grandmother's left hand, the active list from the composition book. She read it slowly. She did not, tonight, read in the voice she had been developing for six months. She read in the voice of a granddaughter at her grandmother's deathbed, which was a different voice, and which Mama Tate — whose eyes were closed, whose breathing was shallow, whose hand was warm under Tiana's hand — heard in the small place inside her where the hearing had moved to.

Tiana read every name.

She read the names of Mt. Calvary. She read the children by classroom. She read the neighborhood. She read the block. She read the Hightowers — Sheryl and Reggie and Naomi — which they did not know she was reading but which Tiana read with her head slightly down. She read the Pruitts in Detroit. She read the Williamsons in Houston. She read Ifeanyi in Lagos, and his mother Chinyere, and his grandmother Nneka. She read Denise Cole-Harper and Keith and their granddaughter Brielle Harper. She read Tamika Wells in Oakland, in the back of the book where her grandmother had moved her in July. She read Stephanie Edwards in Houston. She read Sister Doris Akers. She read Sister Linda Briggs. She read the others who had come to the porch in the fall and had begun their own books, whose names Tiana had added in November.

She read Mama Funmi and Lillian Wells and Brother Wells and Eldridge Tate and all the legacy dead.

She read for fifty-seven minutes.

She read the last names — the ones Mama Tate had added, with Tiana's hand, in early December — which were the small group of names Mama Tate had started in the last weeks: the three children of a woman at Mt. Calvary who had asked for prayer in November; two neighbors who had moved onto Park in December; an infant who had been born to one of the Sunday school teachers on the eighteenth.

Tiana closed the book.

She set her hand on the cover.

She did not, for a long moment, speak.

Then she said, quietly, leaning toward her grandmother's ear: "Grandma. The list is read. The names are lifted. The Lord has heard them. You can rest. I have them. I have the book. The keeping continues. I am not going anywhere."

The hand under Tiana's hand moved.

It moved the small answering squeeze.

Yvonne, on the other side, began to weep silently.

Marcus, at the foot of the bed, put his hand on his mother's shoulder.

Carl, by the door, did not move.

The hours went.

Rosa checked every fifteen minutes. She did the small professional checks — the pulse, the breath count, the color in the nail beds. She did them without interrupting the room. She and Tobi traded the small wordless glances two medical women trade in a room where they are collaborating, and at ten-fifteen Tobi leaned forward and took Mama Tate's right hand for a moment and said quietly: Mama Tate. It is Tobi. I am here. My father says hello from the other side. He will meet you when you get there. Mama Funmi will too. They are waiting.

Mama Tate's hand squeezed, faintly.

Tobi closed her eyes.

At eleven-oh-five Mama Tate opened her eyes.

It was the first time she had opened them in four hours.

She did not, at first, focus. The eyes moved across the room. They found the ceiling. They moved down. They found Yvonne.

"Yvonne."

The voice was not, this time, the thread of voice Mother Wells had used at the end. The voice was surprisingly clear. It was the voice Mama Tate had been using all her life, in the small old form, the form that came from the place inside her the disease had not reached.

"Yes, Mama."

"Baby."

"Yes, Mama."

"Is the whole family here."

"Yes, Mama. Marcus. Tiana. Carl. Rosa. Tobi. The Hightowers are in the front room. Naomi is at home asleep. They will bring her in the morning if — if you are still here."

"Good."

"Mama, can I get you anything?"

"No, baby. Water on the lip is enough. I am — Yvonne, I am finishing. I can feel the finishing. It is a kind finishing. The Lord has been kind."

"Yes, Mama."

"I want to say a few things while I have the voice. I do not know if the voice will come back again. Let me say them now."

"Yes, Mama. We are here."

Mama Tate closed her eyes for a moment. She gathered herself. She opened them.

"Yvonne."

"Yes, Mama."

"You have been a good daughter. You have been the best daughter. You are a keeper. You are a mother of a keeper. You are the grandmother of a keeper and a future keeper. You have been my daughter. I have been — baby, I have been proud of you every day of your life. I want you to know that. Your father would say the same. You have been a good daughter."

"Mama."

"I love you, baby."

"I love you, Mama."

"Tiana."

"Yes, Grandma."

"You are the keeper. You have been practicing since June. You are ready. You will keep the book for as long as you have hands. When you cannot, you will pass it. The passing is already arranged. The Lord has been arranging. You do not have to do this alone. Your mother is with you. Your father is with you. Marcus is with you. Naomi, in time, will be with you. The Lord is with you. The keeping continues."

"Yes, Grandma."

"I love you, baby."

"I love you, Grandma."

"Marcus."

"Yes, Mama Tate."

"You are going to be all right. You are going to raise that little girl well. You are going to be the daddy she needs. You already are. The Lord has been forming you since you were born for this. You did not know it. I did. The Lord did. Your grandfather in the cloud did. You are — Marcus, you are a good man. Your mother is a proud woman. Your father is a proud man. I am a proud woman."

"Yes, Mama."

"I love you, son."

"I love you, Mama."

"Carl."

"Yes, Mama."

"You were the right man at the right door for all these years. You stayed. You did the quiet work. You were the man at the grill. You were the man at the porch step. You were the man on the couch. You walked me up the aisle before you ever walked me up the aisle. You were my second son. I love you, Carl Brooks."

"I love you, Mama."

"Rosa."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You tell your grandmother in the cloud that I am coming. You tell her she arranged this. You tell her the Lord used her. You tell her thank you. And you, baby — you keep doing this work. You are good at it. The Lord formed you for it. You are a keeper too. You just keep in a different room than I did."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Tobi."

"Yes, Mama Tate."

"You tell Mama Funmi I will find her. You tell your father. You keep doing the work. You are a doctor who is also a keeper. The combination is rare. The Lord has you where He wants you. You will meet many women like me. You will sit at many kitchen tables. You will bring them comfort. Your grandmother is behind your work."

"Yes, Mama Tate."

"And Rosa, Tobi — one more thing."

"Yes, ma'am," they said, almost together.

"You tell my daughter and my granddaughter — in the next year, when they are in the hard months — that I was not afraid tonight. You tell them I was ready. You tell them the Lord was the Lord. You are the medical witnesses. I want your testimony on record. You will be able to tell them, from the professional side, that you saw me go well. That will help them. You carry the witness."

"Yes, ma'am."

She closed her eyes.

She did not, for a long time, open them.

The room held her.

Yvonne held her right hand. Tiana held her left. Carl, by the door, kept his vigil. Marcus, at the foot, had his hand on his mother's shoulder. Rosa and Tobi, at the foot on the other side, were still.

In the front room, Sheryl and Reggie continued to hold hands on the couch.

The small oxygen concentrator hummed.

The house, around them, had the specific deepened quiet of a house that was, in its inside, honoring what was happening in its front bedroom. The pecan tree, outside, was bare against the January night. The small light over the kitchen sink burned quietly.

At eleven forty-one Mama Tate said, without opening her eyes: "Tiana."

"Yes, Grandma."

"The book."

"The book is on my lap, Grandma."

"Hold it up. Let me put my hand on it. One more time."

Tiana lifted the composition book. She placed it against her grandmother's left hand on the quilt. Mama Tate's fingers moved, slowly, and found the cover, and rested.

She said: "Lord. The book is in Your hand. The book is in Tiana's hand. The list is read. The names are lifted. The work is done. I am coming home."

Her fingers rested on the cover for a long moment.

She said: "Tiana. Open it. Find the front page. The dedication."

Tiana opened it. She turned to the front. On the first page of the composition book — written in her own careful block letters in July, under her grandmother's dictation — was a small dedication that Mama Tate had asked Tiana to write on the day the new book had begun its full life:

This book is kept in the name of the Lord who keeps His own. The names in this book have been carried by the one whose hands this book passes through. The carrying does not end with the hands. The Lord keeps after the carrier. The book is always His.

Tiana read it aloud.

She read it quietly.

Mama Tate said, softly, when she had finished: "Good. That is good, baby. That is the sentence. Close the book."

Tiana closed it.

Mama Tate's hand rested on the cover a moment longer.

Then, slowly, her hand lifted — with the small effort of a body that had very little left to spend — and she took Tiana's hand in her own, and she held it against the book for a long moment.

"Tiana."

"Yes, Grandma."

"The book is yours."

"Yes, Grandma."

"You will carry it well."

"I will try, Grandma."

"Not try, baby. Will. You will. The Lord has made you the keeper. You are the keeper. Say it to me."

"Grandma — "

"Say it, baby."

"I am the keeper."

"Again."

"I am the keeper."

"One more time."

"I am the keeper."

"Good, baby. You are. You will be. You are."

She released Tiana's hand.

She closed her eyes.

She did not, again, open them.

The last hour began at twelve-thirty.

The breathing, which had been steady with small pauses for hours, began to lengthen the pauses. Rosa, at the foot, met Tobi's eyes. Tobi nodded once. They both rose quietly and repositioned themselves — Rosa at the head of the bed on the right side, behind Yvonne; Tobi on the left side, behind Tiana. Marcus came up from the foot. Carl came from the door.

The four of them — Yvonne, Tiana, Marcus, Carl — encircled the bed.

Rosa and Tobi stood a small step behind.

The room quieted further.

The oxygen concentrator hummed.

The pauses between Mama Tate's breaths became ten seconds, then fifteen, then twenty.

Yvonne began, without announcement, to sing.

She sang His Eye Is on the Sparrow.

She sang it low. She sang it in the small clear voice she had inherited from her mother. She sang it in the bedroom at twelve fifty-seven on the morning of January fifth, twenty twenty-seven, with her mother's hand in hers and her mother's breath slowing and her family around the bed.

Tiana, on the other side, joined after four bars.

Marcus, at the foot, joined after eight.

Carl, behind Yvonne, did not sing — Carl did not sing, ever — but his hand was on Yvonne's shoulder, and his eyes were closed.

Rosa, whose grandmother had taught her the rosary in El Paso, hummed the melody under her breath, in the small approximation of a woman who had been hearing the song at hospice bedsides for twenty years and had absorbed it.

Tobi, whose grandmother had taught her Methodist hymns in Lagos, sang quietly in English and then — for the third verse, because the Lord moved her — in the Yoruba version Mama Funmi had sung her as a girl.

The room filled with the small full sound of a hymn being sung by a family and two nurses at a dying woman's bedside at one in the morning in January in Memphis.

Mama Tate's lips moved. Not much. Not to form words. Just a little. She was, in whatever place she was in, hearing.

At one-oh-nine the breathing paused.

It paused for twenty-two seconds.

It did not resume.

The four at the bed continued the hymn quietly for two more bars, because none of them wanted to stop singing first, and because Mama Tate had wanted to be sung into the cloud, and because the singing was the bridge.

The hymn finished.

The room did not move.

Rosa, after a long moment, stepped quietly forward. She did the small careful checks. She nodded once.

She said, quietly: "Twelve minutes past one. She went well."

The room did not, at first, speak.

Yvonne had not lifted her hand from her mother's hand.

Tiana had not lifted hers from the other side.

Marcus, at the foot, had his face against his grandmother's feet over the quilt. He had knelt without any of them noticing when he had done it. He was not making sound.

Carl had his hand still on Yvonne's shoulder.

Rosa and Tobi were at the foot of the bed.

The oxygen concentrator, which did not know, continued to hum.

After a long while Rosa leaned forward and turned it off.

The room went very quiet.

The four at the bed did not move.

Eventually Yvonne spoke.

"Mama."

She said it softly. It was not a question. It was not a call. It was the small breath of a word her mouth needed to form — not to Mama Tate, who had gone, but to the empty small shape of the bed where Mama had been.

She put her forehead against her mother's hand on the quilt.

She cried.

She cried the small dignified cry she had been practicing for six months. She cried with Marcus on the floor at the foot and Tiana on the other side and Carl's hand on her shoulder, and she cried in the way Brooks women had cried at Brooks deathbeds for three generations, which was with the small interior acknowledgment that the grief was going to be a long grief and that tonight was only the first hour of it, and that the first hour had to be allowed.

The four of them held the room.

Rosa and Tobi, at the foot, stepped quietly back.

In the front room, Sheryl Hightower — who had been praying on the couch for six hours — knew the moment had come before anyone told her. She stood. She walked to the bedroom door and stopped at the threshold. She did not enter. She said, softly: Mother Tate. She said it the way you say goodbye to an elder. She said it once.

Reggie Hightower, behind her, removed his cap.

Tiana, after a long time, lifted the composition book from the quilt.

She set it on her own lap.

She set her hand on the cover.

She said, quietly, with her face wet: "Grandma. I have the book."

She did not expect an answer. She did not need one. The sentence was the small private confirmation the keeper gave herself at the moment the keeping officially changed hands, and she had read — in her grandmother's ledger, in the back pages — many similar confirmations written by other women over the years.

She closed her eyes.

She did not, for a long time, open them.

The room held them.

The cloud held them.

The Lord, who had been the Lord through all of it, was the Lord.

Outside, the pecan tree was bare against the January night. The small light over the sink burned on. The house had, in its own small way, known the moment the keeper had gone. The house would, in the coming weeks and months, learn what it was to hold the next keeper and the old keeper's daughter and the old keeper's son-in-law through the long work of grief. The house had held many kinds of grief. It would hold this one.

The long evening, which had begun in May and had moved through summer and fall and winter, had, at twelve minutes past one on the morning of the fifth of January twenty twenty-seven, reached its final hour and had passed.

Mama Tate was gone.

Rosa would, at two-ten, make the small necessary calls — the hospice service, the funeral home, Pastor Honeycutt, Pamela in Atlanta, Curtis in Memphis who had already been alerted by Tiana. Tobi would, at two-twenty, gently and respectfully do the small medical certifications. The funeral home would come at three-fifteen. They would carry the body out in a way Rosa would supervise so that none of the family would have to watch the worst of it.

But the first two hours — from one-twelve until three — belonged to the family.

The family kept the vigil.

They did not, in the two hours, need to speak much.

They sat with her. Yvonne held her hand. Tiana held the book. Marcus, at some point, rose from the floor and sat on the bed beside his mother. Carl sat in the chair by the door. Rosa and Tobi stepped quietly out. The Hightowers waited in the front room. Outside, the Memphis night continued its small ordinary sounds — a car going past, a dog barking, the small wind in the bare pecan tree — and the house held the family who held the woman who had gone.

The first full darkness of the long evening had ended.

The dawn, which was coming in another six hours, would be the first dawn the small brick house on Park Avenue had ever seen without Ola Mae Tate in it.

The dawn would arrive.

The daughter and the granddaughter and the son-in-law and the grandson — and the four-year-old in Whitehaven, who would, when her grandmother woke her at six-thirty and told her gently, begin her own small private grief with a mouth full of dignity — would rise to meet it.

The keeping continued.