Morning

The Keeper of Hours

Chapter 33: Morning

Tiana did the morning at four o'clock on Tuesday, the fifth of January, twenty twenty-seven, in Eldridge's chair in the front room of the small brick house on Park Avenue, alone.

The body of her grandmother had been taken by the funeral home at three forty-five. The carrying-out had been, at Rosa's direction, brief and honorable. The bedroom door had been closed since. Yvonne had gone, without speaking, to the spare room at four. Carl had been on the couch in the front room with his arm around Yvonne until three-fifty and then had gone to the kitchen to boil water for tea. Marcus was asleep, or resting with his eyes closed, on the loveseat under a small quilt Yvonne had brought him. Rosa had gone home at three-twenty with the assurance that she would come back at ten. Tobi had driven home at three-twenty-five.

The house was quiet.

Tiana had, at three fifty-five, without announcing it, picked up the composition book from the kitchen table where Yvonne had set it after the funeral home had left. She had carried the book to the front room. She had turned on the small lamp beside Eldridge's chair. She had sat down in the chair.

She had not, before tonight, sat in the chair.

The chair had been her grandmother's chair since 1981.

She sat.

She held the book on her lap. She set her hand on the cover. She closed her eyes.

She did not, at first, open the book.

She said, in the quiet way her grandmother had been saying things to the Lord for fifty years: Lord. The book is on my lap. I am in the chair. I do not know how to do this without her. I know how to read the names. I have been reading the names since June. I do not know how to sit in this chair. She has been in the chair. I have been on the couch. The couch was the small. The chair is the big. I do not, in my body, know how to be in the big. Help me.

She waited.

She waited the way her grandmother had taught Denise Cole-Harper to wait — the three-breath wait, the small open wait of a keeper who was asking the Lord to begin the keeping.

The Lord did not, for a moment, give her a name.

Then He gave her one.

He gave her, as the first name on the first morning she sat in the chair, the name Ola Mae Tate.

She opened her eyes.

She opened the book. She turned to the legacy pages. She turned to the page where Eldridge was, and her grandmother's mother, and her grandmother's father, and her grandmother's brother, and Sister Loretta and Pastor Briggs and Mother Wells. She found the next blank line.

She picked up the small felt pen from the spine of the book.

She wrote, in the careful block letters she had been writing for seven months — letters that were now, she realized, steadier than her grandmother's had been at the end:

Ola Mae Tate. January 5, 2027. Mother of this book. Went home well. The keeping continues.

She underlined Mother of this book.

She set the pen down.

She set her hand on the entry.

She did not, for a long time, move.

Yvonne came out at four thirty-five.

She came into the front room in her robe with her eyes red. She stopped in the doorway. She saw her daughter in her mother's chair with the book open on her lap, and her daughter's hand flat on the open page.

"Baby."

"Mom."

"You're doing the morning."

"I am, Mom."

"I did not know if —"

"I did not know either, Mom. I came out. The book was on the table. I brought it in here. I did not think. I sat down. The chair held me. The Lord has been — the Lord has been kind this morning. I wrote her name in the book at four-oh-two. I am about to start the active list."

Yvonne came over. She sat on the couch — the couch her mother had been sitting on for the morning readings since July — and she did not, this morning, trust her voice.

Tiana read.

She read the active list quietly.

She read every name. She read the Hightowers — Sheryl and Reggie and Naomi, and Sheryl's and Reggie's names by themselves in a way they had not been until September, when her grandmother had told Tiana to separate them out so that she could pray the grandparents for grace in the grandchild's raising, and Tiana had done it. She read the Pruitts in Detroit. She read the Williamsons in Houston. She read Ifeanyi in Lagos — who was, according to Folake's last email in December, still in remission. She read Tamika Wells in Oakland in the back of the book. She read Brielle Harper, whose adoption paperwork was, per Denise's text on Sunday, moving ahead on schedule for March. She read all the names.

When she came to the family — Yvonne, Carl, Marcus, Naomi — she paused longer at each one.

When she came to the last name on the legacy pages — Ola Mae Tate, January 5, 2027 — she held her finger on it for the count of three.

She closed the book.

She set her hand on the cover.

"Mom."

"Yes, Tiana."

"The morning is done."

"Yes, baby."

"Grandma heard it. She heard me do it. I could feel her. She was in the room."

"I believe you, Tiana."

"The Lord was in the room. Grandma was in the room. I was in the chair. The work was — Mom, the work was continued. I was afraid I would not know how. I knew. The Lord taught me. He used Grandma's chair. He used the book. He used me."

Yvonne rose slowly. She came over. She sat on the arm of Eldridge's chair beside her daughter. She put her hand on Tiana's head, the way her mother had put her hand on Tiana's head all through the last year.

She said, quietly: "Baby. You are the keeper."

"Yes, Mom."

"She said so last night."

"Yes, Mom."

"I am proud of you, Tiana."

"Yes, Mom."

"And Mama is proud of you."

"Yes, Mom."

"And Daddy would have been proud of you."

"I know, Mom."

Yvonne held her daughter's head against her own side for a long moment.

Marcus, on the loveseat, had been awake for the last part of the reading. He did not, at first, say anything. He rose slowly. He crossed to Eldridge's chair. He knelt on the floor the way he had knelt many times in this room over the last year. He put his head against his cousin's knee.

"Tiana."

"Marcus."

"I heard you read."

"Yes, Marcus."

"You sounded like Mama Tate."

"I know, Marcus."

"She is in your voice now."

"Yes, Marcus."

"The keeping continues."

"Yes."

Carl, from the kitchen doorway, where he had been standing with his cap in his hand, said in his quiet voice: "The keeping continues."

The four of them — three in the front room and Carl at the doorway — stayed that way in the small lamp light for the five minutes before the gray of the morning began to come in.

The phone began at six-thirty.

Rosa had put the first round of calls in overnight. Pastor Honeycutt had been called at two. Curtis Wells had been called at two-fifteen. Pamela in Atlanta had been called at two-thirty. The Hightowers had been woken gently at their house by Sheryl, who had driven home at three and had waited until six to tell Reggie fully, because Reggie had been asleep by then.

At six thirty-one Sheryl called Yvonne.

"Yvonne."

"Sheryl."

"I told Naomi five minutes ago."

"Yes, Sheryl."

"Yvonne. She — she said, and these were her exact words, Great-Grandma is with the ducks now."

Yvonne could not, for a moment, speak.

"Yvonne. She is going to be all right. Reggie and I will bring her at nine. We will stay an hour. She wants to say goodbye to the bed. She told me. She said — Yvonne, she said I want to say goodbye to the room where Great-Grandma prayed."

"Yes, Sheryl. Bring her at nine."

"We will, baby."

Pastor Honeycutt came at seven.

He came in the gray winter coat he had been wearing at Mother Wells's funeral in June, with his small Bible under his arm, and his face was the face of a pastor who had done this enough times — sixty-one now, by his count — but who had, for this one, prepared a different face because Mother Tate had been, in his three decades at Mt. Calvary, the woman he had most trusted.

He sat in the kitchen.

Yvonne poured him coffee.

He did not, for the first ten minutes, say much. He had learned, in his pastoral life, that the first ten minutes at a home of a recently deceased Mother was for sitting with the family and drinking coffee. The words came later.

At seven-fifteen he said: "Yvonne. Tiana. Marcus. Carl. Thank you for the night."

"Thank you for coming, Pastor."

"Your mother and I talked, last month. She told me what she wanted. I have it. The service is on Saturday at eleven. The repast is in the basement. Sister Doris will give the Mothers' Board testimony. You, Yvonne, will give the eulogy. Tiana will read the Twenty-third Psalm. Marcus will lead the Lord's Prayer. Naomi will sit with the family. The hymns are chosen. The choir has been notified. The casket is at the funeral home already. The plot at Elmwood is ready. I spoke to the funeral director at three this morning. We are arranged."

"Yes, Pastor."

"Your mother was ready, Yvonne."

"I know, Pastor."

"I spent an hour with her on the twentieth of December. She was clear that day. She gave me the list. She gave me the sentences. She told me — Yvonne, she told me that she wanted me to read, as the opening scripture, First Corinthians fifteen. She said she wanted the Resurrection scripture. She said she did not want the funeral to lean hard on grief. She said, quote, Pastor Honeycutt, the grief will be there. Grief does not need help. I want the Resurrection to be helped. Help it. That is what she said. Word for word."

Yvonne nodded. She could not, for a moment, speak.

"I will read First Corinthians fifteen, Yvonne. I will preach on it. Your mother knew what she was doing."

"Yes, Pastor."

"One more thing. She asked me, on the twentieth of December, that at the service — at the end, after the recessional — I would invite the congregation to stand, and I would ask every Mother of the Church present, and every Mother in formation, to come forward and lay a hand on the casket before it left the sanctuary. She said she wanted the prayer-floor to send her out. I agreed. I am telling you now because I want you to know that the laying-on-of-hands is on the program."

Tiana, beside her mother, said quietly: "Will I be invited forward, Pastor?"

Pastor Honeycutt looked at her.

"Tiana. You are the keeper of your grandmother's book. You have been the keeper for six months under her. You are the keeper now. You are a Mother of the Church. The church has not formally named it. Your grandmother named it. The naming sticks. You come forward when I call."

"Yes, Pastor."

"Good."

The Hightowers arrived at nine.

Sheryl came up the steps first with Naomi. Reggie followed. Naomi was in her small dark blue dress and the red sneakers. Her face was the small sober face of a four-year-old who had been told, two hours ago, that her great-grandmother had gone, and who had been told in language she had understood, and who had, by her own quiet internal work, decided how she would be in the house this morning.

Yvonne met them on the porch.

Naomi did not, at first, speak. She came up to Yvonne. She let Yvonne bend down. She put her small hand against Yvonne's cheek.

"Yvonne."

"Yes, Naomi."

"I brought the drawing."

She had, in her other hand, the small drawing she had given Mama Tate on December nineteenth. It had been on Mama Tate's dresser for three weeks. Yvonne had taken it down this morning at seven and had set it by the door so that she would remember to give it to Sheryl to give to Naomi. She had not expected Naomi to want it now.

"Baby?"

"Grandma gave it to me this morning. She said I should bring it. She said Great-Grandma would want me to put it somewhere in the house."

Yvonne took the drawing.

"Where do you want to put it, baby?"

Naomi thought.

"On the side table by the chair. Where the book was."

Yvonne's eyes filled.

"Yes, Naomi."

She walked the drawing with Naomi to the front room. Naomi, small and careful, set the drawing on the side table next to Eldridge's chair, the exact spot where Mama Tate had been keeping the prayer book since 2011.

"There. Great-Grandma can see it from the cloud."

"Yes, Naomi."

"Now I want to say goodbye to the bed."

"Yes, baby."

Yvonne walked her to the bedroom. Tiana came behind them. Marcus came too. Carl stayed in the front room with Sheryl and Reggie.

The bedroom was the bedroom. The bed had been made — Tiana had quietly made it at four-thirty — and the quilt was up and the pillows were arranged. The small armchair was still by the bed. The small oxygen concentrator had been picked up by the hospice service at six. The room had the specific empty quiet of a room a person had been in for the last hours of their life and was no longer in.

Naomi stood at the foot of the bed.

She did not, for a moment, speak.

Then she said, quietly, the way a four-year-old says a thing she has been preparing:

"Great-Grandma. I came to say goodbye. Grandma said you went to be with the Lord. She said you had been praying a long time. She said you have a book, and Tiana has the book now. I love you. I will look at the pecan tree for you in the spring. I will tell you about my birthday. It is in February. I wish you could come. You will have to come from the cloud. I will see you when I am old. Goodbye, Great-Grandma."

She did not cry.

She turned. She walked out of the room.

In the front room she went to her grandmother and climbed into Sheryl's lap on the couch.

"Grandma. I am done."

"Yes, baby."

They stayed another forty minutes. Naomi sat on Sheryl's lap through most of it. Yvonne brought out coffee for the grown-ups and a small cup of apple juice for Naomi. They talked about small things. Sheryl said, at one point — quietly, mostly to Yvonne: She was ready, Yvonne. Mother Tate was ready. I saw her in December and I knew. I did not say so. I am saying so now. Yvonne had said, Yes, Sheryl. She was.

They left at ten-fifteen.

At the door, Sheryl hugged Yvonne long.

She said: "Yvonne. You call me in a week. Not tomorrow. Not the day after. A week. When you have — when you have the small empty days. You call me. I have been there. I buried my daughter fourteen months ago. I know the week-after. I will come sit with you. We do not have to talk. I will bring coffee."

"Yes, Sheryl."

Reggie shook Carl's hand. Reggie shook Marcus's hand. He kissed Tiana's cheek. He lifted Naomi into his arms. They went.

The calls continued through the morning.

Pamela called at ten-fifty from Atlanta. She was driving in tonight with Terry. The boys would stay with a friend. She would be at the house by six.

Stephen Pruitt called at eleven from Detroit. He would fly in Thursday. Brenda would come too. The children would stay with his mother. Ola would come. She wants to come, Mother Yvonne. She wants to come to the service. She is twelve. She wants to know where Mother Tate's grave is. She wants to be there. Yvonne had said, You bring her, Stephen. She belongs there.

Patrice called at noon from Houston. She would fly in Friday. Camille and Ruth would come. Maurice would stay with Camille's husband Andre and their sons.

Folake called from Lagos at twelve-forty. She would not fly. She could not, in the timing, manage it. But she asked — gently, the way Folake asked everything — if she could have her Lagos pastor join the funeral by video. Yvonne, after conferring with Tiana and with Pastor Honeycutt on a quick call, said yes. The Lagos pastor would join by phone for the benediction. Folake would hold the phone. Mama Funmi's Lagos church — three members of the prayer circle — would pray along.

Tobi drove over at one in the afternoon. She did not stay long. She brought a small plant and a casserole her sister had taught her to make. She sat at the kitchen table for twenty minutes. She did not, for the first ten, say anything. She held Yvonne's hand. At ten minutes she said, quietly: "Yvonne. Your mother was — Yvonne, your mother was one of the great ones. I have known four in my career. Mama Funmi. My own grandmother. A patient in Atlanta in 2013. And your mother. That is my count. She is on the list."

Yvonne had not been able, for a moment, to speak.

Tobi left at one-forty.

The afternoon quieted.

Carl went to the hardware store to buy the small items Yvonne had put on a list that morning — things the house needed for the visitors who would be coming. Marcus went to the funeral home with Yvonne to confirm the arrangements. Rosa came briefly at two — she had, as she had promised, come back, and she had taken Yvonne aside in the kitchen and had said only you call me if you need anything in the next two weeks, anything at all, and had left again.

Tiana stayed at the house alone for ninety minutes.

She sat in Eldridge's chair with the book on her lap. She did not, in the ninety minutes, read. She held the book. She looked at the pecan tree through the window. She looked at Naomi's drawing on the side table next to the chair. She looked at the small framed photograph of Mama Funmi that had been on her grandmother's dresser since August and which Tiana, at noon, had moved to the front room so that Mama Funmi could sit on the small side table of the chair that Mama Tate had been sitting in.

She said, once, aloud, to the room: "Grandma. The book is here. I am here. The morning was done. The Lord was the Lord. I am tired."

The room did not, because rooms do not, answer.

The room held her.

In the early evening, with the family back, Yvonne made supper.

She made, without intention, her mother's soup — the one Tiana had been making on Tuesdays, which had been her grandmother's mother's recipe, which Yvonne had not made since her own mother had stopped being able to eat it in November. Yvonne made it without thinking. She realized, halfway through, what she was making. She did not change course. She finished the soup. She set the table. She called the four of them — Carl, Tiana, Marcus, herself — to the table.

They sat.

Marcus blessed the food.

He blessed it with the small new cadence he had been developing since April, which was the same cadence Carl used, which he had inherited from his father without thinking about it. He ended with the line Carl had added to his blessings in April, which Mama Tate had loved, and which Marcus said now at the first meal without his grandmother:

And Lord, we lift up those who are not at this table but whose names are in this house. Tonight we lift up Mama Tate. She has gone to You. She is at a different table tonight. The table on Your side is bigger than the table on ours. We thank You for her. We thank You for letting her be our table's center for as long as she was. We thank You for the book. We thank You for the keeping. We ask You to hold the four of us tonight. Amen.

Amen, the others said.

They ate.

After supper Yvonne went to lie down early. Carl stayed in the front room with a book in his lap he was not, Tiana thought, reading. Marcus sat on the porch in the January cold for a while, alone, with his coat on. Tiana stayed at the kitchen table.

At nine she went to the front room. She sat in Eldridge's chair with the composition book on her lap. She did not, at nine, read. She opened the book to a blank page near the front. She picked up the pen.

She wrote, in her careful block letters:

I am the keeper now. Tiana Brooks. Thirty years old. Nurse. Granddaughter of Ola Mae Tate and Eldridge Tate. Great-niece of the woman in Greenwood whose name I do not yet know but whose name I will find and add. Niece of Patrice Pinkston Williamson. Niece of Stephen Pruitt's father through the long shape of the keeping. The book is mine to carry. I will not carry it alone. The Lord carries the book. I hold it. My mother reads it on Saturdays. My uncle Carl sits with me. My cousin Marcus will sit with me when he is in town. My cousin Naomi, who is a future keeper, will sit with me when she is older. The keeping does not end. Grandma said. I believed her. I am beginning. January 5, 2027.

She set the pen down.

She set her hand on the page.

She closed her eyes.

Lord. I am starting. You used my grandmother for fifty years. I am not fifty. I may not live to fifty more. Whatever You do with me, You do. I am Yours. The book is Yours. The names in the book are Yours. I will read them tomorrow. I will read them the day after. I will read them on the morning of the funeral. I will read them every morning I have breath. The keeping continues. I am the small new hand. You are the one carrying. Help me.

She opened her eyes.

The pecan tree was bare against the January dark. The small light over the sink — which Carl had turned on at ten-thirty and which would, now, be on around the clock because Tiana had decided tonight that the light over the sink would always be on in this house while she was the keeper, the way a sanctuary lamp stayed lit in a church — was burning quietly.

She closed the book.

She set it on the side table where her grandmother had kept it for fifteen years.

Next to it, she set the small framed photograph of Mama Funmi.

Next to that, Naomi's drawing of the house with the three of them in front of it.

Next to that, the small green book of Mother Wells.

The small altar of the keeping — the Lord's, by the deeper arithmetic; hers, by the carrying — was assembled for the night.

She went to bed.

She slept in the spare room. Yvonne was in the bedroom with the door cracked. Marcus and Carl were in the front room — Marcus on the loveseat, Carl on the small couch. The house held four of them.

At three fifty-eight in the morning Tiana's phone alarm went off, which was the small recording of a four-year-old voice saying We bring good tidings of great joy, which Yvonne had transferred to Tiana's phone at nine last night because Yvonne had said baby, that is yours now. I have the memory. You have the voice.

Tiana rose.

She walked to the front room. She turned on the lamp beside Eldridge's chair. She picked up the book from the side table. She sat down in the chair.

She opened the book.

She breathed.

She said, in the quiet way: Lord. Who do You want me to carry today.

She waited.

She read.

In the small brick house on Park Avenue, in Orange Mound, in the first full morning of a year in which the keeper of fifty years had gone to be with the Lord, the next keeper sat in her grandmother's chair and did the morning.

She did it well.

She did it for forty-nine minutes.

At four forty-nine she closed the book, set her hand on the cover, and did the small private thing her grandmother had been doing for half a century — the final closing hand, the small breath, the amen the keeper said only to the Lord and only with the chest.

The book was on her lap.

The work was done for the morning.

Outside, the first bird in the bare pecan tree began.

In the bedroom across the hall Yvonne, who had not been sleeping deeply, heard the small amen through the wall. She turned her face into the pillow and wept — not in grief, or not only in grief, but in the small private thanksgiving of a daughter who had heard a morning finished by her own child in her mother's chair.

The next morning would come.

The morning after that would come.

And the morning after that.

And the morning after that — for as long as the Lord gave hands to women at kitchen tables and front rooms in Orange Mound and Houston and Detroit and Atlanta and Lagos and Oakland and Camden, Arkansas, and every other small place the Lord had been arranging His prayer-floors since long before any keeper was born — would come.

The book was in Tiana's hand.

Mama Tate was in the cloud, with Eldridge, with Mother Wells, with Mama Funmi, with Adebayo; with Daphne Crenshaw, by the mercy of the Lord who held the inside of the seconds no one else could see, somewhere held.

Tamika Wells, in Oakland, was alive and sober and loved. Ifeanyi, in Lagos, was in remission. Curtis Wells, at four twenty-two, had sat down for the first time at his grandmother's kitchen table with a small new notebook and had begun his own list, because Curtis had, over the night, decided to answer.

Mama Tate would have known, in the cloud, that the keepers were at the floor.

She would have smiled.

The second volume of a long quiet work closed, on the small brick house in Orange Mound, with the book in a new hand.

The work continued.