The Service

The Keeper of Hours

Chapter 34: The Service

Mt. Calvary on Saturday, January ninth, twenty twenty-seven, was the fullest it had been since the second Sunday of Pastor Briggs's funeral in nineteen ninety-six.

By ten o'clock the sanctuary was at capacity. The balcony was at capacity. The lobby had twenty standing. The overflow had been routed, by Brother Carlton and two of the younger deacons, to the fellowship hall in the basement, where a livestream had been set up on the small projector the youth department had bought in 2023 for the Easter pageants. The livestream had — unexpectedly, the tech committee would later say — four hundred and seventy-two people on it, including watchers in Detroit and Houston and Atlanta and Oakland and Lagos.

Folake Akinyele, in her kitchen in Ikeja at four o'clock in the afternoon on a Saturday, had gathered seven members of Mama Funmi's old Methodist prayer circle at her own kitchen table with the laptop between them. They watched. They would hold their portion of the benediction over the phone at the appointed moment. Folake had confirmed the timing with Pastor Honeycutt by email on Thursday.

Tamika Wells, in Oakland, did not watch.

Pamela had, at Mama Tate's direction, mailed the notice-of-death letter on the sixth. Tamika had received it on the eighth. She had not, as of this hour, written back. Pamela had told Tiana, in the kitchen at nine this morning: She will write when she writes. The letter was the keeping. We do not need a return. Tiana had nodded.

The family seating began at ten-forty.

Carl walked Yvonne up the aisle first. Yvonne was in a navy blue dress that had been Mama Tate's in the eighties and which Yvonne had, over the past three days, taken in slightly at the waist because Mama Tate had been smaller than Yvonne, and Yvonne had wanted, this morning, to be wearing her mother. Carl was in his dark gray suit. He walked her slowly. He did not, in the walk, look up at the pews. He kept his eyes on the carpet in front of him and his hand under his wife's elbow, and Yvonne — who had cried every morning for four days and had decided at six this morning that she would not cry during the service if she could help it — held her chin level and walked.

Marcus walked up behind them with Tiana on his arm.

Tiana was in a cream dress. She had chosen cream on Thursday after a small conversation with Yvonne in the bedroom where they had decided, together, that one of them would wear the opposite of mourning — that cream was a Resurrection color, that Mama Tate had asked for Resurrection, and that Tiana, as the new keeper, would carry the Resurrection color into the sanctuary. She carried the small composition book under her right arm. She was going to hold it on her lap through the service. She was going to read the Twenty-third Psalm from it when Pastor Honeycutt called for her. The psalm was the first reading she had ever done as the formal keeper, and Mama Tate, she thought as she walked, had known it would be — had chosen it nearly a year ago — because Mama Tate had known what she was arranging.

Behind Tiana and Marcus came the Hightowers.

Reggie walked with Sheryl. Between them, in her small burgundy Christmas dress which Sheryl had pressed again last night, walked Naomi, five minus three weeks, in the red sneakers, holding each grandparent's hand.

Naomi had been given — by her grandmother, on Friday evening, in a conversation Sheryl had been preparing herself for since Monday — a small pale blue handkerchief that Sheryl had embroidered with a single tiny pecan leaf, and had been told that the handkerchief was for her to carry to Mother Tate's service and to keep in her pocket, and was to be used for any tears she needed to cry during the service, and was to be kept in a drawer at home after the service for the rest of her life. Naomi had received the handkerchief with the small grave seriousness she had been receiving every instruction about this week with. She had asked if she could look at it. Sheryl had said yes. She had looked at it for ten minutes in her bedroom on Friday night. She had folded it. She had put it in her pocket. She had slept with the dress laid out on the chair.

She carried the handkerchief this morning.

She did not cry during the processional.

She walked up the aisle of a sanctuary she had never been in, in the small red sneakers, between her grandparents, looking straight ahead the way Reggie had told her to look in the car. When they reached the front pew she sat between Sheryl and Reggie. She did not, for the first ten minutes of the service, turn her head.

Behind the family came the larger circle.

Pamela Wells-Brown walked in with her husband Terry and her two teenage sons. Pamela sat in the second pew with her family. Curtis Wells sat beside her, in his only suit, which he had bought in November. He was twenty-seven. He had been carrying, for four days, the small private weight of a young man who had lost his second grandmother in seven months and who had been given, by both of them in their own ways, permissions he had not yet figured out what to do with.

Stephen Pruitt came up behind, with Brenda on his arm and Ola at his other side.

Ola Pruitt was twelve years and seven months old. She was wearing a navy dress. She had insisted, her father had told Yvonne on the phone last night, on wearing her grandfather's small Baptist church-anniversary pin on her collar. The pin was an inch high and was enameled with the words 40 Years, New Hope AME, Detroit, and Ola had been wearing it every Sunday since her grandfather Calvin had gone. This morning she had decided the pin should come to Memphis.

She sat in the third pew with Brenda and Stephen.

Behind them — Patrice Williamson, with her husband Maurice and her daughter Camille and her granddaughter Ruth. Ruth was now eight years and five months, and she had, Patrice said in a low voice to Yvonne at the door, been holding it together since Thursday when Patrice had told her where they were going. Ruth was in a small white dress. She was holding her grandmother's hand tightly.

Denise Cole-Harper and her husband Keith came fourth, with the small bulletin program held carefully between them because Denise had been designated as a reader for one of the scripture passages mid-service. Denise had been asked by Pastor Honeycutt on Tuesday. She had cried when asked. She had accepted.

Sister Doris Akers came fifth, walked up by her own son. She sat in the fifth pew as the Mothers' Board representative.

Dr. Akinyele came next. She was alone — Folake had stayed in Lagos, and Tunde had been unable to come from San Jose — and she wore a simple black skirt and a white blouse and the small silver chain with the cross her grandmother had given her at her confirmation in 1995. She sat in the sixth pew.

Rosa came seventh, quietly, and sat in the seventh pew near the aisle, the way hospice nurses who had been at their patient's door sat — present, reverent, without presuming to be family.

The Mothers of the Board came behind — Sister Linda Briggs; Sister Stephanie Edwards, who had flown in from Houston on Friday morning, tired and small and insistent on being present; four of the older women of Mt. Calvary whose own practices Mama Tate had been quietly forming over the years.

Stephanie sat next to Rosa, by coincidence, and the two of them exchanged the small nods of women who had never met but who knew, on sight, that they were at the same prayer-floor.

The service began at eleven-oh-six.

Brother Hightower — who was seventy-seven now and whose hands trembled more than they had the year before, and who had, two weeks after Mama Tate had gone, told the trustees he would step down from the organ bench at Easter — began the processional hymn. The choir came in. The choir had, at Pastor Honeycutt's request, been padded this morning — several members who had moved away had flown in to sing, and the choir numbered forty-one — and the processional was Soon and Very Soon.

They sang it twice through as the choir walked.

Pastor Honeycutt came up behind the choir, in his robe, with his Bible under his arm. He took his place at the pulpit. The choir sat. He did not, at first, speak.

He looked at the casket.

The casket was open. Yvonne, on Monday, had been given the choice. Yvonne had said yes to open — Mama Tate's instructions in the folder had said open for the first hour, closed before the service — and the casket had been open from ten to ten-forty-five for those who wanted to pass. Many had. It had been closed at ten-forty-five, the way Mama Tate had asked. The wreath of yellow lilies — Mama Tate had specified yellow, over Yvonne's own objection during the planning in October, and had said yellow, baby, Mother Wells liked yellow, I will have yellow too — was on top of the casket, and a small framed photograph of Mama Tate and Eldridge in 1974 had been set on the small stand beside it.

Pastor Honeycutt looked at the casket.

He looked at the family in the first pew.

He looked at the congregation.

He said: "Church. We have lost a Mother of the Church."

The congregation answered — the full chorus amen that had been, in the last decade at Mt. Calvary, the small formal marker of the passing of a Mother of the Board. It was, Pastor Honeycutt would later say, the fullest amen he had heard from this congregation in his thirty-one years at the pulpit.

He said: "Church. Before I read the opening scripture, I want to say one thing. Mother Tate gave me, on the twentieth of December last, a small letter in an envelope. She told me to read the first sentence of it from this pulpit before I read the scripture, and then to give the letter to Yvonne after the service. I am going to honor the request. I have not read the letter myself past the first sentence."

He took the envelope from his robe pocket. He opened it. He unfolded a single sheet of paper.

He read the first sentence.

"Church — thank you. Ola Mae Tate."

He paused.

"That is the first sentence, church. That is all she wanted me to read from the pulpit."

He refolded the paper. He put it back in the envelope. He set the envelope on the shelf inside the pulpit. He looked at the congregation.

"Now. First Corinthians fifteen."

He preached on the Resurrection.

He preached for nineteen minutes. He preached the way Mama Tate had asked him to preach — leaning into the Resurrection, not into the grief. He preached the cloud of witnesses. He preached the continuity of the keeping. He preached Mama Tate as a woman who, in fifty-two years on the prayer-floor, had been one of the small steady hands the Lord had used to hold Mt. Calvary together across the generations of its worst seasons.

He said, near the end of the sermon: "Mother Tate is not finished, church. Mother Tate is at the prayer-floor on the other side. Mother Tate is praying for us from there. She is praying, right now, for the women in this room who are being called to the floor she has left. She is praying for Tiana Brooks, who is carrying her book. She is praying for Sister Doris Akers. She is praying for Sister Stephanie Edwards, who flew in from Houston yesterday. She is praying for Sister Denise Cole-Harper and Sister Linda Briggs and the other newer Mothers who are in this sanctuary. She is praying for all of us. And she is praying — most of all, church, most of all — for the young ones. The granddaughters and the great-granddaughters. The ones who do not yet know they will be called. I want the young ones in this room today to hear me when I say this. The keeping does not end when an old woman goes. The keeping moves. The keeping is already looking for its next houses. Some of you, today, are going to feel a small warm press in your chest. You will not know what it is. I am telling you what it is. It is the Lord calling you. You answer Him when you are ready. You do not need to know today. You will know when you know."

He paused.

"Let us pray."

He prayed briefly. He closed.

The choir rose for the first hymn.

They sang Blessed Assurance.

Sister Doris gave the Mothers' Board testimony.

She rose slowly. She had been on the Mothers' Board since 1997, and she was now sixty-eight, and she had been the alto line of Mt. Calvary's choir for thirty-two years, but she did not, this morning, sing. She walked to the pulpit. She adjusted the microphone. She said:

"Church. I am going to speak for three minutes. Mother Tate herself would have spoken for three minutes. She would not have approved of more. I am going to honor her shape."

The congregation laughed quietly — a small wet laugh that was, at funerals of the very loved, the small correct release.

"Mother Tate called me to the prayer-floor in June, in the pew, at Mother Wells's funeral. She did not call me out loud. She did not even turn her head. She called me the way the old Mothers called each other, which was by sitting beside a woman who had been almost-answering for years and tipping the answer by proximity alone. I had been called since ninety-six. I had been not-answering since two thousand and six. Mother Tate sat beside me on the first Sunday of June twenty-six and said not one word, and I went home and began my list that afternoon. That was her gift. She called without calling. She was the most unhurried woman I have known. In the six months since, I have added twenty-nine names to my own book. I will add more. Some of you are being called this morning. You answer. That is my three minutes."

She sat.

The congregation said amen.

Yvonne gave the eulogy.

She stood at the pulpit without notes, because she had decided on Wednesday that she would not use notes, because her mother had not used notes when her mother had spoken in public, and because if she were going to speak about her mother on this morning she wanted to speak the way her mother had taught her to speak, which was with her own mouth and whatever the Lord put in it.

She said: "I am going to tell you three things about my mother. Then I am going to sit down."

She told three things.

She told about the lavender dress her mother had worn in 1981 — the one that had come back out for Patrice Williamson's visit in May. She told about the kitchen her mother had fed her in for fifty-eight years. She told about the last morning her mother had been conscious — a small moment in the bedroom on the fourth of January, when her mother had squeezed her hand and had said baby, you have been a good daughter, and Yvonne had known that her mother had been preparing that sentence for years, and her mother had been saying it the day of the Lord's arranging.

She said, at the end: "Church. My mother was a keeper. I thought, for most of my life, that she was a praying woman. I did not know until this spring how big a praying woman can be. I have been reading the book. My daughter Tiana has been reading the book. The books are bigger than we knew. My mother was one of the ones the Lord uses to hold a church together while the rest of us are busy. I am grateful. I am going to miss her every day. I am not going to despair. She taught me not to. That is all I have."

She sat.

Tiana read the Twenty-third Psalm.

She read it from the small composition book she had brought up — the book was open to the back page, where Mama Tate had asked her in November to transcribe the psalm by hand in two-inch letters so that the psalm would always be in the book — and Tiana read it slowly.

She read: The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

She read the whole psalm.

She closed the book.

She sat down.

Marcus led the Lord's Prayer.

He led it in the small steady voice he had been developing over the last year. The congregation said it with him. The sanctuary joined the balcony joined the lobby joined the basement joined, through the screen, Lagos and Oakland and Houston and Detroit and Atlanta and San Jose and a small apartment in Brooklyn where a young Sunday school teacher Mama Tate had never met was, at that moment, watching the livestream on her laptop with tears on her face.

The Lord's Prayer filled the building.

At the end of the service, after the choir had sung I'll Fly Away and the casket had been prepared for recessional, Pastor Honeycutt did what Mama Tate had asked for.

He stepped forward to the edge of the platform. He raised his hand.

"Church. Mother Tate, in her last months, made me one specific request. She asked that at the end of her service, every Mother of the Church present, and every Mother in formation, be invited forward to lay a hand on the casket before it leaves the sanctuary. I am going to invite them now. Mothers of the Board — you come first. Mothers in formation — you come second. Future keepers, if the Lord has called you this morning — you come third. You line up at the head of the aisle. You lay your hand on the casket. You pray for three breaths in your own chest. You step back. You take your seat. This is Mother Tate's request. We honor it today."

The sanctuary was, for a moment, still.

Then Sister Doris rose. She walked forward.

Behind her came Sister Linda Briggs. Behind her, Sister Stephanie Edwards of Houston. Behind her, Sister Denise Cole-Harper. Behind her, four of the older women of Mt. Calvary who had been quietly keeping books for years and whom no one had known about.

Then Tiana rose.

Tiana — who had not expected, in the planning, to be called forward in this wave, because she was a granddaughter and not yet a formally titled Mother — stood because Pastor Honeycutt had caught her eye and had given her the small nod that meant you too. She walked up. She laid her hand on the casket. She prayed her three breaths. She stepped back.

Behind Tiana came — and this was not in the plan; Pastor Honeycutt had not expected it, and Yvonne had not expected it, and nobody had expected it, and the congregation did not, in the moment, know what to do with it — Ruth Williamson, age eight, out of the fourth pew, walking up the aisle on her own without looking at anyone.

She reached the casket. She laid her small hand on the wood. She stood for a long second. She walked back to her grandmother.

Patrice, in the pew, put both hands over her face.

Behind Ruth came Naomi.

Naomi did not run. She walked. She walked slowly up the aisle in her burgundy dress and her red sneakers and the small pale blue handkerchief folded into her left fist. She reached the casket. She stood on her toes. She laid her small hand on the wood. She stood for three breaths, the way Pastor Honeycutt had said to. She walked back.

Sheryl Hightower, in the first pew, was crying silently into her own handkerchief.

Behind Naomi, eleven other women — who had been in their pews watching Sister Doris walk up and had, in the small hot press of the moment, answered the call — came up. They laid their hands on the casket. They stepped back.

By the time the wave ended, thirty-nine hands had touched the wood.

Pastor Honeycutt, at the platform, was crying openly.

He said: "Church. The floor is full. The Lord be praised."

He raised his hands.

"Let us pray the benediction."

He paused.

"Before I pray it, I am inviting Dr. Folake Akinyele of Lagos, Nigeria, and the prayer circle of her grandmother's Methodist church, to pray the opening line with me by phone. Yvonne, you hold the phone up to the microphone."

Yvonne stood. She held the phone.

On the other end of the phone, four thousand miles east and nine time zones ahead, in a kitchen in Ikeja at dusk, seven women — Folake and six of Mama Funmi's prayer sisters, who had been doing the keeping in Yoruba for fifty years in the same back room Mama Funmi had used — prayed the first line of the benediction together with Pastor Honeycutt.

They prayed: The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

They prayed it in English and in Yoruba, the two streams running under each other.

The sanctuary received it.

The livestream carried it.

Pastor Honeycutt closed.

The organ began.

The pallbearers — Carl, Marcus, Curtis, Stephen Pruitt, and two of the younger deacons Mama Tate had been praying for by name for a decade — carried the casket out.

The congregation stood. The family followed. The casket went into the hearse.

The service was finished.

Tiana stood at the back of the sanctuary for a moment before following the family.

The casket was gone. The pallbearers had stepped out. The congregation was filing out behind. The aisle was emptying.

She held the composition book against her chest.

She looked up at the ceiling of the sanctuary. She did not know why she looked up. She looked up because her body did. She thought, in the small private chamber where Mama Tate had taught her to think such things: Grandma. The floor was full. Ruth walked up. Naomi walked up. Eleven others came who were not on the list. You got the sending you asked for.

She did not hear an answer.

She did not expect one.

The keeping, Mama Tate had taught her, was not about hearing. The keeping was about carrying.

She lowered her eyes. She walked to the door. Carl was waiting for her. They walked to the car.

Outside, the January light was clear and cold. The motorcade was forming for the drive to Elmwood. The family got in.

The cars pulled out slowly.

In the small brick house on Park Avenue, the pecan tree was bare. The porch was empty. The lamp beside Eldridge's chair had been turned off by Yvonne at seven that morning. The composition book had gone to the sanctuary on Tiana's arm. The small green book of Mother Wells was at the house on Tiana's side table.

The cloud watched.

The motorcade drove.

The keeping continued.