The First Saturday

The Keeper of Hours

Chapter 36: The First Saturday

The first Saturday without her was the sixteenth of January, and Tiana had decided on Thursday that the full Saturday arrangement would happen — the one Mama Tate had set in July and had been refining for six months. She called her mother on Thursday afternoon from the unit.

"Mom."

"Tiana."

"Saturday. The morning at four. You read the legacy pages, like Grandma wanted. Carl sits on the couch. I will read the active. We do the whole arrangement. Yes?"

"Yes, baby."

"It is the first one."

"I know, Tiana. I have been thinking about it all week."

"You ready?"

"I am going to be ready. I will be ready. Grandma told me to read. I will read. I have been practicing at the kitchen table. I have been doing it in my chest for ten years without knowing I was doing it. I am ready. Four o'clock."

"Yes, Mom."

Tiana arrived at Park Avenue at three forty-four on Saturday morning.

She came in the Civic through the cold. The temperature had dropped in the last two days, and a small coat of frost was on the grass and on the porch rail. The air had the specific sharpness of Memphis in the second week of January when the front had come through and the cold had settled.

She let herself in with her own key.

The house was awake.

The small light over the sink was on. The lamp in the front room was on. A fresh pot of coffee was starting in the kitchen — the percolator was going through its first gurgle. Yvonne was in the kitchen, in her housedress and the robe over it, sliding two pieces of bread into the toaster. Carl was in the front room, in his Saturday clothes, in the small wooden chair by the door — he had come over at three-thirty, Tiana could see from the way his cap was already on the hall hook.

"Mom."

"Baby. You come in. I have the kettle on too. I made both in case."

"I will take coffee, Mom."

"Yes, baby."

Tiana went to the front room. Carl stood up.

"Mother Tiana."

She laughed.

"Carl. Do not call me Mother Tiana. Not yet."

"Mama Tate said you were Mother Tiana in the kitchen in December. I have been honoring her words."

"Carl — "

"I am doing it once today, baby. I will not do it again until you have been at the prayer-floor long enough to stop laughing at it. I am honoring Mama's words today only."

She could not, at first, answer him. Her throat had tightened.

"Thank you, Carl."

"Yes, baby."

He sat back down in the wooden chair. He did not go to the couch yet — the couch was for the reading, not before. He sat in his door chair with his hands folded.

Yvonne brought Tiana a mug of coffee. Yvonne brought herself tea because Yvonne, for two years, had been drinking tea on Saturday mornings and not coffee — a small habit Yvonne had learned from her mother, who had learned it from her own mother, and which Yvonne had resumed unconsciously in the week since the funeral because her body was reaching for the small continuities without her asking it to.

They sat in the front room. Tiana in Eldridge's chair. Yvonne on the couch. Carl in the door chair.

At three fifty-nine Yvonne rose.

She went to the side table. She picked up the prayer book. She brought it back to the couch. She opened it.

She looked at Tiana.

"Baby. You want to do the active first, or the legacy first?"

"Mom. You do the legacy first today. Grandma always did the legacy second, but this morning we are going in reverse. We are going to put her on the legacy page by reading her this morning. Then I will do the active. Then we will finish. She would approve."

"Yes, Tiana."

Yvonne opened the prayer book to the legacy pages.

She turned to the first page.

She read.

She read Eldridge Tate, 1936 to 2008.

She read Ola Mae Chambers, the first. My grandmother, Yvonne's great-grandmother. Greenwood, Mississippi.

She read her mother's father. She read her mother's brother, dead at nineteen in the foundry. She read her mother's sister. She read Sister Loretta. She read Brother Jenkins. She read Mother Cole. She read Pastor Briggs.

She read Patricia Mae Hawkins and Sammy Lee and Jerome Brooks Sr., crossed April twenty-second, Died well.

She read Calvin Pruitt, crossed April nineteenth, Free.

She read Patrice Pinkston, crossed April twenty-ninth, Free, with a daughter, with a granddaughter named Ruth.

She read Daphne Crenshaw, crossed April seventh, Held by the Lord. The end was not what we asked. We trust the Lord with the inside of it.

She read Mother Wells of Mt. Calvary, crossed June first, Went home well. The keeping continues.

She read Adebayo Akinyele, crossed June twenty-fourth, Went well.

She read, at the last legacy page, in her daughter's careful block letters:

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

Her voice, on the last line, did not break.

She had been afraid it would. She had been afraid all week. Her voice held.

She finished. She closed the prayer book. She set her hand on it.

She said, quietly, in the small amen her mother had been saying for fifty years: Lord. These are Yours.

"Amen," Tiana said.

"Amen," Carl said, from the door chair.

Tiana read the active list.

She read it in the small measured voice she had been developing since June and which had, in the last week, settled further — not a voice of performance, not a voice of imitation, but a voice of a woman doing her work at four in the morning in a chair her grandmother had left her.

She read the active list slowly. She read it for forty-one minutes.

At the end she closed the composition book.

"Amen," she said.

"Amen," Yvonne said.

"Amen," Carl said.

They sat for a long moment.

The first Saturday morning was done. The arrangement Mama Tate had designed in July and had watched them execute for six months had, this morning, been executed without her for the first time. It had held.

Yvonne was crying quietly on the couch. She had not, this week, cried during a reading, but the reading had been Tiana's until today. Today the reading had been hers. The new reader's tears, Yvonne thought without planning to, were the small closing amen the body added.

Tiana, in Eldridge's chair, let her mother cry.

Carl, in the door chair, let her cry.

After a long while Carl said: "Mama."

Yvonne lifted her face.

"Yes, Carl."

"You read well today."

"Thank you, Carl."

"Mama Tate would have said it too. She would have said Yvonne, baby, you read well."

"Yes, Carl."

Tiana said: "Mom, Grandma is on the legacy page now in your voice."

Yvonne could not, for a moment, answer.

When she did she said: "Baby. I — I want to do the legacy on Saturdays for the rest of my life. I want that part. I want Tiana to keep the active. I want to be the one who reads the dead."

"Yes, Mom."

"I did not, until this morning, know I wanted that. The reading this morning taught me."

"Yes, Mom."

"That is our arrangement. You read the active. I read the legacy. Carl sits on the couch. Every Saturday. Until I cannot. Then — Tiana, then you read both. You will know when."

"Yes, Mom."

The rest of the morning was quiet.

Yvonne made biscuits. Carl ate four. Tiana ate two. They talked about small things — about the weather, about the bank statement Yvonne had not yet opened, about Marcus's plans to come home for Martin Luther King weekend in three days. They did not, for the rest of the morning, talk about the reading.

At eleven Carl went home to Cordova.

At eleven-thirty Denise Cole-Harper called.

"Tiana."

"Sister Cole-Harper."

"Baby. I am sorry to call on a Saturday. I have been — I have a question. It has been bothering me all week. I thought about waiting until Sunday to ask after church. I have decided I cannot wait that long."

"You come over now, Sister. We are at the house. I am here all afternoon."

"I can come at one."

"One is fine."

Tiana hung up.

She told her mother. Her mother said, baby, that is what the afternoon is for. You counsel. You will be counseling for the next forty years. Today is the first one. You are ready. You do it at the kitchen table. I will be in the bedroom if you need me. I will stay out of the room.

Tiana nodded.

Denise came at one-oh-two.

She was in jeans and a blue sweater. She was carrying her own composition book — a new one, the marbled cover, which she had bought at Dollar General in August — and a small thermos of coffee she had made at her own kitchen in Frayser before driving over.

She sat at the kitchen table across from Tiana.

"Sister Cole-Harper. Tell me."

"Tiana — I want you to call me Denise, baby. We are past Sister Cole-Harper now. I am sixteen years older than you. I am a new keeper. You are my — you are my teacher. We can drop the titles in this kitchen."

"Yes, Denise."

"Tiana. I want to ask about a name."

"Ask."

"There is a boy in my sixth-grade class this fall. His name is Jamal. He is eleven. He is — Tiana, he is struggling. His father has been in prison since he was six. His mother works two jobs. He sleeps, some nights, in the school bathroom because he does not want to go home. I have been — I have been keeping him in the small piece-of-paper way in my Bible since September. I have not, yet, written him in the composition book. I have been afraid to. I want to ask you why I have been afraid."

Tiana did not, for a moment, answer.

She had not, in the eight months since her grandmother had begun the counseling practice in May, been in the chair of the counselor. She had been the granddaughter by her grandmother's side. She had been, in Denise's visit in August, the assistant. She had been watching. She had been absorbing.

She was, this afternoon, the one.

She breathed.

She said: "Denise. The reason you have been afraid is that the composition book is, for you, the formal book. Writing a name in it is the full yes. You have been giving the boy the informal yes. The informal yes is real. The informal yes is also, I think, what you are carrying by putting the paper in the Bible. Grandma said the small piece of paper in the Bible is a holding. It is not a permanent holding. It does not commit you the same way the composition book does. You have been afraid to commit because you have been afraid of what the commitment would do to your teaching."

Denise looked at her.

"Tiana. How did you know that."

"I know it because — because Grandma used to say, when I was learning her practice, that the Bible-paper is the waiting room and the composition book is the yes. Most Mothers, she said, have a phase where they keep names in the waiting room because the composition book feels too heavy. It is normal. The question — Grandma said — is not whether you are ready to write. The question is whether the Lord is telling you to write. You answer that one by asking yourself: have you, in the small interior way, heard the Lord say his name to you in the waking hours when you were not praying?"

Denise thought.

She thought for a long minute.

"Tiana — yes. I have. I heard his name yesterday in the lunch line at school. I was not thinking about him. I was thinking about something else. His name came up in my head. I set my tray down for a second. I was — I was asking myself what that was."

"That was the Lord, Denise. That was Him moving the name from the waiting room. He is telling you to write."

"Yes, Tiana."

"You open your book. You write Jamal's name. You add what you know. His age. His classroom situation. His father. His mother. You underline his name. You pray for him every morning from Monday forward."

"Yes, Tiana."

"And Denise."

"Yes."

"One more thing. Grandma told me last year — in June when I was asking her about a name I had been holding and not writing — she said baby, the writing is sometimes a moment you have to walk through alone. You do it in your own kitchen. You do not do it in front of another keeper. You do it with the Lord. You write. You close the book. You sit with the book. That moment is sacred. Do not rush past it. Do not put a name in the book with somebody watching. I am telling you that now. You drive home. You do it tonight. I will not be there. The Lord will."

Denise's eyes filled.

"Yes, Tiana."

"Denise."

"Yes, baby."

"You have been doing the work well. Grandma would have told you so."

"Thank you, Tiana."

"Now. Do you want coffee?"

Denise laughed. "I brought my own in the thermos. We are all right."

"Then let us sit on the porch a few minutes. The sun is out."

They sat on the porch for twenty minutes.

They did not, on the porch, talk about the book. They talked about Denise's granddaughter Brielle, whose adoption had, last week, moved forward another step — a hearing had been scheduled for early March. Denise was preparing Brielle's room. Brielle had stayed with them twice in December on weekend visits arranged by the caseworker.

"Denise. Tell me about Brielle."

"She is small. She is three. She is quiet. Her hair is just long enough to do two small puffs in. She is afraid of loud things. She is not, praise the Lord, afraid of me. She is not afraid of Keith. She sits in Keith's lap when she watches cartoons. Keith has been — Tiana, Keith has been teaching himself to braid at sixty-one. He watches videos on YouTube. He practices on a doll."

Tiana laughed. The laugh was the first real laugh she had done all week.

"Denise. That is the Lord."

"It is, Tiana."

Denise left at two-fifteen. She hugged Tiana at the door. She drove home to Frayser with the composition book in her lap and a name she would, that night at nine-thirty in her own kitchen at her own table with Keith asleep in the bedroom, write in her own hand in her own book.

At three Yvonne came out of the bedroom.

"Baby."

"Mom."

"You did good."

"You were listening?"

"I was not listening to the words. I heard you through the wall. I was listening to the rhythm. You had Grandma's rhythm. I wanted you to know."

Tiana sat down at the kitchen table. She put her head in her hands.

"Mom."

"Yes, baby."

"I do not know how to be her."

"Baby. You are not being her. You are being you. You have her rhythm because you have been living with her rhythm for thirty years. It is in your body. You are not copying. You are continuing. There is a difference."

"Yes, Mom."

"Now. We are going to eat something. Then you are going to go home to your apartment. You sleep there tonight. You come back tomorrow morning at nine for church. I am here. I am fine. You do not have to carry the house tonight. Carl will come over at six. We will eat leftovers. I will be all right."

"Yes, Mom."

Tiana drove home at four-thirty.

She drove slowly. The January light had gone amber early. The streets were, on a Saturday afternoon in Memphis, the small ordinary streets of a city doing its weekend business. A basketball game on a driveway. Two men carrying a sofa. A woman pushing a stroller.

At her apartment she sat in the car for a moment before going in.

She thought about what her mother had said.

You are not being her. You are being you. You have her rhythm because you have been living with her rhythm for thirty years. You are not copying. You are continuing. There is a difference.

She thought about Denise.

She thought about what she had said — the thing about the waiting room and the composition book, which she had not, until the words had come out of her mouth, known she knew. The words had come from her grandmother, she knew that. They had been in her from listening. They had come out when Denise had needed them to. That was how, she realized, her grandmother's teaching worked — it lived in the listeners, and it came out when a room needed it, and the listener did not always know it was there until it was said.

She would be, she thought, slowly, over the next forty years, the kind of woman her grandmother had been — not because she was imitating her grandmother, but because her grandmother had been in her since she was small, and the Lord was going to use what was in her.

She did not, at the steering wheel, cry.

She thanked the Lord instead. She thanked Him for her grandmother. She thanked Him for Denise. She thanked Him for Jamal, whom she did not know, and for the writing that would happen tonight in a kitchen in Frayser. She thanked Him for her mother, who had read the legacy pages for the first time and had not broken. She thanked Him for the small first Saturday.

She went inside.

She made a small supper. She read for an hour. She went to bed at nine.

At nine-forty she woke briefly to the small ping of a text. She checked her phone. It was Denise. The text said only: Book is open. Jamal is written. Underlined. I am going to bed. Thank you, Tiana.

Tiana set the phone down.

She slept.

In the small brick house on Park Avenue, Yvonne was on the couch in the front room watching the tail end of a movie with Carl beside her and the small lamp by Eldridge's chair on low. The pecan tree was bare against the dark. The prayer book and the composition book were on the side table. The keeping continued.

In Frayser, Denise Cole-Harper was in bed with her husband Keith, and the composition book was on her nightstand with a name in it that had not been there yesterday, and the small writing had settled something in her that she had been carrying since September.

In Oakland, Tamika Wells was sitting at her own kitchen table with the condolence letter from Pamela open in front of her, which had arrived twelve days ago and which she had not, until tonight, picked up. Diane was at the stove behind her making tea. The small brown dog Cornbread was at Tamika's feet. Tamika read the letter for the first time. She did not cry. She did not, tonight, write back. But she folded the letter carefully and put it in the small wooden box in her closet where, in 1998, she had put her mother's first letter.

The box held, now, two letters.

In Whitehaven, Naomi was asleep in her small bed with Mr. Apatosaurus and the small bear. Her alarm clock, which was still set to the small recording of her own voice saying We bring good tidings of great joy, would go off in the morning at six-thirty.

In Detroit, Stephen Pruitt was on the phone with his mother.

In Lagos, Folake was at the kitchen table with the laptop, writing her weekly email to Tobi in Atlanta.

In Atlanta, Tobi — who had flown home the day after the funeral and who had been at work Monday through Friday — was at her own kitchen table with a small composition book, newly begun, and was writing the first names of her own practice. Her grandmother's name was on the first page. Her father's was on the second. A small list of her patients' names was on the third.

The keepers, in the small first Saturday of the year after, were at their kitchens across the country and across the ocean.

The first Saturday had ended. The first week had ended with it. The next week would begin on Monday.

In the small brick house on Park Avenue, the pecan tree was bare against the January stars. The small light over the sink burned on. The house held Yvonne and Carl. The book was on the side table. The ordinary continuation was the ordinary continuation, and the Lord, who had been arranging the ordinary for fifty years, was arranging it still.