Mother's Day

The Keeper of Hours

Chapter 40: Mother's Day

Patrice Williamson called on the last Sunday of April.

"Yvonne."

"Patrice."

"Baby. Maurice and I have been talking. Camille has been talking. We want to come for Mother's Day weekend. All four of us this time — Maurice is coming. We have not been up since the funeral. I know you are only four months in. If you are not up to it, you say no. We will come a different time."

Yvonne did not, for a moment, answer.

Then she said: "Patrice."

"Yes."

"Come, baby. Mother's Day will be — it will be the first one. Having you in the house will be right. Mama would have wanted you there. I want you there. You bring Ruth."

"Yvonne. You are sure."

"I am sure, Patrice. Tiana is at Park every weekend. Marcus is moving home in June — did I tell you? — and he is flying in for that weekend too. Carl is here. Naomi will be here. If you come, the house is going to be — Patrice, the house is going to be full. That is what Mama wanted."

"Yes, Yvonne."

"Come on the eighth. Stay through the tenth."

"Yes, Yvonne. We will."

The Williamsons flew in on Saturday the eighth of May at noon. Marcus picked them up at the airport in his rental car. He had flown in the night before. He was in charge of the transportation because Tiana was at the hospital until five that afternoon and Yvonne was at Park Avenue cooking and Carl was at the grill.

They arrived at Park Avenue at one-fifteen. Patrice was in a gray travel outfit. Camille was in a navy blouse. Ruth — who had been eight for eight months now and who had grown in the year since Tiana had last seen her — was in a small yellow dress. Maurice was in a light gray suit because, Patrice had told Yvonne on Tuesday, Maurice did not own casual clothes for visiting and would not be talked out of the suit.

They came up the porch steps.

Yvonne met them at the door. She did not, for a moment, trust her voice. She opened her arms. She hugged Patrice first, then Camille, then Maurice, and finally — after a brief nod that said come here, baby — Ruth, who was larger than last May and who hugged Yvonne with the same small careful eight-year-old dignity with which she did everything.

"Come in. Come in. Lunch is on the table. Carl is grilling for tonight. Tiana will be home at five-thirty."

They came in.

Patrice stopped in the kitchen doorway.

She had not been in this kitchen since the funeral in January. She had been at the service. She had been at the repast. She had not, in the four days of her January visit, come to this house. The kitchen was the kitchen she had first re-entered a year ago in May, when she had sat in the chair to the left of the door where she had sat at seventeen.

The chair was still there.

Yvonne said, without drawing attention: "Patrice, baby. Sit where you sit."

Patrice sat in the chair to the left of the door.

Ruth, without being told, climbed into the chair beside her grandmother, which was the chair Naomi would have sat in if Naomi were there. Ruth had been told, in the car from the airport, that Naomi and Naomi's grandparents would come on Sunday afternoon. Ruth had been pleased about this. She had said, from the back seat, Mama, I want to show Naomi the pecan tree. I have been thinking about the pecan tree since last year. Camille had said, baby, you can show her.

The lunch was small. Yvonne had made chicken salad sandwiches and a small pot of tomato soup. They ate. Maurice — who had been hearing about this kitchen for a year — looked around it with the small careful look of a man trying to match the kitchen to the stories he had been told. He did not, at first, say much. At one point he said quietly to Patrice: Baby. The cabinets are the cabinets you described. Patrice had said yes, honey.

After lunch they moved to the porch.

Carl was at the grill in the back. Yvonne had taken a break from the kitchen. Marcus was on the floor of the front room reading to Ruth from a small book Ruth had brought. Camille and Yvonne were at the kitchen table having a second cup of tea. Patrice and Maurice were on the porch with Tiana's grandmother's wicker chairs — now just the household's wicker chairs.

Patrice said, to the pecan tree: "Maurice."

"Yes, baby."

"This is the porch."

"I know, baby."

"I sat here with Mother Tate in 2026. It was the first time I saw her. She was sitting in this chair. I came up the steps. She said — she said come up, Patrice Williamson. Come up. The door is open. The porch is yours. I have been telling you that sentence for a year."

"I remember, baby."

"She said the porch was mine."

"Yes."

"Today I am sitting in the second chair because my husband is here. She was sitting in the first. I sat in the second. We have changed positions. That is — Maurice, that is the thing that is striking me. Everyone has changed positions."

"Yes, Patrice."

Maurice put his hand on his wife's. They sat quietly for several minutes.

After a while Patrice said: "Yvonne is doing well."

"She is."

"She is sitting in her mother's kitchen as if it is her kitchen."

"She has been, for a year, baby."

"I know. I am — I am noticing. She is holding the house."

"She is."

"Mama Tate taught her how."

"She did."

Tiana came at five forty-three.

She came in through the kitchen door with the small scrub tiredness that she had developed over the last year — the small post-shift tiredness of a nurse who had been at the unit twelve hours and had driven across town in traffic. She kissed her mother. She hugged Camille. She went to the porch and hugged Patrice and shook Maurice's hand. She went to the front room and knelt on the floor beside Marcus and Ruth and told Ruth she had grown two inches, which made Ruth laugh and straighten her back.

At six the family sat down to supper. Eight at the table — Yvonne, Carl, Tiana, Marcus, Patrice, Maurice, Camille, Ruth. Marcus said the blessing. The blessing was short. He ended with Carl's line: And Lord, we lift up those who are not at this table but whose names are in this house. We lift up Mama Tate. Amen.

Amen, the others said.

They ate.

Ruth asked about Mama Tate in the middle of dinner.

She asked it the way an eight-year-old asks a question she has been preparing to ask — with the careful look of a child who had decided on the plane that tonight was the right night for the question.

"Yvonne."

"Yes, Ruth."

"Mother Tate — when she went — did you get to say goodbye."

The table quieted.

Yvonne set her fork down. She did not, at first, answer. She looked at Ruth — who was eight, and who had been coming to this kitchen in her grandmother's and mother's retellings since the year before, and who had laid her hand on Mother Tate's casket in January in a way nobody at the pew had planned.

Yvonne said, carefully: "Ruth. I did. The night she went. She spoke to me. She said — baby, she said I had been a good daughter. She said she loved me. She said she was proud of me. She said it with her voice. Then she slept, and then she went to heaven."

"Did she say goodbye."

"Baby. She did not use the word. She said the things that were instead of goodbye. I think they were her goodbye."

"Yes."

Ruth thought about this.

She said: "Yvonne. I did not get to say goodbye. I said goodbye at the casket. I put my hand on the wood. I said my own small goodbye in my chest. I wanted to know if I did it right."

The table was very still.

Yvonne said, in a voice that did not quite hold: "Baby. You did it right. The casket goodbye is a goodbye. Mother Tate saw you. She heard. Heaven is a big place but the Lord gives the people the ear for the ones who are telling them goodbye. She heard you, Ruth. I am certain of it."

"Okay."

Ruth nodded. She ate a small piece of cornbread.

After a moment Patrice reached over and put her hand on her granddaughter's back.

Camille said, quietly, across the table: "Baby. Thank you for asking. That was the right thing to ask tonight."

"Yes, Mama."

After supper the adults had coffee on the porch. Marcus took Ruth to the front yard to show her where the pecan shells had fallen last fall in case any were still around — she wanted to see the shape of a pecan shell, because she had never, she told him, seen one. Tiana went with them. They walked, the three of them, in the small mild May evening, while the adults sat.

Patrice said: "Yvonne."

"Patrice."

"I want to say one thing to you while Ruth is out of the room."

"Tell me, baby."

"In the year since I first sat on this porch, my life has changed. You do not know the full shape of it because I have not, in our calls, wanted to make it about me. Camille and her family are good. Ruth is — Ruth is better than good. Maurice retired in September. We have been, as a family, in the most stable year we have had in thirty years. I have attributed all of it to the Lord, which is right. I have also attributed some of it to the fact that my mother's name is in your mother's book, and my name, and my daughter's name, and my granddaughter's name. I have been — Yvonne, I have been believing, more and more, that the book held us. I think it is true. I wanted to say so, out loud, on this porch, before this weekend is over."

Yvonne did not, for a moment, speak.

"Patrice."

"Yes."

"The book holds the people it holds. My mother was — my mother was the first hand. Tiana is the second. The Lord is the first keeper under both hands. I believe with you. I am — Patrice, I am glad the holding has reached Houston. I am glad Maurice has had a stable September through May. I am glad Ruth has been growing. Those are receipts. The book collects them quietly. My mother taught me that."

"Yes."

"You stay here as long as you want tonight. Stay at the hotel if you have to because Maurice prefers a real bed. But come back tomorrow at ten for breakfast before church. All four of you. The Hightowers are coming at one. We will have Naomi here all afternoon. Mother's Day will be full."

"We will come at ten, Yvonne."

"Good."

The Williamsons left for the hotel at nine-fifteen. Ruth, in the back seat, fell asleep before they were out of the neighborhood.

Tiana, on the porch, said to her mother at nine-forty: "Mom."

"Yes, Tiana."

"That was a long day."

"It was."

"You good?"

"I am, baby. I am tired. I am also — I am all right. It is the first Mother's Day weekend. I have been practicing, at the stove, all week. The practicing held me today."

"Yes, Mom."

"Tiana."

"Yes."

"Tomorrow. Church in the morning. Lunch here after. Hightowers at one. You do the morning at four. I will do the legacy as usual. Carl on the couch. Williamsons will join for the morning if they want — it is a Sunday so we are short. I have told Patrice. She said they will come over at nine-thirty."

"Yes, Mom."

"Go to bed, baby. You have been up since three-thirty."

"Yes, Mom."

Sunday morning was gentle.

Tiana did the morning alone at four. Yvonne joined her at four forty-five for the legacy pages. The reading was clean. Yvonne read Mama Tate's entry at the end of the legacy pages without her voice catching, which Tiana noticed and which Yvonne noticed herself and which both of them quietly thanked the Lord for.

The Williamsons came at nine-forty. Patrice walked into the front room and — without anyone telling her to — she sat on the couch. She did not, at first, speak. She listened to the small domestic post-morning sounds of the kitchen. She said, quietly, after a while: Yvonne, your mother was in this room this morning. Yvonne had said, She was, Patrice. Patrice had nodded.

Breakfast was at ten. Church at Mt. Calvary at eleven-fifteen. The congregation, this year, had a small Mother's Day moment in which Pastor Honeycutt asked every mother present to stand, and then every grandmother, and then every great-grandmother, and then every woman who had mothered a child she had not birthed — at which point Sheryl Hightower, who had come to Mt. Calvary for Mother's Day for the first time ever, stood in her pew with her husband holding her elbow. Pastor Honeycutt blessed them all. He blessed, by special request read from the bulletin, the memory of Mother Tate.

The service ran forty minutes longer than a usual Sunday, which was the Mother's Day custom at Mt. Calvary since the nineties, and which Yvonne had been expecting.

After church they went back to Park.

The Hightowers arrived at one-oh-eight.

Reggie was driving. Sheryl was in the passenger seat. Naomi — five and a half now — was in the back in a small pale blue dress with small white shoes that were not the red sneakers, because the red sneakers, Sheryl had told Yvonne last week on the phone, had finally grown too small in April, and had been retired with ceremony to the top of Naomi's dresser.

They came up the path.

Ruth Williamson, who had been waiting on the porch with Marcus for the last twenty minutes, stood up when she saw the car. She had been, all morning, preparing to meet Naomi. She had asked her mother four times what time Naomi would arrive. She had brought, in her small overnight bag, a small notebook with some drawings she had made for Naomi, which Camille had, at Ruth's instruction, wrapped in bright paper.

Naomi got out of the car.

The two small girls — eight and five and a half, across a yard, on a Sunday afternoon in May, both of them dressed carefully, both of them prepared by their grandmothers — looked at each other.

Ruth said: "Naomi."

"Ruth."

"I am Ruth. My grandma knows your great-grandma."

"My great-grandma is in heaven."

"Yes. My grandma said. I am sorry."

"Thank you, Ruth."

Ruth walked down the porch steps. She walked up the path. She stopped when she was two feet from Naomi. She held out the wrapped package.

"This is for you. I made it."

Naomi took the package. She did not, at first, open it. She looked at her Grandma Sheryl. Sheryl nodded.

Naomi opened it.

Inside was the small notebook — a plain spiral-bound thing Ruth had bought at a dollar store in Houston. It had, on the first page, a careful eight-year-old drawing of two girls on a porch, one bigger than the other, with the words Ruth and Naomi written underneath in careful printing. On the next page was a drawing of a pecan tree. On the next, a drawing of a bus stop with the number 159 on it. On the next, a drawing of two houses — one labeled Memphis and one labeled Houston — with a road between them. On the last page was a drawing of two girls holding hands with a careful block-letter caption: Friends.

Naomi looked at the drawings.

She looked up at Ruth.

"Ruth."

"Yes, Naomi."

"Are we friends?"

"I hope so, Naomi. My grandma says we are cousins by the book."

"Cousins?"

"Cousins. Our great-grandmas prayed for each other. Your great-grandma prayed for my grandma. My grandma prayed for me. You and me — we are both in the book. So we are cousins."

Naomi thought about this.

"Yes. We are cousins."

"Okay."

The two girls walked up the porch together. Ruth took Naomi's hand. Naomi let her.

The adults — Patrice with her hand on her chest, Camille with her eyes wet, Sheryl with her hand on her own cheek — watched the walk.

Yvonne, at the door, said quietly: Patrice. That just happened.

Patrice said, without looking away: Yes, Yvonne.

The afternoon was a small beautiful hour.

Ruth and Naomi played in the backyard — Ruth led; Naomi followed carefully; they had, by three, agreed to be the kind of cousins whose favorite games involved a lot of counting. They counted the pecan buds on the tree (the small green hands were just starting). They counted the dogwood flowers across the lot. They counted the steps on the porch. They counted the number of Mothers in the house (five, Ruth had said carefully: Sheryl, Camille, Yvonne, Patrice, and Tiana — who was, Ruth explained, a mother of the book). Tiana had laughed at being counted. Ruth had said, Aunt Tiana, you are.

The adults sat on the porch.

Maurice and Reggie — who had not met before today — discovered at two-fifteen that they had both, in the nineties, worked in transit administration in different cities, and they did not, for the next hour, run out of things to discuss.

Camille and Tiana sat on the porch steps and caught up — Camille had been promoted to grade-level lead last fall; Tiana had been asked to mentor two new nurses at the unit.

Patrice and Yvonne sat in the wicker chairs. They did not, for long stretches, speak. They sat. They were content.

Sheryl sat in the small folding chair Carl had brought out. Carl, at one point, came up from the backyard where he had been grilling and sat beside her for forty minutes. He told her about the step stool. He told her about Brielle. He told her about Denise and Keith. Sheryl asked gently if she could come with him next time he visited, because she wanted to meet Denise, and she wanted to meet the little girl. Carl said yes.

The Hightowers left at four-thirty with a sleeping Naomi.

The Williamsons left at five-fifteen for the hotel.

By six the house was down to four — Yvonne, Carl, Tiana, Marcus. They sat at the kitchen table and ate leftover chicken and warm bread and passed, in the small quiet of a Sunday evening at the end of a long Mother's Day weekend, the small comments of a family that had managed the day well.

At seven-thirty Yvonne said: "Babies."

"Yes, Mom," they said.

"Mama would have liked today."

"She would have, Mom."

"She was at the table."

"Yes, Mom."

"I felt her in the kitchen when Patrice sat down in the chair this morning."

"Yes, Mom."

"And Ruth taking Naomi's hand on the path — Mama would have been on her porch watching that from wherever she is. I am sure of it."

"Yes, Mom."

"Tomorrow is Monday. I am tired. I want to be in bed at nine. Tiana, you go home tonight. You come back Tuesday for the evening if you want. I am all right tonight. Carl is here."

"Yes, Mom."

"Marcus — when are you flying back."

"Wednesday morning early. I have a meeting Thursday I cannot move."

"Good. You stay Tuesday at Cordova with your dad. Come over for dinner tomorrow."

"Yes, Mom."

"I love you all. Go to bed when you need to."

She went to the bedroom. Carl followed her thirty minutes later. Tiana drove home at eight-thirty. Marcus went to Cordova at nine.

The house was, by ten, quiet.

Tiana sat at her apartment kitchen table with the composition book at eleven.

She had not read yet tonight. She had not added the notes of the day. She sat. The book was closed on the table.

She thought about the first Mother's Day without Mama Tate.

She thought about her own mother sitting at the head of the table in the kitchen, receiving Patrice and Maurice, directing the afternoon. Her mother had, in the last year, become the matriarch. The becoming had not been sudden. It had been quiet. It had been the slow shift of a woman who had been the daughter for fifty-eight years and who had, with her mother's going, inherited a role she had been preparing for without knowing.

Tiana had been the keeper. Her mother was the matriarch. Marcus was coming home. Naomi was five and a half. Ruth had held her hand. Brielle was in Frayser. Tamika was in Oakland reading letters. Denise was in Frayser with a step stool. The Hightowers were carrying.

She opened the book.

She did not, tonight, add notes. She just sat with it open on her lap.

She said, in the small interior way: Grandma. We did it. The first one is over. Mom held the kitchen. I held the book. Marcus is coming home. The two girls held hands on the path. The Lord was the Lord. Thank You.

She closed the book.

She set it on the side table.

She went to bed.

In the cloud, in the small arrangement of the prayer-floor on the other side that Mama Tate had told Mother Wells about on the first of June in the side room at Mt. Calvary, Mama Tate was — Tiana suspected, without claiming — at her own prayer-floor. The prayer was for the next month, the next year, the next decade. The prayer covered Park Avenue and Whitehaven and Houston and Oakland and Detroit and Lagos and Frayser and Atlanta and the small cities Tiana did not yet know the book would reach.

Spring was full. Summer was coming. The pecan tree had all its small green hands. In October, they would be pecans.

Ruth and Naomi were cousins by the book.