Ola

The Keeper of Hours

Chapter 59: Ola

Tiana went into labor at three-forty-six on the morning of Wednesday, January fourteenth, twenty thirty-two, at home on Greenwood Street, in the bed she had been sleeping in for twenty months.

She had, by that morning, been at thirty-nine weeks and four days.

The pregnancy had been, by the physicians at the clinic, uncomplicated. Tiana was thirty-five. First pregnancy. Everything had progressed on schedule.

Yvonne had, over the nine months, been alternately protective and careful — protective in the first trimester, when she had insisted Tiana not take the Park Avenue morning shift on Saturdays and had insisted Yvonne herself would cover the reading; careful in the second and third, when she had taught Tiana the small things her own mother had taught her during Yvonne's pregnancy with Tiana in 1995 and 1996. Yvonne had, throughout, been both her mother's mother and her grandmother's daughter, and had spent the nine months in a low steady state of thanking the Lord for the particular specific grace of a living mother who got to see her daughter become pregnant by a good man.

Yvonne had, since Carl had gone eleven months before, settled into her widowhood slowly.

The first six months had been hard. The second three — after Tiana had told her in April that she was expecting — had been easier. The last two, Yvonne had said to Tiana in December, had been full.

Tiana woke David at three forty-nine.

He had been asleep beside her. She had been awake, she told him, since three-ten — the contractions had started at three-ten but had been mild, and she had wanted to let David sleep as long as she could before waking him. At three forty-six she had had a harder one. She had decided it was time.

David said: "Tiana."

"David."

"Is it starting."

"It is, David."

"Okay."

He sat up. He did not, in any way, panic. David had, over the nine months, been the kind of husband who had read the birth books, had attended the birth class, and had prepared a small go-bag that had been by the door since week thirty-six. He got out of bed. He turned on the small bedside lamp. He said: "Tiana. How far apart."

"Four minutes."

"We are going now."

"David. Let me shower first. One quick one. I want to be clean when they meet her."

"Yes. Ten minutes."

She showered. He dressed. By four-oh-five they were in the car.

He called Yvonne from the driveway.

"Mom."

"David."

"Tiana is in labor. We are going to Methodist Le Bonheur. Contractions four minutes apart."

"I am coming."

"Yes, Mom."

"I will meet you at the hospital in twenty minutes."

"Yes."

Yvonne got to Methodist Le Bonheur at four twenty-eight.

She had dressed in three minutes. She had been, for the entire month of December and the two weeks of January, sleeping in a housedress she could pull over easily and a pair of soft pants, because she had known — from her own experience in 1996 — that labor nights did not give you time to pick an outfit.

Tiana was in admissions when Yvonne arrived. David was with her. The contractions had moved to three minutes apart. The nurse at the counter — a young Black woman in scrubs whose name, Yvonne would later learn, was Keisha and who had been a nurse for six years — was checking them in.

Yvonne went to Tiana. She took her hand. She said, simply: "Baby. I am here."

"Mom."

"How are you."

"Mom, it hurts."

"I know, baby."

"Mom — Mom, Mama is in the room."

"I know, Tiana."

"I have been feeling her all morning. Since the first contraction. I am not — Mom, I am not imagining it. She is in the room."

"I know, baby. I have been feeling her too since David's call. She is here."

"Yes."

"She is going to be here through the whole thing. Mama is going to be with you through the whole labor. Your grandmother did not get to be at your birth. She has been waiting thirty-five years to be at a Brooks birth. She is waiting for her own name's hour. She is here."

Tiana did not, for a long moment, answer.

She closed her eyes against a contraction.

When she opened them she said: "Mom. Good."

The labor was eleven hours.

They brought Tiana to a room on the fifth floor at five-oh-four. The labor and delivery nurse was a woman named Tammy — mid-fifties, white, a nurse with twenty-eight years at Methodist Le Bonheur — who had the specific calm of a woman who had been at thousands of births. She asked Tiana gentle questions, told her the small practical things about the next eleven hours, and, at six-twelve, said: Honey. You are three centimeters. You are going to be here a while. Your mama and your husband are going to walk you. You walk as long as you can. It helps. I will come back at eight.

She walked.

David and Yvonne walked with her in rotating shifts. She walked the small hospital corridor in her socks and the hospital gown. She stopped, at each contraction, and breathed. She kept walking after.

At eight Tammy came back. She was four centimeters.

At ten-thirty she was six. The contractions were harder. Tiana, through the contractions, was praying. She had told Yvonne in her second trimester, in August of twenty thirty-one, that she had been thinking about what prayer she would pray through labor. She had decided, in August, that she would say the same five sentences she had been teaching to the next generation since 2029. She had decided the sentences were the ones she knew by bone and could reach for even through pain.

She said them now.

Lord. I am here. Who do You want me to carry today.

She said them on the contractions. She waited the three breaths between them. The baby came up through the birth canal slowly and steadily, as if responding to the rhythm of the sentences.

At twelve-ten the obstetrician came — a tall Black woman named Dr. Amaya Robinson, who had been Tiana's OB for the whole pregnancy and who had, in the last two visits, told Tiana that she would be attending the birth if her schedule allowed. It had allowed.

She said: "Tiana. You are ready. Second stage. You push on the next contraction."

Tiana pushed.

She pushed through four contractions. She pushed through five. The baby's head crowned at twelve forty-two. The head came through at twelve forty-four. The shoulders and the body followed at twelve forty-five and thirty seconds.

The baby came out.

The baby cried.

The baby was a girl.

Dr. Robinson said, quietly: "She is here. She is pink. She is breathing. She is — Tiana, she is perfect."

They put her on Tiana's chest at twelve forty-five and ninety seconds.

She was small. She was the deep pink of a baby who had just done the hardest work she had ever done. Her hair was black and already a little curled. Her eyes, when they opened briefly at three minutes of age, were the dark midnight blue of every newborn's eyes. She had her great-grandmother's small wide mouth — which Yvonne, from beside the bed, saw first and which Yvonne, from beside the bed, recognized before anyone said the name.

David had tears on his face.

He had not, in nine months, cried. He cried now. He put his hand, very gently, on the baby's back. He said: "Tiana."

"David."

"She is here."

"She is here, David."

"She has a mouth."

"She has my grandmother's mouth."

"Yes."

Yvonne, on the other side of the bed, said, in a voice that had gone small: "Baby."

"Mom."

"That is Mama's mouth."

"It is, Mom."

"She came with the mouth."

"She did."

The next forty minutes went in a small warm blur.

Dr. Robinson did the small post-delivery work. Tammy brought warm blankets. The baby was weighed — six pounds eleven ounces, the same weight Tiana had been at her own birth, which Yvonne noted on the whiteboard without commentary — and measured at nineteen inches. The cord was cut. The small set of first-hour rituals was completed.

By one-thirty the baby was back on Tiana's chest, nursing for the first time. Tiana was exhausted and radiant. David was sitting on the edge of the bed with his hand on Tiana's shoulder. Yvonne was in the chair by the window with her own hand on her own chest.

David said, quietly: "Tiana. What is her name."

Tiana looked up.

She had, over nine months, discussed the name with David many times. They had, in July, landed on a shape they had both held quietly through the second half of the pregnancy. They had not announced it. They had agreed in July to hold it for this moment.

Tiana said: "David. You say it."

David said: "Ola Mae Brooks Taylor."

Yvonne, in the chair, put her hand over her face.

She did not, immediately, speak.

Tiana said, softly: "Mom."

"Yes, Tiana."

"Is that — is that all right with you?"

"Baby."

"Yes, Mom."

"Baby. Your grandmother will have been — I believe, baby, she will have been at the prayer-floor on the other side for five days now preparing to welcome this child with her name coming through. She knew. She — Tiana, she wrote to me in the letter I opened in March twenty twenty-seven that you would have a daughter one day and the daughter might bear her name. She asked me to not tell you in advance. I have kept the secret for four years and ten months. I am telling you now."

Tiana closed her eyes.

"Mom."

"Yes, baby."

"Mama asked for this."

"Not asked. She said — she said she would receive it, if it came, with joy. She said she was leaving the decision to you and David. She did not want you to feel pressured. She did not tell me to mention it. She told me to hold the secret. I held it."

"Mom. You should have told me."

"Baby. No. She was right. The name had to come from you and David freely, not from her through me. You came to the name in July without knowing. That is the Lord, not Mama. I have been watching since July, holding the secret. Today the name has come. Ola Mae is in the room. Mama is in the room. I am — Tiana, I am beside myself with the Lord today."

Tiana wept quietly.

David held her hand.

Yvonne stood up. She came to the bed. She bent over her granddaughter.

She said, to the baby, in the small old voice she had inherited from her own mother: Ola Mae Brooks Taylor. Welcome, baby. Your great-grandmother has been waiting for you. I am Grandma. I am the one who is going to tell you stories about her for all the years of your growing up. You have her mouth. You have — baby, you have her mouth.

They called Sheryl at two-fifteen.

Sheryl and Reggie drove Naomi to the hospital at three-fifteen. Naomi, who had been kept out of school for the day in anticipation of the birth, came up the elevator with her overnight bag because Sheryl had been told, gently, that Naomi would be spending the night at Park Avenue after the hospital visit — which meant, Sheryl had told Yvonne on the phone, Naomi sleeping in Yvonne's guest room with Yvonne there, because Sheryl had decided three weeks ago that Naomi should get the first cousin overnight of the new era in Yvonne's house, not the Hightowers'.

Naomi came into the room at three twenty-two.

She was nine years and eleven months old. She was in her school clothes — Sheryl had not had time to change her — and she came to the bed with the small careful step she had been bringing to important arrivals since she was three.

She said: "Cousin Tiana."

"Baby."

"Is it a girl."

"It is, Naomi."

"Can I see her?"

"Come up, baby."

Naomi climbed up onto the side of the bed. Tiana turned the baby slightly so Naomi could see her face.

Naomi looked for a long time.

She did not, for a moment, speak.

She said, finally: "Cousin Tiana."

"Yes, baby."

"She has Great-Grandma's mouth."

"She does, baby."

"What is her name."

"Ola Mae Brooks Taylor."

Naomi, on the bed, said the name back to herself slowly.

Ola Mae Brooks Taylor.

She said it out loud. She said it in her chest. She tested the shape of it.

She said: "That is the right name, Cousin Tiana. Great-Grandma is smiling on the other side right now. I am sure of it."

"I know she is, baby."

Naomi put her small hand, very gently, on the baby's foot under the blanket.

She said, to the baby: "Cousin Ola. I am Cousin Naomi. I am nine. I am going to be ten in four weeks. I am a keeper. You are going to be a keeper too one day, but not for a long time. You are four hours old. I have been a keeper for years. I am going to help teach you when you are old enough. Cousin Tiana taught me. She will teach you. I will tell you the five sentences when you are four. That is when I got them from the book Cousin Tiana had, and I think four is the right age. You are going to be loved. You are — Cousin Ola, you are already in my book. I wrote you down this morning at six after Grandma Yvonne texted Grandma Sheryl that Cousin Tiana was in labor. You are active. You are daily. Welcome to the line."

She lifted her hand.

She looked up at Tiana.

"Cousin Tiana. I did the small speech I had prepared. I had been practicing for months."

Tiana could not, for a long moment, speak.

Then she said, through tears: "Baby. You said it well."

"Yes."

At four o'clock Sheryl came in.

She had, in the waiting room, been sitting with Reggie. She had given Naomi twenty minutes alone with the family first, which had been Sheryl's idea — she had said to Yvonne on the phone two weeks ago: Yvonne. When the baby comes, I will bring Naomi. I will wait outside for twenty minutes. I want Naomi to have first cousin time without grandmother time. Naomi is old enough. I do not want to crowd.

Yvonne had said: Yes, Sheryl. Right.

Now Sheryl came in with Reggie.

She came to the bed. She looked at the baby.

She said, softly: "Tiana."

"Sheryl."

"She has your grandmother's mouth."

"I know, Sheryl."

"I wish your grandmother could hold her."

"She is holding her, Sheryl. In the small interior way keepers hold. She is."

"Yes, baby."

Sheryl did not try, in that moment, to hold the baby. She put her hand on Tiana's shoulder and kept it there for a long moment. Reggie, behind her, nodded at David — the small nod of one father-father to another, the small acknowledgment that David had just become what Reggie had become in 2022 when Naomi had been born, which was a man who was going to organize the rest of his life around the child who had been brought into the world.

They stayed another forty minutes. Sheryl, at the end, held the baby briefly — Tiana had asked her to, because Tiana had decided, in the third trimester, that Sheryl would be the second woman in the world after Yvonne to hold Ola Mae Brooks Taylor. Sheryl had cried and had not, for the three minutes she held the baby, spoken.

Reggie had held the baby after Sheryl. He had held her the way Reggie held small babies — carefully, the way a man who had retired from a transit supervisor career holds a schedule he is responsible for.

Naomi had, at Tiana's invitation, held the baby for the last seven minutes of the visit. Naomi had sat on the bed with the baby in her arms and had not, for the seven minutes, looked up from the baby's face.

At four forty-five the Hightowers left. Naomi stayed — she had been given permission, at her own request, to spend the night at the hospital with the family rather than going to Park Avenue.

David went home at seven to take a small shower. He came back at eight-fifteen with a cheeseburger from Kwik Check, which Tiana had asked for.

Tiana ate the cheeseburger in nine bites. It was, she told David, the best cheeseburger of her life.

By nine the family had settled into the small hospital room — Yvonne in the chair by the window with Naomi asleep in her lap, David in the small cot the hospital had rolled in because they had promised Naomi she could spend the night and had not, by ten, had the heart to tell her she had to go to Park Avenue, Tiana in the bed with the baby nursing.

At ten-oh-two Tiana said, quietly: "Mom."

"Yes, baby."

"I want to tell you what I want to write in the book tonight."

"Tell me, baby."

"I want to write: January 14, 2032. Ola Mae Brooks Taylor, 12:45 PM, 6 pounds 11 ounces, 19 inches, the mouth is Mama's. Named for Mother Tate. Named by the parents freely in July 2031 without knowing that Mama had asked for the possibility. Added to the active list as the first and longest-kept child of my own family in my keeping. The name returns."

"Tiana."

"Yes, Mom."

"That is the right entry."

"I am going to underline The name returns."

"Yes, baby."

"Mom."

"Yes, Tiana."

"Mama is in the room."

"I know, baby. She is."

"She is beside you."

"Yes, Tiana. She is beside me."

"Mom. I want to write something else. I want to write, on the next line: She is here, Grandma. Thank you for the preparing."

"Yes, baby."

"Mom. Hand me the book."

Yvonne, on the chair, reached into the small bag she had brought to the hospital. She had, she told Tiana in the third trimester, been going to bring the composition book to the hospital whenever labor started because she had known her daughter would want to write in it on the day of the birth. Yvonne had, tonight, remembered to bring it.

She took it out. She handed it to Tiana.

Tiana wrote the entry with the baby nursing on her chest and the pen in her free hand.

She wrote slowly.

The writing took her eight minutes.

When she closed the book she set her hand on the cover.

She said, in the small interior way: Grandma. She is here. Thank you for the preparing.

She felt, in her chest, the small warm release the Lord had been giving her at significant moments since she had become the keeper in 2027.

She smiled.

She looked up at her mother.

Yvonne, in the chair, was crying quietly with Naomi asleep in her lap.

Tiana said: "Mom."

"Yes, baby."

"The line holds."

"The line holds, Tiana."

Naomi slept on Yvonne's lap through the night.

David slept on the cot. Tiana slept, in small segments, between the baby's small hungry wakings.

Yvonne did not sleep. She sat in the chair and watched over the room.

She watched Tiana, who was asleep with the baby in the small bassinet beside the bed. She watched David, who had, at some point, started snoring quietly on the cot. She watched Naomi on her lap, whose small breathing had the small steady rhythm of a nine-year-old at the end of a long important day. She watched the baby, who would, at intervals, stir and make the small sounds newborns make and settle back.

She thought about her mother.

She thought, in the small interior way she had been thinking to her mother for five years and nine days now: Mama. She is here. The mouth is yours. The family is yours. Naomi is the cousin by the book, and Ola is the daughter by the blood and by the name. Four generations of keepers in the room tonight — me, Tiana, Naomi, Ola. You were the fifth, on the other side, watching through the window the Lord leaves open for you at specific moments. You were here, Mama. I felt you at twelve forty-five. I felt you in my own chest. You were in the room.

She paused.

Thank You, Lord. Thank You for bringing her in the hour. Thank You for the mouth. Thank You for the five sentences Tiana prayed through labor. Thank You for the small release in my daughter's chest at ten-oh-two when she closed the book. Thank You for all of it.

She closed her eyes.

She did not sleep. She rested.

There is a difference, she had learned in fifty years of being her mother's daughter. She rested.

In the morning, at six, the baby woke for a feeding.

Tiana fed her. The baby settled. Tiana handed her to Yvonne.

Yvonne held her granddaughter for forty minutes. Naomi, who had slept on Yvonne's lap through the night, had shifted to David's cot at five when David got up to use the bathroom and had, half-asleep, climbed onto the cot and curled against David's shoulder.

Yvonne, with Ola Mae Brooks Taylor in her arms in the specific gray light of a Memphis hospital room at dawn, sang — quietly, in the small rough voice of a sixty-four-year-old widow — the small soft hymn her mother had sung her in 1968 and which her mother had sung Naomi the last Saturday Naomi had stayed at Park Avenue under her mother's teaching.

His Eye Is on the Sparrow.

She sang through the third verse.

Ola Mae Brooks Taylor, in her grandmother's arms, closed her eyes and slept through it.

They went home to Greenwood Street on Friday afternoon.

David carried the baby in from the car in the small car seat. Tiana walked in on her own, slowly. Yvonne had, on Thursday afternoon, driven over to the house and had made the small preparations — put clean sheets on the bed, stocked the kitchen, set up the small nursery in the second bedroom that David and Tiana had prepared over the fall.

At the door Yvonne kissed them each.

She said: "Baby. I am going home tonight. I will come over in the morning. You sleep when she sleeps. David will wake you when she needs you. You call me if you need me."

"Yes, Mom."

"I love you."

"I love you, Mom."

That night Yvonne sat at the kitchen table at Park Avenue alone for the first time in a week.

She opened her own small notebook — the one she had started in February of twenty twenty-seven after her mother had died, the small private book she had kept for her own thoughts that were not names — and she wrote:

January 16, 2032. Ola Mae Brooks Taylor is home. She arrived Wednesday at 12:45 PM. She has Mama's mouth. She was named freely and without knowledge of Mama's letter. Mama was in the room at the hour. The line holds. I am the grandmother of a child named for my mother. The Lord be praised. Carl would have been a good grandfather. He is at the door on the other side. He is, I believe, holding her great-grandfather's hand right now as he watches through the window the Lord left open for him on Wednesday.

She underlined the Lord be praised.

She closed the notebook.

She set her hand on it.

She said, in the kitchen: Thank You. Thank You for the baby. Thank You for the mouth. Thank You for Mama beside me at twelve forty-five. Thank You for Carl on the other side. Thank You for all of it.

She went to bed.

In the nursery on Greenwood Street, Ola Mae Brooks Taylor — forty-nine hours old, with her great-grandmother's mouth — slept in the small bassinet David had assembled in October. Her mother slept in the next room with her door cracked. Her father slept in the bed beside her mother with his hand on her mother's hand.

In Whitehaven, Naomi — who had been up since six and who had, at school all day Friday, told her fourth-grade teacher and eight of her friends and the school nurse about her new cousin-by-the-book — was asleep with her composition book on her nightstand open to the page where, that morning at six-fifteen in the hospital, she had added Ola Mae's name.

The line held across four generations now living — Yvonne, Tiana, Naomi, and the new one — with Mama Tate on the other side, and all the ones before her who had, in 2032, been on the other side for longer than Tiana had been on this one.

The baby was home.

The name had returned.

Outside, in the cold Memphis January night, the pecan trees were bare, and the small brick house on Park Avenue was quiet, and Yvonne slept in the bed her husband had left in January a year ago, and Tiana slept in the bed of her own house with her daughter in the next room, and the morning — when the morning came — would be the first morning Ola Mae Brooks Taylor's second full day at home.

She would, in seventy-five years, be an old woman reading her own book at her own chair at four in the morning in a house her mother had slept in forty years before her, in the line that had taught her and that she would have taught, in her own time, to the generation after her.

She did not, at forty-nine hours old, know any of this.

She did not need to know it yet.

She slept.