Matriarch: Oprah's Book Club: A Memoir

by Tina Knowles

The baby’s Friday due date came and went. Now I’ll have it on a weekend, I thought, worrying I’d end up with some random doctor. Then the weekend passed, and each day was an eternity—all the way to the next Friday. Beyoncé could not wait to be a sister and kept staring at my huge stomach. “C’mon baby!” she said. “Come on out!” Mathew told Beyoncé the doctor had said that if I walked a lot, it might get the baby moving. “Okay, then,” she said, going to the door to put on her shoes. Do you know we marched for an hour? All over the neighborhood in the Texas sun, Mathew and me with Beyoncé leading us. She made up songs to keep us in rhythm, then switched it up with the Jackson 5 and then New Edition’s “Cool It Now.” “Anything?” she asked me at a corner. “No, Snoogums,” I said. “This baby has its own mind.” As I fanned my face, Beyoncé whispered to my belly, “I just want to meet you.” When we got back inside, Mathew and I called the doctor before he left for the day. “If I don’t have this baby by Monday,” I said, “I’m coming up there, and y’all gonna take this baby.”