something, she went forward "whole hog," as she
would say, even though it was something she had not
pondered long.
"No one should be impulsive and fall between the devil and the deep blue sea, but we don't live long enough to waste time," she lectured at dinner, where most of her lectures took place. "When you reach my age, you realize that even more. Your heart is like one of them parking meters. God puts a few coins in and you tick away, but that expired sign is climbing and old man Death is getting ready to give me a ticket. I can see his grumpy old face forming in the fog just
outside the windows of my very soul."
The expression on her face, the way she
focused her eyes, put the jitters in me. It was as if
Death was there at the table and she really did see
him.
"How do you know Death is a man?" Trevor
asked her with an impish smile in his eyes.
"I've been introduced to him enough times to
know," she snapped back at him. "And don't you start
giving me some of that superstitious nonsense your
great-aunt stuck in your head. Trevor Washington,
superstitions passed down from your Southern slave
ancestors. You probably wasted a ton of salt all these
years throwing a pinch here and a pinch there over
your shoulder. and I know you won't kill a spider.
Don't deny it!" she added quickly, and pointed her
right forefinger at him.
"If it works, don't complain," he muttered
undaunted. "I've seen you walk around a ladder to
avoid going under it"
"That's because you leave the darn thing right
in a person's path."
It was entertaining watching the two of them go
at it. I felt sorry for Echo, who wasn't able to hear.
When I mastered signing. I often translated their
loving bickering for her and she would laugh with me, "Until you came here," Mrs. Westington told