Since Titta never married, she continued to teach until poor health (dizzy spells causing unsteadiness on her feet, as I recall) forced her into early retirement. According to Aunt Tom, who was full of tales about her in-laws, the Johnsons, Latitia never did feel well enough to go to the fields and work like her brothers and sisters when they were growing up. The inference was that she retired because she had a general disinclination to work.

Titta was 42 at the time she retired. She lived with Alice until Alice died at 102. After Alice died, Aunt Titta lived on in Alice's house (which was picked clean of all her pretty things by rapacious nieces before she died, according to Mother.) Titta died at 96. She was a sweet old lady, very different in personality from my grandmother’s hateful bitterness and Aunt Alice’s greed. Aunt Titta was a secret source of cookies, which were never part of Aunt Alice’s knowing hospitality towards her grandnephews. Aunt Titta was also fairly reliable in giving tours of the dark old parlor if we asked nicely and she was ready to slip out on the old-ladies’ talk in Aunt Alice's sitting/bedroom.

A tour of the parlor by Aunt Titta was the second best way to see it. The room had two sets of heavy wooden sliding doors, from the hall into the parlor and from the parlor into the dining room. In Aunt Titta's company, we were allowed to slide the pocket doors closed and open again one time each. Hell for a young boy is to be in a room with two sets of pocket doors and be forbidden to open and close them except for one time each.

The best way to see the parlor was not with Aunt Titta as guide and docent, but to sneak in the back door through the kitchen and dining room and snoop around on our own. Sneaking in meant sliding the doors was impossible to get away with. They made too much noise. The real problem with sneaking in was that the parlor was an unsteady place. Under the floor was probably riddled by termites and walking even slowly and carefully shook the room, rattling teacups and dishes and making the old piano hum. Ghosts may have been involved in the humming piano, but we rarely made it to the middle of the room before either Mother or Big Mama, at Aunt Alice’s prompting, came to see if we were fooling around in there, which of course we were.

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