A petite woman with cropped hair and dark brown eyes, Tammy, 51, wore a freshly pressed shirt and, as she spoke, her hands remained clasped on the glass surface of her dining table in Missouri.
As she began to speak, her hands seemed to become lighter, harder to control, so she had to put her drink down on a bookcase.
There is something effortlessly kinetic about Stevens: as she speaks, her hands and fingers trace the arcs of ideas, forming and unforming synapses in the air.
As she spoke, her quivering hand moved to the left side of her chest.
As she spoke, her posture erect and her hands clasped behind her back in the style of a soldier at ease, a battered flatbed truck pulled up to a smashed newspaper kiosk with panels of fresh glass, a moment of normality in this flower-festooned colony of drifters and debris.
Rachael had also changed in other ways; she was bigger, impressively so; her two chins wobbled as she spoke, even her hand gestures were grand and all-encompassing.
An introverted student slowly gains enough confidence to start raising her hand and speaking her mind.
Her voice shook a little; she was speaking with her hand in front of her mouth.
She is speaking into her hands, but her voice is strong.
As she did often in the interview, she spoke slowly, tapping her hand on the table for emphasis, and offered perorations, as if speaking to a hall full of listeners.
