My Life Phonetically
an excerpt

An Engagement
People in Hitchins don’t date around. Nine out of ten first relationships end in marriage. Ten out of ten second relationships end in marriage. Usually, the engagement is announced at the graduation party of the boyfriend. The graduation party of the girlfriend then doubles as a wedding shower. There are only two reasons for altering the date of the announcement: one or both of them will be going to go to college or the girl is pregnant. So when Senior Class President Lauren Richards and Starting Running Back Jake Deluth announced their engagement in the newspaper, everyone knew that Lauren knew she was pregnant or had a pretty good idea that she was.
Pregnancy in and of itself is not automatically frowned down upon in Hitchins. To stay in the good graces of our small community, however, the expecting parents (assuming they aren’t already married) have to do several things: first, they have to get married; second, they have to stay at home; third, they not only have to stay at home, they have to remain living with one set of grandparents; fourth, both must finish high school; fifth, the new mom must remain a stay at home mom and dad must secure employment with fixed hours and no social engagements that would keep him from his new family. If all these expectations are met, the family can move out of the grandparents’ home when the child is three. In most cases, by the time the child graduates from elementary school, only the town gossips remember who “got knocked up” and who just married after high school, especially when the expecting parents are seniors.
The town’s expectations are usually complied with one hundred percent. When there is a deviation, it is usually only in one expectation: mom drops out, dad goes to college, or they live in their own place, small things like that. But there was one girl that I heard about from the town gossips that completely disregarded the guidelines for social acceptability. The first time I heard about her was when Georgia Farrow got pregnant four years ago. Georgia, a sophomore at the time, had been dating Lawrence Hitchins. The only similarity between Georgia and the girl in the story was that they were both 16 when they got pregnant. Biddie Laurence was the Gossip Sage that told me the story first. And ‘The Story,” as I was told, goes like this:
“Eight years ago, there was a pregnancy that was begun by scandal and ended in mystery. A sophomore, real scrawny thing from a quiet family, claimed that Teddy Benson, a senior football captain and student body Vice President, raped her. The story was so outrageous – Teddy was involved with Nellie Brown. They’re married now, you know. Have two beautiful little girls.
“Of course no one believed her. That’s when her true colors began to show. That harlot skulked around town in hideously scandalous outfits, picking up any scum she could find and trying to seduce the good men of Hitchins away from their girlfriends and wives. The playground was one of her favorite spots, sitting out there on the swing, a cigarette dangling from her lips and her legs practically splayed open. On the children’s playground, no less!
“She was pregnant by Christmas, by who, no one knows. At sixteen! With no young men stepping forward as the father, her poor parents did the only things they could do under the circumstances – kick her out. She left after that. Christmas Eve she was at church, Christmas Day, no sign of her. She’s been gone ever since. Ain’t nobody in this town seen sight of her since. She probably got a job at the strip joint in Lima.”
I once asked Matthew if he knew who the story was about. Assuming that the version I heard had some truth to it, it would make the girl just one year older than him. At such a small high school, surely he knew her. He said he didn’t know anyone who fit the description the gossips gave me. Later that summer, I snuck into his room, while he was at work, and looked at his high school yearbooks. It didn’t take long to find her; there was only one person in that class’s tenth grade picture that wasn’t in their eleventh grade picture. Her name was Tabitha Laurell. I agreed with the gossips that she was very skinny, but I didn’t think that she was unattractive. I looked up the other two people from the story too, Teddy Benson and Nellie Brown. Although they were also good looking people, I didn’t think that there was much physical difference between Nellie and Tabitha for the gossips to write off Tabitha’s story so quickly. They were both petite brunettes with kind smiles. The main difference was Nellie was a senior and Tabitha was a sophomore.
I remember being struck by a sudden, intense sadness when looking at Tabitha’s picture. The confirmation of her existence led me to infinitely more questions about what had become of her and her unborn child. Seeing her picture made it impossible to believe that she had become a stripper. She was pretty, but not that exotic beautiful that tends to fit the physical stereotype of “exotic dancers.”
Now every time there is an engagement or a pregnancy, I wonder what will become of the people involved. I wonder what they will remember of this time and how it will shape who they become in five, ten, or more years. In Hitchins, we usually get to see both the journey and the end result of all of these stories. No one ever moves away. Except this Tabitha. The town has not gotten to see her journey, and I can’t imagine it will ever get the chance to see the outcome. Certainly her story is sad, and she probably missed out on a lot, getting pregnant at sixteen and all, but I can’t help but feel that the town missed out too. I’ve been scanning all the local papers periodically for two and a half years now, hoping for any sign God will grant me of where Tabitha ended up. So far, I haven’t found a blessed thing. Engagements like Lauren Richards’s and Jake Deluth’s, however, remind me of my mission to find her.
Matthew should be home soon. I will ask him again if he knows the girl. This time, though, I’ll ask for her by name. Maybe that will help jog his memory. At times like this, I am very glad for Matthew; he’s the only one in this town that I feel comfortable asking a question that brings up something that the town is not comfortable talking about. Mostly, because he’s the only one that will talk to me straight about it. I’m certain he must at least have an inkling about who Tabitha was. Maybe now that I’m older he will feel more inclined to talk straight about the incident with me.

The Gossip Sages
Once you reach high-school age in Hitchins, you realize that everyone your age and older in the town is expected to fill an appropriate role. High school boys are to play football and high school girls are to get good grades. Amidst the jock life and pursuit of academic excellence, boys and girls are expected to find a suitable mate in preferably one, but no more than two, tries, and then get married. Once married, you are expected to get a job that allows for a comfortable, if not lavish, lifestyle, and raise a family with at least two kids (in the ideal family, there would be at least one male child to carry on the family name). Once you reach retiring age, your role is once again determined by gender. The men golf and play poker at the church on Wednesday and Thursday nights; the women are inducted into what I call the Gossip Sage Society.
As a woman in Hitchins, it is expected that once you are old and your business is tended to, it becomes your business to mind other people’s business. Of course, simple age does not guarantee you the title of Gossip Sage. There is a somewhat rigorous trial period and initiation, but once you are “in,” it is clear that the town values your rendition of countless stories that everyone already knows by heart. Thus, the Gossip Sages have grown into a sort of living history book of the events and goings on of the town of Hitchins since it was first founded in 1853.
Currently, there are five true Gossip Sages and two fledgling Gossip Sages. Each of the seven have their merits and strengths. The oldest Gossip Sage is Ethel Brown. Even though she is the oldest, Ethel has one of the best memories of any of the Gossip Sages and having such, has one of the largest story repertoires in the Gossip Sage Society. Her younger sister, Biddie Laurence is also a Gossip Sage. Biddie is the best Gossip Sage if you’re looking for a love story or scandal. Two Gossip Sages specialize in family secrets: Betty Ross and Lulu Hitchins. Betty is the youngest of the Gossip Sages, but having worked as a stylist at the local barber shop, she’s heard more than her fair share of tales of family woe. Lulu Hitchins, is the reigning matriarch of Hitchins’s founding family. As such, Lulu has access to all the documents the family has kept in tact, and has perfected several “Lulu exclusive” stories pertaining to her ancestors. I’ve often thought that perhaps Lulu has exercised discretion in exactly what stories she shares of her family, but that does not keep her stories from being sizzling with juicy details. The last Gossip Sage is Georgie Farrow, Lulu Hitchins’s best friend. The Farrows are the second wealthiest family in Hitchins, second only to the Hitchins family themselves. Georgie dabbles in a little bit of everything; she doesn’t really have her own beat yet. The two fledgling sages, Emma Richards and Rebekah Laurence (a cousin of Biddie’s), are too busy learning the stories to bother retelling them, so I’m not sure what their strengths will be.
My personal favorite of the sages is Biddie. Perhaps that is because I know that Biddie learned most of her stories from my great grandmother and was a friend of Grandmother Hawn’s. Well, reason or no, Biddie’s stories are the ones I find most fascinating and it is her camp that I wander to on Sunday afternoons after church to hear the latest “news.” So far, there doesn’t appear to be an heir-apparent to Biddie’s position as head Gossip Sage on all stories love related. Emma and Rebekah appear to be spending the most time with Betty and Lulu, presumably to offer a smooth transition of one family secrets duo to another. As hideous as such a tradition must seem, I actually am rather fond of the Gossip Sages. Although our quests are different in several ways, I view myself as somewhat of a Gossip Sage in recording the events and stories that have occurred to me. Who knows, maybe someday I will be a Gossip Sage. By then, surely at least one of the stories I have recorded in here will have been elaborated on so that it could stand alone as a Gossip Sage’s tale. As long as Hitchins can survive as its own town, I can’t think of a reason that should keep this from happening.