The Party Line

Somewhere in the middle of a working class neighborhood, stood a small white house that looked much like all the others. Neatly kept, there were just a few flowerpots in the front, and a clothesline in the back. This was Sadie’s house.

It had been a struggle to keep it after her husband left, and she’d had to get a job at a dry cleaners. Every morning, she drove off in her old car, and wearing a simple homemade dress. And after working hard all day, she would come home, and do alterations at night. Though life could sometimes be hard, she was never one to complain.

Polite in public, yet at the same time private, Sadie insisted on going to the housewives’ homes to pick up alteration work, and she’d always leave quickly. Long since aware of the local rumor mill, she didn’t want the housewives talking about what she had or didn’t have, or even telling her about anybody else. This wasn’t like your ordinary gossip fence, for they had leaned on that and broken it years before. No, what they had was more like a wheel spinning out of control, powered by the energy of a hundred tongues wagging at the same time.

One Saturday morning, as she opened the front door to get the paper, Sadie looked up to see a car stopped in the street in front of her house, and recognized its female occupants as they looked at her. Then it drove off quickly.

That’s odd, she thought.

It certainly was. And if Sadie had pondered it more, she’d have realized that the aforementioned wheel itself was turning her way and about to run her over.

They had started things about her in the past. She never had children, so naturally they talked about that. And they talked when she divorced, though they actually knew little, if anything. It was said that she had a boyfriend on the side, possibly the milkman or else the TV repairman. Lord knows she just couldn’t attract anyone better with her plain looks. Then they said it was her husband who’d had an affair, probably with a certain young floozy at the mill. Yes, that was definitely it, and so they spun that one until they ran it into the ground. After that, they dropped Sadie as a topic, and finally moved on to someone else.

Sadie was deeply hurt, but she held her head high, and did her best to just ignore them. What good would it do, she thought, to let those catty women know they had gotten under her skin? She was better than them and proved it, to herself at least, by never stooping down to their level.

So now they were at it again, this time hoping to catch a glimpse of a boy that Sadie had been paying to cut her grass. He was tall for his age, and from a distance, well… he looked like someone that she might get involved with. Apparently, one of the housewives had heard a report that Sadie had spoken to him at length one afternoon in the driveway. That, at least, did happen. But poor Sadie was unaware that in hiring the boy in broad daylight, she had again become the talk of the town. Then the boy didn’t get to come for a while, and so the grass got tall, sparking even more gossip.

The party line across the street lit up brighter than a neon sign in Las Vegas.

“She’s keeping him inside as her love slave,” said Thelma, as she looked out the window at Sadie’s house.

“Either that or she scared him off with her perverted ways,” said Betty.

Still another said that maybe she had killed him. At that, the suspense became almost too much for them to bear, and soon the cars were driving by Sadie’s house day and night. It was a mystery they would just have to solve.

Just by looking at Sadie’s little house though, you’d never know that so much was going on over there.

Louise Pitchard ranked highest among the gossip hierarchy, and even had a secret, old fashioned telephone switchboard, which she would use to listen in on everybody in town. She heard Thelma’s remark about the love slave, and asked Suellen Bagwell if she’d go to Sadie’s house and snoop around. Suellen liked Sadie, and sometimes wondered if all the idle gossip was really true. But Louise talked her into it, and in a short while she was knocking on Sadie’s door, holding a blanket to be altered. Sadie was surprised to have a visitor.

“Hi, Sadie,” said Suellen. “I know you like to pick things up, but it’s been a while since we’ve been able to chat.”

“That‘s fine, Suellen. Come on in.”

Suellen sat down with the blanket on her lap, and kept looking around nervously.

“Are you alright, Suellen?” Sadie asked.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she answered, while peering into the kitchen. “I’ve brought this blanket…”

“The washer just stopped,” Sadie said. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”

“Oh, of course!” said Sullen little too enthusiastically.

As soon as Sadie left the room, Suellen quickly tiptoed down the hall and peeped into the bathroom, and the bedrooms. On Sadie’s bed was a new pair of men’s work boots. They must be his, Suellen said to herself. Then she hurried back to the chair, and sat down just before Sadie came back in.

“Why, Suellen, you’re out of breath! Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Y-yes… I’m fine,” Suellen panted. Then she rolled her eyes back as she realized she had brought the wrong blanket.

“Oh, foolish me! I’ve brought the wrong one! Well, I better go. I’m sorry to have bothered you!”

“I’ll come and pick it up soon,” Sadie said, as Suellen rushed out the door. “It was nice to see you, Suellen. Bye.”

As she went to her room, Sadie wondered what in the world was the matter with Suellen. Then she put the boots in a stronger box, and labeled it, so she could mail it the next day to her brother for his birthday.

So Suellen went back and reported the details of her spy mission to Louise, and then just as the rumors of the boy took full flight, another one developed. Sadie’s car was in the shop, and heaven forbid, she had to ride a taxi home.

“Where’s her car?” Louise asked.

“She can’t afford one,” offered Sarah.

“I heard her husband left her with a lot of debt,” added Alice.

“Maybe she lost her job,” said yet another.

“I’ll bet that boy took it,” Louise said. “He looked to me like he was from the wrong side of the tracks."

Some time after that, Louise saw Sadie coming out of the doctor’s office. Sadie had only been there for a routine annual checkup, but Louise didn’t know that, and she called Henrietta Poole.

“That boy’s gotten Sadie pregnant.”

“At her age?”

“If not that, then he probably gave her venereal disease.”

Then things took off fast. Unknown to the rest, Sadie’s hair was thin, and for years she had kept it really short, and covered by a wig. She had managed to never be seen without it, but early one evening as she turned on the light at the side step to feed the cat, she didn’t have it on, and naturally a neighbor saw her. It didn’t take long for the whole street to declare that with such a preferred look, she must be a lesbian.

Then they talked about how thin Sadie had gotten. At her doctor visit a few weeks before, she learned she had diabetes. She was told to alter her diet drastically, and as a result, she got much thinner. That, along with her short hair, spawned the rumor that she had cancer.

Over on Seventh Avenue, the party line buzzed with talk.

“Sadie’s near death,” Louise declared.

“At least she’ll be out from under all those medical bills.”

“The poor woman. She must be destitute.”

They decided to take up a collection for her. A box was sent around the neighborhood in which to put money, and a bigger one was filled with canned goods. As before, Suellen was given the job of deliverer.

While Suellen was getting ready to go over, Sadie was unknowingly about to get an education. Up to then, she was unaware of the things they were saying about her, though the odd visit by Suellen had made her wonder if it was happening. Another way to have known was by listening on the party line, but Sadie had always detested how the women listened in on each other. She looked at it as an abuse of privacy. Yet she did need to call her brother, so she would have to pick up the phone…

I’ll listen just this once, she decided, and she quietly picked up the kitchen phone. What she heard horrified her.

“Sadie has cancer?” she heard Betty ask.

"Yes!” came the reply. It was Sadie’s next door neighbor, Emily Periwinkle.

“Well, that explains why she’s so thin. I certainly didn’t think she was pregnant. Especially being a lesbian and all.” Upon hearing those words, Sadie’s jaw dropped to the floor, but she didn’t let them hear her.

“You know, she was pregnant,” Emily said, “But she had an abortion.”

“No!” gasped Trudie. “Are you sure?”

“It came from a reliable source,” answered Emily. “You know Ila Wortson, don’t you?”

“I do, but didn’t she move to Johnsville?”

“Yes. But she’s second cousin to Wilma Harris, who as you know used to live on this street but still keeps up with things.”

“Well, that’s different then.”

Others then got on the line, and Sadie leaned against the wall, and trembled as she listened.

“Did you hear that Sadie…”

“Sadie’s…”

“And then she…”

It was Sadie this and Sadie that for a full ten minutes. All her life, Sadie had believed in treating others the way she wanted to be treated. She was a kind and considerate person, and did not deserve the way they were treating her. She covered the mouthpiece in an effort to keep them from hearing her sobbing.

“What was that?” one of them asked. They got quiet for a few seconds, before Betty spoke up.

“You don’t think she’s listening, do you?” Everyone listened, and they could hear a faint, muffled sound coming from somewhere. But then they picked right up where they had left off.

Sadie didn’t know what to do, but the more she listened, and the more she cried, the angrier she finally became. At last, she blew her top, probably for the first time in her life.

“Shut up!” she yelled at them. “Stop telling those awful lies about me! You don’t know anything about me, you damned squawking hens!” She hung up before waiting for an answer, then put her head down on her little yellow table and cried.

In the meantime, Suellen was driving over with the collection box. Sadie pulled out a tissue, and wiped her face. She’d laid down on the bed just a few minutes when she heard a knock on her door. She was suddenly struck with fear at the thought of those women coming over. Slowly, she went to the front window, and peeped out. Seeing that it was Suellen, she opened the door.

“Come in, Suellen.”

“Hi, Sadie,” went Suellen, as she came in carrying the box. “How are you feeling today?”

“Oh, I’ve been better, actually.”

“Owwwh, you poor dear. You looked tired. Here, some of the girls wanted to send some things over to you.”

“Why?” asked Sadie.

“Well, you know… We’ve heard what a hard time you’ve had, and we wanted to help.”

“Who’s telling you I’ve hard time?”

“Uh… well, Louise…”

“What has she said about me, Suellen? Here, put the box down and sit with me. What is she saying?”

Suellen bit her lip and hesitated. She started to wish she hadn’t come.

“What, Suellen?”

“Well, that… maybe you have AIDS.”

Sadie stood up and gritted her teeth.

“That self… appointed queen bee! I swear I’ll…” Then she muttered a few choice expletives.

Suellen looked rather shaken, and she started to leave. Sadie looked exasperated, and shook her head.

“Don’t worry, Suellen. Sit back down and tell me more.”

Suellen then filled Sadie in on everything that they’d been saying about her for the past few weeks. They said she had cancer, and had gotten pregnant by an underage boy, and then gotten an abortion. Then they’d said that he left because she admitted to being a lesbian, and that she’d lost her job after coming on to her boss’s wife. And then they said she was telling lies about Emily, which caused her to have a breakdown.

Sadie felt shell shocked. Now she knew just how far they could go. And they were never going to stop unless she stood up to them.

“Come with me, Suellen!”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to give those old biddies a taste of their own medicine!”

Suellen’s car was parked behind Sadie’s, and Sadie got in it and started blowing the horn. Knowing at least one of the gossips would be watching, she backed out of her driveway and then pulled back in. Then she backed out again, and kept backing down the street, all the while blowing the horn. Next she crept forward, stopped, then went forward again. By then, all the housewives were coming outside to take a look. Then Sadie sped up and weaved back and forth as she went. By the time she reached the corner of Third and Meadowview, there were twenty cars following.

“What are you doing?” cried Suellen.

“Just getting their attention, honey!”

As they went from one street to another, women were sitting in their cars waiting for them to go by, and each got in the back of the line as the procession passed. At Sixth Avenue, Sadie saw Bill Arnold, a local policeman whom she’d known since high school. She got out and spoke to him a minute, and then he turned on his blue lights and led the line of cars onto Seventh Avenue. By then, there were at least a hundred following.

The policeman pulled into Louise’s driveway, with Sadie and Suellen coming in right behind. The other cars stopped in the streets, and the women all got out and came running. Louise was sitting at her switchboard, which was later confiscated, and Officer Arnold brought her outside to face the crowd.

He turned on the microphone in his patrol car and handed it to Sadie, so that all could hear. She scanned the faces in the front rows. Sadie had known many of the women since they were young, and she knew a few secrets herself, ones she’d never dreamt of telling.

“Thelma,” she said coldly. “Does anyone here know that you filed for bankruptcy after your divorce?” The crowd let out a gasp, and Thelma’s face turned red.

“Emily, isn’t it time you told them your son is gay?” Terribly embarrassed, Emily appeared to shrink before their eyes. Sadie continued with the revelations.

“Betty wants you to know that she wears a girdle at night.” Laughter was heard within the group, and Betty hung her head and looked as if she was about to cry.

Then Sadie turned to Louise. They had once been good friends, until Louise started telling lies about her. But Sadie knew a truth about Louise, something very old, but still so scandalous that it would bring the queen bee to her knees.

“Louise, isn’t there something you want them to hear?” Louise walked up to Sadie, and shook her head slowly.

“No, Sadie. You wouldn’t…”

“Louise…” Sadie said loudly. Louise wiped a tear, and looked like she wanted to run. Sadie decided it had gone far enough.

“Do you know how it feels now?” she asked Louise.

“Yes, Sadie. And I’m truly sorry." Sadie spoke again.

“I apologize for the things I said just now. But let me say this. If any of you ever gossip about me again, I swear I’ll… Well, I won’t say enough to implicate myself.”

Sadie was too nice to say anything more, and it wasn’t necessary. She went home, and was never bothered again.

And luckily, the phone company dismantled the party lines soon after, much to the benefit of all.