Chapter 5 - The Video I Shouldn't Have Posted
I recorded Cynthia speaking at the emergency session from my seat in the public part of the clubhouse. The session itself ended without a vote. Later that night I posted a thirty-second clip to the neighborhood Facebook group.
HOA PRESIDENT WANTS TO KILL A HEALTHY TREE. I'd typed it in a rush, while Ellie was showering.
The clip caught Cynthia saying, “One resident has already been injured.” It also caught Helen in the background, awkwardly standing with her cane while somebody asked her to describe the fall. I hadn't noticed that when I hit upload.
By morning the comments were vicious. Strangers called Cynthia a tyrant. Two people accused Helen of making up her injury to help her friend. Someone enlarged a frame of her face and added a laughing emoji.
I tried deleting those comments. More appeared. Then a message came from Helen's daughter: My mother is crying because people are sharing a video of her trying to walk. Take it down.
I took it down immediately.
Ellie was waiting by the kitchen sink. “Was that supposed to help?”
“I didn't put the mean comments there.”
“You put her there.”
She opened the refrigerator, found nothing she wanted, and shut it harder than necessary.
I went to Helen's porch with banana bread I'd bought at the grocery store because there was no time to bake. She didn't invite me inside.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “I should've watched the video before posting it.”
She looked at the paper bakery bag. “I didn't want that tree dead.”
“I know.”
“No, you don't. Because you never asked what I told Cynthia. I asked for the path to be fixed. I didn't ask to be shown all over the internet.”
She wasn't shouting. I wished she would.
I left the banana bread on her step even though she hadn't asked for it. Later I went back and picked it up. It felt wrong to force another choice on her.
At work, my supervisor called me into the staff room. Someone had forwarded the video to the library director with a complaint that I was bullying a senior citizen. My supervisor knew the story and didn't threaten my job, but she asked me to keep library employees out of the dispute.
By late afternoon, Cynthia had posted a bland statement saying the board would respond to “online harassment” through appropriate channels. Neighbors who had supported me were suddenly less eager to speak up.
I had wanted everyone to see what Cynthia was doing. Instead, I'd made an old woman who'd shared our dinner table feel unsafe in her own neighborhood.
May you like
That night Ellie hung the trail broom back on its hook, handle toward the house. “I'm done cleaning it for you,” she said. “If you promised, you do it.”
I went outside in the dark and swept until the bristles caught in a crack. On the trail ahead, a pair of headlights turned into the service entrance. A landscaping truck rolled slowly toward our fence.
