3: 3
The building manager saw that I hadn't answered and sneered, "What, you country girl, gone mute all of a sudden? Tell your mother to pay up, or this isn't over."
I only grew firmer, my face dead serious. "We won't confess to something we didn't do. Stop throwing filth at my mother."
As the argument went on, more and more people from the building gathered to watch.
Once Nellie had fed them her version of things, the crowd looked at us like they wanted to swallow us whole.
A heavyset middle-aged woman spat as she screamed at my mother, "You wicked snake of a woman. They hired a country nobody like you to keep house, paid you good money too."
"And this is how you treat an old lady? You're an animal in human skin."
Another girl with narrow, squinting eyes shot my mother a look, her tone dripping with contempt.
"If you didn't have the patience to look after people, you shouldn't have taken the job. You think they hired you to be the queen of the house?"
"Someone as heartless as you deserves to be poor and broke for the rest of your life."
"Cough up the fifty thousand you stole. Half in the grave already and still this shameless. Careful you don't shave years off your own life."
My mother was shaking all over with rage, her lips visibly turning purple.
I glared at the narrow-eyed girl and said furiously, "Shut your mouth. Stop talking nonsense."
"Nellie's got you all fooled. It's just her word, and that proves nothing about my mother abusing anyone."
My mother clutched her chest, dragging in big gulps of air.
"I, Lydia Lambert, have lived my whole life upright and honest. I've never done a single cruel or wicked thing."
"My in-laws had three sons and three daughters-in-law, but I'm the one who cared for the two of them to the very end, and I never said one word of complaint."
Nellie choked out, "What are you trying to say? You think I'd wrongly accuse you?"
I watched her clumsy little performance and couldn't hold back. "You are wrongly accusing us. You say Mom abused an old woman. Where's your proof?"
"You live in a nice building like this, with an elderly person here who can barely move around. Don't tell me there isn't a single camera in the living room."
"Pull up the footage, and won't the whole truth be right there?"
My question stopped Nellie cold. She froze for a beat, then stammered, "I... our camera's broken. We haven't gotten it fixed yet."
"But that's no excuse for you people to dodge responsibility. I will get justice for my mother."
The narrow-eyed girl pulled out her phone and started filming me and my mother nonstop, and Nellie's mother too.
"I'm posting you two lowlifes online as a cautionary tale, so everyone can see your ugly faces."
My mother reached out to grab the phone, stumbled, and dropped straight to the floor.
The woman with the phone shoved it right in my mother's face and kept filming.
"This is what evil people get. Heaven's punishing you. Why didn't the fall just kill you? That'd be justice served."
I quickly helped my mother up and turned a furious stare on her.
"Watch your mouth. My mother stands straight, so she doesn't fear a crooked shadow. Until the truth is clear, you have no right to spew this poison at her."
Nellie put on a wounded look, pulled her mother into her arms, and sobbed, "The truth speaks for itself. Mom, are a widow and her daughter just meant to be trampled on?"
The heavyset middle-aged woman glowered at us and said through gritted teeth, "Don't worry, no one's going to trample on anyone. Since you won't admit it, we'll let the police handle it."
Hearing that, I sent off a message on my phone.
Then I pulled out my phone, dialed, and said in a cold voice, "Is this 911? Someone here is falsely accusing my mother of abusing an elderly woman. You can have the alleged victim examined for injuries and prove my mother's innocence."
