At the morning meeting, an intern suddenly pulled up the security footage from the employee housing building's hallway.
On the screen, a white-haired old woman was bent over, rummaging through the garbage bags by a doorway.
And that old woman was my grandmother.
Frowning, I reached to close the video.
Instead, the intern slapped a complaint form down on the table.
"Sir, the entire staff and I are jointly filing a complaint against Pauline Delgado for moving her relatives into the employee housing, illegally occupying company living space, and disrupting the daily lives of everyone in the office."
On that form, forty-nine names besides mine were written out in neat rows, each one stamped with a red fingerprint.
I looked around at all of them and asked calmly.
"Is this really what all of you think?"
My coworkers avoided my eyes.
"Pauline, the employee housing isn't your home. Bringing people in without approval was wrong to begin with."
"Right, exactly. And you let relatives on vacation crash there too. Anyone who didn't know better would think it was your family's free hotel."
I turned in silence to my boyfriend, the boss.
"Do you think so too?"
He made no move to defend me.
"Pauline, the housing is a perk for employees. It's not your private residence."
I laughed and threw the question back.
"So what is it you all want?"
The intern tilted his chin up, pleased with himself.
"You move out of the employee housing within three days, and for all the time you occupied it in violation of the rules, you pay housing fees at hotel rates."
The other coworkers chimed in their agreement one after another.
They seemed to have forgotten that I was the one who'd heard them complain they couldn't afford rent, and lent the building to the company for free.
...
"Pauline, because you moved your relatives into the housing, you've seriously disrupted the other employees' lives. Take these three days to pack your things and move out. As for the compensation for all these years you've been occupying the housing, finance will run the numbers and notify you."
Hearing my boyfriend Glen Harding hand down his ruling, I picked up the joint complaint from the table and looked at everyone.
"When exactly did my relatives staying in the housing disrupt your daily lives?"
One of the women curled her lip.
"That older guy you brought in last time stayed in the housing and walked around the hallway shirtless every single day. He was always peeking at us girls' rooms from the doorway too. Who knows what filthy ideas he had."
The man she was talking about was my uncle Marcus Delgado, who'd come here on vacation last month. He was used to country life, but after I reminded him on the first day, he never once stepped out without being properly dressed.
And the housing units were all one-bedroom apartments with their own bathroom, so aside from coming and going to work, no one was ever out in the hallway.
And if I remembered right, the whole time my uncle stayed there, he spent his days hauling water for these women, fixing their pipes, fixing their lights. Now, in their mouths, that had become improper intentions.
Another man spoke up, just as mocking.
"And that grandmother of yours, the whole time she stayed here, she skulked around outside our doors every day, even went through the garbage bags. Don't tell me she brought her habit of light-fingered country ways along with her."
The file crumpled in my grip before I realized it, and I looked at the man mocking my grandmother.
Last month, when he collapsed from a bout of acute gastroenteritis, it was my grandmother who happened to find him and got him to the hospital. Even after he was discharged, she made him a bowl of soothing oatmeal every day.
It was because of him that she was so often out in the hallway, afraid something might happen to someone. And they'd decided she was there to steal.
The others piled on about the rest of the relatives I'd brought around, saying my cousin's dog was vicious to people. But they'd forgotten that same dog had scared off a would-be intruder for them after their late shifts.
