Our HOA president, Patricia, had locked my deaf child inside, removed her hearing aids, and left her to suffer in the blazing sun. All because Emma's noisy singing broke neighborhood rules.
I found my little Emma inside a metal cage burning under the hot sun. Her tiny hands reached for me through the bars, her tear-streaked face red from crying in the heat. Her special hearing aids had been removed and tossed on the ground. At that moment, I wanted to kill Patricia Montgomery.
"Mommy, help," Emma cried. "The mean lady said I was too noisy. She put me in the timeout cage."
My five-year-old daughter was born deaf. Her cochlear implants helped her hear the world, but sometimes she couldn't control how loud her voice was when she got excited. Today, that excitement had made her a target.
It all started this morning. Emma was playing with her new toy piano in our backyard. She was laughing and singing, making up little songs like children do. I was inside making lunch when I heard a sharp knock at our front door. There stood Patricia Montgomery, the president of our neighborhood HOA, her face tight with anger.
"Your daughter is making that awful noise again," she said without even saying hello. "This is the third time this week. We have rules about noise in this community."
I took a deep breath. We had moved to Sunshine Acres just two months ago. I thought it would be a nice place to raise Emma after her father died last year. The school nearby had a great program for deaf children. But from day one, Patricia had made our lives a nightmare.