On this particular morning, I woke up at around 10am something told me to part the curtains at the door leading out to my balcony where I could see the main gate to my parents', only to see someone’s hand sticking in to pull the bolt open – lo and behold it was my brother. When he pushed the gate open to admit the car, I was not the least bit surprised to see that the indicator and parking lights on the left side of the car were smashed and the wiring hanging out. I just let the curtain drop and made my way to the kitchen where my mother sat eating porridge with my sister and cousins.
‘Your son’s back’ I say. My mother looked up at me questioningly ‘He crashed the car though’ I finish.
My brother walked in just then and speechlessly led me outside to view the damage.
‘What happened?' I ask resignedly.
‘I don’t know..’ he says
‘You don’t know??' keep your voice level I think to myself 'You don't know?? Did you knock another car? Were you knocked?? Didn’t you stop??’
‘Look,’ I say ‘just go and sleep it off’.
‘I know I have to pay of course’ he mutters ‘I have to pay for the repair’
‘Yes, yes,’ I say impatiently as I push him around the car and towards the house ‘we’ll decide what to do when you wake up’
I walked back into the kitchen feeling completely numb. I had completely expected this. My brother has the habit of taking other people’s things without telling them, and he and I had quarrelled about it many times. I remembered the last time we’d quarrelled about it I had told him that if he did not drop this habit he would do something one day from which we wouldn’t recover! Maybe this was it!!
The most annoying thing is his inability to see how many people some of his actions affect. For instance, in this case he had crashed my sister and brother-in-law’s car. They'd left it with me for 10 days while they went shopping ang holidaying in Honk Kong, and I was due to pick them up from the airport the following day. I had planned to send some one else to pick them up as I had to be at work, but now that was going to be impossible because I couldn’t send their car back to them in this state and not be there to explain, meaning I had to miss a day of work. What was more, my dad had to ring up his mechanic on a Sunday and have him come and take the car away, and then we had to look for cash to pay him.. My brother had already told me he had no money but that he’d look for it… Fat chance of that happening in his current state. As if that was not enough, the man had completely emptied the fuel tank and yet my sister and her husband left it almost half full, meaning I had to refuel it as well!! In the middle of a fuel crisis too!! Anyway, I knew I had to take care of business because the car had been left with me, but the fact that this was merely enabling my brother's misbehaviour was not lost on my Dad and I. We just decided we would totally stick him with the bill later, but could do nothing more in the circumstances!
When I came back into the kitchen after surveying the damage, my mother said:
‘You may think this is crazy but I am just glad he is alive!’
I just shook my head, what could I say? I certainly could not admit that I had hoped he had broken a leg or something, anything to snap him out of this downhill spiral that he’d been in the last two years. I have heard of mothers who let their sons spend a night or two in jail in an attempt to practice some tough love, but I wondered if my mother was capable of that. On my part, I really felt like completely cutting my brother off. My cousins told me later that the fact that I hadn’t screamed at him as I usually do had really shaken him. The following day when I had to drive to the airport with a white bumper on a grey car because the mechanic hadn’t had time to spray it, I just decided that I couldn't do this anymore, I had to cut him off! If the others still had hope of him changing, they were welcome to wasting some more of their energy and hope but they could count me out! Riding with me in the car to the airport was a cousin of mine who was quite close to him, but who was also a much more empathetic person that I am. She told me that although his actions were annoying and irritating, there was no denying that deep down he was obviously in deep pain; what he needed was help not censure.
A few days on, I have to agree with her, albeit reluctantly. Truly he hasn’t been the same since his break up with his girlfriend of 4 years (it’s been two years since and she's since married). For that matter, one can probably trace his troubles to high school, when his grades suddenly dipped and even after re-sitting his A-levels, he hadn’t made it into any higher education institution. No one really knows what hapoened to him in those years.
Anyway, on the day he crashed the car, my mother’s sister came calling and my mother led her outside to show her the car. We were listening to them in the kitchen when we heard my mother break down into tears before she could even get one word out. I remember that made me so mad at my brother that I stormed out of the kitchen and went up to his room to wake him up! This was too much!! Now he was making his mother cry; I wanted him to come out and see this!! I banged and banged on his door, shouted his name, kicked the door, banged some more but eventually had to give up because he was clearly passed out!!
Anyway, the parents are now talking of carrying out some sort of intervention.
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