My brother is a thief.
No, let me put it more appropriately, he is a con! He is a spoilt brat and a mummy’s boy who never grew up to take any form of responsibility and now at almost 40 years, he wants to get married! I called the lady to tell her she is about to make the greatest mistake of her life. But before I tell you what she said, let me give you a bit of background
My brother is the only son of our parents.
Because he is the only son, my parents spoilt him!
He is not only spoilt; he is very entitled. There are six of us, he is the middle child, the third born. Today, even our last born, a girl, is more accomplished than him.
Paul, my brother is the only one among us who repeated classes, not even because he was dull, he was just recalcitrant, that’s one of the reasons he was once been suspended and yet he is the one our dad insists should inherit all of his life’s labours; consisting of two houses, one in Lagos, one in our village and two cars and what was left of his pension. To be honest, none of these are stuff any of my sisters would kill for. We are all doing very well.
Before papa became sick to the point of being house-bound, Papa willed everything to our mum, with the instruction that when she passes on, she leaves it to my brother, Paul.
The rest of us girls are married, except our two youngest sisters who are doing well on a job and in business. Our parents ensured they gave us a good education so we aren’t even interested in sharing property with Paul. He’s the only one amongst us who needs it because he never stayed long enough at any job to be able to gain any experience or acquire anything of importance. My parents started several business interests for him…. he failed at all of them.
He lives with our parents but in a different apartment where all he does is start businesses that never survive or host friends that are useless like him or bring in girls like the place is a brothel.
Paul has been siphoning funds from our parents’ account for years; he would tell our dad to sign a cheque and the old man would, Paul would withdraw and spend the money on himself. This is mostly money we, the rest of my sisters and I usually pooled on a monthly basis as allowance for our parents’ upkeep.
Why cheques?
Because our parents are old, they have never trusted ATM cards so they never even got ATM cards nor learnt how to use it…come to think of it, it would have been worse if they had because Paul would have simply stolen all their money.
He has been such an awful son to them.
So why am I telling you this story?
Our parents failed Paul and he too didn’t help himself and that would have been okay by me if he didn’t drag us all into a marriage proposal I knew would fail from the beginning.
Anyway, Paul is 38 now and suddenly realizes he needs a wife.
There’s this girl he met at the bank, who I suspect is the one helping him fleece our parents of their money. Anyway, he brought the girl home one day and told our parents he wanted to marry her.
We had a family meeting where our parents said we should all support our only brother. I was angry with them, the rest of my sisters too were also angry.
What has Paul ever done for anyone?
Our parents were tasking us to help Paul marry a woman we all know he won’t be able to keep.
What will happen when they start having kids? Granted that the lady has a job, who says her salary would be sufficient for the family once the children start coming in?
Paul said he doesnt have to worry about rent, I said, “Thank God for your parents but you think children feed on stones?”
He told me to mind my business as he would not be needing my” dick to have sex” with his wife!
I asked him, “So why are we involved in raising money for your wedding?”
I mean, I haven’t finished taking care of my own kids, I can’t add another person’s own. His actions will ensure we continue to enable him live a careless life. We know his antecedents and there is nothing to tell us this guy was going to do better.
So I told one of my sisters I was going to call the so-called wife-to-be and tell her she is about to enter into a marriage where she would cater for this man for the rest of her life. He might be my brother but I never wish him to marry just so another woman will continue to carry his burden.
See me see wahala, o. I called her, I explained what a useless human being my brother was. Telling her that she should go find someone who works, who she can build a life with.
Hummn.
Her reply shocked; she asked me why I wanted to stop her from enjoying what God has ordained for her?
She said my brother was the best thing to happen to her, she said they won’t have to worry about rent and as for her ‘husband,’ having a job, she asked whether I was God.
Chai!
I said, “Biko my sister, no vex. Na me make mistake”
Na here I dey o!
They will soon be married, and we shall all see!
(series and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)