My Brother (PART III)

The second month of vacations we spent it here in Bogota. My father grounded him because we had to attend this funeral service of a person who was very close to our family. He missed it and missed another service of the daughter of my dad’s partner. One night in which he was punished turned out to be the party of one of his friends. My dad was firm and with my brother’s insistence my dad had to say that if he left to that party, he would have to find a place to sleep. That meant that he was going to be kicked out of the house just because of one party. He left and we were shocked because we never thought he was so dumb to do so just for one more drunken night. My mother was very sad so she kept in touch with him for the first week and washed his clothes but after that he was becoming a burden on the families he stayed with so he went to my farm for the rest of the time. What happened there is still a myth to me because even the maids don’t know what was really going on. Sometime he went horseback riding at 4 in the morning. I don’t know if he was doing drugs or something but he was indeed acting crazy. He returned home after a very long talk with my parents, right before school started. 12th grade was pretty much the same thing so this is when my father decides to help him in a very harsh way. That was the only solution. If we can’t do it, the military can. Once he found out my father wasn’t going to pay his way out as the rest of kids in school, he started to burden us some more. Another trip came along but this one wasn’t as terrible as the first one. There were so many things to be done and so many places to visit that we hardly ever fought. The only thing that made my sister and I want to kill ourselves was the sleeping arrangement. We were in one room and my parents in another. Without my parents this boy turns into a devil and works his ass off to make the worst night out of each night. When we returned to Colombia things were very different because now he was taking off. Now the relationship was much better and everybody was in peace because he finally faced the fact that he was going and he was going to be all alone. My father was not going to make arrangements or any calls so he would get special treatment. My father wanted him to go out of this bubble we are all raised in and taste what Colombia really is. The whole experience was as important to my brother as it was for all of us in the family. He was the first in the larger family and the only one in his class so this was very special, at first.