Brother's Keeper
If you asked me, it, the beginning of the end, started one Sunday evening, with a phone call from my brothers’ principal that said Datonye and Damiebi had been suspended for a month. They could have been twins, my older brothers. Odd, considering their different mothers. Datonye, my half-brother, was a year older than Damiebi and the result of a fling my father never spoke about, not even to my mother. If she resented this or him, she hid it well. Damiebi – her firstborn, her pride – was, after all, my father’s legitimate heir. If Datonye resented this, he hid it even better. They were close, for half brothers. Best friends, confidants, twins if you didn’t know better. And so perhaps, you understand why they did what they did. “What offence this time?” my father asked, his face a mask of irritation. Two boys had been sighted kissing in an empty classroom on Friday night. Both had escaped, one without his ‘D. Carpenter’ monogrammed sweater. On one hand, there was Datonye, with his tattoos and love for …