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In my family, we've always known my elder brother Chukwudi to be the difficult one.
Everyone in the family talks about it. Although not loudly, or in places he would hear. But in silent ways, families communicate the things they have already decided without moving their mouths. Either through sighs, or the slight pause after his name is mentioned. I could see the irritation on my mother's face as it tightened whenever someone brought up stories about things he had done in different times in the past.
When he was still in school, he borrowed money from our uncle and never paid it back. The person changed jobs four times in two years. Well, I didn't think this one was actually bad. With the way the economy had been, I was sure he had reasons. Compared to when he took a loan from me, pretending that he wanted to start a business, only for me to hear months later that he moved in with a woman nobody had met before and married her six months later without the proper wine-carrying ceremony, without the full bride price, without asking anyone's blessing. Just a court marriage and a WhatsApp group announcement to the family. That was when I joined them for a conversation.
"Chukwudi is the difficult one." I would always say it the loudest at every family meeting, every Christmas gathering, every phone call with my mother that drifted toward him,
"Can't you see? He's a crook and a big hypocrite!" I will add a comparison, a verdict, or even a gentle but firm reminder of how a man was supposed to carry himself. Always out of anger over the loan he didn't care to repay.
I said it everywhere with the confidence of someone who had never embarrassed or could never embarrass the family. The pride of someone who paid his debts, kept to a job and even married correctly.
I believed every word of it.
Until last December, I visited home with my wife to meet Chukwudi there. He had arrived with his wife too early.
Suddenly, there was something in the air. A weird kind of silence you get when you've already made up your mind about a person and you all are simply waiting for him to confirm it.
I watched my family interact with Chukwudi's wife carefully. Not wanting to sound harsh yet not polite. Smiles that barely left wrinkles below the eye. The way my aunt spoke to her was like she was a problem that had been finally accepted but not forgiven, even when I saw that she did absolutely no wrong. I saw it all and felt vindicated. At least I wasn't the only one who hated his attitude.
Then one evening, my mother called me into her room and told me something I had not known. Three years ago, when I had a little financial crisis while I was still building my house, I didn't want to tell anyone apart from my mother because I wanted to appear like a man who had everything handled. Chukwudi had called her and had secretly sent money quietly through her. He had told her not to tell me because he knew I would clearly refuse. I had already cut him off after our money incident.
My mother, on the other hand, had told me it was part of my inheritance that our father left for me.
I stood in that kitchen for a long time. With shame written all over me. I remembered all the times I had written him off before people. All the times I had used his mistakes to feel better about my own choices. Every time I had mistaken my noise for integrity and his silence for failure.
I never knew that all those times he was struggling and now he had somehow found his way out of the muddy waters of life.
And while I was busy looking down on him he was looking out for me.
I realised in that instant that maybe I had been the hypocrite. I had been so confident about my actions. Thinking I had standards looks like standards. I painted myself righteous and wore it like a badge and never once stopped to question it.
I found Chukwudi on the veranda that evening. We did not talk about what I had learned. We talked about football, about his new job, about the way the old mango tree in the compound had finally been cut down. The normal siblings talk.
Until I let it out, "Your wife seems like a good woman."
He looked at me for a moment. Then he smiled
"She is," he said. "She really is."
"And I'm sorry for everything."
He tapped my shoulder. "No, I should have let you all know about my predicament earlier. I just didn't want to look like the first son who depended on his younger ones. That's why I stayed away."
I nodded.
I went to bed that night with the story of the speck and the plank ringing in my head. That silent realisation that the most dangerous hypocrite in any room is the one who genuinely believes they are not one.
