Family Forced My Kidney to Brother; They Regretted After Death

When the SATs came, my brother got into a mid-tier state school. Going there meant asking home for four or five thousand a month in living expenses. Meanwhile, back in tenth grade, my test scores were often over six hundred. To free up more money for my brother, they decided to pull me out of school. They even said they'd found me a good job. My mother said it to my face, cold: "What's the point of college? Plenty of graduates end up delivering takeout." "Why waste the money?" "Listen to me. I've already lined up a job for you." "Going to work now just saves you a few wasted years." I asked her: "If college is so useless, then why does Blake get to go?" "If working now saves you wasted years," "then why don't you make Blake quit and go to work?" By then I wasn't a naive little kid anymore. And she knew I'd been hammered hard enough that hitting me got her nowhere. She screamed at me, furious: "I'm being nice to you, and you won't listen. Are you trying to send me to an early grave?" "I don't care about your excuses or whatever you're thinking. You are not going to that school, and that's final!" I was so angry I said it straight out: "Don't think I don't know what you're after." "You're pulling me out so I'll work and hand it all over to feed Blake's spending!" She rounded on me like a snarling dog: "You ungrateful brat, what's that look for?" "I raised you all these years. Isn't it only right you take a little of the pressure off me now?" "Besides, you're a girl. Sooner or later you'll marry off." "However much I spend raising you, in the end it all goes to some other family anyway." I glared hard at her. "So that's what you really think." Coldly, she said: "Either way, you're not getting the tuition." "Tomorrow you report to the factory!" I was livid. And in my heart I knew there was no fighting her back then. My only hope was my father. I waited and waited for him to get home from work, then told him through tears that I wanted to stay in school. He sighed. "Prissy, sweetheart, it breaks my heart too. I want you in school as well." "But you know how things are with us right now." "Your mother's at home with no job. This whole family runs on the few thousand a month I bring in." "And your brother needs four or five thousand a month on his own, on top of what it costs to feed and keep everyone." "There's just no money left to send you to school." That was it. All hope gone. From that moment I understood it completely. To them my life was worth nothing. In this house I could count on no one. The only person I could lean on was myself. I did as I was told and went to the factory. But I also went fully off the rails. Making five thousand a month, I bought a phone that cost over ten thousand, bags that cost tens of thousands. My pay was always gone before month's end. Gone, and then some, until I was in debt. Every time they came to me, I stuck my hand out first to shut them up: "I'm broke. Got any cash for me?" "You wouldn't squeeze a poor girl who's already drowning in debt, would you?" "You wouldn't, right? You wouldn't?" I chased them with it. Until they couldn't even look me in the face. I would not give them the smallest opening to bleed me dry. I thought that was how it would stay. But I never imagined that, under their endless coddling, my brother would end up gravely ill so young after all. Sick enough to need a new kidney. For a moment none of them could accept the news. After a long silence, my mother's eyes went straight to me: "Prissy, the only thing that can save your brother now is you giving him a kidney. He's your own flesh and blood. You don't want to watch him left crippled this young, do you?"

Mom stood there sobbing, nose running, tears streaming. If she and I were like any ordinary brother and sister. If we were like other people's children. By now I'd probably be crying my eyes out too, wouldn't I? But there wasn't a shred of pity in me. I looked at her coldly. "What does his being paralyzed have to do with me?" She wailed at me. "You wretched girl, how can you be so cold-blooded? He's your own brother!" I gave a faint smile. "So what if he's my brother?" "His whole life he's soaked up every bit of love in this house. Did anyone ever think of me?" "Now that you need to carve out my organs, suddenly you remember I exist?" "Don't you find that laughable!" Mom stared at me, unable to believe her ears. "Prissy, when did you turn into someone like this?" I shouted back at her. "From the day you stripped me of my education for his sake!" "You—" Her eyes went wide. I laughed coldly. "I know what you're about to say. That I'm a girl, that I'll marry off sooner or later, so what's the point of school? Right?" "Well, since that's how you feel." "Then his needing a new kidney has nothing to do with me either." "After all, once I marry, I belong to another family." "Until my future husband gives his permission, you have no right to touch my organs, and no right to order me around!" "You—" Mom clutched her chest and jabbed a finger at me. "You, you're trying to make me drop dead?" I shouted. "That's exactly what I'm trying to do!" Slap. A hand cracked hard across my face. I cupped my cheek and turned to look at my father. He said icily. "How dare you talk to your mother like that! Apologize!" Bearing the burning sting on my face, I looked at him and asked. "You hit me?" Dad flared up. "I didn't just hit you, I'll beat you black and blue!" "It's my fault for going easy on you all these years, for not disciplining you properly, for spoiling you and indulging you too much." "That's why you've got no respect left for your own parents!" What an ironic thing to say. Was he saying it in anger? Or was this a joke? I looked at him. "How did you treat me all those years?" "When you bought two drumsticks, you gave them both to my brother and didn't leave me so much as a scrap?" "Or when my brother and I fought over a toy, and you took a feather duster to me?" "Or how about cutting off my right to go to school so my brother could have more spending money than anyone else!" "That's what you call spoiling me? Indulging me?" "How do you even have the nerve to say it?" "You, you—" Dad raised his hand again, ready to strike me. I thrust my face right out at him. "Hit me, go on, hit me!" "You've always taken out every bit of your frustration on me anyway, my whole life." Dad roared. "That's a lie!" I said. "A lie?" "When I was twelve, your boss chewed you out at the factory, so you came home, and all because I scored a ninety-eight on a test instead of a perfect score—" "That was your excuse, and you took it out on me and slapped me hard, twice." "And at that very moment, my brother was standing right there shaking, holding a test he'd scored eighty-nine on. Were you blind? Couldn't you see?" Dad's eyes wavered for a moment. "I did that because I wanted you to do better!" "If you'd just tried a little harder, wouldn't you have gotten a perfect score?" "You wanted me to do better?" It was as though I'd heard the biggest joke in the world. "If you really wanted me to do better, if you really cared about my schooling, would you have ignored me? Would you have forced me to give it up?" "You're a grown man past your prime, saying things like that. Don't you feel any shame?"

Dad had nothing left to say. Mom shouted from the side: "Barnaby, don't waste your breath arguing with her." "This ungrateful little snake only ever remembers a grudge. She holds onto every hurt and forgets every kindness." I turned to look at her. "You're right. I am an ungrateful snake. So I'm not donating, and that's final." "You'll donate whether you want to or not!" Mom screamed, her face twisted. "I'm your mother. You do as I say. I tell you to donate, so you donate!" Dad joined in: "That's right. If it comes to it, we'll strap you to the operating table ourselves!" Their words froze the last of the warmth in me. Those two faces I knew better than any others suddenly looked like a pair of demons, snarling and clawing at me. I stumbled back a step in fear. "You're monsters. You're monsters!" I couldn't stay a second longer. I ran out of the hospital in tears. Behind me came Dad's footsteps, chasing. I was terrified. I ran faster and faster. I heard a crash behind me, and Dad's howl of pain. But I didn't dare turn around. I was afraid that if I did, they really would tie me down and cut the organs out of me. I ran and ran with everything I had. Until I reached my boyfriend's rented room. He saw me arrive, still crying. He gently wiped away my tears and asked what was wrong. I told him everything. I thought he would care. But he listened, frowned, and said: "He's your brother, though. Even if he's done a thousand wrong things, he's still your own brother. How can you just turn your back on him?" I stared at him, unable to believe it. "What did you say?" My boyfriend went on: "It's just one kidney. A person can live a perfectly normal life with one kidney. It's nothing. But if your brother can't find a donor, he'll be disabled for the rest of his life!" The more he talked, the more worked up he got, as if he'd cast himself into the role. He kept going: "If my little sister were still alive, if my older sister were still alive, I wouldn't just give one kidney. I'd give her both, gladly!" His hypocrisy shocked me beyond anything I could hold in. "Matthew Henson, that's enough!" "What are you spouting?" "Wasn't it your own sister who worked herself sick back then, all for your sake?" "And now you're playing the saint?" "If you were really such a good man, you wouldn't have watched your sister slave and suffer while you drank and partied every single day." "You are the last person on earth with any right to lecture me!" I spun around and ran. My boyfriend called after me a few times. It only made my feet move faster. I ran, and I cried as I ran. It felt like the whole world was a lie. Every bit of it was fake. I drifted on the streets for a week. After a week, I went home again. When Mom and Dad saw me come back, they didn't curse me or hit me. They were like different people: "Prissy, you silly girl, you're all grown up now, so why are you still acting like a child?" "Your father and I were only frantic, that's why we said those things to you. You can't just run away from home." "Do you have any idea how worried we were about you?" Dad had turned unusually gentle. And Mom, for once, said: "Look how thin you've gotten from going hungry. Tell me what you want to eat, and I'll make it for you." I didn't know why they had suddenly changed. But being worried over felt warm. A warmth I had never known. What I wanted, what I had ached for, was nothing more than a family like this. I looked at Mom, crying. "Mom, I want your pot roast." "All right, don't cry. I'll make it for you." That evening, Mom cooked a whole table of my favorite dishes. I ate it with tears in my eyes. So they wouldn't see me cry. The moment I finished, I hurried back to my room. I lay there thinking for a long time. Maybe I really was cold-blooded. Something inside me began to give. He was my brother, after all. My own brother. What was so terrible about giving up one kidney? By the dead of night, I had worked it through. I decided to have a proper talk with Mom and Dad. I decided to agree to donate. But when I got to my bedroom door, I overheard them talking. Mom asked: "Is she asleep?" Dad said: "She usually stays up late. She won't be asleep before two or three in the morning." He sighed and said: "Give her this milk, we've put sleeping pills in it. Once she drinks it, we take her to the operating table." "I know it's cruel, but there's nothing else we can do. Our son's illness can't be put off any longer." The room went quiet for a long while. Then Mom snapped, resentful: "Barnaby, what are you still hesitating for?" "Don't leave me to always be the villain!" "It's your son lying in that hospital, waiting for a kidney. He's your only bloodline, Barnaby." "If you won't go, then you can just watch your son turn into a cripple!" Dad was silent for a long time. Then he said: "All right. I'll go." Terrified, I spun around and slipped back into my room, pulled the blanket over myself, and pretended to be asleep. Behind me came the sound of the door opening. And Dad's heavy footsteps. Every one of those footfalls landed on me like the tread of an executioner coming for my life. It wasn't that I hadn't known they didn't love me. I just never imagined they could be cruel to me to this degree. "Daughter." Dad's voice came, trembling: "Are you asleep?" "Dad made you a cup of hot milk. Drink it while it's warm."