Why I Left Louisiana (pt. 4) – The Last Straw

I was going to save this story for later in this series, but recent experiences have put it on the top of my mind as of late. So, now felt like the right time.

I wasn’t supposed to end up at a fancy college.

I was supposed to end up at LSU. That’s where everyone who did well at my high school ended up. And, that would work for me. On a lark, I applied to Tulane basically to see if I could get in. When I did, I remember turning to my parents and saying, “Huh, that’s nice. Well, I know we can’t afford it.” To their credit in that moment (more on this later), they said, “Lets tour campus and see what they have to offer.”

The second I stepped foot on it I fell in love. To hear my parents tell it, they knew like 5 minutes into the tour. This is where I needed to be. It was just so different than anything else I had connected to. Oh sure I had been to the Audubon Zoo but that is as much of uptown as I knew. I knew Metairie, but I didn’t know shit about the actual city…and I was smitten from the second I got there.

We got home…a few days passed. My parents told me to accept Tulane’s offer. That I would go there in the fall.

What I didn’t know at the time was the devil’s bargain being struck behind my back. In fact, it took a full year for it to solidify.

My first year was entirely funded on bonds. You know, the kind you get when you are a baby. Apparently, that was popular enough that combined with my scholarship, I was barely able to cover it.

After that year, my grandmother, to her eternal kindness. Funded the difference. I think she wanted to say one of her grandkids went to Tulane.

As discussed before, money is the axis on which my family rotates. I had no idea at the time, but there were plenty of the fellow grandkids who resented me (some of whom still do). No more so than my brother.

My entire sophomore year was spent with him seething and churning. Trying to find a way to get “equal” to what I “got.”

That summer was one of the hardest of my life. I have a bunch of random stories from that time place (including the last beating I ever took from my brother).

But eventually it was the end of the summer. The actual story begins with me helping my grandmother out with some things at her house. My brother at the time was working for the family business, trying to figure out what to do with his life. He had graduated high school and was kind of lost. People at the family business called my grandmother to tell her that my brother just walked off the site and someone needed to pick him up. She handed me some gas money and told me to take him wherever he needed to go.

I go to pick up him up and he is livid. I have seen him this angry probably a dozen or so times in my life. There is no talking him down from it. He gets a level of hyperpissed that few other people do.

He tells me to drive him to Baton Rouge. That he had left his car there. So, I do that.

He goes into a full interrogation mode, “How much money is she giving you?” I plead. That its for school. It pays the tuition minus my scholarship and that’s all. He tells me, “You tell me or I am going to jump out of this car.”

And on I-10. He fully opens the passenger side door and sticks his foot out. I scream. Panic. Yell.

I cave. I tell him. He goes, “I fucking knew it. I should be getting that much money. I’m going to take care of this bullshit…”

I spend the rest of the ride to his destination, a sketchy ass trailer park in the back of airline highway somewhere, begging. Begging him to let me stay at school. That it was the only away I could afford it.

He is totally silent. He gets out of the car and yells, “It’ll be taken care of, now get the fuck out of here.” Which I did at best possible speed.

A few weeks pass, and I am about to move back to campus. I check my bank account to cut the check for tuition and I am short. I call my grandmother and she informs me that my mom instructed her to stop paying it.

I confronter her. “If she can’t pay your brother what you are getting paid, she shouldn’t be paying either of you.” I say, “I’m not ‘getting paid.’ Its for my tuition. It covers a school cost.”

My mom didn’t care. She was shutting it down.

I ended the conversation, “Ok, if I have to get a loan. I will. I was lucky to have two years covered. But if I have to do that and this is why, you will never hear from me again.”

And I left the house.

I have recounted these events multiple times to my family. I still have never received an answer on why it happened that makes any sense to me. It was their idea for me to go to a school where I would have a big tuition bill. I would have been content at LSU. Now I had a much better collegiate experience (and honestly, life experience), but I didn’t want to fight over money.

Honestly, maybe it was inevitable. My brother was never going to be university material. My parents couldn’t admit there was something wrong with him. They never gave me the kind of adulation they gave him for every fart that ever floated out of his ass.

Anyway, I had loan paperwork drawn up. I had it filled out and was going to take it back to the bank. My parents told me to hold off. That my grandmother was coming to the house on what was the last weekend before I headed back to campus.

That my mom would “convince her to give the same amount of money to my brother.”

I figured I would at least thank her for what she did so far, and leave it at that.

Luckily enough for pretty much everyone involved. Chaos intervened.

At 2am the night before, my brother drunkenly called my grandparents and left the following voicemail.

“I want you both to know that you are going to hell. Ya’ll think ya’ll some good fucking christians. You are hypocrites. You don’t give a shit about anyone, and you both going to hell.”

*click*

My family’s secret mutant power is knowing where to stick the knife and twist it. My brother certainly did that that night.

The next day, we hosted a big Sunday dinner. My grandparents came over. I found my grandmother and mom sitting in the room in silence. When I walk in, my grandmother takes the initiative.

“I guess I can keep handling The Right Reverend’s tuition?”

My mom storms out, ‘I GUESS YOU CAN.’

This incident was not the first time my parents chose my brother over me. It was just the biggest. It was clear to me from then on out that I needed to sever contact. At least, as much as I could still being this close.

I did math. The tuition calculus done by my grandmother included room and board on campus. I figured out how to turn that money into an apartment off campus as long as I lived cheap. Ate a ton of peanut butter sandwiches, but I ended up saving money in the long run.

I didn’t call my parents for anything. When I got an internship that summer, my then girlfriend, now wife, convinced me to call them. To let them know the good news. My mom answered the phone, “So that means your grandmother can stop paying you.” ‘No, I still have to go to school. The internship doesn’t pay big money.’

My mom replies, “Oh….” I say, “ok, well I’m going to hang up now.” And she says, “Oh I mean we’re proud of you and whatever.”

And then I hung up.

My life was building towards it. But this is the event that made me realize how hard I had to shut the door behind me. It honestly took most of a decade to rebuild that relationship. I will not pretend I have any kind of traditional parent/child relationship at all. I have something I would describe as congenial.

It was the event that made me never look back. I disappointed some people. I know I made some people mad along the way. But, it’s what needed to happen in order for me to have a chance at happiness. I don’t regret any of it.