FAMILIES across the human species are bound by common inflictions, celebrations and contradictions. Strength, courage and betrayal inhabit the same space of private dreams and ambitions, our genetic codes span centuries. But we hear only of the heroes and heroines, the villains and the social defects are hardly spoken of, thus, the genetic villain in its new manifestation can proceed to taint, mislead, destroy and deceive unexpected.

The tale begins with a determined matriarch defying creed and carefully laid-out plans that resulted in a broken home with children dispersed in different directions. The concept discussion captures the children in three locations and what developed. Cleo was deposited with the grandparent of one side, Orpheus with the grandparent of the other side, while Odyssey went to Godparents. None of them was subject to childhood hardships of the extreme that were traumatic, but each evolved differently and responded to life’s changes as a result of a sense of reality cultivated along the opposing veins of survival and entitlement. Orpheus was deposited in a middle income with an upper-income patronage environment. He cultivated a high self-esteem, one that transcended the norms of his generation with an inculcated passion. He aspired to a mystical interpretation of self with a snobbery of the active customs and practices of his cultural landscape. Long after the upper-income patronage had dissipated, he pursued assumptions and a keen ability to entertain, decipher, and deem his close family environment for isolation, recognising who was for mere courtesy and deportation from his close quarters. But in the previous business exploits, he erred in not understanding the nature of the political and its social capabilities for deceit and backstabbing. He lost greatly and suffered where, if he understood well enough with the right loyalties, he could have survived better. For most of his life, he shunned family life through concepts and a morality that conflicted with the norms around him, but developed for survival, an ardent service based on knowledge of a specific crucial government system, its loopholes, and advantages. Applying the technical training of his earlier employment, that all engines are operated on by an inner knowledge of the applications of its systems.

Cleo was well enveloped by caring folks on a justifiable pedestal towards a meaningful life of success. What was wrong was that families are at times divided between ‘Yard fowl’ and ‘Proper fowl.’ Cleo was the latter; the ‘Proper Fowl’ has a sense of isolation, a profound instinct of entitlement. It is a way that parents expect the other child not to complain when they are ignored and think that they do not recognise that they are regulated to a lesser plane. Cleo landed a significant job with potential for elevation, but a matter occurred that made her lose her job. By that time the economic blessing to her by her favourite aunt was exhausted, so she joined the common folk to extract a living. She had talents, but the development of talents took time. She needed to cultivate a new persona that didn’t or couldn’t fit into the studious realms of reliability, production, and marketing.

Cleo turned uninitiated by social experience to the underworld, a netherworld of no loyalty, where without the brutal means to retaliate you couldn’t hold ground. She courted a bank robber, who when apprehended, brought the police to her home and with tears she handed over the loot to the dishonest officers. Next, she negotiated a consignment of drugs, but before anything could be done, the suppliers invaded the home and pistol-whipped an innocent relative, looked in the typical locations that the neophyte would use and took back her/their drugs. With each act of folly, Cleo sank deeper into a strange bitterness, feeling happy when people she knew died.

Time was passing by and one folly followed the other. Then she carried the drugs herself and lost more time in a foreign jail, duped by the easiest ‘salawala’ promise a policeman could use on a vulnerable novice. Cleo continues. Why with the initial exposure, upbringing and ‘Proper School’ did Cleo fall into the dismal netherworld? Was it a sense of callous entitlement?

Odyssey. After his Godparents passed and his father moved into their country house, now left for him, he was the only child who had a dual rural and urban upbringing. The matriarch of the family returned. It was like meeting his biological mother for the first time. He also learnt that he had other siblings. He moved out from his house that his father and the stepmother from hell occupied and went to his mother. There was no money for him to sit his final exams. Eventually he was taken out of school to help with babysitting chores. His world had turned upside down. His ally was his step-father, who secretly packed a bag and he left for the Youth Corps, then to another location after the Guyana Youth Corps was dissolved. Odyssey fell in with the ‘Yard fowl’ side of the family. With no patronage, he went to the waterfront with help from a neighbour Cleo introduced him to.

The great aunt he stayed at was demanding, so he turned to street hustling to substitute his needs and wants in some cases. He sold ‘canta’gold to clients at a famous High Street hotel with the collaboration of a prostitute. He learnt the streets through older schoolmates and relatives, faced and survived the courts and walked, and made a covenant towards redemption after the matriarch told him in the presence of Orpheus that with his imprisonment for buying stolen items, she approached them for bail. Cleo, who still had her esteemed job, said that ‘MY MONEY IS NOT FOR THAT” and Orpheus declared, among other things, it was not his problem.

However, in the past and in the future, from then it was Odyssey who was called to physically represent these siblings. The matriarch insisted, ‘Know wuh yuh deh pon.’ Odyssey had learnt, though there would be more to his lesson.

Thus concludes the character sketch of a novel based on real characters. In a world we can all identify with; it is on us as leaders, parents and guardians to understand how we balance with values the intricate tapestry of the responsibility of the ego with the capabilities to discern and not only to feel impulsively.