Quite simply, this is a story about, feeling alone despite your surroundings. It is also about point of views, and understandings...this excerpt is from the following: A Perspective

A Perspective

by Mark James

Marlene:
Santa Cruz, who does leave Belmont an’go live up in d’bush in Santa Cruz? Marlene was hot as a coal-pot iron. She slammed chairs into floors and doors into walls, she lost one side of her good gold earrings as a result of her antics that afternoon. She cursed Granny and Daddy for letting chi'ren who thought they was grown woman run game in she house. Threats were hurled at the two remaining girls. Afterwards, she prayed for patience and understanding, she asked God why? What had she done to deserve such ungrateful children. Granny and Daddy looked at each other then she went back to reading her Psalms and he, to his Daily News. People had always disappointed her. Her own father, Daddy Sanchez, left her, her mother and her brothers behind to pick up with God knows who else. He say how he just kya be bothered wid woman an' chi'ren. Marlene don't even remember what he face look like sometimes. Her first husband left, though no fault of his own, gone nonetheless. Her daughters and her son, all disappointments, all almost gone. No peace, why couldn't Marlene discover peace, she was forty-five years old and still, uncertain as to how she might get a bit of it.
Childhood was out of the question. It was beat out, weakness and tears forbidden. The flame reduced to less than a flicker. Women hated and scorned, men waited their turn for an opportunity, that only little Marlene was unaware of. What becomes of a child deprived of knowledge? She morphs into an adult with nothing to offer, except rules, unexplained directions, and a readied hand to punish; she is left with the remembered sting of the hand, or the belt, left with questions she dare not ask, unrealized answers, immobilizing fear. The why, unanswered. The "how comes?", neglected. The burdens held close like a suckling baby who knows nothing but the urge to do so.
It was a bondage like no other, her father had come to the island via Venezuela looking for work. "Hear-Say" gone and tell everybody in Trinidad how he run from the law and hole up in Nariva near d'swamp; that is why he so mean spirited, because he was never able to have the life he truly wanted.
What make bad matters worse is when he went and marry the Carib girl with long pretty jet black hair. Is like she was so in opposition to he character that he was hoping some of the goodness would rub off on he too. But God help him. It didn't serve to make he no more happy than he was before. Within a month she was pregnant, then here come little Marlene, red-hot and burning like flames.
To Mr. Eliseo Sanchez life was never fair, or good, happiness was meant for fools to consider, and he was no fool, and so happiness went away for good. Jhoka felt like life could get no better. She had a man to call her own, he had given her a baby and his name. The year was 1925, the end of Crown Colony rule; nobody, not a soul could care less about what was happening elsewhere if it wasn't impacting a he, a she or a them. Like the British empire, Eliseo's presence was, apparently, less and less, yet the psychological noose tugged and tightened against Jhoka' s sun stained neck. Her idealized view was augmented when Daddy Sanchez came home drunk one too many times threatening to kill the baby if she didn't put it away somewhere. Refusal to do so resulted in a hot slap to the face and a knock in the head, Jhoka's body slamming into a wall, the baby girl crying and screaming on the floor and Eliseo planting himself and his source into the recipient of his passion and rage, resulting in the creation of Te'Amo, the first born son. Crown rulership was of no consequence but plans to get from under Eliseo's hand were starting to form in the mind of Jhoka De Luna.
Who needs to feel worth in Nariva? It was a valid question, with respect to these circumstances.
Almost always, desirability, usefulness and value are brought into question, mostly from the people around you. Community, parents, could make or break a young child. Jhoka had none, she felt that she had no merit. And so Marlene got very little self-assurance from her mother. Too many lashes absorbed, too many daydreams interrupted, too many 'hush yuh mout' gurl an' do what ah say!" It was to the point that Marlene began looking in the mirror more and more, seeing less and less of the person she thought she was meant to be. Reflected back, she saw Jhoka, her mother instead. Education too, had no worth but for some reason, unknown to man, Jhoka let Marlene go to convent school. Somehow she felt the need to address the why not/what could be worse than this life? Silently. Prodded by moral sense or God. With no fuss or talking she took Marlene all the way to St. Joseph, and left her there.
Daddy Sanchez beat Jhoka when she returned to Nariva after dropping Marlene off. For one, it took too long for her to get back in time to receive him at home, two, she had no permission from him to do so, three, the fact that she was smart enough to know where St. Joseph was let alone get to and from it made him angry and scared. He knew she must have heard of the school through the nuns work on the island, never in a million days did he think she would leave this place if it weren't with him leading the way.    Six ways from Sunday, like the plague he tortured her. He rested on the seventh, just in time to pray, Hail Mary and Our Father his sins into vapor. Returning home four years later, Marlene discovered what was left of her mother, Daddy Sanchez gone, his last wicked words left dangling in the air like a clothesline, too far to reach, mocking you. Jhoka was almost unrecognizable, except for her hair, all natural beauty had vanished along with the once held hope in her eyes. Somehow Eliseo had them now, maybe in his pockets or under his feet, who knows. Marlene had been known to those in her life by the names given to her, affording her an identity, a place, a categorizing of the life she'd have. She went from a young Ms. Sanchez to Mrs. Robert St. Claire, then to Mrs. Walcott. She wished she knew who she was before having a name, maybe then the interpretation would have less residual effects on her guilt riddled mind, body, and soul. Presently, thirty years later, she is sitting alone on the side of the bed that she and Llelwyn Walcott share, wondering where the match to her earring was, the question, still unanswered, what had she done to deserve this outcome? The silence of her mother and her husband brought about feelings of remorse and more questions. How much of her father did she have in her? With everything she had done to prove she was not in his likeness, she ended up here, feeling less like the abused and more like the culprit. Looking up from her hands that held one gold stud earring, Marlene prepared to tidy herself in the mirrored bureau only to see in it her fathers face. From the living room where Granny and Daddy sat, they could not hear the soft tap, tap, tap, of the other earring falling to the bedroom floor.