MONTEGO BAY, St James –

Eighteen years ago Shenae Bell’s biological father told her mother to have an abortion or consider the relationship over.

Neither were ready for a child. He was a 24-year-old policeman and she was 20 and unemployed.

But her quick response was decisive.

“I threw the money back in his face,” she said.

At the time it hurt, but Karen McIntyre pressed on with her resolve to raise her daughter as best she could with the help of her mother, Shenae’s grandmother.

Although she had great expectations of the girl, whom she introduced to books at an early age, she never realised at the time that she was grooming one of Jamaica’s brightest students who would land nine distinctions in the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) examinations and scholarship offers from three top colleges in the United States.

Shenae remembers it well.

“My mother loves books, so naturally I grew to love them too. I was about four or five when she took me to join the library in Sandy Bay. I took home a big blue book. I don’t remember what it was called but I learned to spell the word ‘dinosaur’ and ‘system’,” she said. She remembers too reading every sign in sight on the roads. This helped build her cognitive skills. Television too played a huge part in her academic grooming. ” I don’t agree with people who knock TV, it is educational. I watch MTV, BET, the History Channel and Discovery and the news. Every night we watch the news and argue about what’s happening in society,” she said.

‘We’ means herself, her mother and Paul Appleton, the man who came into their lives ten years ago and established himself as her mother’s other half.

“As far as I’m concerned he’s my daddy,” said Shenae proudly.

A suave-looking Appleton tried without success to restrain a proud grin at the acknowledgment.

“I just do what I have to do I love them by doing, not by talking,” he told the Observer West matter of factly.

According to Appleton, an opinionated man who with no qualms about the fact that he’s not a fan of marriage or traditional religion, his role in the family includes that of being an advisor and provider.

” A lot of people get married and what happens, I can run my own thing, I don’t need the government to run my thing,” he told the Observer West.

A proud McIntyre who runs the family business — an auto parts store alongside Appelton — seemed quite easy with Appleton’s stance. She told the OBSERVER WEST that she was quite satisfied with Appleton’s performance as a father.

“He’s a bit miserable at times, but he has done very well. He works hard and spends his time here. And he has done a very good job with Shenae. Heart-to-Heart talks, discipline, making sure that everything is in place… you name it,”

According McIntyre, this represents a far cry from the role Shenae’s biological father, who migrated when she was a baby, played.

“Once when she was three he promised her $500 and a bicycle if she could recite her ABC’s. “She reeled it off in no time and ran to him and gave him a hug…all now not a bicycle, not a $500,” she recalled.

“I’m very glad I never listened to him,” she added.