love in lost places

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Love in Lost Places

(Continued)

They stayed together for close to a year. For an anniversary, she had a set of dog–tags made with their names and the date when they started dating.

On an afternoon in 2009, Jameska was coming up the hill towards her house when she heard the sirens. Walking a little faster, her curiosity turned into panic when she realized that they were coming from her backyard. She saw her uncle Earl run down towards the trusses that once supported railroad tracks but now acted as a footbridge out of the backyard over the creek and into the woods.

Her dad was the only person she knew that used those trusses. The shortcut through his daughter's backyard was the fastest way of getting to his girlfriend's house after a night of drinking.

Tammie told her what happened. "Jameska, it's your dad."

The night's events are unclear. The Glouster police said that he fell off the footbridge and hit his head before landing in the creek. They called it an accidental death.

A few days earlier, Jimmy promised Jameska, like he had many times before, that he'd be by to pick her up so they could hang out. Maybe he would take her fishing this time, she thought. He never showed up. In a fit of what she regretfully labels the behavior of "an angry freaking little teenager," Jameska told him that she hated him and that she hoped he would die.

"And then he did…" she said, wet eyes and all.

  • Jameska

  • Alex

  • Jessica

  • Break-Up

  • Michael

In the last three years Jameska continued trying to find love through fleeting relationships.

Her relationship with Josh and her father have become her frame of reference for any subsequent relationships. Agitated by the break-up and afraid to be alone, she sought affections from a boy in jail, another that was in and out of jail and just about anyone who left comments on her MySpace photos.

"I used to think I wasn't good enough for him because he would come and go and I just felt I wasn't that important," she says about her relationship with her father.

"I feel like I always have to have someone there. At all times. When I get somebody in my life, I want to keep a hold of them and I don't want them to go," she says.

"When I get somebody in my life, I want to keep a hold of them and I don't want them to go and when they go, I just get really upset" — Jameska McKee

Through hinging much of her happiness on having relationships, affection and attention, she has taken on the role of the hopeless romantic searching for her elusive Prince Charming.

When Jessica started flirting with Jameska in the summer of 2010, she finally decided she was "done with guys." A pretty girl with short hair and a collection of Cincinnati Bengals ball caps was willing to drive twenty minutes north just to visit her. To Jameska, there was no way a girl could break her heart.

Jameska McKee - Text Message

A text message sent to Jameska from a boy who was trying to convince her that as soon as he left his girlfriend, they would be together.

Tammie has known Terry since high school, practically all her life. "I always thought he was a nerd," she says. He is a heavy, asthmatic man who holds his NASCAR hats and smokes near and dear. Tammie's sister was egging her on, telling her that he wanted to date her. One night in a bar three years ago, they were drunk, they got together.

Six months later, he asked her for her hand in marriage. Jameska, excited about a stepfather possibly providing the father figure she always wanted, pushed her to accept. Tammie's heart was not in it. She had seen what relationships did to people's lives.

"I could come and go as I wanted. Do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Didn't have no responsibility of someone else besides my kid and that was my choice. I didn't have somebody 'Oh you can't go there, you can't hang out with this one,' I know I can make it without a man, I know I don't need one," she says.

If it was not for Jameska, Tammie says, she would have never married Terry. She was ready to boot him, but Jameska fought for it. He worked. He would come home. He gave them money.

Today, Jameska has a highly contentious relationship with the once-upon-a-time stepfather of her dreams. Expletive-laced exchanges fly across the house between them. He had to stop working shortly after the marriage because previous back injuries stopped him from doing the manual labor he had used to build his independence. No longer is he the provider he once sold himself as. Now he spends his days doing odd jobs for the McKees while, Tammie scrounges for hours at her job as a home health aide.

"They're jealous of each other," Tammie says of the impatience between Terry and Jameska. "He wants all the attention and she wants all the attention, When they can't get the attention, they're fighting amongst each other," she explains..

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