Collection Spotlight: Kamesa Evette Carter

The FWA Board of Directors wants to showcase our winning Collections authors. Please read Kamesa Evette Carter’s winning short story.

A Teen Mom Starts Over

As a kid, I was a fan of the Choose Your Own Adventure series of books. I liked choosing what direction the story took to its ultimate end. Once, I was eaten by a shark. Another time, I was betrayed by a friend and locked in a dungeon. Of course, I liked the ending where I found the treasure and became rich and famous.

While I didn’t care very much for the boy-centric storylines of dragons, pirates, and space monsters, what I did like was that each book gave me the chance to start over and choose a different path, a different ending. I suppose if I had written a Choose Your Own Adventure book from my own life, a page would read like this:

You are a nineteen-year-old unwed mother in rural Mississippi. It’s the late nineties. Your child’s father is long gone. Your church has turned its back on you, people in your hometown give you dirty looks when you are out shopping, and random people tell you that no decent man would want to marry you. The men who do talk to you only do so because they think you’re “easy.” Forget the fact that you are in college and making very good grades. Forget the fact that you are working to support yourself and your child, because no one in Greenville, Mississippi will let you forget that you are nothing more than a whorish dreg on society. You are angry and tired of living this way. You want a fresh start.

Turn to page 15 to go online and meet a stranger.

Turn to page 20 to grit your teeth and bear it.

Continuing to live my life in Mississippi was not an option. I had few real friends to talk to because they did not have the same concerns. I wanted to move, but I had no money saved up to leave Greenville. In my boredom and desperation, I went online and began talking to a young man. After a few conversations, I visited him at his home in Michigan. A week later, he drove to Mississippi, and we got married in a hallway at the courthouse. The day after that, I packed up a few clothes and all of my books, and left town with my new husband. I wouldn’t return for a decade.

I had married the first man who asked me. Who does that?

In my flawed logic at the time, I had to shed Kamesa Honour—she was a miserable loser. Kamesa Al-Rida was a wife and mother who lived in suburban Detroit, attended classes at one of the local universities, and had a great job at a popular bookstore. She didn’t love her husband, but that didn’t matter because the alternative was to live in rejection and isolation in Mississippi. It was a nice revision to my life story. I took a risk and started over. Who wouldn’t love that story?

Another possible page:

Your ex-husband was a compulsive liar who was also emotionally and verbally abusive. He had the audacity to tell you that you owed him a child because he accepted another man’s child. Screw him. You were only married for six months and now you’re a divorcee. How glamourous! Surprisingly, you are not heartbroken. The world is your oyster and you have money and choices.

Turn to page 30 to stay in Detroit.

Turn to page 32 to move north to Saginaw and finish college there.

I loved Detroit, but I had no real desire to stay there. There was no way in hell I was going back to Mississippi. I had a taste of what it was like to live with respect and dignity, and I wasn’t going to trade it for anything in the world. I enrolled at Saginaw Valley State University and graduated with a degree in social work. I made friends, had a job at a nonprofit, and lived in a nice neighborhood.

Now that I was a pro at starting over and changing myself, I wasn’t afraid of what people would say about me. I was confident, I had a degree under my belt, and I loved the sense of adventure. It wasn’t the Paris or London that I’d longed for most of my life, but it damn sure wasn’t the backwoods of Mississippi.

Here’s one more page:

It’s time for a new adventure now that you’re bored in Michigan. You’ve been contacted by a headhunter who has found two job offers for you. One is in Jacksonville, Florida, and the other is in Phoenix, Arizona. They both sound interesting and have NFL teams, bookstores, and lots of arts and culture.

Turn to page 40 to move to Phoenix.

Turn to page 41 to move to Jacksonville.

I packed up again and headed for Jacksonville. I knew no one, but within six months, my son and I had made plenty of friends. I enjoyed the beaches, the abundance of sunshine, and I fell in love with the Jaguars.

Ten years later, I’m still here. I’ve remarried and added another son to my family. He can’t bear to miss a Sunday afternoon of football at EverBank Field. I’m proud to call Jacksonville my home and I could not see myself living anywhere else—unless it’s London.

I always tell my middle school students that it’s not how you start the race, it’s how you finish. You might make some less-than-awesome choices along the way—like being a teen mother–—but the decisions you make afterwards can either get you eaten by sharks or they can lead you to the treasure. You just have to be willing to get off that page, choose your adventure, and start over lest you end up in a dungeon.

Kamesa Evette Carter lives in Jacksonville. When she was in the third grade, she discovered that writing stories was a lot more fun than doing long division. Kamesa supports her reading and writing habits by working as a paraprofessional. She is a Jaguars fan and is currently in graduate school.