Meet Cute in Menlo Park
“Please don’t close the door to our future”
– The Jackson 5
I see my father—a thirteen-year-old boy in a tie
and slacks approaching a girl, my mother.
He holds a shoebox full of rocks. The fog
has just burned off the morning—
leaving the day bright and dry. Do you want
to see what I found? he asks her.
The other neighborhood children play cops
and robbers—dodging bullets
and putting the bad guys in handcuffs
at the shore of the bay. I know my mother
was skinny (like my sister) and her mother
would go weeks without re-pressing
her hair—so her edges must be beginning
to bloom back into afro.
Why do you dress so funny, like a pastor? she asks.
I see her looking at her jeans that fray
down the pants leg, and the green Chuck
Taylors—see her feel a new hole wearing
into the sole of them.
My mama always wants her children to look nice, he says.
She counters, Well, you look like you just got out
of church. They both laugh.
Their story begins much like it ends—with children
trying to understand pain, curious to feel
any kind of love.
Is it fair for me to tell you what will become
of these children?
In this moment, my father must think of only one thing:
the gap, still widening, between my mother’s teeth
as he opens the box to an assortment
of wet pillars of earth.
My mother reaches out to touch the collection,
her fingers moving across a red one—flat,
smooth, and marbled. You can have it, if you want,
my father says. She smiles. What’s your name?
Timothy Hughes, he says.
I’m Kimmy, pastor Hughes
by Erica Hughes
from 3Cents Magazine
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