That's My Girl

by Dale Ray Smith and Tony Robles/PNN

The ancestral winds blow us across oceans and onto streets; the trees shed their leaves and return with the coming of the seasons. How many ancestors have the trees seen? How many times have we walked past the trees without looking, without honoring their presence? People appear and disappear, come and go in and out of our lives. I hear my father’s voice in the bamboo forests of Hawaii saying, life isn’t promised, we are all on our journey. Each person in our life serves a purpose, each with his or her unique heartbeat and way of laughing; each with a gift that is given to be given and given again in the cycle which is life.

I remember the day I met Mary Ann Smith. Her father Dale Ray saw me at the coffee shop on the corner of 6th and Market little more than a month ago. We greeted with a hug. “Hey, come outside for a minute” he said, “I want you to meet my daughter”. We walked over to the front of Jack’s Bar, that great place recently shut down due to gentrification. Mary Ann was with a group of friends in front of that closed down, boarded up bar. I could still hear the music and the lights inside Jack’s--black faces and black voices swirling with lights of all colors—men in slacks and women in thick makeup and the bathroom door with its loose hinges. Jack’s was my church and many people’s church. I know Mary Ann heard that music and felt the life of that place. Now it was boarded up and she was outside with the trees.

“This is my girl” Dale Ray said. Dale Ray hugged his daughter and said things that daddy’s say to their little girls, even when the girls aren’t little anymore. They hugged a hug that lasted a lifetime, a hug that said all the things that went unsaid through the seasons. Things like “Baby girl, I’m sorry for the times I wasn’t there but I’m here now”. Mary Ann took her father’s hand then let go. “I’m tired daddy”, she said, “I’m tired”. I watched and the trees watched as father and daughter embraced. Slowly the leaves of houselessness, gentrification, substance abuse, the death of her mother, the death of her boyfriend, foster homes, lost leases and many other things fell from the trees and onto the street. “It’s ok now”, Dale Ray says to the woman who is, was, will always be his little girl. Mary Ann looks at her daddy, the loneliness and anxiety between them melting in each other’s arms but knowing that it comes back like weeds—it’s hard, very hard to make it go away.

That was the only time I met Mary Ann Smith—poverty scholar and daughter of POOR Magazine’s author Dale Ray Smith. He informed me of Mary Ann’s death a few days ago. She passed away on January 3rd at the age of 36, a poverty scholar and native of San Francisco. “She was in and out of foster homes during my addiction”, says Dale Ray. “Her number one priority was getting back into her kid’s life. She was mother to Sharonda, Laron and Shalonte. Dale Ray’s voice cannot cover his sadness. “She was a beautiful person with a good heart. She would give you her last dime”. Mary Ann lost her mother to a car accident 5 years ago. Her sister Carmen remembers. “She drank but not heavy until her mom passed”.

I walk past Jack’s on 6th street. I see the trees dance to the voices of those whose spirits sing in the Market Street wind. Mary Ann Smith’s voice sings and is not forgotten. Her voice sings with her mother who are finally reunited singing the sweet mother-daughter song that was meant to be sung without pain as the trees dance the ancestral dance honoring their lives.

Editor’s note: POOR Magazine is asking the community to help the Smith family at this time. Contributions can be made by Contacting Tiny at (510)435-7500