Reviving Hope

Reviving Hope

A Crowdsourced novel written by the IGrow Chicago Community.

Chapter 1

Returning from a short visit to her husband's  grave, Hope Hamilton was lost.  It had been less than a year since 'Tom' had passed, and she was an emotional mess. She was forgetful and she seemed to be indifferent to everyday living. Nothing bothered her, and nothing interested her.  Her job bored her; her co-workers bored her, the world as a whole, as messed up as she thought it was, bored her, too. 

She wasn't suicidal, but in her mind, she was not burning to live.  She was just...nothing.  A family doctor or psychologist probably would have diagnosed her with a severe form of Depression, but she did not have the time or money to sit and listen to someone tell her something she already knew.

It was raining and her 2007 Honda Civic had begun to overheat.  For awhile she ignored the steam coming out of the front of her car.  Finally, the 35 year old widow decided to pull off the Chicago Skyway and find her way back to her North Side apartment serpentining through the neighborhood streets of the South Side of Chicago.  

Looking down at her phone and the Google map that was providing her directions, she saw that it was using the last of its battery power.  She reached into her purse to retrieve her recharging cable, and quickly realized she had forgotten to bring it along. 

She sighed and shook her head as she drove, thinking about how stupid she was for the things she hadn't done, like packing the recharger, but also not having the engine checked on her car when the dashboard warning light had come on the week before. Oh, well. She thought, another fascinating day in the life of Hope Hamilton.  Not.

A thought of Tom suddenly popped into her mind; he was smiling and slowly shaking his head at her, as if he found it amusing that she should be so lost without him.  In fairness to her, his death had taken both of them by surprise.  He had gone into the doctor with a back ache only to be told he had a rare form of cancer and would probably not live beyond the Spring the two had been enjoying.

Tom had beaten the odds and lasted until the end of the Summer.  When he died, everyone was stunned.  His parents and friends as well as Hope, couldn't really believe it.  He had been the most alive person any of them had ever known, and then he was gone.  It made no sense to anyone, least of all, Hope, who had assumed that she and Tom would spend the rest of their lives together and that that meant many, many years.

Her car, still steaming, suddenly sputtered and a few hundred feet later, the car stopped.  It was still raining, but Hope could see through the windshield that she and the car had come to rest at 64th and Honore Street. 

A North Sider who rarely travelled through the area, Hope had no real idea where she was.  Although she could name various neighborhoods on the North Side (Andersonville, Lincoln Park, Bowmanville, Rogers Park, Lake Side Balmoral, etc.) to her, the South Side was just that: the South Side.  She had no thoughts of exactly where she was.  No thoughts or ideas of Bronzeville, Lawndale, North Lawndale, Pullman Village, Pilsen,  Marquette Park, Beverly.  To her, it was all just the South Side.

In fact, her car had rolled to a stop in the rain in Englewood.  

She sat in her car with her dead phone for a few minutes as the rain pounded the roof of her car.  She wasn't sure what to do, nor was she sure what she wanted to do.  She kept thinking to herself, Here I am, staring at my phone that has died, inside my car that has died, after visiting the grave of my husband who has died.  Maybe the universe is telling me something.  Maybe I should...

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of someone knocking on her car door.  It scared her to see a group of young boys surrounding her car. Some of the boys were hooded, others stretched their shirts over their heads to protect themselves from the rain.  Instinctively, Hope locked her doors then put her right arm over her purse, as if to hide it.

The boy to her left continued to knock on her driver's side window, while the others took their positions around the car.  Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw that one of the boys was signaling for her to roll down her window so that he might have a conversation with her.  Hope's heart pounded and she reached for her ignition key.  She tried to start the car. The engine gave a faint whirring sound, but then gave up quickly.  When she tried to start the car again, all she saw were the red lights on her dashboard.  The car battery was just about dead.

Hope put her head down for a moment and prayed.  Then she looked up at the boy staring into her from the driver's side window. She hoped that the piteous look on her face might save her from being robbed or worse.  But as she took in his face, she could see that he was doing his best not to look threatening.  As the rain beat down on him, he alternately wiped his face, then opened up his hands, trying his best to suggest that he wasn't trying to hurt her or rob her.

Hope rolled down her window just enough so that she could hear what he was trying to say through the rain.  

"It's cool, lady, it's cool." He kept saying.

"Roll down your window."

Not convinced, Hope kept the window exactly where it was.

"I...I'll give you my purse, but please don't hurt me," she said.

"We're not going to rob you.  Come on in.  We're from the Peace House," he said, pointing in the general direction of a building on the corner.

Hope was confused.  "The what?"

"The 'I Grow Chicago Peace House'.  It's right there," he said, again pointing at the building.

Hope looked around her car and saw for the first time that the boys were not just boys.  In fact, some of the people surrounding the car were girls, and some of the people looked to be young men and young women.  In her panic she had not really looked at them, but had more or less just seen  their shapes.  As she stared at the group she felt relieved, embarrassed, fortunate and foolish.

She got out of the car and followed the group into the dry, well lit Peace House.  It was the beginning of a long way back to living.