Hope in the Heart of Darkness

We drive down the avenue and see men standing together in groups of twos and threes, old men and young men. They loiter in mid-day across the street from The Pentecostal Holiness Church of Deliverance with its windows boarded shut. There are few businesses open on the street: a handful of convenience stores, several ethnic food markets, and more barber shops than seem necessary. There are broken things on the street; broken bottles, broken buildings, broken people. We stop at a light, and I breathe anxious prayer waiting for it to change, wanting to leave behind this neighborhood here in the heart of darkness.

                                                          

We arrive at the hospital, the building nearly as sad as those we’ve just passed. A security guard directs us down the hall to the ramp leading to the office building. I find a seat to wait during the appointment. The waiting room is painted in two shades of dark sage green. Pictures and artwork line the walls, and I wonder who selected these pieces and why they were chosen. Were they intended to make the place seem more cheerful? I wondered. If so, the art buyer fell far short in his mission.

Sliding glass windows separate the office workers, busily going about their office work, from the sad, frightened people seated in the waiting area. Remnants of scotch tape cling to the glass marking the places where old, important policy information had been taken down to make way for the new. Posters advertise in multiple languages the availability of support groups. I sit near another patient, an older woman clutching a plastic bag filled with pill bottles. A television set in the corner plays to no one; the insipid dialog of a children’s educational program teaches no one. A couple of naked Barbies lie on the stained carpet next to a crumpled cardboard box holding other sad toys. The room smells of stale cigarette smoke.

Three others sit in the room; I assume they are a family. A man holds a clipboard and asks the woman next to him for information. She digs through her purse, finds a card, and reads numbers. They discuss the route they took to arrive here, whether they thought it was a better idea to follow the directions of MapQuest or their GPS. They are well-dressed, professional-looking. They look normal. They try to act normal. A young boy, I assume he is there son, sits slumped in his chair. They try to make normal conversation with him. He doesn’t answer. His body screams, I hate you! I hate this place! I hate my life! I wonder what has gone on in their home, what angry conversations they have endured, that brought them here seeking hope in this place on the edge of the heart of darkness.

And I wonder, Where is hope to be found in a place like this?

I meet her on her way out of her doctor’s appointment. She sits in a chair several feet from me and picks through her change purse, gathering her bus fare. I look at her and smile, and she says,

You have such a beautiful smile! When you smile, it makes me want to smile!

She tells me about her doctor’s appointment, how she’s been seeing the same doctor for years. She’s got attitude, she tells me, and teases her poor doctor something awful. He gives back as good as he gets, she says. She laughs and tells me,

I’ve always been this way. One real hot cookie! No sense trying to change me now.

I say, Amen, and she laughs.

And a glimmer of light catches my eye as it reflects from the gold cross hanging near her heart.  She walks past me toward the door, boards the bus, and heads for home somewhere in the neighborhood in the heart of darkness.

Linking with Jen and the sisterhood:





And with emily at imperfect prose: