On a Friday evening on the 6400 block of South Peoria in Englewood, jump ropes snap against the pavement. A girl, riding a bike without training wheels for the first time, pedals a fly’s path down the sidewalk, past graystone three-flats, under giant oaks. An old man, just home from work and still wearing a shirt with his name stitched on the breast, inspects his yard.
The teenagers from Lake Forest crowd around one bed of dirt, the children of Englewood around another. They pack flowers into the soil–delicate purple lobelia, orange and lemon marigolds arranged in the shape of a peace sign.
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“I hope we plant azaleas,” says 12-year-old Gina. “That’s my grandmother’s name. She just died in January.” A little later she says, “This neighborhood would be all right if there weren’t no drug dealers or shooting. I want to live in a neighborhood with no cursing or shooting.”
“The name of this center is PEACE, and these kids when they come in, sometimes they’re very angry,” Miss Dominique says. “Sometimes I say, ‘Take a walk.’ But this is not a walk for punishment. They need to know there’s a place they can go and not be angry.”
“Uhh, that’s nasty!” Anfernee said.
“Temperature,” he said. “To see how much food they had.”
Miss Dominique dipped her hand into the bin and came up with a wriggling hunk of soil. Some of the worms were as big as baby snakes, others were tiny as centipedes. “Here I go,” she said. “No gloves. How ’bout that? A hand full of worms! You see the babies up in there? Now I’m gonna see who’s brave.”
