Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair (8 page)

Crystal's favorite period at the group home was her first six months. “We used to always sit down and have conversations about things like sex,” she recalls. “What a man expects from a woman, how he treats a woman after having sex, me and the other girls, each one voicing they opinions. I was the youngest, so I was getting more of a learning. I was getting wiser.” She has referred to a couple of her original housemates as “the older sisters I never had” and to several of the staff members as “family.” After those six months, Crystal began to complain about how much her housemates stole from her. Stealing is commonplace in congregate living, and Crystal flaunted her leather coats and bags and gold jewelry—gifts from Daquan, Diamond, and her other male acquaintances. She complained about the constant thefts but never gave her valuables to the child-care workers for safekeeping. With each passing year, she displayed more reluctance to do her chores, to refrain from using profanity, to obey her curfew. She bribed one child-care worker with beer when she returned late from dates. She seemed to know just how many hours she could be AWOL and how much drinking and drugs she could do without getting tossed
out. It was as if she had made up her mind to stay at the group home as long as possible, because she knew of no better alternative. She was the only one to come to 104th Avenue after having a child; she had been where the others were going.

I
n 1985, six former foster-care recipients between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one who had been discharged to independent living and three recipients currently in group homes who expected to be discharged brought suit against the governor of New York, claiming lack of supervision of those discharged and lack of provision of discharge plans or transition services before discharge for the others. The primary reason for the lawsuit seemed to be that a substantial number of people in homeless shelters had been discharged from foster care. The case resulted in greater attention to preparing older children to live independently upon discharge from foster care and to arranging more orderly discharges. Agencies like St. Christopher-Ottilie had been providing many such transition services but had not been adequately funded for them until the suit was settled, in 1986.

Crystal was fortunate. St. Christopher's opened an independent-living apartment for two girls in 1987 and a second in 1988. In October of 1988, Crystal applied for admission to an independent-living apartment. The first tenants of the 1987
apartment had recently been evicted for breaking one of the cardinal independent-living-apartment rules: no overnight guests. During Crystal's second year at Satellite, her attendance improved. Students had to sign a contract with each teacher, agreeing to a maximum number of cuts per subject in a cycle; if they exceeded the cuts, they were not given credit for the subject even if they attained a passing grade. In the fall of 1988, Crystal took night classes at Jamaica High School in two subjects she had failed the previous year at Satellite—math and English. It seemed that she would be able to graduate in June, 1989, and that presumption was a point in her favor when she was being considered for an independent-living apartment. The staff at the group home had always been fond of Crystal—her keen sense of humor and her lack of self-pity were endearing qualities that made many adults forgive her temper tantrums, outbursts of obscenity, and selfishness—but as she grew older and became a house leader they worried about the poor example she set the younger girls, and thought she should move on. On December 27, 1988, Crystal moved into the independent-living apartment that had been opened the previous year. Her roommate was Benita, an alumna of another St. Christopher's group home.

The apartment, which was situated in Jamaica, a twenty-minute ride from the 104th Avenue group home, in Queens Village, occupied the second floor of a two-family house. It had a separate entrance on the ground floor and its
own staircase. The bedroom was sufficiently large to accommodate twin beds and two dressers; the living room, kitchen, and bathroom were adequate; all the rooms had windows.

Crystal and Benita broke the rules of the independent-living apartment at once. Their girlfriends and boyfriends spent the night. No drugs or liquor were allowed on the premises. They drank Absolut vodka and Rémy-Martin cognac, kept a six-pack of wine coolers in the refrigerator, and smoked reefer. Shortly after moving in, however, Crystal did give up crack. When they had been in the apartment a few months, a social worker paid an unscheduled visit, and saw a “roach” (marijuana butt) in an ashtray. Crystal and Benita lied their way out of the situation by saying that a girlfriend had come over and smoked reefer; they claimed they had told her to put it out and she had, but they hadn't dumped the ashtray. The social worker's advice was that if they couldn't keep their company from doing drugs in the apartment they shouldn't have company. “They bought our story and threatened us with more pop-up visits, but they didn't follow through for a long time,” Crystal says.

One way an independent-living apartment helped young women make the transition from group-home life to life on their own was by enabling them to save money. Their rent and all utilities were paid, and they had access to a revolving cash fund of up to two hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. That sum was intended to cover groceries, cleaning supplies, laundry, dry cleaning, transportation to school and work, and such recreational activities as movies. To be reimbursed for their legitimate
expenses, all they had to do was to produce receipts for the money they had spent. They were also given a clothing allowance and an additional monthly stipend from the state of between twenty and forty dollars a month (twenty dollars at age sixteen, forty at age twenty). The independent-living residents who were employed full time or part time were supposed to show their social workers their paychecks and bank books: they were expected to bank half of their earnings and also the stipends. Their savings—some girls left the agency with two or three thousand dollars—might be spent on a month's security deposit and the first month's rent on an apartment after they left the St. Christopher's apartment.

Crystal had injured her thumb operating the cash register at her job in the spring of 1988, and had quit during the summer. Her new social worker urged her to get another job. In February of 1989, she found an after-school job at Cheap John's, a store that featured bargain goods. (“Five rolls of toilet paper for a dollar,” Crystal recalls.)

A week or two after she started there, she found more lucrative employment when Furman, a Jamaican with short dreadlocks who supplied Crystal with weed and tried unsuccessfully to date her, offered her five hundred dollars plus expenses to carry half a pound of cocaine to Washington, D.C. All the other girls he had used as couriers had been caught. Furman said he would accompany her on the first run, on February 21st, to show her what to do. The twenty-first was a Tuesday, so Crystal went to Satellite, to her four-to-eight job at Cheap John's, and
to Furman's house to fetch the goods. Following his instructions, she wrapped a Ziploc bag of cocaine in a paper bag, put the paper bag at the bottom of a large Gucci pocketbook she used as a book bag, and covered it with books. They took a cab to Thirty-sixth Street and walked to Penn Station—Crystal walking a few steps behind Furman. He had given her a hundred and fifty dollars and some instructions: if he was picked up on the train, she was to take a train back home. He had given her enough money for the return trip. Crystal bought a one-way ticket. They left New York on an evening train. They sat on opposite sides of the aisle, acting like strangers. Crystal looked at one of her schoolbooks, did a little homework, and then read a novel by Jackie Collins, her favorite author. They arrived at Washington's Union Station after midnight. Furman got into a cab, looked around, and told her to jump in: his fear of getting caught appeared to be over. They travelled a short distance to a four-story building. Two men were waiting for them in a small apartment. While the men busied themselves at the kitchen stove, turning the cocaine into crack, Crystal stayed in a bedroom, watching television. Furman handed her a hundred dollars for a shuttle ticket home and the five hundred dollars she had earned. Crystal had been nervous on the train. That night she slept on and off, but she realized that what she was doing was dangerous; she felt afraid, and prayed that the night would end and the daylight would come. In the morning, Furman took her to a McDonald's for breakfast and then drove her, in a car that belonged to one of the Washington drug dealers, to National
Airport. Crystal used her Satellite identification to buy a shuttle ticket at the student rate. It was the first time she had flown, and she liked it: flying was exciting. She took a cab from LaGuardia to the independent-living apartment and tossed about six hundred dollars in tens and twenties on the coffee table—her earnings, plus the extra train and plane money. She called Tonia at the group home.

“Where have you been?” Tonia asked her. “Diamond's been going crazy looking for you. Benita called me to ask where you was. He was in the apartment all night with her. He thought Benita knew you was sleeping with another man and just wasn't saying anything. At first, he wouldn't let Benita go to school, but then he did. You better get your lies together, because your Diamond is mad, he's really mad.”

Crystal asked Tonia to come over to the apartment, by cab, at Crystal's expense, to keep her company: she was afraid of Diamond. Crystal went into the bathroom and took a shower. She heard the doorbell, put on a T-shirt, and went downstairs to answer it with a big grin: she was thinking about spending the money. It was Diamond. “Where you was?” he asked.

Crystal stuttered and hesitated, then turned and walked up the stairs.

“Come here,” he said, standing in the living room as she headed for the bedroom to put on some clothes. He saw the cash on the coffee table. “Where did you get this money?” he asked. “You slept with a man for money. I know you.”

Crystal told him she had earned the money carrying cocaine to Washington. She was happy she had made the drop safely and happy he'd been worried about her. In retrospect, Crystal thinks she smiled a little too hard. Diamond hit her. She hit him back. She tried to punch him as hard as he punched her. Then Tonia pulled up in a cab, and a friend of Diamond's also came upstairs. They couldn't break up the fight. Diamond knocked the cap off Crystal's front tooth. He thought he had really hurt her and tried to hug her. Crystal wanted to fight him some more. “I'm getting out of here, you fucking crazy,” Diamond said when she hit him again. He snatched two hundred dollars of the money from the table and left. She thought he was trying to take temporary custody of all the money, to show her that what she had done was wrong, and grabbed the rest of the cash. When Crystal later spoke to Precious, another girlfriend of hers whom Diamond had called, she reprimanded Crystal for not having told Diamond she was going to Mrs. Hargrove's for the night—an alibi that would have covered her.

“I didn't carry no more drugs for Furman,” Crystal says. “Even if Diamond hadn't hit me—and when he found out who I did it for he gave me another argument—I wouldn't have did it again. Diamond dealt in drugs, but he said he was a man what could take care of hisself. He reminded me I could have gotten killed in that apartment and that I had a son. He loved little Daquan. It was easy money, but it was too scary and I was afraid of losing Diamond's respect for good. I loved that man so much
until it hurted.” Crystal sought refuge in the group home on the night of the eighth.

When the staff of St. Christopher's learned that Crystal had been in a physical fight, her apartment was searched and her plane ticket found. “I told the social worker some nonsense about my girlfriend's boyfriend getting shot up in Virginia and she had no one to go with her and she'd pay for my ticket and I'd gone down there—some lame story,” she says. “They suspected I'd done something illegal, but they didn't know what. I'd broken a rule, because I wasn't allowed to leave the state. I told them Diamond had hit me because I hadn't told him where I was going. They acted like they believed that, because he'd hit me hard before.” The agency nurse referred Crystal to a dentist, and she got the cap put back on her tooth.

C
rystal did not return to Cheap John's: “I was tired of seeing them same old dull faces.” In March, she got a temporary afternoon job in a vast room on West Fourteenth Street, in Manhattan, stuffing and sealing envelopes. Four weeks later, a layoff notice was posted near the time cards. That same week, Crystal heard from Veronica, a girl with whom she had drunk rum-and-Coca-Cola at J.H.S. 109. Veronica was working in the mailroom at an advertising agency on Madison Avenue at Fiftieth Street, and said the firm was hiring. Crystal had
always liked the idea of “working with the big rich people in the big Manhattan buildings.” On a rainy day, after picking up her last paycheck on Fourteenth Street, Crystal walked around the East Fifties and filled out applications at several firms in the area's glassy skyscrapers. A month later, she received a call from the advertising agency and went for a job interview. Crystal had already forgotten the job application, and Veronica had quit because one of the outside messengers who came up to the mailroom was pestering her. Crystal was hired as a part-time mail clerk. Her hours—4:30
P.M.
to 9
P.M.
—enabled her to continue at Satellite, which ended its day at 3
P.M.

Her first day of work was May 1st. The pay was four dollars and twenty-five cents an hour, not even a dollar above the minimum wage, but the job had an appealing fringe benefit: the company sent employees who stayed at work after 8
P.M.
home by car service. That saved two homeward-bound subway and bus tokens per day—ten dollars' worth of tokens a week, in 1989—and an hour's travel time. Crystal, who already had her learner's permit, had always preferred cars to mass transit. In June, although she still needed to complete two courses before she could get her diploma, she participated in graduation ceremonies at Satellite, in a white cap and gown. Big Daquan rented a car for her in honor of the occasion (he has never had a driver's license or owned wheels of any kind, so Crystal did the driving), and little Daquan and Diamond attended the graduation. Crystal dropped out of summer school (“I couldn't deal with it in the nice weather”), finished her coursework at
Satellite in the fall, and picked up her diploma in January of 1990, shortly after her twentieth birthday. By then, she was working full time at the ad agency, from 2 to 9
P.M.
By then, little Daquan was living in the Bronx and was halfway through kindergarten.