Free Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair by Susan Sheehan Page B

house. It had a separate entrance on the ground floor and itsown 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 legitimateexpenses, 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, andto 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