Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair

by Susan Sheehan

  After the boys’ return from boarding school, Samuel went to junior high school and Clifford to high school. They ate grits and bacon and cereal for several years while Lavinia paid off their school bill, and resented the preachers at Lavinia’s church, who ate steak. Clifford remembers that his mother celebrated making the final boarding-school payment by sending out for Chinese food.

  In the fall of 1967, Lavinia didn’t like the way Samuel was behaving. He fought with his teachers and his high-school classmates or played hooky; he was caught by the police riding in a car that had been stolen by one of his friends; he infuriated her by asking questions about his father. She took him to court, thinking that a threat of removal from home might make him respond to her discipline. It didn’t, and in July of 1968 Samuel was committed by the court to Hawthorne Cedar Knolls School, a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed adolescents in Westchester County. Samuel didn’t have a bad time at Hawthorne; during his year there, he went to school, received therapy, learned to drive a backhoe, a bus, and a dump truck, and how to cook. In the summer of 1969, when he was sixteen and was ready to leave Hawthorne—he missed the city—he was given a choice of completing his high-school education or receiving vocational training. He chose to study industrial electricity. Though he has never been able to obtain his General Equivalency Diploma, he has been employed fairly steadily ever since he made that choice. Clifford dropped out of high school after completing the eleventh grade, and has also been unable to obtain his G.E.D.

  Sometime during the ten years Lavinia worked as a housecleaner, she met a man named Rufus Parker, who drove the youngest child of her employers to school. Despite being “saved,” and despite her church’s disapproval of sexual relations outside marriage, she had sex with him. Clifford remembers seeing his feet in socks in Lavinia’s bed before Cynthia’s birth, and Samuel remembers seeing him there afterward.

  Lavinia was “silenced” by her church for a year after Cynthia’s birth: she was expelled from the choir, and had to sit at the back. She never rejoined the choir but resumed sitting in the second row. She didn’t return to domestic work after Cynthia’s birth. She stayed home, babysitting for the children of working mothers until Cynthia was old enough for school, and then went on welfare. In 1978, after their apartment in the Bronx was condemned, Lavinia and Cynthia moved to a housing project in Astoria, Queens. Samuel and Clifford had moved out in 1970, not long after Cynthia was born.

  Lavinia has a photograph of herself with Cynthia, Crystal, and Wesley Taylor, taken on Crystal’s fifth birthday. After 1976, Florence hardly saw her mother. Lavinia knew that she had become involved in drugs, and says she was frightened of her life style. Clifford and Samuel lost track of Florence after 1982, when she left Sheridan Avenue.

  Children’s Village, where Carlos and Matthew were sent in July of 1986, was founded in 1851, as the New York Juvenile Asylum, to shelter and educate vagrant immigrant children living on the streets of Manhattan. In 1901, the agency bought several hundred acres of land on a wooded hilltop in Dobbs Ferry, ten miles north of the city; the staff and children made the journey there by horse-drawn wagon. Today, more than three hundred boys, between the ages of five and sixteen, live at Children’s Village, the nation’s largest residential treatment center for emotionally handicapped boys. The boys are admitted primarily from four places: from more restricted settings, such as psychiatric hospitals; from homes where substance abuse, sexual abuse, and other forms of violence prevail; from homes with no abuse, but where some kind of assistance is needed; and from foster homes (some boys have been in as many as fifteen)—as Carlos and Matthew were, in July of 1986, when Carlos was close to his tenth birthday and Matthew was about to turn nine. Children’s Village has been known to accept boys rejected by as many as fourteen other agencies. Currently, fifty percent of the residents are black, thirty percent Hispanic, twenty percent white and “other.” They are housed in twenty-one “cottages,” staffed around the clock. Upon arrival, each boy is evaluated by a multidisciplinary team, and an individualized treatment plan is designed for him. Most of the boys meet frequently with a social worker and a psychologist or psychiatrist. Most attend a year-round school on campus, which offers special-education classes, with a low teacher-to-student ratio. In addition to emotional and behavioral problems, the boys tend to have learning disabilities and to be several years behind grade level.

  The staff at the group home where Crystal was living in 1986 did not pursue Florence. In January, Crystal reached the age of sixteen; in April, her discharge goal was changed, from discharge to biological mother to discharge to independent living. Fifty percent of the boys at Children’s Village do return to a relative—Carlos and Matthew’s goal. There is pressure on the agency to discharge residents within two years, and to involve parents in making a success of the treatment and in expediting the discharge, partly because the cost of maintaining a boy at Children’s Village is about fifty thousand dollars a year. In February, 1987, Florence told Carlos and Matthew about Michael’s birth—they took the news calmly—and signed a contract agreeing to attend a special weekly training course in parent skills at Children’s Village. The contract read, “I will seek help and remain drug free, I will seek appropriate housing for myself and my children, I will apply for public assistance.” (Florence had been taken off welfare when her children went into foster care.) “I understand that my failure to adhere to the above listed rules may result in termination of my parental rights.”

  Between March and June of 1987, Florence’s attendance at the family-training sessions with Carlos and Matthew was inconsistent, and she occasionally appeared to be under the influence of alcohol: she always denied she had been drinking. Although she was briefly in another detoxification program that spring, she also denied any drug use. Nevertheless, she showed up with reasonable frequency and made a sufficient effort in the therapy sessions to be recognized at a graduation luncheon in June. At an early session, Florence confronted Carlos about his claims that she had taken him on drug deals and had him engage in sex with men for money. Carlos said he had lied. The child-care and social workers who were to work with him over the following years did not believe his denial.

  That June, Florence, Carlos, and Crystal went to a state park on a picnic organized by Children’s Village. In July, Florence continued to show up for family-therapy sessions, visited the boys on Sundays, and took them out for their birthdays. In August, she came two and a half hours late to one appointment and missed another. On August 19th, the boys’ social worker asked her why she hadn’t shown up on the twelfth. She said that when she was still dealing drugs, before her latest detoxification program, she had skipped with her supplier’s drugs without paying, and had been dodging him ever since. He had finally caught up with her the previous week. He had beaten her and she had gone to the emergency room. She hadn’t wanted the boys to see her so bruised. She was still slightly bruised on the nineteenth, under her eye and around her mouth. The social worker recorded what Florence said, and added that her demeanor and appearance had changed. The social worker was concerned that Florence was back into drugs. Florence wasn’t seen at Children’s Village during the month of September. In mid-October, she telephoned to say that things were going badly for her, and she still didn’t come to Dobbs Ferry. In late October, her S.S.C. worker called Children’s Village to say that Florence had also missed appointments with her and with Natasha, James, and Michael. Florence saw the younger children in November, but appeared helpless and hopeless about her situation—and high. That month, she told Carlos and Matthew that she couldn’t give them a good Thanksgiving and would honor whatever decision they made about the holiday. The boys spent it with members of the staff at Children’s Village. Florence had Thanksgiving dinner with Crystal at Crystal’s group home. Crystal’s psychologist noted (as he had often done before) that Crystal’s mental status fluctuated with her mother’s status. Crystal was having a difficult time because of her mother’s condit
ion and living arrangements—and so were Florence’s other children.

  The drug scene in which Florence had existed for a dozen years changed for her in September, 1987, after she started using crack. The drug affected her differently from heroin and cocaine: it made her high too quickly; it made her heart beat too fast. The world of crack was more violent and more sinister; she was frightened by the sight of crack dealers being held up and shot, and concluded that if she started selling crack she would wind up either in jail or dead. The increasing popularity of crack also deprived her of a living: users in her neighborhood were less interested in buying heroin and ordinary cocaine, which she had been selling for years. Because she had no money, she had to stay in Clarence’s room all day. Clarence’s landlord proposed raising his rent from two hundred dollars a month to four hundred dollars. He hadn’t wanted Florence there in the first place: Florence was the first of Clarence’s women Clarence had allowed to stay overnight. By then, Clarence himself had become fed up with supporting Florence’s drug habit. He paid the landlord a little extra money, but he threatened to move out of the room on Grant Avenue and sleep at the nursing home where he worked.

  Florence had recently heard of a residential drug-treatment program, Phoenix House, and told her S.S.C. worker she was ready to get away from drugs for good. The only way she could imagine kicking her habit was to move out of the old neighborhood. The first interview the worker could get at Phoenix House was in January of 1988. In early December, Florence was interviewed by Odyssey House. Two days later, she was accepted into its residential program. The worker had secured a bed for Florence at a shelter, because homeless adults are given priority in entering programs like Odyssey House, which tend to have waiting lists.

  On December 10, 1987, when Florence went to Children’s Village to tell Carlos and Matthew and their social worker about her imminent entry into Odyssey House’s adult program, she talked non-stop and repeated herself endlessly. The boys appeared uncomfortable listening to her rambling speech, but said they were relieved that she would at least have a place to live and would not be “on the streets.” Florence had deliberately got herself high, because she knew that that would be her last high from drugs. She didn’t go to the shelter, but spent the night with Clarence. The next day, she moved into an Odyssey House building on Ward’s Island. She was assigned to a room with six bunk beds. She went cold turkey. The first three days were the roughest: she was depressed and tired—she wanted only to sleep. After that, she felt better.

  Florence was older than most people who enter the Odyssey House program for adolescents and adults: she was approaching thirty-seven in December, 1987. She had consequently been on drugs longer than most of those on Ward’s Island with her. Once she had gone cold turkey, she never used cocaine or heroin again; all the urine tests randomly given to her afterward came back negative. Fifty-three percent of those who enter the program leave voluntarily (many because they are unable to keep away from drugs) or are dismissed for unacceptable behavior, such as “sexual acting out.” Even passing notes, kissing, and winking result in a disciplinary talk. The dropout rate is highest during the first three months.

  A critical part of Odyssey House’s drug-rehabilitation program is to make residents confront the reasons for their addiction. Most of them have led lives of deprivation. A significant percentage have been physically abused, sexually abused, or severely neglected. Sixty-eight percent of the adults in the program are second- or third-generation substance abusers. Seventy-five percent of the female residents have children in the foster-care system or living with grandmothers. According to the president of Odyssey House, the men who fathered these children perceive their role as impregnating the women and carrying around photographs of the children in their pockets. Ten percent of the residents are white, sixteen percent Hispanic, the remainder black. Virtually all are poor. Odyssey House receives state and federal funds, but most residents qualify for public assistance, as Florence did. Their welfare checks pay for their room and board, and they are permitted to keep a small personal allowance from this payment.

  Residents move through various levels toward graduation. Each level carries with it different restrictions, responsibilities, and privileges, which must be earned. When Florence was a Level I, she required a peer—someone else in the program at Level I—and an escort from Level III to accompany her when she went out. Only when she got to Level III could she go out alone. Level I’s may write letters to their families; Level II’s may make telephone calls to and receive visits from members of their immediate families. Level Ill’s may get in touch with non-family members, visit their families with peers, and go on outings with them. Visiting one’s children is regarded as a responsibility, so Florence was permitted from the outset to go with a peer and an escort to Children’s Village to see her older boys and to the offices of the Child Welfare Administration’s Division of Adoption and Foster Care Services to see her three younger children. (In 1988, S.S.C. became C.W.A.)

  Florence is a guarded person. When she is questioned about her life, she finds it easiest to say “I don’t remember,” although she has an excellent selective memory. She tends to dismiss many questions with “I don’t know” when she knows the answer but does not like it. In therapy groups, Florence was a good listener but a poor talker. Although her primary reason for entering Odyssey House was to get her children out of foster care as quickly as possible, it was many months before she was able to open up to others and deal with her feelings about herself, her family, and other people who had played a significant part in her past. Most Odyssey House residents who don’t fall by the wayside during the first three months graduate from Odyssey House after a stay of between eighteen and twenty-four months. It took Florence two and a half years to graduate.

  It became apparent early on that the main issue troubling Florence was the anger she still felt toward her mother for letting her be raised in foster care, and the anger and guilt she felt toward herself for having followed in her mother’s footsteps. She was required to submit weekly self-evaluation notes to her therapist at every level. In a note in May, 1988, in regard to Lavinia, she wrote, “I’m angry at the way she abuse me and now just like she did me I did to my children with the drugs.” In mid-July, she wrote that she hoped “to see mother, sister, brothers soon and to let her know I still love her but was hurt by fact I had to be raised in foster home,” and added, “I also want to let her know how it played a big part in me using drugs and how it is affecting my children now.”

  Florence reached Level I in February of 1988, and Level II in April. All program residents have jobs. Her Level I job was in the laundry. The staff believed she was isolating herself there; she was described until graduation as someone not given to socializing. Her Level II job was in the Admissions Department, which was in two four-story attached brownstones on East Sixth Street that housed the Odyssey House adolescent program. She remained on East Sixth Street, a site she preferred, until she completed the program.

  Florence had not been permitted to bring her telephone-and-address book to Odyssey House. In the summer of 1988 she no longer had her mother’s or her brothers’ addresses or phone numbers, but she knew how to find her mother when she was ready to do so. On a Sunday in late August, together with a peer and an escort, Florence went up to the fundamentalist church in Harlem. She had no trouble finding her mother at the front of the church, where she always sat and sometimes stood, moving rhythmically to the music, punctuating the preachers’ sermons with “Amen”s, and putting bills in the collection plates, which were usually passed five times during the Sunday service.

  A week later, Lavinia, Clifford, Samuel, and Cynthia came to visit Florence on East Sixth Street. Florence’s Level II therapist had told her just to discuss her uncles, aunts, nieces, and cousins, but Florence lost no time in confronting her mother about the past, and told her that on the next visit she wanted to see her alone. When Florence reproached Lavinia for letting her be raised in other
people’s houses, Lavinia told her that she hadn’t chosen to put Florence in foster care and that she had sent Clifford and Samuel away because she couldn’t bear raising them alone, without Florence. After four or five visits in the summer of 1988, Lavinia Wilson stopped visiting Odyssey House: Florence believes that Lavinia didn’t care for her lines of inquiry. Florence reached Level III in November of 1988.

  Lavinia’s rejection continued to haunt her, and by April of 1989 Florence’s commitment to therapy and her quest for the truth had deepened. One Sunday in April, she went up to Lavinia’s church again. “My mother didn’t greet me with open arms which I kind of knew she wouldn’t,” Florence wrote in a self-evaluation note. “And just by her actions toward me I now realize that she is not going to be the mother I want her to be. I felt like an outcast, someone she just had and that’s it. I don’t know why it meant so much to me to have my mother’s love and to be accepted by her. Now … I know it’s never going to happen.”

  Florence confronted Lavinia about her refusal to take her in even for a night after she left the Pattens’. Lavinia said the agency had never asked her to do that. Florence was sure she was lying, because her caseworker at Sheltering Arms had told her what really happened on July 29th and August 2nd of 1968.