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

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 NationalAirport. 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.
    â€œWhere 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.
    â€œCome 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.
    â€œI 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