Apart from dabbling in drugs, perhaps her worst misjudgments involved men. Her daughter's father was 16 when the baby was born. Aikman was 23. He once dangled their baby by her ankles from a third-floor window, Aikman said, and now is serving 20 years to life for killing a man. After his departure, Aikman, then 26, took up with a 15-year-old boy who beat her, routinely spit in her face, called her fat and landed in jail, too, for gun possession. Now she is 32 and has not been in a relationship in four years

"Right now, I am working on having a relationship with myself and my daughter," said Aikman, whose child is in her parents' care. She sees the girl on weekends.

Being assistant house coordinator, the position that had her overseeing House Matters, requires gaining the respect of housemates and staff members who entrust that duty to residents with leadership skills and diplomacy. It is a small step toward wherever she is going, Aikman said.

Mary Jo Ganci occupies the top bunk in the room she shares with Aikman, and its doors, according to one in a litany of Greenhope rules, are never locked. The wall above a chest of drawers was covered mainly with photos of Aikman's relatives and certificates for tasks and courses assigned to her at Greenhope.

Except for one cousin, Ganci said, she is not in contact with her relatives. She never knew her mother. Her lifestyle embarrasses her stepmother. Her father, whom she described as a mobster, died of lung cancer, handcuffed to a bed in a Queens hospital, when she was 12, Ganci said. "That's what set me off," said Ganci, who refused to give her age, and pulled out a library form as proof of her beginnings. "Last Days of the Sicilians" is a book she has on reserve. It lists her father's name, she said, and some of her family history.

Ganci grew up in Middle Village, Queens, and spent four teenage years in Water Mill at her stepmother's old house, mainly while on breaks from prep school in New Lebanon, Pa. Her last arrest was for robbing a home for money to buy crack. Before she could get away, she was so high and sedated she fell asleep. One of three men living in the apartment discovered Ganci, tied her up and waited for police.

Ganci is a computer buff - she hopes to earn money legally by designing Web pages - and artist. The tattoos on her body, including the newest one of her girlfriend who overdosed and died three months ago, are Ganci's own designs. From a folder she keeps in her dorm room, she retrieved a sketch, pencil on paper, that also is her creation. It is an oversized hand, holding a big, old, uprooted tree. The tree represents her life, the hand her effort to take control of it and the gaping hole in the ground a reminder that she is teetering on the edge of a giant abyss. "I will die a statistic if I go back out there in the state I am in right now," she said.

Less than 5 percent of Greenhope's women are white, like Ganci. A recent increase in the number of Latinas brings that group to 12 percent of Greenhope's population. Black women make up the rest. During its last fiscal year, Greenhope admitted 51 women into its six-month residential program. Thirty-two were discharged, and 24 of those continued showing up for aftercare counseling and therapy. Of 39 women residing at Greenhope while training for jobs, 24 found employment. So did 13 of last fiscal year's 18 aftercare clients.

The roster of Greenhope services includes GED classes, instruction in writing resumes, mock job interviews, the scheduling of real job interviews, vocational training, yoga, aerobic exercise, salsa dancing. There are Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings and ones exploring sexuality, how to live on one's own and being a good parent.

To lighten things up a bit, several mothers spent a recent parenting class using crayons, glitter and construction paper to depict their own clans and map out the kind of day they dream of once they are reunited with their children. Some are in foster care, some living with relatives. "This is a fun group, but next week we will be talking about abuse, guilt and shame," said Rachel Oquendo, a case manager.

No matter what has transpired in the past, no one is encouraged to excuse bad behavior in the present at Greenhope. "We don't see them as victims," deputy director Taylor said. "We talk about what they can achieve." And they promote the concept of "consequential thinking," the idea that every action and reaction carries a cost.

For example, depending on how long she has been in the program and how well she is faring, a client is allowed time away from the facility. Depending on her behavior in a given week, she might be allowed an overnight pass home. The newest clients, unproven still, go nowhere unescorted. Neither do the problematic ones.

Appointments with a doctor, prospective employer, lawyer or judge must be kept, and afterward a client must return to Greenhope straightaway. "Deviation is another form of getting high and trying to do what you want to do," said Yadira Velazquez, 47, explaining a Greenhope theory and dialing a pay phone to check in with her counselor at Greenhope.

Velazquez had just visited her 19- year-old son at a correctional facility at Hunts Point, where he was sent for selling heroin. She was hoping to leave there for a Manhattan hospital where her 21-year-old daughter, new mother to a third child, was battling postpartum depression and acutely high blood pressure.

Greenhope enforces its rules, Velazquez said. No stealing. No drugs. No weapons. No new courtships (a potential disaster for women in rehab, counselors say). No fighting. No disrespect. They do kick women out for severely violating rules. One woman's infraction can "close the house," which means nobody leaves for anything other than emergencies and everyone dives into back-to-back group sessions. That forces the women to spend more time together and, counselors hope, somehow see themselves reflected in each other.

"We have a lot of laughing. We have a lot of crying, especially when we say our story," Velazquez said. Her mother was an addict, and Velazquez was born with heroin in her blood. Her mother died at 20. Yadira Velazquez never knew her father. Her grandparents raised her in a house full of screaming and cussing and "a whole lot of love, too," she said. "They took me in when no one else wanted me."

Two boy cousins sodomized her when she was 5. Pained by an assortment of things, including being orphaned, Velazquez started smoking pot at 14. At 16 she tried heroin. The first time she got pregnant she was a student at Washington Irving High in Manhattan. The father, whom she later wed and had a second child with, died of an asthma attack when he was 24 and detained in the Riker's Island jail. The father of her two youngest offspring beat Velazquez. He shot and killed Velazquez's brother as he sought to shield his sister from yet another beating.

Like many coming through Greenhope, Velazquez has circled in and out of prison on various drug convictions. If she stays out of trouble, her parole will be up in June. When her Greenhope residency ended last month, she moved into her fiance's two-bedroom apartment, with plans of finding some sort of work to supplement her $935 monthly widow's pension. She has been a receptionist and sales clerk, gained some computer skills at Greenhope and, having already earned some college credits in elementary education, she is hopeful. Maybe she will return to college or open a day-care center, Velazquez said. "I will get a job. I have that confidence that I can walk in and sit with the interviewer. I have my resume," she said. "I am prepared."

Part of the Greenhope prescription for Carmen Bultron, 44, born in Puerto Rico and residing mainly in St. Albans and Jamaica, Queens, since she was 22, is enrolling her in night classes to polish her heavily accented and sometimes broken English.

Bultron said she welcomes the instruction. But some aspects of remaking one's self are frustrating. Last month, when she arrived at 9 a.m. at a state-funded employment agency in midtown Manhattan, believing she was about to win a job, workers there said nothing immediately was on the horizon. They instructed her to return at 1 p.m. for more details.

"I been looking for three weeks. I know I got no education, but you got to have something for the people who got no education. I get tired," Bultron said. "They say I need some kind of letter. They will send me to two places tomorrow. Why can't they send me today? I don't want to get bored this time. Years ago I got bored, and I jump into the drugs."

The temptations do not disappear, even for a woman parolee who believes she is moving forward, said Susan King, 42, who sold memorabilia and collectibles to pay household bills and support what had been a 23-year-old addiction. Her last trip to prison was for burglary, stealing blankets and sheets from a linen closet at Lenox Hill Hospital.
She was preparing last week to leave Greenhope for her own apartment and training as a commercial truck driver."Part of me wants to go, but the other part wants to stay, because this has become my family. This is my strength," said King, who grew up in Massachusetts, lived in Manhattan and the Bronx and is estranged from many of her relatives. "This is the first time in my adult life that I have been clean for a year. I begged God for this. I have some tools now. I will have to be responsible for myself. I am 100 percent alone in that. And change is very scary."