Love, Justine

Muncy State Prison

July 26th, 2024

Friday

6:47pm

I’m just going to take the open plea to the judge and see how that goes. I’m not going to do any better with that fucking DA. I can feel it in my bones. I called my mother and told her. She seems to think it’s the right decision. I asked her about Lilly. She said she’s going to Alaska next week with her Dad. Daisy and Morocco are busy doing prison tattoos. Morocco is getting some woman’s name on her finger covered up with a tiny mustache. It’s not going well.

July 27th, 2024

Saturday

An old Black lady grabbed my arm as I walked past the other day and exclaimed, “Oh my, honey, why is your arm so bruised?” I looked down at my arm, confused. “Oh. That’s where I used to shoot up,” I said flatly. “Oh!” she said, and gripped me with both hands, “Lord Jesus! Please heal her!”

I muttered thank you, wrested my arm away, and vacated the area as quickly as possible.

Jesus Christ.

July 28th, 2024

Sunday

7:52pm

Daisy’s mother had a stroke. This is a disaster for many reasons, not the least of which is that she is responsible for five of Daisy’s children. She was talking gibberish, so Daisy’s 16-year old son called the ambulance, but they said she was stable and didn’t take her to the hospital. This doesn’t make any sense to Daisy or me. Isn’t a stroke a life-threatening emergency? I’m worried that the five younger children will end up in the system, in foster care, and Daisy won’t get them back. She still has over a year to do in prison. She cried when she said, “I just don’t know what’s going to happen to my kids,” with both of her hands on the sides of her face in a gesture of helplessness and despair. “And HE gets to get OUT!” she said, talking about her abusive ex.

The unfairness is profound, and hung in the air between us like a wall of broken glass. She angrily sorted through the things in her shower bucket. I was getting out of the shower and she was getting in. “Her mother died of a stroke when she was fifty,” she said. 

I’ve never seen Daisy look so pale and in shock.

I impotently asked her if she wanted a hug. “No, I definitely don’t want a hug,” she snapped. Zuko asked if she could at least pray for her and her mother and kids, and she relented and said yes.

Later, it turned out that her mother, Mary, had refused to go to in the ambulance. I feel helpless, too. It’s not like you can say, “What can I do?” when in reality, you are in the same boat and can’t do anything at all.

July 29th, 2024

Monday

10am

I called my lawyer. He said an open plea is what he was going to suggest. He said he’ll ask if I can plead and be sentenced on the same day. So now I have to sign paperwork, get sentenced, then see what parole is going to do with me.

4pm

Daisy got called back from the sewing shop. Her mother went to the hospital and went into cardiac arrest. She survived, but her muscles are deteriorating from non-use and poisoning her. She’s in intensive care. It sounds really bad. Daisy had to give CYS permission to place the kids. They all went with someone they know, which is good, and the two youngest are together. So much for that CYS appeal that I wrote for her. Now they have to be involved.

July 30th, 2024

Tuesday

Daisy’s mother died last night.

They said she went into organ failure. I feel completely useless. Daisy says she feels the same way. Bambi got her an e-cigarette, at least. Daisy’s sister is driving from North Carolina to Pennsylvania to deal with her mother’s affairs.

Daisy said that her mother was sitting in her own urine and feces on the couch, and the house was infested with bedbugs. Nobody knew how bad it was. 

Daisy said that her mother was her best friend.

She asked me if I would think less of her if she testified in a federal case to the the fuck out of here. 

“No.” I said.

Of course not.

The woman has seven children, five of whom need her badly. The neighbor lady went to the courthouse for temporary emergency custody of the three youngest ones. Daisy doesn’t even have her phone number. I wonder if she’ll have to fight her in court to get them back. I can’t help feeling like the nightmare is just beginning for her.

The father of two of the kids is dead, and the father of the rest of them is in prison for raping and sodomizing their daughter. I wonder if she’ll get custody of any of them back. 

Then I feel terrible for even thinking that.

July 31st, 2024

Wednesday

4:11pm

Daisy seems a little better today, and hasn’t cried as much. She decided that she doesn’t want the neighbor lady (who now has custody of three of the kids) to have the kids. She might have to be shipped back to Somerset County to fight that case. Daisy also got a message from Little Man, the ex-boyfriend who repeatedly tried to kill her. He sends his condolences. And his “love.”

Ridiculous.

She’s serving this sentence for hindering HIM. And now her mother died. Yesterday, she said, “This puts the last nail in the coffin of the Little Man thing. I’m here because of you! And my mother DIED!”

I hope she’s right.

She didn’t respond to his message. I have told her before about Crystal Leschner, whose boyfriend stabbed her to death, and then cut up her body and put it in a suitcase in a shed in his backyard in Pittsburgh. 

That was the first story I covered as a reporter for the local newspaper. I interviewed her family. 

It was awful.

Crystal had said that if she ever went missing, he would be the reason.

She turned out to be right.

August 2nd, 2024

Friday

8pm

I talked to my boys. They were playing a game with their cousin where the floor is lava, they each own different territories, and cheese is money. They each get five cheese for pushing each other into the lava.

I got a book at the library today called, “Drug Use for Grownups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear,” by Dr. Carl L. Hart.

Sounds like a good read.

August 3rd, 2024

Saturday

1:30pm

Kimberly is talking to a Lieutenant because Officer Kibbe (yes, I’m naming names) is doing invasive pat searches. According to Kimberly, following one such search last week, she said, “Oh! You just touched my coochie lips!” 

Kibbe responded, “That’s okay, because I bought your dinner.”

Disgusting.

We’ll see what happens. 

Probably nothing.

Kimberly is effectively off work until the “investigation” is over.

In this book, “Drug Use for Grownups,”  it says that 70% of people who use drugs do not become addicted to them. 

The author, Dr. Carl L. Hart, tried a whole bunch of drugs in his research for this book, even becoming (on purpose) physically dependent on heroin so he could experience the withdrawal symptoms.

Interesting.

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

–Fyodor Dostoyevsky