I hate those apples now. I gaze out my window at those nasty crabapples every morning and I scold them; I say, “How is it that you are responsible for my beautiful daughter being locked up like an animal since she was fourteen years old, and young for fourteen, a baby really, and you are sitting there on that branch just happy? How is it? That a tiny little fruit could cause a catastrophe?”
Apparently, to toss an apple, to hit a mean-spirited postman in the back of the knees, is assault.
And she didn’t exactly help herself.
Oh, Glory, you would have to pull the fire alarm in the police station after shoplifting a CD all because you were havin’ so much fun in juvenile detention with your new friends, you wanted to go back, you finally fit in somewhere! But they didn’t know that, nor did they care. Stealing is a crime and you were gonna pay for it and pay for it you have.
It has been five years. Oh yes. Oh YES, originally sentenced to six months, just six months in juvenile detention when she was fourteen! I tell people that, no one can believe it. She has never, ever been violent, or committed any crime, other than bein’ a giant pain in the butt sometimes—but that six months has lasted for five years. You may be wondering how the hell does THAT happen?
Well I’ll tell you.
Eight hundred incident reports.
Five hundred “institutional charges.” And what do you think those charges were for? Swiping a pencil, telling a rough guard to eff off, maybe even spitting.
Oh you might be thinking but surely, surely she musta done something more serious to rack up all them charges, in this country even rapists get out after a year or two for good behaviour . . .
Listen to me: they film every single interaction with the inmates . . . They have everything, everything on film in order to protect themselves, right? Union rules. Do you think for a MINUTE, if Glory had been violent, that they would not have caught that on film?
I asked them: I said, “do you have any of this on film?”
They wouldn’t answer me. Because they know the charges are garbage. Lies.
They don’t like her, because she doesn’t say, “Yes sir no sir three bags full sir,” because she is fearless. My Glory is fearless.
Oh yes. She woulda been a revolutionary, you see, in another time, another place. I could imagine Glory leading peasants through the jungle, fearless.
But now. Oh she puts on a show but I know she’s afraid. I can hear it in her voice, a tremor, a wave in her voice on the phone. Like her voice is water and there is something roiling underneath.
They used to reassure me she was doin’ FINE. They’d call me all the time and say how much they cared about her, how well she was doin’ and I stupidly believed them. Now they don’t tell me anything. Because, can you believe it? She’s in a federal penitentiary now. I have no idea why they moved her there, she’s absolutely terrified. “I’m in here with killers, Mom,” she said to me. She even smashed a TV to get put back into segregation, because she’s so afraid.
Now they can’t tell me anything. Because she’s over eighteen. Because of the confidentiality, can you believe that . . . And she won’t tell me. Because she doesn’t want to worry me. That’s the kind of thoughtful child she is.
But I do worry, because they have a sickness when it comes to my Glory. But they always have had—even in juvenile detention, they used to tease her without mercy—callin’ her Princess because she did have the nicer things—and putting a silly crown on her . . . Though she did have some very good friends there, and she was heartbroken to leave . . . you see it’s like she had finally found her people, her tribe, right? But the guards . . . they just . . . I don’t know, it’s as if she somehow got this reputation, and right across the country in all those institutions they treated her according to the reputation, instead of the sweet girl right in front of them. I mean, she was so sweet, the mum’s in federal, when she was in the population—would have her watch their babies! Oh Glory loved children . . .
I am just hoping . . . hoping against hope, that those guards have enough humanity, to know . . . that coming home is all that girl needs . . . that they would let her raise her voice, or even spit or yell and just . . .
Let her be.
So we can walk hand in hand around Pleasant Point and she can finally feel the fresh air on her cheek.
I am her mother and I don’t need them to tell me something is not right.
My cousins, they have a dairy farm near here and although they are very nice people, they do treat their animals good, when I look at the calves in those . . . pens, the veal pens . . . they are chained inside those cramped, shiny, blinding white, and it makes them so nervous they are insane, you can’t pet them—Whenever I think of Glory, I think of those calves.
I won’t eat veal now— Veal is young, you can taste how young it is, sweet and tender.
That is my Glory. They have put her in the veal pen.