Corrections in Ink: A Memoir

by Keri Blakinger

I found out that I now owned almost nothing; my apartment had been ransacked after my arrest. This is not uncommon; when your arrest is in the newspaper, all your drug friends—and enemies—know you’re in jail, and if they’re assholes, they’ll come help themselves to your belongings. They were assholes. And so, somewhere in the first few days after I got picked up, looters took my books, my dirty underwear, the sheets on my bed, my memories. My collection of skating medals had vanished, along with the hand-me-down winter coat from my mom, my favorite Diesel jeans—and my dog, Charlotte. Had someone taken her? Did Animal Control intervene? Or did she just run away in the chaos of looting? I still had no idea. At first, I’d held out hope she could somehow be waiting exactly where I’d left her in my trashy basement apartment. Maybe, I thought, some kind housemate had heard her whining and decided to feed her. Maybe, I hoped, she would just stay put until Alex got back. Maybe, I hoped, she was okay. Charlotte had come into my life three years earlier, just a few days after I’d jumped off a bridge in Ithaca in a very earnest suicide attempt during the summer of 2007. At the time, she was in rough shape—just like me. She was not quite two, and her first owners had gotten her a little over a year earlier, after she’d been found in a farmer’s field, abandoned and making herself a bed in the corn. They’d taken her in, but they already had four other dogs who bullied her and stole her ...