by Piper Kerman
DeSimon kept a television in the shop. He would periodically emerge from his office, toss a VHS tape at us, and grunt, “Watch this,” then leave us for hours. These instructional videos explained the rudiments of electrical current and also very basic wiring procedures. While uninterested in the content of the videos, my coworkers quickly figured out how to rig up the TV with an illegal makeshift antenna. That way we could watch Jerry Springer; one con would man the lookout post by the window to spot any approaching COs.
I was trying to learn some Spanish, and my coworker Yvette was very patiently trying to teach me, but what I managed to pick up was almost exclusively about food, sex, or curses. Yvette was by far the most competent of my coworkers, and she and I would often work together on any electrical job requiring proficiency with tools. This occasioned conversations where every sentence suffered from multiple fractures, coupled with a lot of cautious mime—neither of us wanted to get shocked. I had already learned the hard way what that was like—your head snaps back as if you’ve been kicked under the chin.
Jae, my neighbor Colleen’s pal, was assigned to the electric shop—she had been cleared to work back in the Brooklyn MCC, so her paperwork didn’t take long. She got the clerk job. “As long as I don’t have to touch wires and shit, I’m cool,” she said.
By default, she hung out with me at work—I was best buddies with Little Janet, and Little Janet was the only other black person in electric. As the New England spring took its sweet time arriving, the three of us occupied the bench in front of the shop, smoking and watching the comings and goings of other prisoners. The guards went in and out of their deluxe gym, which was located directly across from the electric building. There were long stretches of inactivity during which we shot the shit… about the drug game (distant memories for me), about New York City (where we all were from), about men, about life.
Little Janet could hold her own with us, despite being fifteen years younger, and I could hold my own with them, despite being white. Little Janet was excitable, eager to argue a point or show off a dance move or just act silly, while Jae was funny and mellow, with an easy laugh. She had served just two years of a ten-year sentence, but she never seemed bitter, just measured and mindful. But she had a quiet sadness about her, and a deep, still quality that seemed to be the part of her that she would not allow her surroundings and circumstances to destroy. When she talked about her sons, a teenager and an eight-year-old, her face shone.
I admired the humor and calm with which she handled her losses and our prison world—her dignity was not as quiet as Natalie’s but was just as lovely.
· · ·
JOYCE, FROM the electric shop, was going home soon. She had drawn the calendar on the blackboard in the shop and would cross off every day that passed with chalk. About a week before she was due for release she asked if I would color her hair. I must have shown my surprise at the intimate request. “You’re the only one I know who seems like they won’t fuck it up,” she explained in her sharp, matter-of-fact way.
We went into the salon room off the camp’s main hallway, a space that occupied as much room as the law library—about the size of a large closet. There were two old pink hair sinks with nozzles for rinsing, a couple of salon chairs in almost total disrepair, and some standing driers that looked like they were from the early 1960s. Shears and other cutting instruments were kept in a locked cage mounted on the wall—only the CO could unlock it. One of the chairs was occupied by a woman having her hair set by a friend. As I worked on the sections of Joyce’s straight shiny hair, carefully following the directions on the box, I felt proud that she had asked me, and I also felt a bit more like a normal girl, performing beauty chores with girlfriends. When I accidentally sent the sink nozzle shooting out of control, spraying water everywhere, to my surprise everyone laughed instead of cursing me out. Maybe, just a little, I was starting to fit in.
IN THE free world your residence can be a peaceful retreat from a long day at work; in prison, not so much. A loud discussion of farting was happening in B Dorm. It had been initiated by Asia, who didn’t actually live in B and was chased out. “Asia, you’re out of bounds! Get your grimy ass outta here, ya project ho!” someone bawled after her.
I was surviving just fine in “the Ghetto” of B Dorm, due to my luck in having been paired with Natalie, and maybe to my stubborn conviction that I would be acting like a racist baby if I tried to get moved, and perhaps also to the fact that I had gone to an elite women’s college. Single-sex living has certain constants, whether it’s upscale or down and dirty. At Smith College the pervasive obsession with food was expressed at candlelight dinners and at Friday-afternoon faculty teas; in Danbury it was via microwave cooking and stolen food. In many ways I was more prepared to live in close quarters with a bunch of women than some of my fellow prisoners, who were driven crazy by communal female living. There was less bulimia and more fights than I had known as an undergrad, but the same feminine ethos was present—empathetic camaraderie and bawdy humor on good days, and histrionic dramas coupled with meddling, malicious gossip on bad days.
It was a weird place, the all-female society with a handful of strange men, the military-style living, the predominant “ghetto” vibe (both urban and rural) through a female lens, the mix of every age, from silly young girls to old grandmas, all thrown together with varying levels of tolerance. Crazy concentrations of people inspire crazy behavior. I can just now step back far enough to appreciate its surreal singularity, but to be back with Larry in New York, I would have walked across broken glass barefoot in a snowstorm, all the way home.
MR. BUTORSKY, my counselor, had a policy he had come up with all by himself. Once a week he would put every prisoner he supervised—half the Camp—on the callout for a one-minute appointment with him. You had to report to the office he shared with Toricella and sign a big log book to acknowledge you had been there.
“Anything going on?” he would ask. That was your chance to ask questions, spill your guts, or complain. I only asked questions, usually to have a visitor approved.
Sometimes he was feeling curious. “How are you doing, Kerman?” I was fine. “Everything going all right with Miss Malcolm?” Yes, she was great. “She’s a nice lady. Never gives me any problems. Not like some of her kind.” Er, Mr. Butorsky—? “It’s a big adjustment for someone like you, Kerman. But you seem to be handling it.” Is there anything else, Mr. Butorsky? ’Cause if not I’m going to go.…
Or chatty.
“I’m almost done here, Kerman. Almost twenty years I’ve been at this. Things have changed. People at the top have different ideas about how to do things. ’Course they have no idea what really goes on here with these people.” Well, Mr. Butorsky, I’m sure you’ll enjoy retirement. “Yeah, I’m thinking of someplace like Wisconsin… where there’s more of us northerners, if you know what I mean.”
Minetta, the town driver who had brought me up to Camp on my first day, was due to be released in April. As her date was nearing, the line of succession was the hot topic around Camp, as the town driver was the one prisoner who was allowed off the plantation on a daily basis. She was responsible for doing errands for the prison staff in town, ferrying inmates and their CO escorts to hospital appointments, and driving prisoners to the bus station after they had been released—plus any other mission that was handed to her. Never, ever had a town driver been chosen who was not a “northerner.”
One day I went into the counselors’ office for my callout minute. As I was signing the book, Mr. Butorsky stared at me. “Kerman, how about applying for the town driver position? Minetta is leaving soon. We need someone responsible for that job. It’s an important job.”
“Um… let me think about it, Mr. Butorsky?”
“Sure, Kerman, you go right ahead and think about it.”
On the one hand, being the town driver would mean the opportunity to rendezvous with Larry in gas station bathrooms in the outside world. On the other hand, the town driver was wide
ly held to be the designated Camp snitch. I was no snitch, no way, and clearly no good could come from coziness with prison staff, which the town driver position required. The uncomfortable privilege and collaborator subtext was more than I could stomach. Plus, after my screwdriver misadventure, I didn’t have the stomach for illicit activities, even assignations, no matter how much I lusted for Larry. The next week in Butorsky’s office I quietly turned the job down, much to his surprise.
· · ·
WHEN I first arrived at the Camp, Pop, the ruler of the kitchen, would watch the prison-screened movie-of-the-week flanked by Minetta and Nina, Pop’s bunkie. They would sit in a prime spot in the back of the room and kibitz and enjoy contraband delicacies, courtesy of Pop. When Minetta left for the halfway house, her movie seat was briefly taken by a tall, imposing, and largely silent white girl who was a prolific crocheter and was also leaving soon. Nina was also preparing to depart, but she was going “down the hill” to a nine-month residential drug program. It was for prisoners with documented drug and alcohol addictions who had been fortunate enough to be flagged for the program by their sentencing judge. It was the only serious rehabilitative program at Danbury (other than the puppies), and it is currently the only way in the federal system to significantly reduce your sentence. Campers headed to the drug program were always scared, as it took place not in the Camp but in the “real” prison: high security, lockdown, and twelve hundred women serving serious time, some with life sentences.
Nina had the added concern of finding an acceptable replacement for herself at Pop’s side. After my initial faux pas in the dining room, it didn’t even occur to me that I was a candidate, but one Saturday night in the common room Nina beckoned to me. She and the quiet girl were sitting with Pop. “Piper, come have some food!” Contraband food was irresistible—one did not readily pass up the simple novelty of eating something other than institutional food, cooked with a measure of love. I was pretty damn shy, though, after Pop’s veiled threat in the chow hall.
They had guacamole and chips. I knew the avocados had been purchased from commissary and were not really contraband. I took a little bite but didn’t want to seem greedy. “It’s soooooo good! Thank you!” Pop was looking at me sidelong.
“Go on, have some more!” Nina said.
“I’m okay, I’m kind of full, but thank you!” I started to edge away.
“C’mon, Piper, sit down for a minute.”
Now I was nervous. But I trusted Nina. I pulled up an extra chair and perched on it, ready to flee at any sign of Pop’s displeasure. I made small talk about the other woman’s imminent return to the outside world, how great it would be for her to be reunited with her teenage son, and whether she would find work with the carpenter’s union. When the movie started I excused myself.
They made the same advance the next week. That night they offered me burgers, fat and juicy compared to the ones in the dining hall. I wolfed one down without prodding, tasting oregano and thyme. Pop seemed entertained by my relish and leaned over to confide: “I use extra spices.”
A day or two later Nina posed a question to me: “Whaddaya think about watching the movie with Pop when I go to the drug program?” she asked.
What?
“She needs someone to keep her company when I leave, and get her ice and soda for her, you know?”
Did Pop really want my company?
“Well… you’re not a wacko, you know? That’s why we’re friends, ’Cause I can really talk to you about things.”
The invitation seemed like the ultimate endorsement… and not one to be turned down lightly. When I saw Pop, I tried to be charming, and perhaps I was somewhat successful. The nonwacko contingent must have been thin on the ground at that time in the Camp, because a week or so later Nina asked me if I wanted to take her place as Pop’s bunkie in A Dorm, “the Suburbs.”
I was perplexed. “But I’m already in B Dorm—I can’t move.”
Nina rolled her eyes. “Piper, Pop gets whatever bunkie she wants.”
I was stunned by this revelation that a prisoner could get what she wanted. Of course, if that inmate is the prime reason that your institutional kitchen runs in an orderly fashion… “You mean, they’ll move me?” More eye rolling. I frowned, lost between contradictory impulses.
B Dorm was certainly living up to its “Ghetto” moniker, with all the irritants of any ghetto. One B Dorm practice alone drove me to the tooth-grinding brink of sanity: people would hang their little headphones on the metal bunks and blast their pocket radios through the makeshift “speakers,” foisting their staticky music on everyone at top, tinny volume. It wasn’t the music I objected to, it was the terrible audio quality.
But A Dorm seemed populated by a disproportionate number of fussy old ladies, plus the Puppy Program dogs and their people, who were mostly nuts. And I didn’t want anyone to think I was a racist—although nobody else in the Camp seemed to have the slightest compunction about expressing the broadest racial generalizations.
“Honey,” another prisoner drawled to me, “everyone here is just trying to live up to the worst cultural stereotype possible.”
In fact, that was part of the motivation of this new invitation. “Pop don’t want any lesbians in there,” said matter-of-fact Nina. “And you’re a nice white girl.”
On the one hand, Pop would certainly be an advantageous bunkie, as she clearly wielded a lot of influence in the Camp. On the other hand, I had a strong suspicion that she would be a high-maintenance cubemate—look at the hustle Nina was putting on for her.
Finally, I thought about Natalie: how kind she had been to me and how easy she was to live with—and she was just nine months from going home. If I bailed on her, who knew what kind of kook they would stick in Cube 18? “Nina, I don’t think I can just ditch Miss Natalie,” I said. “She has been really good to me. I hope Pop understands.”
Nina looked surprised. “Well… help me think about who else we can get. What about Toni? She’s Italian.”
I said that sounded grand, they would be a perfect fit, and retreated to B Dorm, my Ghetto home.
CHAPTER 7
The Hours
There were a host of religious opportunities at Danbury: a Friday Mass for Catholics, and sometimes a Sunday Mass as well (usually delivered by the “hot priest,” a young padre who played guitar and spoke Italian and was thus adored by all the Italian-Americans); a Spanish Christian service on the weekends; a Buddhist meditation group and also rabbinical visits on Wednesdays; and a wacky weekly nondenominational be-in led by volunteers armed with acoustic guitars and scented candles. The biggie, though, was the “Christian” (aka fundamentalist) service held in the visiting room on Sunday evenings after visiting hours were over.
In March I asked Sister Rafferty, the German nun who was the head chaplain, whether there would be any provision for Episcopalians on Easter Sunday. She looked at me as if I had three heads, then replied that if I wanted to hunt down my own minister and put him or her on my (full) visitors’ list, then we could use the chapel. Thanks for nothing, Sister!
I found the religious prostrations of my saber-rattling born-again neighbors tedious. Some of the faithful had a distinct aspect of roostering, loudly proclaiming that they were going to pray on any number of topics, how God was walking beside them through their incarceration, how Jesus loved sinners, and so on. Personally, I thought that one could thank the Lord at a lower volume and perhaps with less self-congratulation. You could worship loudly and still act pretty lousy, abundant evidence of which was running around the Dorms.
There were no new spring hats or dresses in prison, but the week before Easter someone erected a creepy giant wooden cross behind the Camp, right outside the dining hall. I was confronted with it at breakfast and could only ask “What the fuck?” of Mrs. Jones, the gruff old queen of the Puppy Program and one of the old ladies who always came to breakfast. I was surprised to learn that she was only fifty-five. Prison will age a gal prematurely.
A few days later Nina and I were discussing the impending holidays over a cup of instant coffee. Levy and the one other Jew in residence, the decidedly more likable Gayle Greenman, had been given boxes of matzoh by the German nun for Passover. This excited the interest of the other prisoners. “How come they get them big crackers?” a neighbor from B Dorm asked me, probing the mysteries of faith. “Them crackers would be good with jelly.”
Nina, her bangs in rollers, tilted her head as she reminisced about Passovers past. “One year I was in Rikers. Matzoh was the only edible thing they gave us,” she mused, rolling her cigarette thoughtfully between her fingers. “It’s a delicious with buttah.” This year I would not be ferrying back and forth between Larry’s family’s seder and my own Easter traditions. Too bad—I love the ten plagues.
Pop and her crew pulled out all the stops for Easter dinner. It was positively lavish, a spring miracle. The menu: baked chicken and cabbage with astonishing dumplings, so dense you could have used them as weapons; mustardy deviled eggs; and real vegetables on the salad bar. For dessert, we had Natalie’s very special bird’s nest confection—a deep-fried tortilla cupping a mound of pudding, covered with lush green-dyed coconut “grass” strewn with jelly bean “eggs,” and a gaily colored marshmallow Peep perched on top. I just stared at it, unable to believe my eyes, while everyone around me ate enthusiastically. I didn’t want to eat this incredible diorama. I wanted to shellac it and save it forever.
RIGHT AFTER Easter, Nina left to go down the hill to the high-security prison for the drug program. I would miss her. She had been knitting a scarf for weeks and weeks, and I had been consulting on it. “What color do you think now?” she would say, pulling out a remarkable collection of little scraps of yarn she had scavenged. “Purple!” I would point. “Green!”