Orange Is the New Black

by Piper Kerman

  I spent an evening in my bunk composing what I would write on the card. It was our eighth anniversary of dating. I told him how quickly that time had passed, a quarter of our lives spent together. How all the risky choices we had taken together were the right ones, and how I couldn’t wait to come home to him, the only man for me. I promised to keep counting sunrises until I could be where he was, anywhere that might be.

  ONE DAY when we got to work, DeSimon stepped out of his office and locked the door. “Today we’re going to practice with the lift,” he announced. What the hell did that mean?

  The lift turned out to be a mechanical hydraulic lift. I tried to figure out what it might be used for—all of the buildings were pretty low-lying, and the FCI itself was only a few stories tall. DeSimon shed some light on my question. There were a handful of area lights around the grounds that were hundreds of feet high. The lift was used when a bulb or fixture on one of them needed attention. “Oh, hell no!” said Jae, who was trying to get transferred to the warehouse. “No motherfuckin’ way are you getting me up on that!” The rest of the crew were in agreement with her.

  But we still had to go through the elaborate process of setting up the lift properly—essentially a metal platform a few feet square with a railing that went straight up in the sky when you pressed a button. If you screwed up one of the safety measures, it was easy to imagine the splat on concrete.

  When we had finally done it properly, DeSimon said, “Who wants a ride?” A few intrepids—Amy, Little Janet, Levy—climbed onto the platform and pushed the button, each stopping long before the lift reached its full height, then coming down. “Scary!”

  “I want to try!” I climbed onto the platform, and DeSimon handed me the control button. Up, up, up—my heart beat hard as I left the concrete behind, the faces of six women and a beard upturned to watch me. Higher, higher. I could see everywhere, for miles farther than I had imagined beyond the confines of the prison. Maybe I could see my future from up here. The entire platform was swaying in the breeze, as I kept my finger on the button. I wanted to go all the way up, even though I was clutching the railing with white knuckles and the blood was pounding in my ears.

  At its highest extension the lift stopped with a jerk, scaring me even more. A little half-cheer rose from my coworkers, who were shading their eyes to see me. Women were coming out of the other shops to have a look. “She crazy!” I heard someone say admiringly.

  I peered over the railing that I was clinging to, grinning. Mr. DeSimon appeared to be trying to hide a smile in his beard. “Come on down, Kerman. No one wants to clean you off the concrete.” I almost liked him that day.

  THE PLACE was emptying out. Early in the month there was a rush of new faces, including a clique that had smuggled in marijuana via the cootchie express (squat and cough doesn’t really seem to work) and brought a flurry of shakedowns onto the entire Camp. But then the flow of new prisoners seemed to stop abruptly. The prevailing rumor was that the BOP had “closed” the Camp, accepting only prisoners who were already doing time in other facilities, because they didn’t want Martha Stewart designated to Danbury. Unclear was whether this was because the place was a broken-down dump, or for some other, more sinister reason. The moratorium on new prisoners seemed real, because the flow of new faces slowed to a feeble trickle. But people kept leaving to go home.

  I wished that I was leaving. The adrenaline of the initial “Can I do this?” period was definitely over, and the rest of my time in Danbury stretched ahead of me. Larry and I had spent much time and energy hoping to get my sentence down to a year, feeling like that would be a victory. Now I was in the midst of it, and the months felt like they would never end.

  Still, the novelties of prison socializing could distract me. Jae, like many of my favorite people, was a Taurus, a fact I learned when Big Boo Clemmons approached me in B Dorm to invite me to Jae’s birthday party. Big Boo was a giant bulldyke. When I say giant, I mean at least three hundred pounds. She had skin like a Dove ice cream bar and was the most attractive three-hundred-pound woman I have ever seen. She used her massive bulk to intimidate, but her girth was less daunting than her wit. She had a lightning-sharp way with words—she was the resident rhymemaster, and her charisma and charm were undeniable. Her girlfriend Trina, at two hundred pounds, was pretty but a bitch on wheels and was commonly referred to by other prisoners as “Pieface”—but only behind her back. She loved to argue, was as disagreeable as Boo was smooth.

  Boo told me the day and time when the party would take place, and that I could bring a cheesecake. “Where’s the party?” I asked, and was surprised when she said, “Right here in B Dorm.” Prison parties were usually held in the common rooms; otherwise you risked being hassled by the guards.

  When Jae’s birthday arrived, I wondered how she felt. This must have been her second or third birthday in prison, and she had seven more stretching in front of her like hurdles on a very long track. I turned up for the party promptly after dinner, cheesecake in hand (it was the only prison cuisine I knew how to make). The party guests gathered in the middle corridor of B Dorm outside Jae’s cube, which she shared with her bunkie Sheena. B Dorm residents made up most of the guests, and we pulled up the folding chairs and stools from our cubes.

  My neighbor bipolar Colleen was there, and so were Jae’s buddy Bobbie, the biker mama from back in the Brooklyn MCC, Little Janet, Amy, and Lili Cabrales, who I had observed in action on my first morning in B Dorm. Lili almost drove me insane when I first moved in, as she would call out across the room again and again, “Pookie, what you doin’? Pookie, come over here! Pookie, do you got any noodle soups? I’m so hungry!” Pookie was her very quiet special friend, who lived two cubicles over from me. I would sit on my bunk and ask myself (and sometimes Natalie), “Will she ever shut up?” Lili was a loud-ass Bronx Puerto Rican gay-for-the-stay don’t-fuck-with-me piece of work. But a funny thing happened, especially after Pookie went home and Lili quieted down a bit—she began to grow on me. I guess maybe I grew on her, until we got to the point where she nicknamed me “Dolphin” after my tattoo, and I could get a big smile out of her with a little joke.

  Delicious the cheerful tittie-admirer was there—she played Spades with Jae. Delicious might have been my old friend Candace’s doppelganger. This may seem surprising, as Candace is a North Carolinian, white Dartmouth grad who is a high-powered technology PR maven on the West Coast, mother of one and a clown enthusiast, whereas Delicious is a black D.C. native with a five o’clock shadow, a bunch of tattoos, and unusually long nails, who worked as a prison dishwasher while sharpening her excellent singing voice and off-the-cuff witticisms. But they had similar hair, similar stature, the identical button nose, and the same mellow-with-a-touch-of-hyper way of looking at the world. It gave me goosebumps. Delicious sang all the time. All. The. Time. She would rather sing than speak. As soon as I got to B Dorm, she asked me, “Y’all got any gangsta books?” When I told her about my friend Candace on the outside, and how they were like twins, Delicious looked at me as if I were the weirdest person she had ever met.

  For the party, Boo had prepared a game for us to play. She made up a rhyme that was a riddle about every invitee, and the game was to guess the identity of the riddle’s subject. This was an irresistible novelty, and soon we were laughing at each other, although Boo had refrained from being really mean at anyone’s expense.

  She lives right here

  Between you and me,

  And when you see her

  You think of the sea.

  When Boo read that rhyme, I had to bite my lip to hide my smile while I looked around quickly. Most people looked confused, but a few were smirking, pleased with themselves for getting it right away.

  “Who is it?” asked Boo. A lot of shoulders were shrugged, which irked her.

  “It’s Piper!” shouted Sheena and Amy in triumphant unison.

  “I don’t get it,” Trina pouted at her girlfriend. “That don’t make no sense.”

&nb
sp; Boo was exasperated. “‘She lives right here between you and me’—that means she lives in B Dorm. ‘And when you see her, you think of the sea,’ that’s her tattoo. Get it? See, sea? The fish?!”

  “Oh yeah!” Lili Cabrales grinned, “That’s my Dolphin!”

  CHAPTER 10

  Schooling the OG

  I had learned a lot since arriving in prison five months ago: how to clean house using maxipads, how to wire a light fixture, how to discern whether a duo were best friends or girlfriends, when to curse someone in Spanish, knowing the difference between “feelin’ it” (good) and “feelin’ some kinda way” (bad), the fastest way to calculate someone’s good time, how to spot a commissary ho a mile away, and how to tell which guards were players and which guards were nothin’ nice. I even mastered a recipe from the prison’s culinary canon: cheesecake.

  I made my first effort at cooking for someone’s going-home party, preparing a prison cheesecake according to my coworker Yvette’s Spanish-and-hand-gesture instructions. Unlike a lot of prison cookery, most of the necessary ingredients could be bought at the commissary.

  Prison Cheesecake

  Prepare a crust of crushed graham crackers mixed with four pats of margarine stolen from the dining hall. Bake it in a Tupperware bowl for about a minute in the microwave, and allow it to cool and harden.

  Take one full round of Laughing Cow cheese, smash with a fork, and mix with a cup of vanilla pudding until smooth. Gradually mix in one whole container of Cremora, even though it seems gross. Beat viciously until smooth. Add lemon juice from the squeeze bottle until the mixture starts to stiffen. Note: this will use most of the plastic lemon.

  Pour into the bowl atop the crust, and put on ice in your bunkie’s cleaning bucket to chill until ready to eat.

  It was a little squishy the first time; I should have used more lemon juice. But it was a great success. Yvette raised her eyebrows when she tasted it. “¡Buena!” she proclaimed. I was very proud.

  Prison cuisine and survival techniques were all well and good, but it was time to learn something more productive. Pleasantly but persistently, Yoga Janet had been inviting me to join her class, and when I wrenched my back, she iced it while I lay prone on my bunk. “You really should learn yoga with us,” she gently chided me. “Running is too hard on the body.”

  I wasn’t going to give up the track, but I started descending to the little gym for yoga class several times a week. Larry laughed when I told him. He had been trying to get me to try yoga at a fancy downtown studio for years, and he found it both entertaining and annoying that it had taken incarceration to get me into Downward Dog.

  The field house gym had a rubber floor. At first we used undersize blue foam mats, but with great effort and persistence Yoga Janet got proper orange yoga mats donated to the Camp from the outside. Tall and calm and down to earth, Janet managed to create the sense that she was teaching us something important and valuable without taking herself too seriously.

  Camila from B Dorm was always there. Alongside all the many misfit toys at Danbury, Camila was instantly noticeable. My friend Eric spotted her in the visiting room and declared her “the hottest woman in prison in America—no offense to you, Pipes.” She glowed with health and radiated beauty; tall, slim, with a glossy black mane, tawny brown skin, a pointed chin, and huge dark eyes, she was always laughing, loudly. I was drawn to her willingness to laugh, but that very quality was the subject of derision among some of the white women.

  “Those Puerto Ricans, it’s like they don’t even know they’re in jail, they’re always laughing and dancing like idiots!” sneered tall, mopey Sally, who wanted everyone to be as miserable as she was. And as ignorant—Camila was Colombian, not Puerto Rican. Camila was a natural at yoga, easily mastering warrior poses and backbends and giggling helplessly with me as we tried to balance on one leg while twisting the other around it.

  On the mat next to Camila would be Ghada. Ghada was one of the handful of Muslim women I met in prison. It was difficult to guess her age—her face was deeply creased, but she had an air of tremendous vitality—she might be in her fifties or sixties. Her hair was salt-and-pepper, and she hid it under makeshift head scarves—sometimes a pillowcase, sometimes a contraband cloth napkin. I never quite got the story straight, but it seemed that the guards frequently confiscated her head scarves. We were not allowed to wear “doo-rags” when in uniform, only commissary-purchased baseball caps or prison-issue wool knit caps that itched like hell. I thought surely there should be some exception for Muslim women. I could never figure out if I was mistaken and the hijab was forbidden in the prison system, or if Ghada just couldn’t get it together to obtain a prison-approved head scarf. She wasn’t much for rules.

  Ghada was from Lebanon but had lived in South America for many years and so was fluent in Spanish, with pretty tenuous English. Because of her long residence in Latin America, Ghada was an honorary Spanish mami. This was a good thing, because she was totally unaccepting of the authority of the staff and uninterested in the institution’s rules, and only the monumental efforts of her friends to protect her from the consequences of that indifference kept her out of the SHU. This won her both annoyance and respect from her fellow prisoners. No one seemed to know what Ghada was down for, but we could all agree that she was another OG. Ghada loved Yoga Janet, which was the primary reason she came to class. She was not all that interested in doing the poses properly, but she brought great enthusiasm to the ritual.

  The final member of our ragtag band of aspiring yogis was Sister Platte, who took proper form very seriously. Sister had tight hips, so twists and Pigeon Pose prompted a knitted brow, and if she had indulged in the greasy home fries at the midday meal, the forward bends would give her trouble. When I sank into a deep lunge, the tiny nun would study me, plaintively wondering, “What am I doing wrong?”

  The five of us had a camaraderie that made those few hours among the most enjoyable of the week. Every class we would meet to claim the peace that, at Danbury, could only be found within one’s own body. Each session ended with Janet’s final relaxation, when she spoke soothingly to us of the work we had just completed, and the things we had to be grateful for every day, together in prison. And every single week Ghada would fall asleep within minutes during final relaxation, snoring loudly until someone woke her.

  ONE EVENING Miss Mahoney, the cheerful education administrator from down the hill, made a lot of people very happy. Miss Mahoney was one of the few prison staffers who seemed to be on our side. As near as I could tell, she was one of the education department’s few saving graces. She did have an annoying habit of trying to be “down on tha mic” when she was on the PA system. On this particular evening she announced that a gender awareness class would be offered in the dining hall. What exactly was going to be conveyed there was unclear.

  Then she got to the important matters: “Would the following ladies please report to the CO’s office for their GED test results…” And you could just tell from her voice that the news was good for every name called.

  “Malcolm!” Mahoney called.

  I jumped out of my bunk. Natalie had taken the GED test approximately a dozen times and was definitely way past due to pass it. She got nervous during the testing, and time and again the math section had proved her bête noir. Where was Natalie?

  When I got to the main hall, there were already screams of joy, and women were pouring out of all of the Rooms and Dorms. When a woman of twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five has struggled to earn her high school diploma in prison, taking pretest after pretest and trying to learn in a poorly run program and classes full of every imaginable delinquent student behavior, and then actually passes, it is a victory. Some of these women had dropped out of school thirty years before and were finally getting one of the only positive things—one of the only measures of achievement—one can earn in prison. Plus, it meant that these women could finally earn above the lowest pay grade at their prison jobs—if you didn’t have your GED
, you couldn’t earn over fourteen cents an hour, which was barely enough to pay for toothpaste and soap. Everything came out of our prison accounts—hygiene items, phone calls, fines. If a prisoner didn’t have her GED and didn’t have money coming in from outside, she was screwed. Natalie had toiled for many years as a skilled baker in that prison kitchen, a treasured member of the cooking staff, and yet she could never be paid more than $5.60 a week for forty hours of work.

  Where was Miss Natalie? Her name had been called five minutes ago, but I didn’t see her in the throng of jubilant, shouting, laughing women in the hall. Where was my enigmatic bunkie, that supremely self-possessed woman? I knew how badly Natalie wanted that diploma, I suspected it hurt her that she had struggled for so long to pass that math section. With embarrassed dignity, she had declined my offers of study help. This was her moment! Could she possibly be hiding, ashamed to join the orgy of congratulations and illegal hugs taking place in the hallway?

  No, wait, she was down at the track! I had watched her putting on her sneakers. In my flip-flops I took off down the hall, out the building, and down the stairs to the track at top speed. She didn’t even know! Halfway down the stairs I was calling out to the others on the track, “Is my bunkie down there?” I rounded the field house—and there she was with her crazy friend Sheila.

  “Bunkie! Your GED results are back!” I panted.

  Natalie smiled nervously.

  “Come up, bunkie, come up and see!”

  “Okay, bunkie, I’m coming.” Ladylike to the end, Natalie did not rush.

  I started up the stairs as a number of people came down. “Where’s Natalie? Where’s Miss Malcolm? There she is! Come on, Natalie!” My bunkie looked surprised, but she still didn’t hurry. She had that look of skepticism on her face, unwilling to give herself over to celebration until she saw its cause with her own eyes.