Orange Is the New Black (6 page)

She indicated a toilet and sink area behind a plastic shower curtain. “Strip.” I kicked off my sneakers, took off my socks, my jeans, my T-shirt, my bra, and my underpants, all of which she took from me. It was cold. “Hold your arms up.” I did, displaying my armpits. “Open your mouth and stick out your tongue. Turn around, squat, spread your cheeks and cough.” I would never get used to the cough part of this drill, which was supposed to reveal contraband hidden in one’s privates—it was just so unnatural. I turned back around, naked. “Get dressed.”

She put my own clothes in a box—they would be mailed back to Larry, like the personal effects of a dead soldier. The bullet bra, though hideous and scratchy, did fit. So in fact did all the khaki prison clothes, much to my amazement. She really had the eye. In minutes I was transformed into an inmate.

Now she seemed to soften toward me a bit. As she was
fingerprinting me (a messy and oddly intimate process), she asked, “How long you been with that guy?”

“Seven years,” I replied sullenly.

“He know what you were up to?”

Up to? What did she know! My temper flared again as I said defiantly, “It’s a ten-year-old offense. He had nothing to do with it.” She seemed surprised by this, which I took as a moral victory.

“Well, you’re not married, so you probably won’t be seeing him for quite a while, not until he gets on your visitor list.”

The horrifying reality that I had no idea when I would see Larry again shut me right down. The prison guard was indifferent to the devastating blow she had just dealt me.

She had been distracted by the fact that no one seemed to know how to use the ID machine camera. Everyone took a turn poking at it, until finally they produced a photo that made me look remarkably like serial killer Aileen Wuornos. My chin was raised defiantly, and I looked like hell. I later figured out that everyone looks either thuggish and murderous or terrified and miserable in their prison ID photo. I’m proud to say that, against all odds, I fell into the former category, though I felt like the latter.

The ID card was red, with a bar code and the legend “U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Prisons—INMATE.” In addition to the unflattering photo, it also bore my new registration number in large numerals: 11187–424. The last three numbers indicated my sentencing district—Northern Illinois. The first five numbers were unique to me, my new identity. Just as I had been taught to memorize my aunt and uncle’s phone number when I was six years old, I now silently tried to commit my reg number to memory. 11187–424, 11187–424, 11187–424, 11187–424, 11187–424, 11187–424, 11187–424, 11187–424, 11187–424, 11187–424.

After the ID debacle, Ms. Personality said, “Mr. Butorsky’s gonna talk to you, but first go into medical.” She pointed into another small room.

Mr. Who?
I went and stared out the window, obsessing about the razor wire and the world beyond it from which I had been taken,
until a medic—a round Filipino man—came to see me. He performed the most basic of medical interviews, which went quickly, as I have been blessed with more or less perfect health. He told me he needed to perform a TB test, for which I extended my arm. “Nice veins!” he said with very genuine admiration. “No track marks!” Given his total lack of irony, I thanked him.

Mr. Butorsky was a compact, mustachioed fiftyish man, with watery, blinky blue eyes and, unlike the prison staff I had met so far, of discernible intelligence. He was leaning back in a chair, with paperwork spread out in front of him. It was my PSI—the presentencing investigation that the Feds do on people like me. It is supposed to document the basic facts of one’s crime, one’s prior offenses, one’s family situation and children, one’s history of substance abuse, work history, everything important.

“Kerman? Sit down,” he gestured, looking at me in a way that I suspect was much practiced to be calculating, penetrating, and measuring. I sat. He regarded me for several seconds in silence. I kept my chin firm and didn’t look at him. “How are you doing?” he asked.

It was startling to have anyone show the slightest interest in how, exactly, I was doing. I felt a flood of gratitude in spite of myself. “I’m okay.”

“You are?”

I nodded, deciding this was a good situation for my tough act.

He looked out the window. “In a little bit I’m going to have them take you up to the Camp,” he began.

My brain relaxed a bit and my stomach unclenched. I followed his gaze out the window, feeling profound relief that I wouldn’t have to stay down here with evil Shorty.

“I’ll be your counselor at the Camp. You know I’ve been reading your file.” He gestured at my PSI on the desk. “Sort of unusual. Pretty big case.”

Was it? I realized I had absolutely no idea if it was a big case or not. If I was a big-time criminal, who exactly would my cellmates be?

“And it’s been a long time since you were involved in all that,” he
continued. “That’s pretty unusual. I can tell you’ve matured since then.” He looked at me.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I muttered.

“Well, look, I’ve been working up at that Camp for ten years. I run that Camp. It’s my Camp, and there’s nothing that goes on up there that I don’t know about.”

I was embarrassed by how relieved I felt: I didn’t want to see this man, or any prison staffer, as my protector, but at the moment he was the closest thing to human I had encountered.

“We’ve got all types up there. What you really have to watch is the other inmates. Some of them are all right. No one’s going to mess with you unless you let them. Now, women, they don’t fight much. They talk, they gossip, they spread rumors. So they may talk about you. Some of these girls are going to think you think you’re better than them. They’re going to say, ‘Oh, she’s got money.’”

I felt uncomfortable. Was that how I came across? Was I going to be pegged as a snotty rich bitch?

“And there’s lesbians up there. They’re there, but they’re not gonna bother you. Some are gonna try and be your friend, whatever—just stay away from them! I want you to understand, you do not have to have lesbian sex. I’m old-fashioned. I don’t approve of any of that mess.”

I tried very hard not to smirk. Guess he didn’t read my file that closely. “Mr. Butorsky?”

“Yes?”

“I’m wondering when my fiancé and my mother can come to visit me?” I could not control the querulous tone in my voice.

“They’re both in your PSI, right?” My PSI detailed all the members of my immediate family, including Larry, who had been interviewed by the probation department.

“Yes, they’re all in there, and my father too.”

“Anyone who’s in your PSI is cleared to visit. They can come this weekend. I’ll make sure the list is in the visiting room.” He stood up. “You just keep to yourself, you’re gonna be fine.” He gathered up my paperwork and left.

I went out to retrieve my new creature comforts from the prison guard: two sheets, a pillowcase, two cotton blankets, a couple of cheap white towels, and a face cloth. These items were crammed into a mesh laundry bag. Add to that an ugly brown stadium coat with a broken zipper and a sandwich bag that contained a stubby mini-toothbrush, tiny packets of toothpaste and shampoo, and a rectangle of motel soap.

Heading out through the multiple gates of the monster fence, I felt elated that I would not be behind it, but now the mystery of the Camp was rushing toward me, unstoppable. A white minivan waited. Its driver, a middle-aged woman in army-issue-looking street clothes and sunglasses, greeted me warmly. She wore makeup and little gold hoops in her ears, and she looked like she could be a nice Italian-American lady called Ro from New Jersey.
The prison guards are getting friendlier
, I thought as I climbed into the passenger seat. She closed the door, and smiled encouragingly at me. She was chipper. I stared back at her.

She flipped up the sunglasses. “I’m Minetta. I’m an inmate too.”

“Oh!” I was flabbergasted that she was a prisoner, and she was driving—and wearing makeup!

“What’s your name—your last name? People go by their last names here.”

“Kerman,” I replied.

“Is this your first time down?”

“My first time here?” I was confused.

“Your first time in prison.”

I nodded.

“You doin’ okay, Kerman?” she asked as she guided the minivan up a small hill. “It’s not so bad, you’re going to be all right. We’ll take care of you. Everyone’s okay here, though you’ve gotta watch out for the stealing. How much time do you have?”

“How much time?” I bleated.

“How long is your sentence?”

“Oh! Fifteen months.”

“That’s not bad. That’ll be over in no time.”

We circled to the back entrance of a long, low building that resembled a 1970s elementary school. She pulled up next to a handicapped ramp and stopped the car. Clutching my laundry bag, I followed her toward the building, picking through patches of ice while the cold penetrated my thin rubber soles. Small knots of women wearing identical ugly brown coats were smoking in the February chill. They looked tough, and depressed, and they all had on big, heavy black shoes. I noticed that one of them was hugely pregnant.
What was a woman that pregnant doing in prison?

“Do you smoke?” Minetta asked.

“No.”

“Good for you! We’ll just get you your bed assignment and get you settled. There’s the dining hall.” She gestured to her left down several stairs. She was talking the entire time, explaining everything about Danbury Federal Prison Camp, none of which I was catching. I followed her up a couple of stairs and into the building.

“… TV room. There’s the education office, that’s the CO’s office. Hi, Mr. Scott! CO, that’s the correctional officer. He’s all right. Hey, Sally!” She greeted a tall white woman. “This is Kerman, she’s new, self-surrender.” Sally greeted me sympathetically with another “Are you okay?” I nodded, mute. Minetta pressed on. “Here’s more offices, those are the Rooms up there, the Dorms down there.” She turned to me, serious. “You’re not allowed down there, it’s out of bounds for you. You understand?”

I nodded, not understanding a thing. Women were surging all around me, black, white, Latino, every age, here in my new home, and they made a tremendous collective din in the linoleum and cinder-block interior. They were all dressed in khaki uniforms different from the one I was wearing, and they all wore huge, heavy-looking black work shoes. I realized that my attire made it glaringly obvious that I was new. I looked down at my little canvas slippers and shivered in my brown coat.

As we proceeded up the long main hall, several more women
came up and greeted me with the standard “You’re new… are you all right?” They seemed genuinely concerned. I hardly knew how to respond but smiled weakly and said hello back.

“Okay, here’s the counselor’s office. Who’s your counselor?”

“Mr. Butorsky.”

“Oh. Well, at least he does his paperwork. Hold on, let me see where they put you.” She knocked on the door with some authority. Opening it, she stuck her head in, all business. “Where did you put Kerman?” Butorsky gave her a response that she understood, and she led me up to Room 6.

We entered a room that held three sets of bunk beds and six waist-high metal lockers. Two older women were lying on the lower bunks. “Hey, Annette, this is Kerman. She’s new, a self-surrender. Annette will take care of you,” she told me. “Here’s your bed.” She indicated the one empty top bunk with a naked mattress.

Annette sat up. She was a small, dark fiftyish woman with short, spiky black hair. She looked tired. “Hi,” she rasped in a Jersey accent. “How are you? What’s your name again?”

“It’s Piper. Piper Kerman.”

Minetta’s work was apparently done. I thanked her profusely, making no effort to hide my gratitude, and she exited. I was left with Annette and the other, silent woman, who was tiny, bald, and seemed much older, maybe seventy. I cautiously placed my laundry bag on my bunk and looked around the room. In addition to the steel bunk beds and lockers, everywhere I looked there were hangers with clothes, towels, and string bags dangling from them. It looked like a barracks.

Annette got out of bed and revealed herself to be about five feet tall. “That’s Miss Luz. I’ve been keeping stuff in your locker. I gotta get it out. Here’s some toilet paper—you gotta take it with you.”

“Thank you.” I was still clutching my envelope with my paperwork and photos in it, and now a roll of toilet paper.

“Did they explain to you about the count?” she asked.

“The count?” I was getting used to feeling completely idiotic. It
was as if I’d been home-schooled my whole life and then dropped into a large, crowded high school.
Lunch money? What’s that?

“The count. They count us five times a day, and you have to be here, or wherever you’re supposed to be, and the four o’clock count is a standing count, the other ones are at midnight, two
A.M.
, five
A.M.
, and nine
P.M.
Did they give you your PAC number?”

“PAC number?”

“Yeah, you’ll need it to make phone calls. Did they give you a phone sheet? NO? You need to fill it out so you can make phone calls. But maybe Toricella will let you make a call if you ask him. It’s his late night. It helps if you cry. Ask him after dinner. Dinner’s after the four o’clock count, which is pretty soon, and lunch is at eleven. Breakfast is from six-fifteen to seven-fifteen. How much time do you have?”

“Fifteen months… how much time do you have?”

“Fifty-seven months.”

If there was an appropriate response to this information, I didn’t know what it was. What could this middle-class, middle-aged Italian-American lady from Jersey possibly have done to get fifty-seven months in federal prison? Was she Carmela Soprano? Fifty-seven months! From my presurrender due diligence, I knew it was
verboten
to ask anyone about their crime.

She saw that I was unsure what to say and helped me out. “Yeah, it’s a lot of time,” she said sort of drily.

“Yeah.” I agreed. I turned to start pulling items out of my laundry bag.

That’s when she shrieked, “Don’t make your bed!!!”