Read Online Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Piper Kerman
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baby?”
“I love you! I have to go, honey!”
“I love you too!”
“Come see me on Friday, and thank you for calling my folks… I love you!”
I hung up the phone. Mr. Toricella watched me with something that looked like sympathy in his beady little eyes. “It’s your first time down?” he said.
After thanking him, I headed out into the hall wiping my nose on my arm, depleted but exponentially happier. I looked down at thedoors of the forbidden Dorms and studiously examined the bulletin boards covered with incomprehensible information about events and rules I didn’t understand—laundry schedules, inmate appointments with various staffers, crochet permits, and the weekend movie schedule. This weekend’s film was
Bad Boys II.
I avoided eye contact. Nonetheless women periodically accosted me: “You’re new? How are you doing, honey? Are you okay?” Most of them were white. This was a tribal ritual that I would see play out hundreds of times in the future. When a new person arrived, their tribe—white, black, Latino, or the few and far between “others”—would immediately make note of their situation, get them settled, and steer them through their arrival. If you fell into that “other” category—Native American, Asian, Middle Eastern—then you got a patchwork welcome committee of the kindest and most compassionate women from the dominant tribes.
The other white women brought me a bar of soap, a real toothbrush and toothpaste, shampoo, some stamps and writing materials, some instant coffee, Cremora, a plastic mug, and perhaps most important, shower shoes to avoid terrible foot fungi. It turned out that these were all items that one had to purchase at the prison commissary. You didn’t have the money to buy toothpaste or soap? Tough. Better hope that another prisoner would give it to you. I wanted to bawl every time another lady brought me a personal care item and reassured me, “It’ll be okay, Kerman.”
By now conflicting things were churning around in my brain and my guts. Had I ever been so completely out of my element as I was here in Danbury? In a situation where I simply didn’t know what to say or what the real consequences of a wrong move might be? The next year was looming ahead of me like Mount Doom, even as I was quickly learning that compared with most of these women’s sentences, fifteen months were a blip and I had nothing to complain about.
So though I knew I shouldn’t complain, I was bereft. No Larry, no friends, no family to talk to, to keep me company, to make me laugh, to lean on. Every time a random woman with a few missingteeth gave me a bar of deodorant soap I swung wildly from elation to despair at the loss of my life as I knew it. Had I ever been so completely at the mercy of the kindness of strangers? And yet they were kind.
The young woman who furnished my new shower shoes had introduced herself as Rosemarie. She was milky pale, with short curly brown hair and thick glasses over mischievous brown eyes. Her accent was instantly familiar to me—educated, but with a strong whiff of working-class Massachusetts. She knew Annette, who said she was Italian, and had made a point of greeting me several times already, and now she came by Room 6 to bring me reading material. “I was a self-surrender and I was terrified. You’re going to be okay,” she assured me.
“Are you from Massachusetts?” I asked shyly.
“My Bahston accent must be wicked bad. I’m from Nawh-wood.” She laughed.
That accent made me feel a lot better. We started talking about the Red Sox and her stint as a volunteer on Kerry’s last senatorial campaign.
“How long are you here for?” I asked innocently.
Rosemarie got a funny look on her face. “Fifty-four months. For Internet auction fraud. But I’m going to Boot Camp, so when you take that into account…” and she launched into a calculation of good time and reduction of sentence and halfway house time. I was shocked again, both
“I love you! I have to go, honey!”
“I love you too!”
“Come see me on Friday, and thank you for calling my folks… I love you!”
I hung up the phone. Mr. Toricella watched me with something that looked like sympathy in his beady little eyes. “It’s your first time down?” he said.
After thanking him, I headed out into the hall wiping my nose on my arm, depleted but exponentially happier. I looked down at thedoors of the forbidden Dorms and studiously examined the bulletin boards covered with incomprehensible information about events and rules I didn’t understand—laundry schedules, inmate appointments with various staffers, crochet permits, and the weekend movie schedule. This weekend’s film was
Bad Boys II.
I avoided eye contact. Nonetheless women periodically accosted me: “You’re new? How are you doing, honey? Are you okay?” Most of them were white. This was a tribal ritual that I would see play out hundreds of times in the future. When a new person arrived, their tribe—white, black, Latino, or the few and far between “others”—would immediately make note of their situation, get them settled, and steer them through their arrival. If you fell into that “other” category—Native American, Asian, Middle Eastern—then you got a patchwork welcome committee of the kindest and most compassionate women from the dominant tribes.
The other white women brought me a bar of soap, a real toothbrush and toothpaste, shampoo, some stamps and writing materials, some instant coffee, Cremora, a plastic mug, and perhaps most important, shower shoes to avoid terrible foot fungi. It turned out that these were all items that one had to purchase at the prison commissary. You didn’t have the money to buy toothpaste or soap? Tough. Better hope that another prisoner would give it to you. I wanted to bawl every time another lady brought me a personal care item and reassured me, “It’ll be okay, Kerman.”
By now conflicting things were churning around in my brain and my guts. Had I ever been so completely out of my element as I was here in Danbury? In a situation where I simply didn’t know what to say or what the real consequences of a wrong move might be? The next year was looming ahead of me like Mount Doom, even as I was quickly learning that compared with most of these women’s sentences, fifteen months were a blip and I had nothing to complain about.
So though I knew I shouldn’t complain, I was bereft. No Larry, no friends, no family to talk to, to keep me company, to make me laugh, to lean on. Every time a random woman with a few missingteeth gave me a bar of deodorant soap I swung wildly from elation to despair at the loss of my life as I knew it. Had I ever been so completely at the mercy of the kindness of strangers? And yet they were kind.
The young woman who furnished my new shower shoes had introduced herself as Rosemarie. She was milky pale, with short curly brown hair and thick glasses over mischievous brown eyes. Her accent was instantly familiar to me—educated, but with a strong whiff of working-class Massachusetts. She knew Annette, who said she was Italian, and had made a point of greeting me several times already, and now she came by Room 6 to bring me reading material. “I was a self-surrender and I was terrified. You’re going to be okay,” she assured me.
“Are you from Massachusetts?” I asked shyly.
“My Bahston accent must be wicked bad. I’m from Nawh-wood.” She laughed.
That accent made me feel a lot better. We started talking about the Red Sox and her stint as a volunteer on Kerry’s last senatorial campaign.
“How long are you here for?” I asked innocently.
Rosemarie got a funny look on her face. “Fifty-four months. For Internet auction fraud. But I’m going to Boot Camp, so when you take that into account…” and she launched into a calculation of good time and reduction of sentence and halfway house time. I was shocked again, both
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