Piper Kerman - Orange is the New Black

Thank you.

To a dear friend. I made it. God bless you.

Mrs. Jones.

I hit a groove, and the days and weeks seemed to go faster. I passed milestones-one-quarter of my sentence, one-third of my sentence-and prison seemed more manageable. The outdoors showed me the natural passage of time in a way that was new to a lifelong city girl. I went from trudging through ice, then mud, then grass (mowed by the ladies in grounds). Trees budded, and wildflowers and even peonies bloomed. Baby bunnies appeared at the side of the track and grew into saucy teenage rabbits right before my eyes as I ran around and around that quarter-mile loop thousands of times. Wild turkeys and deer freely roamed the federal reservation that the prison sat on. I developed a deep distaste for Canada geese, who shat dark green goose poop all over my track.

One sunny afternoon I was loitering on the bench in front of the electric shop in the sun, listlessly trying to read a slim volume of Candide that some wiseacre had sent me. Mr. DeSimon had not shown up to work, a mercifully common experience. That morning it had been difficult to read because of the thundering gunfire. Very close by the CMS shops, hidden about a quarter mile away in the woods, was the prison’s rifle range. Correctional officers could spend quality time with their firearms down there, and the hammering of multiple rounds was typical background noise during our workdays. There was something unsettling about toiling away for a prison while listening to your jailers practice shooting you.

When we got back from lunch, the gunshots had ceased, and it was once again a placid rural Connecticut day. One of the institution’s white pickup trucks pulled up next to me in front of the carpentry shop.

“What the hell are you doin’, convict?”

It was Mr. Thomas, the boss of the shop. The carpentry and construction shops were housed in one building, to the left of the electric shop and on the other side of a shambling greenhouse. The electric shop did not have a bathroom, and we had to walk over to use the one in their building. The bathroom was for single use only, a spacious private room on whose walls someone had painted pretty blue designs. I loved that bathroom. Sometimes when my coworkers in electric were squabbling, or watching illicit trash television when DeSimon wasn’t around, I would just flee to the bathroom for a few blessed minutes of privacy and quiet. It was the only door in the prison that I could lock.

The construction and carpentry shops were led by Mr. King and Mr. Thomas, respectively. Mr. Thomas was round and volcanic and inclined to noise, jokes, and occasional blue-streak outbursts, like a present-day Jackie Gleason. Mr. King was lean and lanky, taciturn and weathered, always with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He looked like the Marlboro Man. They had been sharing this shop for many years and had a close working relationship. When I would walk into the shop to use the facilities, Mr. Thomas would usually note my presence with a shout: “Hey, criminal!”

Now he wanted to know what the hell I was doing. My fellow B-Dormer, Alicia Robbins, was in the seat of the truck next to him. Alicia was Jamaican and tight with Miss Natalie. She was giggling, so I doubted that I was in trouble.

“Um… nothing?”

“Nothing?! Well, do you want to work?”

“Sure?”

“Well g-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-t in!!!!”

I jumped up and climbed into the truck. Alicia scooted over to make room for me. I didn’t think I could get in trouble if I was with a CO. Mr. Thomas pressed the gas and the truck took off. We veered past the plumbing and grounds shops, headed behind the FCI, and then abruptly plunged down a steep gravel road. I had no idea where it led. Almost immediately the buildings disappeared, and all I could see through the pickup’s open windows was forest-trees and boulders and the occasional creek-all sloping sharply downward.

The truck radio was blasting classic rock. I looked at Alicia, who was still giggling. “Where is he taking us?” I asked her.

Mr. Thomas snorted.

“Boss crazy” was all Alicia would say.

The road plunged down, down, down. We had been driving for many minutes. It didn’t feel like I was in prison anymore. I felt like a girl in a truck heading toward an adventure. Resting my bare forearm on the truck door, I fixed my gaze deep into the woods, so that when the trees flew by, all I saw was a blur of green and brown.

After several minutes the truck broke into a sort of clearing, and I saw signs of people. In front of us was a picnic area, and some of the women who worked in construction and carpentry were painting wooden picnic tables. But they didn’t interest me at all, because what I saw beyond them filled me with so much excitement. The picnic area lay on the edge of an enormous lake, and the June sunlight was glinting off the water that lapped gently at the edge of a boat launch.

I gasped. My eyes widened, and I could not have cared less about maintaining my cool.

Mr. Thomas parked the truck, and I jumped out. “It’s a lake! I can’t believe how beautiful it is!”

Alicia laughed at me, grabbed her painting gear out of the back of the truck, and ambled over to a picnic table.

I turned to Mr. Thomas, who was also looking at the lake. “Can I go look at it? Please?”

He laughed at me too. “Sure, just don’t jump in. Get me fired.”

I rushed down to the edge, where there were floating docks and a number of small motorboats that belonged to prison staff were moored. I was trying to look everywhere at once. On the far bank I could see houses, beautiful houses with lawns that sloped down to the water. The lake appeared to be very long, disappearing out of sight on both my right and my left. I crouched down and stuck both my hands into the cool water. I looked at my two white hands through the brownish cast of lake water, palms down, and imagined myself submerged, holding my breath in with my eyes open underwater, and kicking as hard as I could to swim fast. I could almost feel the water swirling in currents around my body, and my hair rising like a halo around my head.

I edged along ten yards of the lake shore in one direction and back again, thinking that this would be the first summer of my life without swimming. I had always been a total water baby, never scared of the surf. Now I itched to rip off my clothes and throw myself in. But that wouldn’t be prudent or fair to the guy nice enough to have brought me down here. The sunlight off the water made me crinkle my eyes. I looked for a long time, and no one said anything to me. Finally I turned and climbed back up the concrete embankment.

I went over to Gisela, who drove the bus and worked for Mr. King, and asked her if there were any extra paintbrushes.

She smiled. “Sure, let me show you.”

And I spent the rest of the afternoon silently painting under the trees, listening to boats on the lake and the sounds of water birds.

When it was time to go, Mr. Thomas drove us back up to the shops. I got out and stood on the passenger side with my hands on the window frame and looked into the truck at him.

“It was really nice of you to bring me down there. Thank you so much, Mr. Thomas. It meant so much to me.”

He looked away; he seemed embarrassed. “Yeah, well, I know that boss of yours won’t bring you down there. So thanks for helping out.” He drove away. From that moment forward, I was obsessed with getting back to the lake.

ARRIVING AT work one day, we were startled to discover that DeSimon had shaved off his beard and mustache and now looked a lot like a lost penis, wandering around in search of a body. My interactions with him had grown unpleasant, as I resented the fact that I worked for the nastiest man in construction services, and he seemed to take perverse pleasure in treating me in as degrading a manner as he could devise. At lunch I was complaining bitterly about him when Gisela stopped me. “Why don’t you come work in construction? I’m going home in September. Mr. King will need somebody good. He’s so nice, Piper.”