Piper Kerman - Orange is the New Black

I was definitely going to miss her-she was going home in a few weeks. As her release date neared, Vanessa got increasingly anxious, with a decided uptick in religious observance. Many women grow very, very nervous before they go back to the outside world-they face uncertain futures. I think that Vanessa felt this way. But her nerves did nothing to stop our enthusiastic planning for her surprise going-home party, spearheaded by Wainwright and Lionnel.

It was a grand affair. Many cooks contributed microwave treats, and it resembled a church picnic, with all of the attendant food rivalries over who prepared the best dishes. There were chilaquiles, fried noodles, and prison cheesecake-my specialty. Best of all, there was a platter of deviled eggs-a really challenging contraband item to produce.

We all huddled in one of the empty classrooms, waiting for the Diva. “Shhhhhhhhh!! I hear her!” someone said, dousing the light. When we all shouted “Surprise!” she feigned astonishment graciously, although her fresh makeup had been applied with extra care. At this point the entire prison choir launched into song, led by Wainwright, who soloed beautifully on “Take Me to the Rock.” Tops in the singing department was Delicious, who had shaved for the occasion-Delicious had a voice that could really give you goosebumps, in a good way. She had to turn and face the wall while she sang for Vanessa so she wouldn’t break down and cry. After the singing and the eating, the guest of honor got up and called out to each person by name, cheerfully reminding us that Jesus was watching over everyone and had brought her to us. She said thank you, with beautiful sincerity, for helping her through her time at Danbury.

“I had to come here,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height, “to become a real woman.”

SATURDAY NIGHT, movie night, was special, in an old-fashioned let’s-go-to-the-picture-show way. But this particular Saturday was extra, extra special. Tonight the lucky ladies of Danbury were going to get a tremendous treat. The institutional movie this week was the remake of Walking Tall, the classic vigilante revenge fantasy, starring Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock.

I am confident that someday in the future The Rock, who was once a professional wrestler, will run for president of the United States, and I think that he will win. I have seen with my own eyes the power of The Rock. The Rock is a uniter, not a divider. When the BOP showed Walking Tall, the turnout for every screening all weekend long was unprecedented. The Rock has an effect on women that transcends divisions of race, age, cultural background-even social class, the most impenetrable barrier in America. Black, white, Spanish, old, young, all women are hot for The Rock. Even the lesbians agreed that he was mighty easy on the eyes.

In preparation for The Rock, we observed our usual Saturday-night rituals. After visiting hours and chow were over, Pop and her crew finished cleanup in the dining hall, and I was handed our special movie snacks-nachos tonight, my favorite. Then it was on me, the runner, to whisk the food out of the kitchen to safety without getting busted by a CO. I usually slipped through C Dorm, dropped my Tupperware bowl and Pop’s in my cube, and delivered bowls to Toni and Rosemarie, our movie companions.

It was Rosemarie who set up all the chairs in the visiting room for movie night. This meant that she controlled the setup of the special “reserved” chairs for certain people, including our four at the back of the room. Next to our reserved chairs was one of those random pieces of prison furniture, a tall narrow table, which served as our sideboard. I had the job of setting up another Tupperware bowl filled with ice for Pop’s sodas and bringing up the food and napkins when it was time for the movie. Pop, who reported for work in the kitchen at five A.M. and worked all day long through the evening meal, was rarely seen in anything but a hairnet and kitchen scrubs. But on movie nights, just before the screening was to begin, Pop would sweep into the room, freshly showered and clad in pale blue men’s pajamas.

The pajamas were one of those elusive items that had once been sold by the commissary but then were discontinued. They were the plainest men’s pajamas, of a semisheer white cotton-poly. (Pop’s had somehow been dyed for her.) I had wanted a pair desperately for months after arriving in prison. So when Pop presented me with a specially procured pair, I did an ecstatic dance around her cube, hopping madly until I beaned myself on the metal bunk bed frame. Now Toni and Rosemarie would say, “Do the pajama dance, Piper!” and I would dance around in my PJs, as ecstatic as Snoopy doing the Suppertime Dance. The pajamas were not for sleeping. I only wore them on the weekends, to movie night or other special occasions, when I wanted to look pretty. I felt so damn good in those pajamas.

Pop loved Walking Tall. She preferred a straightforward movie storyline, with maybe a little romance thrown in. If the movie was sappy, she would cry, and I would make fun of her, and she would tell me to shut up. She wept at Radio, while I rolled my eyes at the Italian Twins.

After House of Sand and Fog, she turned to me. “Did you like that?”

I shrugged. “Eh? It was okay.”

“I thought that was your kind of movie.”

I would never live down the shame of having enthusiastically recommended Lost in Translation when it had screened earlier in the year. The ladies of Danbury widely and loudly declared it “the worst movie ever.” Boo Clemmons laughed, shaking her head. “All that talking, and Bill Murray doesn’t even get to fuck her.”

Movie night was as much about eating as anything else. Pop would prepare a special Saturday movie meal that was a respite from the endless march of starch in the dining hall dictated by the BOP. The competitive tension of the salad bar on a rare day when broccoli or spinach or-miracle of miracles-sliced onions appeared was a welcome change from the monotony of cucumbers and raw cauliflower-I refused to live on potatoes and white rice. I would wield the plastic tongs with a smile, eyeing Carlotta Alvarado across the salad bar as we both tried to fill our little bowls with the good vegetables faster than the other-me to wolf down immediately with oil and vinegar, she to smuggle out in her pants to cook later.

Chicken day was pandemonium. First of all, everyone wanted to get as much chicken as the kitchen line workers would give them. This is where it came in handy to be in tight with Pop. The rules of scarcity govern prison life: accumulate when the opportunity presents itself, figure out what to do with your loot later.

Sometimes, however, there were plans for that chicken. Often on a chicken day Rosemarie would plan to cook us a special meal. Toni and I would be asked to abstain from chicken-eating in the chow hall and to instead stick the bird in our pants, to be smuggled out for use in some elaborate, quasi-Tex-Mex creation later that evening. This required a plastic Baggie or a clean hair net, procured from a kitchen worker or an orderly. Slip the foodstuffs into the appropriate wrapping at the table, shove it down the front of your pants, and stroll out as nonchalantly as you could with contraband chicken riding on your hip bone.

The list of important things a prisoner has to lose is very short: good time, visiting privileges, phone access, housing assignment, work assignment, participation in programs. That’s basically it. If they catch you stealing onions, a warden can take one of those things away, or can give you extra work. Other than that, the only other option is the SHU. So will a warden be willing to lock up onion thieves and chicken smugglers in Seg?

Let’s put it another way: room in the SHU is a finite resource, and the warden and his staff have to use it judiciously. Fill the SHU up with chickenshit offenders, and then what are you going to do with someone who’s actually done something serious?