Piper Kerman - Orange is the New Black

Nora went out next. I remembered that George Freud was somewhere in the building; I figured there was no way they weren’t calling other codefendants as well. On February 14 I was called to R &D. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” cracked Nora. She had no idea how close to drowning she was.

My escorts to court this time were older, burlier, and more confident. They were also solicitous. “Is there anything we can get you, Piper?”

I was stumped by that one. I didn’t smoke. I was pretty sure they weren’t going to give me scotch. “I would love a good cup of coffee?”

“We’ll see what we can do.”

I had never seen Jonathan Bibby until I was marched into the courtroom in my best orange jumpsuit and stepped into the witness box. Yet I spent what seemed like hours on the stand recounting my own experience, while the jury listened. I wondered what they made of what they were hearing. All of the defense attorney’s questions to me centered on Nora, so it was obvious that she was the star witness. I truly hated testifying for the government, but I was also pretty peeved that this jackass didn’t have the good grace to plead guilty as his codefendants had and spare us all this hassle and discomfort.

On my ride home my escorts pulled over under the El. One of them hopped out and returned with a piping-hot cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. He uncuffed me. “There’s sugar and cream in there, I wasn’t sure how you take it.”

They sat in the front seat and smoked while I enjoyed every sip of that coffee. I listened to the roar of the train above and watched people going about their lives on the street. I wondered if this was as weird as it was going to get.

When it was all over-the jury found Bibby guilty-no one felt good. All I wanted to do was go back to real prison, meaning Danbury. And then go home.

WITHIN THE stifling women’s unit, Crystal “the mayor” made an effort to maintain a faint semblance of prison protocol. Of course, this involved the Lord. Crystal was a big fan and liked to listen to a local minister’s daily morning TV broadcast turned way up loud. She was a much more persistent proselytizer than any prisoner I had known in Danbury. Every week she would swing by when they called for the church group to go out of the unit, Bible in hand. “Coming to church, ladies?”

The Jansen girls would scowl. Although Hester/Anne had been born again, she shared my distaste for prison religious ceremonies. “No thanks, Crystal.”

She wasn’t giving up easily. I figured you had to fight fire with fire. The next time they called us for gym time, I went looking for Crystal.

“You coming to the gym, Crystal?”

Looking at me as if I had lost my rabbit-ass mind, she squawked with outrage, “What? Gym? You won’t find me in no gym, Piper. Tire myself out!”

That Sunday she was back, optimistic as ever. “You comin’ to church, Piper? It’s a good one this week!”

“I tell you what, Crystal. You go on to church, and I’m gonna ask you to pray for me. And this week when I go down to the gym, I’m gonna work out for you. Is that a deal?”

She thought that was the funniest thing she had heard in months. She cackled all the way out the door. From then on, whenever they called our respective faiths to action, we would sing out to each other:

“Work it out for me, Piper!”

“Pray for me, Crystal!”

I CORNERED the unit manager in his office during his once-a-week appearance on the women’s floor. I tried to remain calm as I explained that March 4, my release date, was drawing close, and I needed to know what was going to happen next. Would they ship me back to Danbury? Would they release me from Chicago?

He had no idea. He didn’t know anything about it. He was not concerned.

I wanted to break everything in his office.

Nora and Hester/Anne cast worried eyes on me as I emerged after my conversation. I had kept the fact that my release date was just a week away a secret from everyone in Chicago, especially them. They both had years left to do. Plus I didn’t trust any of the other prisoners not to mess with me in some way, a very typical prison paranoia. So as far as the sisters were concerned, I was losing it over Con Air, which was very un-Zen of me.

“Let’s make dinner,” said Hester/Anne. I went to retrieve the hard-boiled eggs that had been on ice since breakfast that morning. Anne carefully sliced each oval in half, and Nora mixed the yolks with packets of mayo and mustard, plus generous dashes of hot sauce from the commissary.

I tasted it. “Needs something.”

“I know.” Nora produced a packet of hot dog relish.

I wrinkled my brow. “Are you sure?”

“Trust me.” I tasted again. It was perfect. Now I carefully filled each half of the egg whites.

Nora sprinkled a bit more hot sauce on the top.

“Not too much!” said Hester/Anne.

Deviled eggs. We had a feast. The other women admired our dinner, wishing they had saved their eggs too. The three of us had carved out a place among the few sane women in Chicago. But my God it was hard.

I SAID goodbye to the sisters when the next Con Air flight left days later-with them on it. They were mystified as to why I had not been called with them to do the shackle dance on the tarmac. They said goodbye to me with sadness and pity in their eyes. I was so upset that I could barely look at them. Part of it was that I wanted so badly to be on that airplane escaping from Chicago. Part of it was that I knew I would probably never see them on the outs. It felt like there was a lot more to say.

When they were gone, I got under a blanket on my bunk and cried for hours. I didn’t think I could keep going. Although I was days away from my release date, I wasn’t sure of what was going to happen. It was totally irrational, but I was beginning to feel like the BOP would never let me go.

AS A child, a teen, a young adult, I developed a firm belief in my solitude, the not-novel concept that we are each alone in the world. Some parts self-reliance, some parts self-protection, this belief offers a binary perspective-powerhouse or victim, complete responsibility or total divorcement, all in or out the door. Carried to its extreme, the idea gives license to the belief that one’s own actions do not matter much; we traverse the world in our own bubbles, occasionally breaking through to one another but largely and ultimately alone.

I would seem to have been ready-made for prison time then, as a familiar jailhouse trope says “you come in alone and you walk out alone,” and common counsel is to keep to oneself and mind your own business. But that’s not what I learned in prison. That’s not how I survived prison. What I discovered was that I am emphatically not alone. The people on the outside who wrote and visited every week and traveled long distances to come and tell me that I wasn’t forgotten, that I wasn’t alone, had a tremendous impact on my life.

However, most of all, I realized that I was not alone in the world because of the women I lived with for over a year, who gave me a dawning recognition of what I shared with them. We shared overcrowded Dorms and lack of privacy. We shared eight numbers instead of names, prison khakis, cheap food and hygiene items. Most important, we shared a deep reserve of humor, creativity in adverse circumstances, and the will to protect and maintain our own humanity despite the prison system’s imperative to crush it. I don’t think any of us could have managed those survival techniques alone; I know I couldn’t-we needed each other.

Small kindnesses and simple pleasures shared were so important, whether given or received, regardless of what quarter they came from, that they brought home to me powerfully that I was not alone in this world, in this life. I shared the most basic operating system with people who ostensibly had little in common with me. I could connect-perhaps with anyone.