Orange is the New Black - Страница 11

We were subjected to an excruciating five-hour presentation from all of Danbury FCI’s major departments-finance, phones, recreation, commissary, safety, education, psychiatry-an array of professional attention that somehow added up to an astonishingly low standard of living for prisoners. The speakers fell into two categories: apologetic or condescending. The apologetic variety included the prison psychiatrist, Dr. Kirk, who was about my age and handsome. He could have been one of my friends’ husbands. Dr. Kirk sheepishly informed us that he was in the Camp for a few hours each Thursday and “couldn’t really supply” any mental health services unless it was “an emergency.” He was the only provider of psychiatric care for the fourteen hundred women in the Danbury complex, and his primary function was to dole out psych meds. If you wanted to be sedated, Dr. Kirk was your guy.

In the condescending category was Mr. Scott, a cocky young corrections officer who insisted on playing a question-and-answer game with us about the most basic rules of interpersonal behavior and admonished us repeatedly not to be “gay for the stay.” But worst of all was the woman from health services, who was so unpleasant that I was taken aback. She firmly informed us that we had better not dare to waste their time, that they would determine whether we were sick or not and what was medically necessary, and that we should not expect any existing condition to be addressed unless it was life-threatening. I silently gave thanks that I was blessed with good health. We were fucked if we got sick.

After the health services rep was out of the room, the red-headed violator piped up. “Jesus F. Christ, who peed in her Cheerios?”

Next a big bluff man from facilities with enormously bushy eyebrows entered the room. “Hello, ladies!” he boomed. “My name is Mr. Richards. I just wanted to tell you all that I’m sorry you’re here. I don’t know what landed you here, but whatever happened, I wish things were different. I know that may not be much comfort to you right now, but I mean it. I know you’ve got families and kids and that you belong home with them. I hope your time here is short.” After hours of being treated as ungrateful and deceitful children, this stranger showed us remarkable sensitivity. We all perked up a bit.

“ Kerman!” Another prisoner with a clipboard stuck her head into the room. “Uniforms!”

I was lucky to arrive at prison on a Wednesday. Uniform issue was done on Thursdays, so if you self-surrendered on a Monday, you might be pretty smelly after a few days, depending on whether you sweat when you are nervous. I followed the clipboard down the hall to a small room where uniforms were distributed, leftovers from when the place had been a men’s facility. I was given four pairs of elastic-waist khaki pants and five khaki poly-blend button-down shirts, which bore the names of their former wearers on the front pockets; Marialinda Maldonado, Vicki Frazer, Marie Saunders, Karol Ryan, and Angel Chevasco. Also: one set of white thermal underwear; an itchy boiled-wool hat, scarf, and mittens; five white T-shirts; four pairs of tube socks; three white sports bras; ten pairs of granny panties (which I soon discovered would lose their elastic after a couple washings); and a nightgown so enormous it made me giggle-everyone referred to it as a muu-muu.

Finally, the guard who was silently handing me the clothing asked, “What size shoe?”

“Nine and a half.”

He pushed a red and black shoebox toward me, containing my very own pair of heavy black steel-toed shoes. I hadn’t been so happy to put on a pair of shoes since I found a pair of peep-toed Manolo Blahniks at a sample sale for fifty dollars. These beauties were solid and held the promise of strength. I loved them instantly. I handed back those canvas slippers with a huge smile on my face. Now I was a for-real, hardened con. I felt infinitely better.

I strutted back into orientation in my steel-toes. My fellows were still there, their eyes rolling back into their heads from the endless droning. The nice man from facilities had been replaced by Toricella, the counselor who partnered with Butorsky and had allowed me to call Larry the night before. I came to think of him as “Mumbles.” His walruslike visage rarely changed; I never heard him raise his voice, but it was difficult to read his mood, beyond mild aggravation. He informed us that Warden Kuma Deboo would be gracing us with her presence momentarily.

Suddenly I was interested: I knew nothing of the warden, the big boss, who was a woman, and one with an unusual name to boot. I had not heard a word about her in the twenty-four hours I had been in prison. Would she resemble Wendy O. Williams or Nurse Ratched?

Neither. Warden Deboo sailed into the room and took a seat facing us. She was only ten years older than me, tops, and she was fit, olive-skinned, and good-looking, probably of Middle Eastern extraction. She was wearing a dowdy pantsuit and hideous costume jewelry. She spoke to us in an informal, faux-warm fashion that instantly reminded me of someone running for office.

“Ladies, I am Warden Kuma Deboo, and I am here to welcome you to Danbury, which I know is not an ideal scenario for any of you. While you are here, I am responsible for your well-being. I am responsible for your safety. I am responsible for you successfully completing your sentences. So, ladies, the buck stops here.”

She went on for a while in this vein, with some mention of personal responsibility (ours) thrown in, and then she got down to the sex part.

“If anyone at this institution is pressuring you sexually, if anyone is threatening you or hurting you, I want you to come directly to me. I come to the Camp every Thursday at lunch, so you can come up and talk to me about anything that is happening to you. We have a zero-tolerance policy for sexual misconduct here at Danbury.”

She was talking about prison guards, not marauding lesbians. Clearly sex and power were inseparable behind prison walls. More than a few of my friends had voiced their fears that in prison I would be in more danger from the guards than the inmates. I looked around the room at my fellow prisoners. Some looked scared; most looked indifferent.

Warden Deboo finished her spiel and left us. One of the other prisoners tentatively volunteered, “She seems nice.”

The bitter violator who had previously been locked up at Danbury snorted, “Miss Slick. Don’t expect to see her again, except for fifteen minutes every other Thursday on the line. She talks a good game, but she might as well not be here. She don’t run this place. That zero-tolerance shit? Just remember this, ladies… it’s gonna be your word against theirs.”

NEW ARRIVALS in Federal prison are stuck in a sort of purgatory for the first month or so, when they are “A &Os”-admissions and orientation status. When you are an A &O, you can’t do anything-can’t have a job, can’t go to GED classes, can’t go to chow until everyone else goes, can’t say a word when ordered to shovel snow at odd hours of the night. The official line is that your medical tests and clearances must come back from whatever mysterious place they go before your prison life can really start. Nothing involving paperwork happens quickly in prison (except for lockups in solitary), and a prisoner has no way to get speedy resolution with a prison staffer. Of anything.

There are a dizzying number of official and unofficial rules, schedules, and rituals. Learn them quickly, or suffer the consequences, such as: being thought an idiot, being called an idiot, getting on another prisoner’s bad side, getting on a guard’s bad side, getting on your counselor’s bad side, being forced to clean the bathrooms, eating last in line when everything edible is gone, getting a “shot” (or incident report) put in your record, and getting sent to the Special Housing Unit or SHU (aka Solitary, the Hole, or Seg). Yet the most common response to a query about anything other than an official rule is “Honey, don’t you know you don’t ask questions in prison?” Everything else-the unofficial rules-you learn by observation, inference, or very cautious questioning of people you hope you can trust.

Being an A &O that February-a leap year, no less-was a strange combination of confusion and monotony. I prowled around the Camp building, trapped not only by the feds but also by the weather. With no job, no money, no possessions, no phone privileges, I was verging on a nonperson. Thank God for books and the gifts of paper and stamps from other prisoners. I couldn’t wait for the weekend, and the prospect of seeing Larry and my mother.

Friday, there was snow. A worried-looking Annette woke me by wiggling my foot.

“Piper, they’ve been calling the A &Os for snow duty! Get up!”

I sat up, confused. It was still dark. Where was I?

“ KERMAN! KERMAN! REPORT TO THE CO’s OFFICE, KERMAN!” The PA boomed.

Annette was bug-eyed. “You have to go now! Get dressed!”

I tumbled into my new steel-toed shoes and presented myself at the correctional officers’ office, totally disheveled and with unbrushed teeth. The CO on duty was a dykey blond woman. She looked as if she ate new fish like me for breakfast after her triathlon workouts.

“ KERMAN?”

I nodded.

“I called the A &Os a half-hour ago. There’s snow duty. Where were you?”

“I was asleep.”

She looked at me like I was a worm squirming on the sidewalk after spring rain. “Oh yeah? Get your coat on and shovel.”

What about breakfast? I put on my thermal underwear and the ugly stadium coat with the broken zipper and headed out to meet my compadres in the whipping, icy wind, clearing the walks. By now the sun had risen, and there was a gloomy half-light. There were not enough shovels for everyone to use, and the one I used was broken, but no one could go back inside until the work was done. We had more salt-scatterers than shovelers.