Orange is the New Black - Страница 16

Because I could count on money from the outside world, I could buy items to return to each person who had helped me upon my arrival-soap, toothpaste, shampoo, shower shoes, packets of instant coffee. Some women tried to wave them away, “Don’t worry about it, Kerman,” but I insisted. “Please, forget it!” said Annette, who had loaned me so many things in my first several weeks. “You’re like my daughter! Hey, did you get any new books today?”

The books continued to pour in at mail call. It had gotten to the point where I was embarrassed, and also it made me nervous; it was a clear demonstration that I “had it like that” on the outside, a network of people who had both a concern for me and the time and money to buy me books. So far no one had threatened me with anything more intimidating than a scowl or a harsh word, and no other prisoner had asked anything of me. Still, I was guarded against getting played, used, or targeted. I saw that some of the women had little or no resources from the outside to help make their prison life livable, and many of my fellow prisoners were seasoned hustlers.

One day right after I moved into B Dorm, a woman I didn’t know popped her head into my cube. Miss Natalie was absent, and I was putting still more books away in my small footlocker, which was threatening to overflow. I looked at this woman-black, middle-aged, ordinary, yet unfamiliar. My guard went up.

“Hey there, new bunkie. Where’s Miss Natalie?”

“Um, she’s in the kitchen, I think.”

“What’s your name? I’m Rochelle.”

“Piper. Kerman.”

“What’s your name?”

“You can call me Piper.” What did she want from me? I felt trapped in my cube. I was sure she was sniffing around.

“Oh, you’re the one with the books… you got all them books!” In fact, I had a book in my hand and a pile of them on top of the locker. By now I was scared as to what this woman wanted from me and what she was going to do to me.

“D-do you want a book?” I was always happy to lend a book, but only a few people took me up on it, checking my haul at every mail call.

“Okay-whatcha got?” I scanned the selection. The collected works of Jane Austen. A biography of John Adams. Middlesex. Gravity’s Rainbow. I didn’t want to assume that she wouldn’t want any of these books, but how could I know what she liked?

“What kind of stuff do you like? You can borrow any of them, take your pick.” She looked through the titles uncertainly. It was a long, slow, squirmy moment for both of us.

“How about this one? It’s really, really fantastic.” I seized up a copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I felt racist on every level of my being by picking “the black book” from the stack for Rochelle, but there was a good shot that she might like it, might take it, and might leave me alone, at least for the moment.

“Looks good, looks good. Thanks, Pipe!” And she disappeared from my cube.

About a week later Rochelle came back around. She was returning the book.

“It seems good, but I couldn’t really get into it,” she said. “You got The Coldest Winter Ever? Sister Souljah?” I did not, and she wandered away. When I thought about how terrified I had been of Rochelle, and why, I felt like a complete jackass. I had gone to school with, lived with, dated, and worked with middle-class black people my whole life, but when faced by a black woman who hadn’t “been where I’ve been,” I felt threatened, absolutely certain she was going to take something from me. In truth, Rochelle was one of the most mild-mannered and pleasant people around, with a deep love for church and trashy novels. Ashamed, I resolved not to be a jackass again.

While I was meeting all these new players in my life, I made an extra effort to hang out with Annette. When I was moved down to B Dorm, she had sighed, resigned. “Now I’m never going to see you anymore.”

“Annette, that’s ridiculous. I’m literally yards away from you.”

“I’ve seen it before… once girls get moved down to Dorms, they don’t have time for me anymore.” Annette was trapped in the Rooms because of her medical problems, so I made a point of going around to Room 6 to say hi and play cards in the recreation room. But I was officially bored with Rummy 500 and less inclined to spend time with a small handful of often-cranky middle-aged white women than I once had been. Perhaps I would learn Spades. Those players looked like they were having more fun.

NATALIE HAD the respect of everyone in B Dorm, and as I was clearly not going to give her any trouble, she seemed to take to me too. Despite her reserve and discretion, she had a dry but lively sense of humor and treated me to her sharp, sidelong observations on our daily life in B Dorm: “You in the Ghetto now, bunkie!” Ginger Solomon, her best friend who was also Jamaican, was like the yang to Natalie’s yin: antic, combustible, and loud. Miss Solomon was also a fantastic cook, and once she and Natalie had decided that I was all right, she would make me a plate of her special Saturday night dinner, usually a knockout curry prepared with kitchen contraband. On special occasions, Natalie would magically make roti appear.

Extracurricular prison cooking happened primarily in two communal microwaves that were placed in kitchenette areas between the Dorms; their use was a privilege the staff constantly (and with great enjoyment) threatened to revoke. Remarkable concoctions came out of those microwaves, especially from homesick Spanish and West Indian women. This impressed me deeply, given the limited resources these cooks were working with-junk food and poly-bagged chicken, packets of mackerel and tuna, and whatever fresh vegetable one could steal from the kitchen. Corn chips could be reconstituted into mash with water and transformed into delectable “chilaquiles,” my new prison favorite. Contraband onions were at a particular premium, and the chefs had to keep an eye peeled for guards with quivering nostrils. No matter what they were cooking, it smelled like food prepared with love and care.

Unfortunately Miss Solomon only cooked on Saturdays. I had lost ten pounds in a month, thanks to the prison diet-all the liver, lima beans, and iceberg lettuce you want! The day I walked into prison I looked all of my thirty-four years, if not worse. In the months before my surrender I’d drowned my sorrows in wine and New York comfort food; now my greatest comforts were time alone on the icy track and lifting weights in the gym. It was the only place in the Camp where freedom and control seemed in my grasp.

ONE OF the good things about living in B Dorm was that you had your choice of two bathrooms. Both were equipped with six showers, five sinks, and six toilet stalls. That’s where their similarities ended. Natalie and I lived next to the bathroom that I liked to call the Hell-mouth. The tiles and Formica were various shades of gray, the shower curtain rods were rusted, the plastic shower curtains were practically in ribbons, and not all of the stall door locks worked. None of this was what made the C Dorm bathroom a Hell-mouth, though. It was the infestations that made the place unacceptable for anything but a quick pee or toothbrushing. During the warmer months when the ground was not frozen, little black maggots would periodically appear in the shower area, squirming on the tiles. Nothing could make them disappear, although the bathroom orderlies did not have much of an arsenal-the cleaning supplies were stingily doled out. Eventually the maggots would hatch into evil little flies. They were the sign that the bathroom had been built over a direct route to Hell.

I showered instead in the bathroom on the other side of B Dorm, which connected to A Dorm. It was spalike by comparison and had been recently refurbished in shades of beige. The fixtures were new. The light was better. The mood was brighter, even if the shower curtains were just as ratty.

Showers were a complex ritual. It was necessary to schlep all your hygiene products to the bathroom-shampoo, soap, razor, washcloth, and whatever else you might need. This required either great minimalism or some sort of shower caddy. Some women had illegal crocheted bags to carry their stuff; some had mesh nylon bags from commissary; and one woman had a large pink plastic shower caddy, an actual shower caddy. I wasn’t about to ask, knowing that it had either come from some long-ago and distant commissary or was contraband. Morning and evening were peak shower hours, with gradually diminishing stores of hot water. If you showered in the afternoon or early evening, you would have less competition. We were not supposed to be in the showers after lights out at ten P.M., to discourage people from having sex in them.

Many women would wait in line three deep for “their” shower to be free. In the good bathroom there was one shower stall that indisputably had the best water pressure. Some big shots, like Pop, would send an emissary to see if that stall was free or else dibs them a place in the waiting line. If you interfered with one of the early-morning risers’ shower ritual by getting into “their” shower, you would be met with an icy stare when you emerged.

Once you had secured your shower stall, you faced a moment of truth. Some women would disappear behind the stall’s plastic curtain still fully clad in their muu-muus, out of modesty; others would whip off their clothes in front of everyone and climb in and out unabashed. A handful would shower with the curtain open, giving everyone a show.

At first I was among the former, but the water was always freezing initially, and I would yelp as it rained down on my naked skin. “What’s going on in there, Kerman?” someone would inevitably joke. “Piper’s getting busy!” After a while I became convinced that the Linda Blair rape scene in Born Innocent was never going to be re-created in the Camp, so I took to starting my shower before I got in, checking to see that it was at least lukewarm before I whipped off my muu-muu and jumped in. This won me a couple of fans, notably my new neighbor Delicious, who shouted with surprise, “P-I Piper! You got some nice titties! You got those TV titties!! They stand up on they own all perky and everything! Damn!”