Orange is the New Black - Страница 7

Larry pulled into one of the parking areas. We looked at each other, saucer-eyed. Almost immediately a white pickup with police lights on its roof pulled in after us. I rolled down my window.

“There’s no visiting today,” the officer told me.

I stuck my chin out, defiance covering my fear. “I’m here to surrender.”

“Oh. All right then.” He pulled out and drove away. Had he looked surprised? I wasn’t sure.

In the car I stripped off all my jewelry-the seven gold rings; the diamond earrings Larry had given me for Christmas; the sapphire ring from my grandmother; the 1950s man’s watch that was always around my wrist; all the earrings from all the extra holes that had so vexed my grandfather. I had on jeans, sneakers, and a long-sleeved T-shirt. With false bravado I said, “Let’s do this.”

We walked into the lobby. A placid woman in uniform was sitting behind the raised desk. There were chairs, some lockers, a pay phone, and a soda machine. It was spotless. “I’m here to surrender,” I announced.

“Hold on.” She picked up a phone and spoke to someone briefly. “Have a seat.” We sat. For several hours. It got to be lunchtime. Larry handed me a foie gras sandwich that he had made from last night’s leftovers. I wasn’t hungry at all but unwrapped it from the tinfoil and munched every gourmet bite miserably. I am fairly certain that I was the first Seven Sisters grad to eat duck liver chased with a Diet Coke in the lobby of a federal penitentiary. Then again, you never know.

Finally, a considerably less pleasant-looking woman entered the lobby. She had a dreadful scar down the side of her face and neck. “ Kerman?” she barked.

We sprang to our feet. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Who’s this?” she said.

“This is my fiancé.”

“Well, he’s gotta leave before I take you in.” Larry looked outraged. “That’s the rule, it prevents problems. You have any personal items?”

I had a manila envelope in my hands, which I handed to her. It contained my self-surrender instructions from the U.S. Marshals, some of my legal paperwork, twenty-five photographs (an embarrassing number of my cats), lists of my friends’ and family’s addresses, and a cashier’s check for $290 that I had been instructed to bring. I knew that I would need money in my prison account to make phone calls and buy… something? I couldn’t imagine what.

“Can’t take that,” she said, handing the check to Larry.

“But I called last week, and they told me to bring it!”

“He has to send it to Georgia, then they’ll process it,” she said with absolute finality.

“Where do we send it?” I asked. I was suddenly furious.

“Hey, do you have that Georgia address?” the prison guard asked over her shoulder to the woman at the desk while poking through my envelope. “What are these, pictures? You got any nudie Judies in here?” She raised an eyebrow in her already-crooked face. Nudie Judies? Was she for real? She looked at me as if to ask, Do I need to go through all these photos to see if you’re a dirty girl?

“No. No nudie Judies,” I said. Three minutes into my self-surrender, and I already felt humiliated and beaten.

“Okay, are you ready?” I nodded. “Well, say goodbye. Since you’re not married, it could be a while until he can visit.” She took a symbolic step away from us, I guess to give us privacy.

I looked at Larry and hurled myself into his arms, holding on as tight as I could. I had no idea when I would see him again, or what would happen to me in the next fifteen months.

He looked as if he was going to cry; yet at the same time he was also furious. “I love you! I love you!” I said into his neck and his nice oatmeal sweater that I had picked for him. He squeezed me and told me he loved me too.

“I’ll call you as soon as I can,” I croaked.

“Okay.”

“Please call my parents.”

“Okay.”

“Send that check immediately!”

“I know.”

“I love you!”

And then he left the lobby, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. He banged the doors hard and walked quickly to the parking lot.

The prison guard and I watched him get into the car. As soon as he was out of sight, I felt a surge of fear.

She turned to me. “You ready?” I was alone with her and whatever else was waiting for me.

“Yeah.”

“Well, come on.”

She led me out the door Larry had just exited from, turning right and walking along that vicious, towering fence. The fence had multiple layers; between each layer was a gate through which we had to be buzzed. She opened the gate, and I stepped in. I looked back over my shoulder at the free world. The next gate buzzed. I stepped through again, wire mesh and barbed metal soaring all around me. I felt fresh, rising panic. This was not what I had expected. This was not how minimum-security camps had been described; this didn’t look at all like “Club Fed.” This was scaring the crap out of me.

We reached the door of the building and again were buzzed in. We walked through a small hallway into an institutional tiled room with harsh fluorescent light. It felt old, dingy, clinical, and completely empty. She pointed into a holding cell with benches bolted to the walls and metal screens over all visible sharp edges. “Wait in there.” Then she walked through a door into another room.

I sat on a bench facing away from the door. I stared at the small high window through which I could see nothing but clouds. I wondered when I would see anything beautiful again. I meditated on the consequences of my long-ago actions and seriously questioned why I was not on the lam in Mexico. I kicked my feet. I thought about my fifteen-month sentence, which did nothing to quell my panic. I tried not to think about Larry. Then I gave up and tried to imagine what he was doing, with no success.

I had only the most tenuous idea of what might happen next, but I knew that I would have to be brave. Not foolhardy, not in love with risk and danger, not making ridiculous exhibitions of myself to prove that I wasn’t terrified-really, genuinely brave. Brave enough to be quiet when quiet was called for, brave enough to observe before flinging myself into something, brave enough to not abandon my true self when someone else wanted to seduce or force me in a direction I didn’t want to go, brave enough to stand my ground quietly. I waited an unquantifiable amount of time while trying to be brave.

“ Kerman!” As I was unaccustomed to being called like a dog, it took her a number of shouts before I realized that meant “Move.” I jumped up and peered cautiously out of the holding cell. “Come on.” The prison guard’s rasp made it hard for me to understand what she was saying.

She led me into the next room, where her coworkers were lounging. Both were bald, male, and white. One of them was startlingly big, approaching seven feet tall; the other was very short. They both stared at me as if I had three heads. “Self-surrender,” my female escort said to them by way of explanation as she started my paperwork. She spoke to me like I was an idiot yet explained nothing during the process. Every time I was slow to answer or asked her to repeat a question, Shorty would snort derisively, or worse, mimic my responses. I looked at him in disbelief. It was unnerving, as it was clearly intended to be, and it pissed me off, which was a welcome switch from the fear I was battling.

The female guard continued to bark questions and fill out forms. As I stood at attention and answered, I could not stop my eyes from turning toward the window, to the natural light outdoors.

“Come on.”

I followed the guard toward the hallway outside the holding cell. She pawed through a shelf filled with clothing, then handed me a pair of granny panties; a cheap nylon bullet bra; a pair of elastic-waist khaki pants; a khaki top, like hospital scrubs; and tube socks. “What size shoe are you?” “Nine and a half.” She handed me a little pair of blue canvas slippers like you would buy on the street in any Chinatown.

She indicated a toilet and sink area behind a plastic shower curtain. “Strip.” I kicked off my sneakers, took off my socks, my jeans, my T-shirt, my bra, and my underpants, all of which she took from me. It was cold. “Hold your arms up.” I did, displaying my armpits. “Open your mouth and stick out your tongue. Turn around, squat, spread your cheeks and cough.” I would never get used to the cough part of this drill, which was supposed to reveal contraband hidden in one’s privates-it was just so unnatural. I turned back around, naked. “Get dressed.”

She put my own clothes in a box-they would be mailed back to Larry, like the personal effects of a dead soldier. The bullet bra, though hideous and scratchy, did fit. So in fact did all the khaki prison clothes, much to my amazement. She really had the eye. In minutes I was transformed into an inmate.

Now she seemed to soften toward me a bit. As she was fingerprinting me (a messy and oddly intimate process), she asked, “How long you been with that guy?”

“Seven years,” I replied sullenly.

“He know what you were up to?”

Up to? What did she know! My temper flared again as I said defiantly, “It’s a ten-year-old offense. He had nothing to do with it.” She seemed surprised by this, which I took as a moral victory.

“Well, you’re not married, so you probably won’t be seeing him for quite a while, not until he gets on your visitor list.”

The horrifying reality that I had no idea when I would see Larry again shut me right down. The prison guard was indifferent to the devastating blow she had just dealt me.

She had been distracted by the fact that no one seemed to know how to use the ID machine camera. Everyone took a turn poking at it, until finally they produced a photo that made me look remarkably like serial killer Aileen Wuornos. My chin was raised defiantly, and I looked like hell. I later figured out that everyone looks either thuggish and murderous or terrified and miserable in their prison ID photo. I’m proud to say that, against all odds, I fell into the former category, though I felt like the latter.