Orange Is the New Black

December I received a letter from my lawyer, Pat Cotter in Chicago, that informed me that one of my codefendants, a man named Jonathan Bibby, was going on trial, and I might be called to testify as a witness. He reminded me that under the terms of my plea agreement, I was required to provide complete and truthful testimony if called upon by the government. Pat advised me that the feds could choose to transport me to Chicago to appear in court and were in fact planning to do so. He wrote:
    It is not that I would not enjoy the opportunity to see you again, of course, but it is my understanding based on comments of prior clients that travel courtesy of the Bureau of Prisons can be an uncomfortable and tiring experience for the inmate involved. I would like to spare you that experience, if possible.
    I was horrified. Jonathan Bibby was a stranger to me. I didn’t want to go to Chicago, and I certainly didn’t want to be a government witness—a rat. I wanted to stay right here in the Camp and do headstands and go to movie night with Pop. I called my lawyer and explained that I had never even met Jonathan Bibby, that I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. If I were moved to Chicago for his trial, it might screw up my halfway house date in January. Could he please make some calls on my behalf and let the U.S. Attorney know that I had no personal experience with the defendant and couldn’t possibly be a valuable witness?
    “Of course.” he said.
    I sensed I shouldn’t count on staying in Danbury.
    I kept it all to myself, telling only Pop about the letter.
    “Oh, baby,” she said. “The airlift.” She was talking about the federal transport system, Con Air. “The airlift is nothing nice.”
    W ITH N ATALIE gone, I lived solo in my cube for several days. The naked ticking stripe of her mattress made me feel lonely. I had been down long enough to know that just waiting passively for the prison gods to give me a wonderful new bunkie was a losing strategy. Faith, my next-door neighbor, was a good egg, and so a switch of cubes was engineered, and I got permission to move next door. I was now sleeping in the bunk that Vanessa had occupied, and Colleen before her. Faith was very different from Natalie, though happily not much more talkative. She was very glad to have me as a bunkie and would tell me about her pretty teenage daughter back in New Hampshire while she knitted—she had a special knitting permit.
    Faith was doing a long drug sentence, and I vaguely gathered that she had taken the fall for someone else. She worried constantly about her daughter, whom she hadn’t seen in over a year. She was making her a green sweater for Christmas. There never seemed to be more than three or four colors of acrylic yarn at the commissary—gray, white, burgundy, and green—and they would run out of the burgundy and green all the time, frustrating the hobbyists. Jae was crocheting Christmastoys for her kids—she had started months in advance. I couldn’t see anything harder in prison than being a mom, especially at the holidays.
    I GOT a letter from Pom-Pom, formerly of the garage, who had just gone home to Trenton.
    Dear Piper,
    I just asked about you. I’m so happy to receive a letter + some pictures from you. My sister said I was fatter when I was in there. I told her it’s just the clothes. Anyway, I can’t believe you got a shot! Amy wrote me her bunkie went to the SHU, but she didn’t tell me you got a shot. That place is really going nuts.
    Pom-Pom, whose mother had preceded her at Danbury, had been worried about what would happen when she was released. She had relatives who grudgingly agreed to let her live with them, though she also considered going straight to a homeless shelter.
    Now she was back on the outside and she had received a chilly reception. The apartment where she was living was in a neighborhood where gunfire was audible every day—much scarier than the Danbury shooting range. The cupboards had been completely bare, and she had taken the little money she had to stock the house with food, shampoo, and toilet paper. She was sleeping on the floor.
    God, I miss you! It’s sad to say I miss that place cause it is crazy out here.… All this freedom, but I still feel like I’m locked up. I could truly say y’all was my family. I had a birthday and what did I get? Nothing, and I had to beg for a Thanksgiving dinner. Now you know why I was so scared to come home.
    We would have made a big deal about