Orange Is the New Black

had a fit, but she just told me to go fuck myself. She didn’t know what to do with herself if she wasn’t working. The funny,salty, heavily accented earth mother who had helped me through so much was a bundle of nerves—she was less than two weeks from leaving for the halfway house.
    So I felt terrible when I got the call on January 3—“Kerman! Pack out!”
    Packing out
meant you packed up your shit, because you were going somewhere. The prisoner is provided with army-issue duffel bags to temporarily hold her possessions. I elected to give most of my accumulated treasures away: my hot-pink contraband toenail polish, my prized white men’s pajamas that Pop had given to me, my army-green jacket, and even my precious headset radio. All my books went into the prison library. Given my secrecy until this point, my fellow prisoners were surprised by my impending departure. Some assumed I had won early release, but those who heard that I was going on Con Air were full of curiosity, concern, and advice.
    “Wear a sanitary pad. They won’t always let you use the bathroom. So try not to drink anything!”
    “I know you’re picky about food, Piper, but eat whatever you can, because it might be the last edible meal you get for a while.”
    “When they shackle you, try to flex your wrists so there’s a little more room, and if you try to catch the marshal’s eye when he’s chaining you, maybe he won’t cuff you so tight your circulation goes. Oh, and double up your socks so the restraints don’t make your ankles bleed.”
    “Pray they don’t send you through Georgia. They stick you in a county jail, and it’s the worst place I’ve ever been in my life.”
    “There are tons of cute guys on the airlift. They will love you!”
    I went to talk to the Marlboro Man. “Mr. King, they’re shipping me out on a writ, to Chicago.” I actually succeeded in making him look surprised.
    Then he laughed. “Diesel therapy.”
    “What?”
    “Around here we call the airlift ‘diesel therapy.’”
    I had no idea what he was talking about.
    “Well, you take care of yourself.”
    “Mr. King, if I come back before my release date, can I have my job back?”
    “Sure.”
    A S IT turned out, I didn’t get shipped out for two days. I called Larry one last time—other prisoners had warned me not to say anything about the details of prison travel over the phone: “They’re listening, and if you give specifics sometimes they think that you’re planning to escape.” Larry was bizarrely chipper, and I felt like he didn’t really understand what was happening, even though I told him I might not be able to talk to him for a long time.
    I bade goodbye to Pop.
    “My Piper! My Piper! You’re not supposed to go before me!”
    I hugged her and told her she was going to be fine in the halfway house, and that I loved her.
    Then I walked down the hill and began my next misadventure.

CHAPTER 17
Diesel Therapy

    L ike much airline travel these days, flying Con Air involved a lot of stewing in your own juices. Exactly eleven months since I had first set foot in R&D, I was brought back there, and I waited. One by one guards brought other women in to wait with me. A skinny, dreamy-eyed white girl. A pair of Jamaican sisters. An unpleasant hick from the Camp whom I worked with in CMS, and who was headed back to western Pennsylvania for a court case. A big dykey-looking black woman with a wicked scar that began somewhere behind her ear, wound around her neck, and disappeared down below the collar of her T-shirt. There was little talking.
    Finally a prison guard whom I knew from the Camp appeared. Ms. Welch was a food service officer and knew Pop very well. I felt some measure of relief that she would be involved in our departure—much better than the guard who had welcomed me to Danbury. She issued us all new uniforms, the same khaki hospital scrubs and wussy canvas shoes I had been clad in upon arrival. I was sad to give up my steel-toes, even though they already had cracks in the soles. One by one she began to shackle us—chain around the waist, handcuffs that were then chained to your waist, and ankle cuffs with a foot of chain between them. I had never been cuffed in my life outside my boudoir. I thought about the fact that I had absolutely no choice in the matter; I was going to be shackled whether I was cooperative,disgruntled, or prone with a knee in the small of my back or a boot on my chest.
    I looked at Ms. Welch as she