Orange Is the New Black

approached me. “How are you doing, Kerman?” she asked. She sounded genuinely concerned, and I flashed on the fact that we were “theirs,” being sent out into the great unknown. She knew what the next few hours held for me, but the rest was probably as much of a mystery to her as it was to me.
    “Okay,” I answered in an uncharacteristically small voice. I was scared, but not of her.
    She started to chain me up, chatting in a distracting way, almost like a dental hygienist who knows she is doing something that causes discomfort. “How is that—too tight?”
    “A little too tight on this wrist, yes.” I hated the gratitude in my voice, but it was genuine.
    We had all been packed out—all of our personal belongings had been gone through by a prison guard (in my case, the same sneering midget I had encountered on my first day) and stored. The only thing you were allowed to bring on the airlift with you was a single sheet of paper that listed your property. On the back I had written all my important information—my lawyer’s phone number and the addresses of my family and friends. Also scrawled on the paper in many handwritings was the contact information for my friends in the Camp—and if they were due to go home soon, a street address; if they were down for a long time, their inmate registration number. It hurt to look at the list. I wondered if I would ever see any of those women again. I kept the paper in the breast pocket of my scrubs vest with my ID.
    We were lined up and started to shuffle, clinking, out of the building toward a big unmarked bus that was used for prisoner transport. When your legs are chained together, you are forced to adopt a short, tippy-toe cadence. As we were waiting in one of the chain-link-fence chambers between the prison and the bus, the town driver’s van came speeding up. Jae hopped out, with duffel bags.
    The big black dyke perked up. “Cuz?”
    Jae blinked in disbelief. “Slice? What the hell is going on??”
    “Fuck if I know.”
    We were all herded back into the FCI so they could pack Jae out and truss her up—she was joining our motley little crew, and I was really glad to have a friend along for the ride.
    Finally, at gunpoint, we were loaded onto the bus and headed into the outside world. It was disorienting to see suburban Connecticut rushing by, eventually giving way to the highway. I had no idea where we were heading, though the odds were on Oklahoma City, the hub of the federal prison transport system. Jae caught up with Slice, her actual cousin, on the bus. Neither of them would cop to knowing why they were being transported, but they were probably codefendants, as the guard had been concerned that they should have extra restraints.
    “Naw, naw, we cousins, we love each other!” they protested.
    The guard had also indicated that they were headed to Florida, which was most worrisome. “Piper, I don’t know shit about Florida, I’m from the Bronx, I been to Milwaukee, and that’s it,” declared Jae. “No fucking reason I should be going to Florida unless they be taking us to Disney World.”
    We finally arrived at what seemed like an abandoned industrial vacant lot. The bus stopped, and there we sat, for hours. If you think that it is impossible to sleep in shackles, I am here to prove you wrong. They gave us chicken sandwiches, and I had to help the Pennsylvania hick eat—the guard had not been as kind to her as to me and had chained her tightly and put her in an extra “black box”restraint that immobilized her thumbs—this to protect her codefendant, a woman with whom she was now excitedly gossiping. Finally the bus rumbled to life and pulled onto a huge tarmac. We had company—there were at least a half-dozen other transport vehicles, another bus, unmarked vans and sedans, all idling in the cold winter dusk. And then quite suddenly an enormous 747 landed, taxied briefly, and pulled up among the vehicles. In a moment I recognized that I was in the midst of the most clichéd action thriller, as jackbooted marshals with submachine guns and high-powered rifles swarmed the tarmac—and I was one of the villains.
    First they unloaded about a dozen prisoners from the plane, men in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and attires. Some of them appeared to be wearing paper jumpsuits, not the best deal in the biting January wind. Disheveled and cold, they seemed pretty interested in our little group huddled next to the Danbury bus. Then the armed