Orange Is the New Black

deserted, because its inhabitants were already in lockdown. The CO was a ferocious six-foot Native American woman who barked out our cell assignments. I had never been in an actual cell before, let alone locked in with a cellie. I crept into my assigned spot, about six by twelve feet with a bunk bed, a toilet, a sink, and a desk bolted to the wall. I could see in the dim fluorescent light that someone was asleep in the top bunk. She rolled over and gave me the eye, then rolled away and went back to sleep. I crawled in and dozed off, grateful to have running water and free range of movement.
    Thudding, shouting, and my cellmate vaulting out of her bunk awakened me. “Breakfast!” she said over her shoulder, disappearing. I got up and stepped cautiously out of the cell, wearing the washed-out hospital-green pajamas I had been given the night before. Women were scurrying from the numbered cells to get into line on the other side of the unit. Not one of them was in her pajamas. I hurried to get back into yesterday’s nasty clothes and headed toward the line. After receiving a plastic box, I located Jae and Slice, who had claimed a table near my cell. Our boxes contained dry cereal, a packet of instant coffee, a packet of sugar, and a clear plastic bag of milk that struck me as one of the strangest things I had ever seen. But when you mixed the coffee powder with the milk and sugar in a green plastic mug and put it in the unit microwave (an ancient contraption that looked like it belonged on a
Lost in Space
episode), it tasted okay. I pretended that it was cappuccino. “We’re going to starve,” Slice declared. Jae and I feared she was right. We discussed our predicament, and Slice, who was a hungry woman of action, departed on a recon mission. Jae and I retreated to our respective cells.
    I finally got a formal introduction to my new bunkie. “What’s your name?” she drawled. I introduced myself. She was LaKeesha, from Atlanta, and on her way to… Danbury! The minute she heard I was coming from Danbury, she had a million questions. Then shecrawled back into her bed and went to sleep. I soon discovered that LaKeesha slept about twenty-two hours a day, getting up three times to eat and, mercifully, shower. She always looked disheveled, though, emerging from our cell with her twists sticking out in all directions. “Peeper, what’s wrong with your bunkie? She looks like Celie in
The Color Purple
!” cracked Slice.
    I was totally wired on my first day in Oklahoma City—it was a brand-new scenario to get the hang of, with all new rituals and routines. Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing to do. There were three TV rooms without chairs, and one little rolling bookshelf filled with a bizarre assortment of volumes—Christian books, ancient copies of John D. MacDonald, Shakespeare’s
Antony and Cleopatra
, a handful of romances, and two Dorothy L. Sayers novels. A weird structure in the middle of the unit looked like a reception desk and contained nothing but stubby little pencils and various forms of scrap paper. Next to three pay phones there was an outdoor room where smokers shivered, and you could see a slice of the sky over a partial wall topped with razor wire. The unit felt like a train or bus station, but without a newsstand or a coffee shop. I tried to use the pay phone to call Larry or my parents to tell them I was alive, but the phone would place only collect calls, and no one’s phone service would accept them, which intensified the feeling that I had been dropped into a plane of being that didn’t exist to the rest of the world.
    Women came and went quietly. The place was subdued and spotlessly clean. The unit seemed to be at most half full, maybe sixty women in the breakfast line. At eleven A.M. the CO brought in large rolling carts, signaling that lunch was going to be served. I watched a woman emerge from a cell on the top tier and descend the stairs on the opposite side of the unit. That curly hair, that fireplug shape… glasses. Something stirred in my belly; I sat up very straight. What was Nora Jansen doing in here with me?
    I had been certain that a “separation order” would be placed on my codefendants and me, but apparently I was wrong. I stared at her as she got in the chow line. “Come on, Peeper!” Slice nudged me to get my lunch. Despite her obvious misgivings about befriendingskinny white girls, she was willing to accept me as Jae’s buddy, especially given that I