Orange Is the New Black

they do all their time there. Jae had been locked up in the Brooklyn MCC for two years before coming to Danbury and had described that situation as far better than what we experienced in Oklahoma City. “Two units in Brooklyn, about two hundred females, and you could have a job and everything, there was stuff to do. In Chicago MCC you’ll be able to fade back, hook up with someone normal, and just lay low, probably even get in a different unit or dorm than your codefendants.”
    We were driven into the base of a tall, triangular fortress on a city block in the crowded Chicago Loop. Unloaded from the van, shuffled into an elevator, we were deposited in a filthy, decrepit, and disorganized R&D. The building was disorienting; the floor felt tiny and even more constricting because it was cluttered. It was lined with holding cells, populated by men in orange, most of them brown-skinned. We were quickly locked into an empty holding cell, also filthy.
    During the next five hours I paced the cell and tried to ignore the sisters. They were polite and did not say much, seeming to givedeference to my coiled, stymied rage. After several hours I was lying prone on a hard narrow bench, practicing nothingness, and Nora cleared her throat.
    “Piper?”
    “What?”
    “Do you even know Jonathan Bibby?”
    “NO.”
    Several moments passed in silence. “You must be
pissed.
”
    “YEAH.”
    A female guard issued us ill-fitting orange men’s jumpsuits. Mine snapped up the front and had short sleeves and weirdly cropped legs, like convict clamdiggers. I had almost made it through the year without lapsing into total cliché but had now missed the mark. Finally, it seemed that they would escort us to our resting place for the night. I was so goddamned tired, I assumed anything would be an improvement over this filthy, uncomfortable cell, especially if it was far away from Nora.
    The three of us rode in silence up in the elevator to the twelfth floor. We exited through clanging security gates, until the last gate slid open to reveal the women’s unit.
    Psych ward. That was my overwhelming first impression. Dueling televisions blared at opposite sides of the small room. A cacophony of voices vibrated in the close, crowded space. Women, disheveled and stooped, blinked at us like moles. Although there was nothing playful about the place, it had an infantilized, nursery-school vibe. As we entered, everything seemed to stand still, and every eye turned to us. A guard in an ill-fitting uniform, who telegraphed “ineffectual,” approached us. He seemed utterly surprised by our arrival. I turned and looked at Nora and Hester, and then I started to laugh, a disbelieving and desperate laugh. In an instant, the iceberg between me and my codefendants melted. “Oh,
hell
, no!” And they laughed too, with relief and recognition, and I saw the same look of disbelief mixed with disgust and exhaustion in their eyes. They were in the same boat as me. And right here and now, all of a sudden I knew that they were all I had.
    Most changes in perception are gradual: we grow to hate or love an idea, a person, or a place over a period of time. I had certainly nursed a hatred of Nora Jansen over many years, placing much of the blame for my situation on her. This was not one of those instances. Sometimes, rarely, the way we see something is subject to alchemy. My emotions changed so rapidly, and I felt so strongly all the things I had in common with these two women, there was no way not to take immediate notice and stock of what was happening. Our troubled history was suddenly matched by our more immediate shared experience as prisoners on an exhausting journey.
    We huddled together for a moment while chaos reigned around us, and it occurred to me that they probably knew nothing at all about the last ten years of my life, including the very fact that I was incarcerated. They had both gone to prison before me.
    And that’s how we broke the ice. “Is Kentucky like this?” I asked Hester.
    “Nope.”
    “Dublin?”
    “Hell no. Where are you?”
    “Danbury. And it’s nothing like this freak show.”
    The officer reappeared, with housing assignments. We were shown to our respective cells and locked down. My new roommate Virginia weighed 350 pounds and snored like nothing I had ever heard before. It was like there was a wild, rabid animal in the bunk below me. As I tossed and turned on the plastic mattress, trying to cover my head with the pillow, I