Orange Is the New Black

realized that this was what Pop meant when she said “real prison,” as in “You girls don’t have any idea what
real prison
is like.” I remembered a college professor who had told me that lack of sleep, or sleep only in short intervals, will eventually bring on hallucinations.
    Virginia was an amateur astrologer who rarely showered. She informed me that she was planning on defending herself in court. When I refused to tell her my birth date so she could “do my chart,” she was deeply insulted. I thought of Miss Pat and Miss Philly, two of the more unstable women back in Danbury, and remembered to tread verylightly with crazy people. The next day my initial impression of the unit was confirmed when I realized that a significant percentage of its occupants were under court-ordered psychiatric observation. This was darkly humorous, as the prisoners in Chicago had little to no contact with prison staff or counselors of any stripe—the inmates really seemed to run this asylum.
    I also gleaned that just about all of the women in Chicago were on pretrial status—their cases had not yet been resolved, but they did not or could not make bail. So they were captive here while the wheels of justice ground. A couple of them had been here for months without being charged with a crime. This made their lives uncertain on every level, and those who were not already crazy were acting pretty wacko, driven nuts by rage and instability. I had been dropped into a snake pit. Virginia warned me, “See Connie over there?” She indicated a catatonic-looking woman. “She’s gonna ask you for your razor. Promise me you won’t give it to her! She’s only dangerous to herself, don’t worry.” I promised.
    None of the accepted rules of prison behavior that I had learned seemed to apply here. There was no welcome wagon with shower shoes and a toothbrush; there was no understanding of inappropriate or
verboten
questions; there was no sense of solidarity or recognition of the sanity-saving value of personal routine or order or self-respect. Goddammit, you couldn’t even rely on the tribe system—the white women weren’t worth a damn. Most of them were drooling on meds to keep them from killing themselves (or their neighbors).
    My de facto tribe was Nora and Hester (who was going by her given name of Anne these days). At least they understood the official and unofficial rules of incarceration. Warily I sat down with them and slowly began to feel out the situation, including what each of us knew about the upcoming trial and exactly why this place was so freaking miserable. They too were staggered by how awful the Chicago MCC was; we agreed that it was hard to believe it was a federal facility. There was enormous ground for the three of us to cover just on the prison front, but that wasn’t really what I was interested in. I wanted Nora to cop to ratting me out and to tell me why she did it.
    ·  ·  ·  
    F INALLY WE met what passed for the Welcome Wagon—Crystal. Crystal was a tall, skinny black woman in her fifties and the de facto mayor of the women’s unit. She appeared to be perfectly sane and was in charge of issuing uniforms and basics to new arrivals. She led us to a jumbled closet, where she began burrowing in boxes for more orange uniforms and some towels. They were short on underpants, and she handed me two pairs. I looked at them. “Crystal, these are… not clean.”
    “I’m sorry, sweetie, that’s all we got. You put ’em in the laundry that goes out tomorrow. They’ll probably come back.”
    There were no pajamas for us, no shampoo, not even eating utensils. I was relieved to hear that we could shop commissary once a week, but of course my ability to do that was going to depend on someone in this building doing their job and completing my paperwork, which seemed like a fantasy.
    I was thrilled to discover that there were two private showers, though I was disgusted when I saw them. Before surrendering I had been warned never, ever to go into the shower without shower shoes. My feet had not touched tile in almost a year, but I had no shoes. I was dying to bathe. I turned on the water and gingerly stepped out of my canvas slippers and into the gross shower stall, holding a little bar of motel soap. My skin crawled, and icy water stung my back as I tried to get clean.
    N ORA WAS cautious around me but was almost pathetically grateful that I wasn’t outright hostile. I certainly felt entitled to be