Orange Is the New Black

sentence?”
    “Oh! Fifteen months.”
    “That’s not bad. That’ll be over in no time.”
    We circled to the back entrance of a long, low building that resembled a 1970s elementary school. She pulled up next to a handicapped ramp and stopped the car. Clutching my laundry bag, I followed her toward the building, picking through patches of ice while the cold penetrated my thin rubber soles. Small knots of women wearing identical ugly brown coats were smoking in the February chill. They looked tough, and depressed, and they all had on big, heavy black shoes. I noticed that one of them was hugely pregnant.
What was a woman that pregnant doing in prison?
    “Do you smoke?” Minetta asked.
    “No.”
    “Good for you! We’ll just get you your bed assignment and get you settled. There’s the dining hall.” She gestured to her left down several stairs. She was talking the entire time, explaining everything about Danbury Federal Prison Camp, none of which I was catching. I followed her up a couple of stairs and into the building.
    “… TV room. There’s the education office, that’s the CO’s office. Hi, Mr. Scott! CO, that’s the correctional officer. He’s all right. Hey, Sally!” She greeted a tall white woman. “This is Kerman, she’s new, self-surrender.” Sally greeted me sympathetically with another “Are you okay?” I nodded, mute. Minetta pressed on. “Here’s more offices, those are the Rooms up there, the Dorms down there.” She turned to me, serious. “You’re not allowed down there, it’s out of bounds for you. You understand?”
    I nodded, not understanding a thing. Women were surging all around me, black, white, Latino, every age, here in my new home, and they made a tremendous collective din in the linoleum and cinder-block interior. They were all dressed in khaki uniforms different from the one I was wearing, and they all wore huge, heavy-looking black work shoes. I realized that my attire made it glaringly obvious that I was new. I looked down at my little canvas slippers and shivered in my brown coat.
    As we proceeded up the long main hall, several more womencame up and greeted me with the standard “You’re new… are you all right?” They seemed genuinely concerned. I hardly knew how to respond but smiled weakly and said hello back.
    “Okay, here’s the counselor’s office. Who’s your counselor?”
    “Mr. Butorsky.”
    “Oh. Well, at least he does his paperwork. Hold on, let me see where they put you.” She knocked on the door with some authority. Opening it, she stuck her head in, all business. “Where did you put Kerman?” Butorsky gave her a response that she understood, and she led me up to Room 6.
    We entered a room that held three sets of bunk beds and six waist-high metal lockers. Two older women were lying on the lower bunks. “Hey, Annette, this is Kerman. She’s new, a self-surrender. Annette will take care of you,” she told me. “Here’s your bed.” She indicated the one empty top bunk with a naked mattress.
    Annette sat up. She was a small, dark fiftyish woman with short, spiky black hair. She looked tired. “Hi,” she rasped in a Jersey accent. “How are you? What’s your name again?”
    “It’s Piper. Piper Kerman.”
    Minetta’s work was apparently done. I thanked her profusely, making no effort to hide my gratitude, and she exited. I was left with Annette and the other, silent woman, who was tiny, bald, and seemed much older, maybe seventy. I cautiously placed my laundry bag on my bunk and looked around the room. In addition to the steel bunk beds and lockers, everywhere I looked there were hangers with clothes, towels, and string bags dangling from them. It looked like a barracks.
    Annette got out of bed and revealed herself to be about five feet tall. “That’s Miss Luz. I’ve been keeping stuff in your locker. I gotta get it out. Here’s some toilet paper—you gotta take it with you.”
    “Thank you.” I was still clutching my envelope with my paperwork and photos in it, and now a roll of toilet paper.
    “Did they explain to you about the count?” she asked.
    “The count?” I was getting used to feeling completely idiotic. Itwas as if I’d been home-schooled my whole life and then dropped into a large, crowded high school.
Lunch money? What’s that?
    “The count. They count us five times a day, and you have to be here, or wherever you’re supposed to be, and the four o’clock count is a standing count, the other ones