Orange Is the New Black

“Recount, ladies!” Everyone leaped back on their feet, and I stood at attention.
    “They always screw it up,” muttered Annette under her breath. “How hard is it to count?”
    We were counted again, this time with seeming success, and the payoff of inspections became apparent to me. “It’s suppertime,” said Annette. It was 4:30 in the afternoon, by New York City standards an unimaginably uncivilized time to eat dinner. “We’re last.”
    “What do you mean, last?”
    Over the PA system the CO was calling out numbers: “A12, A10, A23, go eat! B8, B18, B22, go eat! C2, C15, C23, go eat!”
    Annette explained, “He’s calling honor cubes—they eat first. Then he calls the Dorms in order of how well they did in inspection. Rooms are always last. We always do the worst in inspection.”
    I peered out the door at the women heading to the chow hall and wondered what an honor cube was but asked, “What’s for dinner anyway?”
    “Liver.”
    After the liver-and-lima-beans dinner, served in a mess hall thatbrought back every dreadful school-age cafeteria memory, women of every shape, size, and complexion flooded back into the main hall of the building, shouting in English and Spanish. Everyone seemed to be lingering expectantly in the hall, sitting in groups on the stairs or lining the landing. Figuring that I was supposed to be there too, I tried to make myself invisible and listen to the words swirling around me, but I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. Finally, I timidly asked the woman next to me.
    “It’s mail call, honey!” she answered.
    A very tall black woman up on the landing seemed to be handing out toiletries. Someone on my right gestured toward her. “Gloria’s going home, she’s down to a wake-up!” I stared at Gloria with renewed interest, as she tried to find someone to take a small purple comb off her hands.
Going home!
The idea of leaving was riveting to me. She looked so nice, and so happy, as she gave away all her things. I felt a tiny bit better, knowing that it was possible someday to go home from this awful place.
    I wanted her purple comb very badly. It looked like the combs we used to carry in the back pockets of our jeans in junior high, that we’d whip out and use to fix our winged bangs. I stared at the comb, too shy to reach up and ask, and then it was gone, claimed by another woman.
    A guard, different from the one Minetta had pointed out earlier, emerged from the CO’s office. He looked like a gay pornstar, with a bristling black crew cut and a scrub-brush mustache. He started bellowing “Mail call! Mail call!” Then he started giving out the mail. “Ortiz! Williams! Kennedy! Lombardi! Ruiz! Skelton! Platte! Platte! Platte! Wait a minute, Platte, there’s more. Mendoza! Rojas!” Each woman would step up to claim her mail, with a smile on her face, and then skitter away somewhere to read it—perhaps someplace with more privacy than I had yet observed? The hall’s population thinned as he worked through the bin of mail, until there were only hopefuls left. “Maybe tomorrow, ladies!” he shouted, turning the empty bin upside down.
    After mail call I crept around the building, feeling vulnerable inmy stupid little canvas slippers that so obviously marked me as new. My head was spinning with new information, and for the first moment in hours I was sort of alone with my own thoughts, which turned immediately to Larry and my parents. They must be freaking. I had to figure out how to let them know that I was okay.
    Very timidly, I approached the closed door to the counselors’ office, clutching a blue phone sheet that Annette had shown me how to fill out, bubbling in the numbers of people I wanted permission to call on the pay phones at some future date. Larry’s cell phone, my family, my best friend Kristen, my lawyer. The lights in the office were on. I rapped softly, and there was a muffled snort from within. Gingerly I turned the handle.
    The counselor named Toricella, who always wore a look of mild surprise, was blinking his little eyes at me, annoyed at my interruption.
    “Mr. Toricella? I’m Kerman, I’m new. They said I should come talk to you…” I trailed off, swallowing.
    “Is something wrong?”
    “They said I should turn in my phone list… and I don’t have a PAC number…”
    “I’m not your counselor.”
    My throat was getting very tight, and there was no need to fake tears—my eyes were threatening to spill. “Mr.