Orange Is the New Black

Toricella, they said maybe you might let me call my fiancé and let him know that I’m okay?” I was begging.
    He looked at me, silent. Finally he grunted. “Come in and close the door.” My heart started pounding twice as hard. He picked up the phone and handed the receiver to me. “Tell me the number and I’ll dial it. Just two minutes!”
    Larry’s cell phone rang, and I closed my eyes and willed him to answer it. If I lost this opportunity to hear his voice, I might die right on the spot.
    “Hello?”
    “Larry! Larry, it’s me!!”
    “Baby, are you okay?” I could hear how relieved he was.
    Now the tears were falling, and I was trying not to screw up my two minutes or scare Larry by totally losing it. I snuffled. “Yes, I’m okay. I’m really okay. I’m fine. I love you. Thank you for taking me today.”
    “Honey, don’t be crazy. Are you sure you’re okay, you’re not just saying that?”
    “No, I’m all right. Mr. Toricella let me call you, but I won’t be able to call you again for a while. But listen, you can come visit me this weekend! You should be on a list.”
    “Baby! I’ll come on Friday.”
    “So can Mom, please call her, and call Dad, call them as soon as we get off the phone and tell them you talked to me and tell them I’m okay. I won’t be able to call them for a while. I can’t make phone calls yet. And send in that money order right away.”
    “I mailed it already. Baby, are you sure you’re okay? Is it all right? You would tell me if it wasn’t?”
    “I’m okay. There’s a lady from South Jersey in my room, she’s nice. She’s Italian.”
    Mr. Toricella cleared his throat.
    “Darling, I have to go. I only have two minutes. I love you so much, I miss you so much!”
    “Baby! I love you. I’m worried about you.”
    “Don’t worry. I’m okay, I swear. I love you, darling. Please come see me. And call Mom and Dad!”
    “I’ll call them as soon as we get off the phone. Can I do anything else, baby?”
    “I love you! I have to go, honey!”
    “I love you too!”
    “Come see me on Friday, and thank you for calling my folks… I love you!”
    I hung up the phone. Mr. Toricella watched me with something that looked like sympathy in his beady little eyes. “It’s your first time down?” he said.
    After thanking him, I headed out into the hall wiping my nose on my arm, depleted but exponentially happier. I looked down at thedoors of the forbidden Dorms and studiously examined the bulletin boards covered with incomprehensible information about events and rules I didn’t understand—laundry schedules, inmate appointments with various staffers, crochet permits, and the weekend movie schedule. This weekend’s film was
Bad Boys II.
    I avoided eye contact. Nonetheless women periodically accosted me: “You’re new? How are you doing, honey? Are you okay?” Most of them were white. This was a tribal ritual that I would see play out hundreds of times in the future. When a new person arrived, their tribe—white, black, Latino, or the few and far between “others”—would immediately make note of their situation, get them settled, and steer them through their arrival. If you fell into that “other” category—Native American, Asian, Middle Eastern—then you got a patchwork welcome committee of the kindest and most compassionate women from the dominant tribes.
    The other white women brought me a bar of soap, a real toothbrush and toothpaste, shampoo, some stamps and writing materials, some instant coffee, Cremora, a plastic mug, and perhaps most important, shower shoes to avoid terrible foot fungi. It turned out that these were all items that one had to purchase at the prison commissary. You didn’t have the money to buy toothpaste or soap? Tough. Better hope that another prisoner would give it to you. I wanted to bawl every time another lady brought me a personal care item and reassured me, “It’ll be okay, Kerman.”
    By now conflicting things were churning around in my brain and my guts. Had I ever been so completely out of my element as I was here in Danbury? In a situation where I simply didn’t know what to say or what the real consequences of a wrong move might be? The next year was looming ahead of me like Mount Doom, even as I was quickly learning that compared with most of these women’s sentences, fifteen months were a blip and I had nothing to complain about.
    So though I knew I shouldn’t complain, I was bereft. No Larry, no friends,