Orange Is the New Black

back into orientation in my steel-toes. My fellows were still there, their eyes rolling back into their heads from the endless droning. The nice man from facilities had been replaced by Toricella, the counselor who partnered with Butorsky and had allowed me to call Larry the night before. I came to think of him as “Mumbles.” His walruslike visage rarely changed; I never heard him raise his voice, but it was difficult to read his mood, beyond mild aggravation. He informed us that Warden Kuma Deboo would be gracing us with her presence momentarily.
    Suddenly I was interested: I knew nothing of the warden, the big boss, who was a woman, and one with an unusual name to boot. I had not heard a word about her in the twenty-four hours I had been in prison. Would she resemble Wendy O. Williams or Nurse Ratched?
    Neither. Warden Deboo sailed into the room and took a seat facing us. She was only ten years older than me, tops, and she was fit, olive-skinned, and good-looking, probably of Middle Eastern extraction. She was wearing a dowdy pantsuit and hideous costume jewelry. She spoke to us in an informal, faux-warm fashion that instantly reminded me of someone running for office.
    “Ladies, I am Warden Kuma Deboo, and I am here to welcome you to Danbury, which I know is not an ideal scenario for any of you. While you are here, I am responsible for your well-being. I am responsible for your safety. I am responsible for you successfully completing your sentences. So, ladies, the buck stops here.”
    She went on for a while in this vein, with some mention of personal responsibility (ours) thrown in, and then she got down to the sex part.
    “If anyone at this institution is pressuring you sexually, if anyone is threatening you or hurting you, I want you to come directly to me. I come to the Camp every Thursday at lunch, so you can come up and talk to me about anything that is happening to you. We have a zero-tolerance policy for sexual misconduct here at Danbury.”
    She was talking about prison guards, not marauding lesbians. Clearly sex and power were inseparable behind prison walls. More than a few of my friends had voiced their fears that in prison I wouldbe in more danger from the guards than the inmates. I looked around the room at my fellow prisoners. Some looked scared; most looked indifferent.
    Warden Deboo finished her spiel and left us. One of the other prisoners tentatively volunteered, “She seems nice.”
    The bitter violator who had previously been locked up at Danbury snorted, “Miss Slick. Don’t expect to see her again, except for fifteen minutes every other Thursday on the line. She talks a good game, but she might as well not be here. She don’t run this place. That zero-tolerance shit? Just remember this,
ladies…
it’s gonna be your word against theirs.”
    N EW ARRIVALS in Federal prison are stuck in a sort of purgatory for the first month or so, when they are “A&Os”—admissions and orientation status. When you are an A&O, you can’t do anything—can’t have a job, can’t go to GED classes, can’t go to chow until everyone else goes, can’t say a word when ordered to shovel snow at odd hours of the night. The official line is that your medical tests and clearances must come back from whatever mysterious place they go before your prison life can really start. Nothing involving paperwork happens quickly in prison (except for lockups in solitary), and a prisoner has no way to get speedy resolution with a prison staffer. Of anything.
    There are a dizzying number of official and unofficial rules, schedules, and rituals. Learn them quickly, or suffer the consequences, such as: being thought an idiot, being called an idiot, getting on another prisoner’s bad side, getting on a guard’s bad side, getting on your counselor’s bad side, being forced to clean the bathrooms, eating last in line when everything edible is gone, getting a “shot” (or incident report) put in your record, and getting sent to the Special Housing Unit or SHU (aka Solitary, the Hole, or Seg). Yet the most common response to a query about anything other than an official rule is “Honey, don’t you know you don’t ask questions in prison?” Everything else—the unofficial rules—you learn by observation, inference, or very cautious questioning of people you hope you can trust.
    Being an A&O that February—a leap year, no less—was a strange combination of confusion and monotony. I prowled around the Camp