Orange Is the New Black
caught? A lot of the romantic relationships I observed were more like schoolgirl crushes, and it was rare for a couple to last more than a month or two. It was easy to tell the difference between women who were lonely and wanted comfort, attention, and romance and a real, live lesbian: there were a few of them. There were other big barriers for long-term lovers, like having sentences of dramatically different lengths, living in different Dorms, or becoming infatuated with someone who wasn’t actually a lesbian.
Colleen and her bunkie next door got lots of Valentines from other prisoners. I got none, but that evening’s mail call yielded plenty of evidence that I was loved. Best of all was a little book of Neruda poems from Larry,
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.
I resolved to read a poem every day.
We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
While the blue night dropped on the world.
I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.
Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin between my hands.
I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.
Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?
The book fell that is always turned to at twilight
and my cape rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.
Always, always you recede through the evenings
towards where the twilight goes erasing statues.
I WAS finally able to shop commissary on February 17, when I bought:
XL sweatpants, $24.70, given to me in error and which they would not let me return
A stick of cocoa butter, $4.30
Packets of tuna, sardines, and mackerel, each about $1
Ramen noodles, $0.25
Squeeze cheese, $2.80
Pickled jalapeños, $1.90
Hot sauce, $1.40
Legal pads, pens, envelopes, and stamps, priceless.
I desperately wantedto buy a cheap little portable headset radio for $42.90. The radio would have cost about $7 on the street. At the base pay for federal prisoners, which is $0.14 an hour, that radio could represent more than three hundred hours of labor. I needed the radio to hear the weekend movie or anything on television, and to use down in the gym, but the officer who ran the commissary brusquely told me they were out of radios.
No mas
, Kerman.
Because I could count on money from the outside world, I could buy items to return to each person who had helped me upon my arrival—soap, toothpaste, shampoo, shower shoes, packets of instant coffee. Some women tried to wave them away, “Don’t worry about it, Kerman,” but I insisted. “Please, forget it!” said Annette, who had loaned me so many things in my first several weeks. “You’re like my daughter! Hey, did you get any new books today?”
The books continued to pour in at mail call. It had gotten to the point where I was embarrassed, and also it made me nervous; it was a clear demonstration that I “had it like that” on the outside, a network of people who had both a concern for me and the time and money to buy me books. So far no one had threatened me with anything more intimidating than a scowl or a harsh word, and no other prisoner had asked anything of me. Still, I was guarded against getting played, used, or targeted. I saw that some of the women had little or no resources from the outside to help make their prison life livable, and many of my fellow prisoners were seasoned hustlers.
One day right after I moved into B Dorm, a woman I didn’t know popped her head into my cube. Miss Natalie was absent, and I was putting still more books away in my small footlocker, which was threatening to overflow. I looked at this woman—black, middle-aged, ordinary, yet unfamiliar. My guard went up.
“Hey there, new bunkie. Where’s Miss Natalie?”
“Um, she’s in the kitchen, I think.”
“What’s your name? I’m Rochelle.”
“Piper. Kerman.”
“What’s your name?”
“You can call me Piper.” What did she want from me? I felt trapped in my cube. I was sure she was sniffing around.
“Oh, you’re the one with the books… you got all them books!” In fact, I had a book in my hand and a pile of them on top of the locker. By now I was scared as to what this woman wanted from me and what she was going to do to me.
“D-do you want a book?” I was always happy to lend a book, but only a few people took me up on it, checking my haul at every mail call.
“Okay—whatcha got?” I scanned
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