Orange Is the New Black

for many millions of dollars. In Danbury the FCI made radio components for the army. Unicor paid significantly more than other prison jobs, over one dollar an hour as opposed to the regular base pay rate of fourteen cents an hour, and the Unicor workers were always dressed in pressed, tidy uniforms. Unicor people would disappear into a large warehouse building that always had semis parked outside. Some girls enjoyed silent flirtation with the truckers, who looked nervous but intrigued.
    Rosemarie had secured herself a job in the Puppy Program, which was housed in A Dorm. That meant she lived with a Labrador retriever that was being trained to be a seeing-eye dog or a bomb-sniffer. The dogs were beautiful, the little puppies adorable. A warm, squirming lapful of golden puppy, licking and biting and unabashedly happy, made despair dissolve no matter how hard you were hanging on to it.
    I wasn’t eligible for Puppies Behind Bars—my fifteen-month sentence was too short. Initially disappointed, on reflection I decided it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The program attracted some of the most obsessive-compulsive women in the Camp, and their OCD could really come into full flower as they trained the dogs, forming intense bonds with their canine companions and feuding with their human neighbors. Rosemarie quickly became consumed with the training of her dog, Amber. I didn’t mind because she would usually let me play with the puppy, which some of her fellow dog trainers frowned upon.
    The doyenne of the Puppy Program was Mrs. Jones, the only person in Camp that anyone called “Mrs.” Mrs. Jones had been in prison for a long time, and it was obvious. A grizzled, steel-haired Irish woman with enormous breasts, she had been down for almost fifteen years on a drug sentence. Her husband was said to have beaten her viciously on the outside and to have died in prison. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Mrs. Jones was a little crazy, but most prisoners and guards gave her more leeway than they might extend to others—after fifteen years, anyone would have gone a little crazy. People liked tosing a few bars of “Me and Mrs. Jones” from time to time. Some of the younger women from the street called her the OG, Original Gangster, and she loved that. “That’s me… the OG! I’m crazy… like a fox!” she would cackle, tapping her temple. She seemed to lack any filter and would say exactly what she thought at any time. Although interacting with Mrs. Jones required patience, I liked her, and her candor too.
    I wasn’t allowed to be a dog trainer, but surely the right job for me was here somewhere? Danbury had a distinct labor hierarchy, and I was at the bottom of it. I wanted to teach in the GED program, which was overseen by a staff teacher and augmented by prisoners who were “tutors.”
    The handful of middle-class, educated prisoners with whom I often ate meals warned me against it. Although the program’s female staffer was well liked, they said the combination of a bad program with captive and often surly students made for a crappy work environment. “Not a pleasant experience!” “Cluster fuck.” “I copped out after a month.” It sounded like my friend Ed’s job teaching public high school in New York City. Nevertheless I requested the job, and Mr. Butorsky, who controlled assignments, said that should work out just fine. As it turned out, he was not as good as his word.

CHAPTER 6
High Voltage

    O ne morning my A&O pal Little Janet found me and said, “We have jobs!” We were assigned to the electric shop, in Construction and Maintenance Services. I was disappointed. What about teaching—feeding the hungry minds of the downtrodden, which were waiting to break free?
    The mandatory GED program had been temporarily shut down. The two classrooms had been overrun with a virulent toxic killer mold that crawled over textbooks, walls, and furniture and made many people sick. The inmate teachers had reportedly sneaked samples of the mold to a sympathetic outsider for analysis and filed a grievance. The staff teacher had sided with the prisoners, to the fury of prison management. The students were gleeful about the shutdown, most of them not wanting to be there in the first place. So it was voltage for me instead.
    The next day Little Janet and I followed the other CMS workers out into the March chill to a big white school bus parked behind the chow hall. After more than a month of being trapped in the confines of