Orange Is the New Black

with that he climbed into the van and drove away.
    Little Janet, Levy, and I stood there outside the building with our mouths open. Was I hallucinating? Had he really just left us here in the outside world? Three uniformed prisoners, out and about—was this some sort of sick test? Little Janet, who before Danbury had been locked up for over two years in extremely poor conditions, looked like she was in shock.
    Levy was agitated. “What ees he sinking? What eef people see us? Zey will know we are prisoners!”
    “There is
no way
that this is not against the rules,” I said.
    “We’re gonna get in trouble!” Little Janet wailed.
    I wondered what would happen if we left. Obviously we would be in massive trouble and be sent to the SHU and probably catch a new charge for “escape,” but how long would it take them to nab us?
    “Look at zeez houses! Oh my god… a school bus! Aieee! I mees my children!” Levy started to cry.
    I felt terrible for anyone who was separated from her children by prison, but I also knew that Levy’s kids lived nearby and that she would not allow them to come visit her because she didn’t want them to see her in prison. I thought this was horrible and that for a kid the unpleasantness of the prison setting would be more than offset by the eyewitness reassurance that their mother was okay. Anyway, I wanted Levy to stop crying.
    “Let’s look around.” I said.
    “No!!” Little Janet practically shouted. “Piper, we are gonna get in so much trouble! Don’t even move your feet!” She looked so stressed that I acquiesced.
    We stood there like idiots. Nothing was happening. The suburban neighborhood was quiet. Every couple of minutes a car would drive by. No one pointed or screeched to a halt at the sight of three convicts off the plantation. Eventually a man walked by with an enormous shaggy dog.
    I perked up. “I can’t tell if that’s a Newfoundland or a Great Pyrenees… good-looking dog, huh?”
    “I can’t believe you—you’re looking at the dog!?” said Little Janet.
    The man was looking at us.
    “He sees us!”
    “Of course he sees us, Levy. We’re three female inmates standing on a street corner. How’s he going to miss us?”
    The man raised his hand and waved cheerfully as he passed.
    After about forty-five minutes DeSimon returned with brooms and set us to work cleaning the pump house. The next week we were made to clean out the root cellar, a long low barn on the prison grounds. The root cellar contained a hodgepodge of equipment from all the shops. In the dark shadows we discovered enormous snakeskins that had been shed, which freaked us out and made DeSimon cackle with glee. An outside inspection was coming soon, and the prison staff wanted to be ready.
    There was actual trash to be removed from the root cellar, a dirty and often heavy job, and we spent days hauling huge metal pipes, stockpiles of hardware, fixtures, and components out to the giant Dumpsters. Into the Dumpster went ceramic bathtubs and sinks still in their boxes, new baseboard heating components, and unopened fifty-pound boxes of nails.
    “Your family’s tax dollars at work,” we muttered under our breath. I had never worked so physically hard in my life. By the time we were finished, the root cellar was empty, spotless, and tidy for inspection.
    While I was quickly learning that even in prison rules were made to be broken by staff and prisoners alike, there was one aspect of work in the electric shop that was meticulously observed and enforced. A large “cage” of tools, where the shop clerk sat, contained everything from band saws to Hilti drills and myriad types of special screwdrivers, pliers, wire cutters, and individual tool belts loaded with complete sets of the basics—a whole room filled with potentially murderous objects. There was a system for checking out those tools:each prisoner had an assigned number and a bunch of corresponding metal chits that looked like dog tags. When we went out to do a job, each prisoner signed out a tool with a chit, and was responsible for returning it. At the end of each shift DeSimon would inspect the tool cage. He made it clear that if a tool went missing the prisoner whose chit occupied the empty space and the shop clerk were both going to the SHU. It was the only rule that appeared to matter to him. One day a drill bit went missing and we tore the shop and the truck apart looking for it while he watched, the clerk on the edge of tears,