Orange Is the New Black

“class,” as she put it. More than once Campers had to be talked out of kicking her ass, which was done by reminding them that she was not worth the trip to the SHU. Most of the time she was nervous-verging-on-hysterical, which manifested in dramatic physical symptoms; an astonishing hivelike swelling made her look like the Elephant Man, and her always-sweating hands made her particularly useless for working with electricity.
    DeSimon kept a television in the shop. He would periodically emerge from his office, toss a VHS tape at us, and grunt, “Watch this,” then leave us for hours. These instructional videos explained the rudiments of electrical current and also very basic wiring procedures. While uninterested in the content of the videos, my coworkers quickly figured out how to rig up the TV with an illegal makeshift antenna. That way we could watch Jerry Springer; one con would man the lookout post by the window to spot any approaching COs.
    I was trying to learn some Spanish, and my coworker Yvette was very patiently trying to teach me, but what I managed to pick up wasalmost exclusively about food, sex, or curses. Yvette was by far the most competent of my coworkers, and she and I would often work together on any electrical job requiring proficiency with tools. This occasioned conversations where every sentence suffered from multiple fractures, coupled with a lot of cautious mime—neither of us wanted to get shocked. I had already learned the hard way what that was like—your head snaps back as if you’ve been kicked under the chin.
    Jae, my neighbor Colleen’s pal, was assigned to the electric shop—she had been cleared to work back in the Brooklyn MCC, so her paperwork didn’t take long. She got the clerk job. “As long as I don’t have to touch wires and shit, I’m cool,” she said.
    By default, she hung out with me at work—I was best buddies with Little Janet, and Little Janet was the only other black person in electric. As the New England spring took its sweet time arriving, the three of us occupied the bench in front of the shop, smoking and watching the comings and goings of other prisoners. The guards went in and out of their deluxe gym, which was located directly across from the electric building. There were long stretches of inactivity during which we shot the shit… about the drug game (distant memories for me), about New York City (where we all were from), about men, about life.
    Little Janet could hold her own with us, despite being fifteen years younger, and I could hold my own with them, despite being white. Little Janet was excitable, eager to argue a point or show off a dance move or just act silly, while Jae was funny and mellow, with an easy laugh. She had served just two years of a ten-year sentence, but she never seemed bitter, just measured and mindful. But she had a quiet sadness about her, and a deep, still quality that seemed to be the part of her that she would not allow her surroundings and circumstances to destroy. When she talked about her sons, a teenager and an eight-year-old, her face shone.
    I admired the humor and calm with which she handled her losses and our prison world—her dignity was not as quiet as Natalie’s but was just as lovely.
    ·  ·  ·  
    J OYCE, FROM the electric shop, was going home soon. She had drawn the calendar on the blackboard in the shop and would cross off every day that passed with chalk. About a week before she was due for release she asked if I would color her hair. I must have shown my surprise at the intimate request. “You’re the only one I know who seems like they won’t fuck it up,” she explained in her sharp, matter-of-fact way.
    We went into the salon room off the camp’s main hallway, a space that occupied as much room as the law library—about the size of a large closet. There were two old pink hair sinks with nozzles for rinsing, a couple of salon chairs in almost total disrepair, and some standing driers that looked like they were from the early 1960s. Shears and other cutting instruments were kept in a locked cage mounted on the wall—only the CO could unlock it. One of the chairs was occupied by a woman having her hair set by a friend. As I worked on the sections of Joyce’s straight shiny hair, carefully following the directions on the box, I felt proud that she had asked me, and I also felt a bit more like a normal girl, performing beauty chores with girlfriends. When I accidentally sent the sink