Orange Is the New Black

More eye rolling. I frowned, lost between contradictory impulses.
    B Dorm was certainly living up to its “Ghetto” moniker, with all the irritants of any ghetto. One B Dorm practice alone drove me to the tooth-grinding brink of sanity: people would hang their littleheadphones on the metal bunks and blast their pocket radios through the makeshift “speakers,” foisting their staticky music on everyone at top, tinny volume. It wasn’t the music I objected to, it was the terrible audio quality.
    But A Dorm seemed populated by a disproportionate number of fussy old ladies, plus the Puppy Program dogs and their people, who were mostly nuts. And I didn’t want anyone to think I was a racist—although nobody else in the Camp seemed to have the slightest compunction about expressing the broadest racial generalizations.
    “Honey,” another prisoner drawled to me, “everyone here is just trying to live up to the worst cultural stereotype possible.”
    In fact, that was part of the motivation of this new invitation. “Pop don’t want any lesbians in there,” said matter-of-fact Nina. “And you’re a nice white girl.”
    On the one hand, Pop would certainly be an advantageous bunkie, as she clearly wielded a lot of influence in the Camp. On the other hand, I had a strong suspicion that she would be a high-maintenance cubemate—look at the hustle Nina was putting on for her.
    Finally, I thought about Natalie: how kind she had been to me and how easy she was to live with—and she was just nine months from going home. If I bailed on her, who knew what kind of kook they would stick in Cube 18? “Nina, I don’t think I can just ditch Miss Natalie,” I said. “She has been really good to me. I hope Pop understands.”
    Nina looked surprised. “Well… help me think about who else we can get. What about Toni? She’s Italian.”
    I said that sounded grand, they would be a perfect fit, and retreated to B Dorm, my Ghetto home.

CHAPTER 7
The Hours

    T here were a host of religious opportunities at Danbury: a Friday Mass for Catholics, and sometimes a Sunday Mass as well (usually delivered by the “hot priest,” a young padre who played guitar and spoke Italian and was thus adored by all the Italian-Americans); a Spanish Christian service on the weekends; a Buddhist meditation group and also rabbinical visits on Wednesdays; and a wacky weekly nondenominational be-in led by volunteers armed with acoustic guitars and scented candles. The biggie, though, was the “Christian” (aka fundamentalist) service held in the visiting room on Sunday evenings after visiting hours were over.
    In March I asked Sister Rafferty, the German nun who was the head chaplain, whether there would be any provision for Episcopalians on Easter Sunday. She looked at me as if I had three heads, then replied that if I wanted to hunt down my own minister and put him or her on my (full) visitors’ list, then we could use the chapel. Thanks for nothing, Sister!
    I found the religious prostrations of my saber-rattling born-again neighbors tedious. Some of the faithful had a distinct aspect of roostering, loudly proclaiming that they were going to pray on any number of topics, how God was walking beside them through their incarceration, how Jesus loved sinners, and so on. Personally, I thought that one could thank the Lord at a lower volume andperhaps with less self-congratulation. You could worship loudly and still act pretty lousy, abundant evidence of which was running around the Dorms.
    There were no new spring hats or dresses in prison, but the week before Easter someone erected a creepy giant wooden cross behind the Camp, right outside the dining hall. I was confronted with it at breakfast and could only ask “What the fuck?” of Mrs. Jones, the gruff old queen of the Puppy Program and one of the old ladies who always came to breakfast. I was surprised to learn that she was only fifty-five. Prison will age a gal prematurely.
    “They always put it up,” she reported. “Some clown from CMS came up and did it.”
    A few days later Nina and I were discussing the impending holidays over a cup of instant coffee. Levy and the one other Jew in residence, the decidedly more likable Gayle Greenman, had been given boxes of matzoh by the German nun for Passover. This excited the interest of the other prisoners. “How come they get them big crackers?” a neighbor from B Dorm asked me, probing the mysteries of faith. “Them crackers would be good