Orange Is the New Black

irritated by her situation; the other was like a young novice in a convent, with shorn hair and a perpetually surprised expression; then there was Alice, about five feet tall with the thickest Coke-bottle glasses I had seen in a long time. She was as friendly as the dogs in the Puppy Program, and as garrulous as her partners were withdrawn. Sometimes they would all join us for yoga class.
    These three made a beeline for Sister Platte and followed her around like ducklings. I thought it was cool that Sister had a posse of pacifists in prison—yes, the government wasted millions of taxpayer dollars prosecuting and locking up nonviolent protesters, but here on the inside the political prisoners now had a community of like-minded folks. Sister certainly enjoyed their company,discussing theories and tactical strategy for bringing the military-industrial complex to its knees for hours on end in the dining hall. Alice and her codefendants managed to get jobs teaching in the GED program, the gig I had previously longed for but that didn’t interest me any longer.
    I felt guilty about preferring CMS work, but I had been observing the unpleasant developments in the education department and was keeping my distance. Following the mold shutdown of the GED program in the winter, all the tainted books and curriculum materials had been thrown out and were not replaced. The prison had transferred a popular female staff teacher out of the Camp and down the hill—I guess she was too sympathetic to prisoners. In her place the new head of education in the Camp was a mullet-wearing, Trans-Am driving vulgarian—I called him Stumpy—who rumor held had basically flunked out of the postal service, only to be picked up by the BOP. He was an inadequate excuse for a teacher, who resorted to (and clearly enjoyed) threatening and verbally abusing his pupils. He was universally loathed by all Campers and most of all by the inmate tutors who worked for him. According to them, his attitude toward his pupils was simple: “I don’t care if they never learn that one plus one equals two. I get paid for eight hours of work.”
    One day I returned from the electric shop to find the Camp in an uproar. Stumpy had been on a serious tear that day in the classroom, more abusive than usual, and Alice the pacifist had finally had it. She wanted to be released from her job as a tutor. Stumpy went ballistic, screaming and ranting and writing her up with a shot for defiance, or resisting a direct order, or something along those lines.
    Pennsatucky, who had been in the classroom (and was probably the object of his initial abuse), said that his dumbass face had turned purple. He had gone storming out of the Camp and down the hill, but now rumor had it that he was trying to have Alice locked up in the SHU, and everyone was outraged.
    Sure enough, after dinner and mail call, we heard the thud of heavy boots and the rattle of chains. Massive men, their boots making the most stereotypically ominous storm-trooper noise, entered theCamp carrying restraints. They stomped by the phones, down the stairs, and down the hallway toward the Camp CO’s office. Every prisoner picked up on those sounds no matter where they were in the building, and the front hall quickly and quietly filled with women, gathering to see it go down. Sometimes when someone was getting locked up for doing something shitty, or when the miscreant was widely disliked, there was an air of the tumbrels on the way to the guillotine. This was not one of those times.
    The PA crackled as Mr. Scott called the condemned: “Gerard!” Little Alice Gerard came up to the office and stepped inside. The door closed, and she was in there with those three huge men, as the lieutenant read her the shot that had been filed against her.
    A buzz was building among the women. “This is BULL-shit!!”
    “This ain’t no thing for the SHU… that little lady didn’t do a damn thing that didn’t need to be done.”
    Someone started to cry.
    “I can’t believe these pansy-ass cracker cops got nothing better to do with their time than lock up Alice!”
    The door to the office swung open. Alice stepped out, followed by the three jailers. They loomed over her, making her look extra tiny as she gazed up at the assembled crowd. Blinking through her Coke-bottle glasses, she said brightly and clearly, “I’m going!” One of the lieutenant’s goons cuffed her, not that gently, and the buzz among the women surged to a low