Orange Is the New Black

of thing you would want for an interview.”
    “What kind of job are we talking about?” she asked plaintively.
    My ugly tweed librarian outfit was lauded as the most work-appropriate.
    After the dress-up fun, a panel of businesswomen spoke seriously about growing sectors of the economy that had entry-level jobs for workers, like home health care. But there was nervous rumbling among the audience. When the Q&A time came, hands shot up.
    “How do we get trained for these kinds of jobs?”
    “How do we know the jobs that are open out there?”
    “How do we find out who will hire women with a record?”
    One of the panelists tried to answer several things at once. “I recommend you spend quite a bit of time on the computer researching these companies and industries, looking at online job listings, and trying to locate training opportunities. I hope you have some access to the Internet?”
    This caused a mild rumble. “We don’t even have any computers!”
    The panelists looked at each other and frowned. “I’m surprised to hear that. You don’t have a computer lab, or any kind of computer training here?”
    The bald BOP representative spoke up nervously. “Of course they do, all units are supposed to—”
    This elicited outright shouts from the ladies. Rochelle from B Dorm stood up. “We do not have any computers up in that Camp! No sir!”
    Sensing that he might have a situation on his hands, the BOP suit tried to be conciliatory. “I’m not sure why that would be, miss, but I promise I’ll look into it!”
    Mary Wilson turned out to be a lovely petite woman in an immaculate soft brown pantsuit. Right from the jump she held the room in the palm of her hand. She didn’t really talk about work. She talked about life, and a couple times she burst into snippets of song. She mostly told stories of trials and tribulations and battling adversity and Diana Ross. But what was striking about Ms. Wilson, and was also true of the other outsiders who volunteered their time that day, was that she spoke to us prisoners with great respect, as if our lives ahead had hope and meaning and possibility. After all these months at Danbury, this was a shocking novelty.
    M ARTHA S TEWART was still on everyone’s mind. Hysteria had been building on the outside and the inside as to where she would serve her short sentence, and what would happen to her. She had asked her judge to be sent to Danbury, so that her ninety-year-old mother in Connecticut could easily visit her. Her judge had no say over it at all, however. The Danbury (or Washington) powers-that-be in the Bureau of Prisons didn’t want her here, perhaps because they didn’t want close media scrutiny on the facility. The Camp had been “closed” to new inmates since her conviction, allegedly “full,” although we had more empty beds as every week passed.
    A lot of nasty things had been written in the press about us. I wasn’t in the least bit surprised, but the women around me were upset, especially the middle-class ones. An article came out in
People
calling us “the scum of the earth” and speculating about the beat-downs and abuse Martha might suffer.
    Annette turned to me after mail call, anguished by her copy. “I have been subscribing to
People
magazine for over thirty-five years. And now I’m the scum of the earth? Are you the scum of the earth, Piper?”
    I said I didn’t think so. But the angst over
People
was nothing compared to the shock waves that rocked the Camp on September 20. I came up from the track in the early evening to find a cluster of A Dorm residents around Pop, cursing and shaking their heads over a newspaper. “What’s up?” I asked.
    “You’re not going to believe this, Piper,” said Pop. “You remember that crazy French bitch?”
    On September 19 the Sunday
Hartford Courant
had published a front-page story—we always got newspapers a day behind, so the institution could “control the flow of information.” Staff writer Lynne Tuohy had gotten an exclusive with a recently released Camper, “Barbara,” whom Martha had contacted for the inside scoop on life in the Danbury Camp. And “Barbara” had some interesting things to say.
    “Once the shock of being in jail was over, it became a holiday,” Barbara said in an interview after her talk with Stewart. “I didn’t have to cook. I didn’t have to clean. I didn’t have to shop. I didn’t have to drive. I didn’t have to buy gas. They have an ice machine, ironing