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A
“Thank you.” I was still clutching my envelope with my paperwork and photos in it, and now a roll of toilet paper.
“Did they explain to you about the count?” she asked.
“The count?” I was getting used to feeling completely idiotic. It was as if I’d been home-schooled my whole life and then dropped into a large, crowded high school. Lunch money? What’s that?
“The count. They count us five times a day, and you have to be here, or wherever you’re supposed to be, and the four o’clock count is a standing count, the other ones are at midnight, two A.M., five A.M., and nine P.M. Did they give you your PAC number?”
“PAC number?”
“Yeah, you’ll need it to make phone calls. Did they give you a phone sheet? NO? You need to fill it out so you can make phone calls. But maybe Toricella will let you make a call if you ask him. It’s his late night. It helps if you cry. Ask him after di
“Fifteen months… how much time do you have?”
“Fifty-seven months.”
If there was an appropriate response to this information, I didn’t know what it was. What could this middle-class, middle-aged Italian-American lady from Jersey possibly have done to get fifty-seven months in federal prison? Was she Carmela Soprano? Fifty-seven months! From my presurrender due diligence, I knew it was verboten to ask anyone about their crime.
She saw that I was unsure what to say and helped me out. “Yeah, it’s a lot of time,” she said sort of drily.
“Yeah.” I agreed. I turned to start pulling items out of my laundry bag.
That’s when she shrieked, “Don’t make your bed!!!”
“What?” I spun around, alarmed.
“We’ll make it for you,” she said.
“Oh… no, that’s not necessary, I’ll make it.” I turned back to the thin cotton-poly sheets I’d been issued.
She came over to my bunk. “Honey. We’ll. Make. The. Bed.” She was very firm. “We know how.”
I was completely mystified. I looked around the room. All five beds were very tidily made, and both A
“I know how to make a bed,” I protested tentatively.
“Listen, let us make the bed. We know how to do it so we’ll pass inspection.”
Inspection? No one told me anything about inspections.
“Inspection happens whenever Butorsky wants to do them-and he is insane,” A
Uh-oh. I hated cleaning too but was certainly not about to risk the ire of my new roommates.
“So we have to make the beds every morning?” I asked, another penetrating question.
A
“You don’t sleep in the bed?”
“No, you sleep on top with a blanket over you.” Pause.
“But what if I want to sleep in the bed?”
A
This sort of social pressure was irresistible; getting between the sheets wasn’t going to happen for the next fifteen months. I let go of the bed issue-the thought of hundreds of women sleeping on top of perfectly made military-style beds was too strange for me to deal with at that moment. Plus, somewhere nearby a man was bellowing. “Count time, count time, count time! Count time, ladies!” I looked at A
“See that red light?” Out in the hallway, over the officers’ station, was a giant red bulb that was now illuminated. “That light comes on during count. When that red light is on, you better be where you’re supposed to be, and don’t move until it goes off.”
Women were streaming back and forth in the hallway, and two young Latinas came hurrying into the room.
A
“Where’s the woman who sleeps here?” I asked about my missing bunkmate.
“That one! She works in the kitchen, so they count her down there. You’ll meet her.” She grimaced. “Okay, shhhhh! It’s a stand-up count, no talking!”
The five of us stood silent by our bunks, waiting. The entire building was suddenly quiet; all I could hear was the jangling of keys and the thud of heavy boots. Eventually a man stuck his head into the room and… counted us. Then, several seconds later, another man came in and counted us. When he left, everyone sat down on beds and a couple of footstools, but I figured it wouldn’t be cool to sit on my absent bunkmate’s bed, so I leaned on my empty locker. Minutes passed. The two Latina women began to whisper to Miss Luz in Spanish.
Suddenly we heard, “Recount, ladies!” Everyone leaped back on their feet, and I stood at attention.
“They always screw it up,” muttered A
We were counted again, this time with seeming success, and the payoff of inspections became apparent to me. “It’s suppertime,” said A
“What do you mean, last?”
Over the PA system the CO was calling out numbers: “A12, A10, A23, go eat! B8, B18, B22, go eat! C2, C15, C23, go eat!”
A
I peered out the door at the women heading to the chow hall and wondered what an honor cube was but asked, “What’s for di
“Liver.”
After the liver-and-lima-beans di
“It’s mail call, honey!” she answered.
A very tall black woman up on the landing seemed to be handing out toiletries. Someone on my right gestured toward her. “Gloria’s going home, she’s down to a wake-up!” I stared at Gloria with renewed interest, as she tried to find someone to take a small purple comb off her hands. Going home! The idea of leaving was riveting to me. She looked so nice, and so happy, as she gave away all her things. I felt a tiny bit better, knowing that it was possible someday to go home from this awful place.
I wanted her purple comb very badly. It looked like the combs we used to carry in the back pockets of our jeans in junior high, that we’d whip out and use to fix our winged bangs. I stared at the comb, too shy to reach up and ask, and then it was gone, claimed by another woman.
A guard, different from the one Minetta had pointed out earlier, emerged from the CO’s office. He looked like a gay pornstar, with a bristling black crew cut and a scrub-brush mustache. He started bellowing “Mail call! Mail call!” Then he started giving out the mail. “Ortiz! Williams! Ke