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“What’s up?” asked Slice, catching that there was a problem.
“Piper thinks she got one of her codefendants here, and she’s surprised.”
“Where?”
I indicated without pointing.
They relaxed a little. “That old lady?” “Shee-it, Peeper, what kind of gangster is you anyway?”
I glared at them. “Jae, I think that bitch ratted me out.”
All levity ceased. Slice studied Nora. Jae thought for several moments, then spoke deliberately.
“Piper, you do what you need to do, knowhatmsayin’, but know this-you will be in the SHU the rest of the time here. If it sucks like this here, imagine what the SHU is like. And fuck knows what else is go
Slice piped in, “I’m not going to the SHU either, not for some white girl I don’t even know. No offense, Peeper. But do your thing.”
I did nothing. Jae kept a worried eye on me. Slice procured a full deck of playing cards from another prisoner and began to shuffle them. I couldn’t stand it, though. I took a break and lay on my bunk and stared at the cinder-block wall. The woman who had landed me here was finally within my grasp, and I was paralyzed. Would I really do nothing?
I left my cell and stalked around the unit, which took about three minutes. Nora was nowhere to be found. Jae gestured me over. “C’mon, Piper, play with us.”
Jae and her cousin riffed back and forth as we played cards. Slice was full of very fu
By the time the di
I was crossing the unit to return my tray when I saw Nora headed toward me. I squared my shoulders and adopted my most arctic ice-queen stare. As we passed, she looked at me uncertainly.
“Hi,” she said, almost under her breath.
I stalked by her.
“What happened?” asked Jae, concerned.
“Tried to say hello to me.” I shook my head, and we started playing cards again. “You know, the thing I can’t figure out is why she’s here and her sister isn’t.”
“Her sister?”
“Yeah, her sister’s my codefendant too. She’s doing time in Kentucky.”
The next morning at breakfast, there was Hester. That was the way it was in Oklahoma -new people materialized in the middle of the night while you were locked down in the cells. They popped up at breakfast, a day-making novelty. I witnessed the sisters’ reunion from my turf-they hugged ecstatically and headed to a corner to confer.
My companions took note. “You need to kill sis, too?” asked Slice.
“Nah, I never had any beef with Hester-she’s all right.”
Time had been kinder to Hester. She looked more or less the same, perhaps due to her old chicken bone charms: long reddish curly hair, a faraway but quizzical expression, and a witchy, mystical demeanor.
For the weeks that we spent in Oklahoma City, I refused to acknowledge the sisters’ presence. Max lockdown was torturous in its monotony and lack of stimulation; the hours and the days crawled by. Flights arrived and departed almost every day, but you never knew when you might be put on one. It was the perfect realization of limbo-departure from one realm of being, waiting to arrive at another. Oklahoma City made me homesick for the Danbury Camp, a surreal and disturbing feeling. I was accustomed to hours of strenuous activity every day, between working construction, ru
I was lucky to have Jae by my side to share the stress and uncertainty and to blow off steam, and her cousin was fu
“Guy jumped her, tried to rape her, and he cut her with a box cutter. Hundred stitches.” Pause. “He’s in jail now.” And the nickname? “It’s her favorite drink!”
It was easy to lose track of what day it was-there were no newspapers, no magazines, no mail, and since I avoided the TV rooms, no significant way to tell one day from the next. You can only play so many games of gin. I tried to count off which day was January 12, when Pop would be released from Danbury. I couldn’t talk to Larry on the pay phone, and there were no clear windows, so I couldn’t even watch the progression of the sun. I wasn’t remotely interested in messing with prison pussy, one of the only available distractions. I learned dominoes. And I learned to understand the true punishment of repetition without reward. How could anyone do significant amounts of time in a setting like this without losing their mind?
No one was all that inclined to be social with strangers, but some limited intrigue took place around cigarettes. In Danbury, the opportunities for hustle were many. But in Oklahoma City, the only things on the market were sex, other people’s psych meds, and, most important, nicotine. Prisoners who volunteered as orderlies got to “shop,” but all there was to buy were cigarettes. Once a week, when the cigarettes got doled out, there would be frenzy right below the surface, threatening to bust out. The orderlies were either companionable and split their cigs up into smaller “rollies,” to be shared out of the milk of human kindness, or were paid in psych meds, which would help you sleep away the days like LaKeesha. I found the whole deal completely stressful and was glad I didn’t smoke. My hair was turning into a rat’s nest absent conditioner-all we had were little packets of shampoo. Finally, I turned to scavenging packets of mayo
Suddenly Jae and Slice got shipped out. At four A.M. Jae and I said goodbye through the thick glass rectangle in my door. “Stick next to Slice!” I said. “I’ll track you down after I get home!”
Jae fixed me with her huge liquid brown eyes, sweet and sad and scared. “Be careful, Piper!” she said. “And remember the Vaseline trick I told you!”
“I will!” I waved goodbye through the inches of glass. When they let us out for breakfast two hours later, I felt truly alone, left to navigate the seas myself. I missed my girls, and I glared across the unit in Nora’s direction. I knew that whatever my immediate future held, it included her.
A few days later my bunkie LaKeesha left for Danbury. I was jealous. As she was scrambling into her clothes, I instructed her, “When you get to the Camp, tell Toni, that’s the town driver, that you saw Piper in Oklahoma City and she’s okay, she says hello.”
“Okay, okay… wait, who is Piper?”