Turning the Tables: From Housewife to Inmate and Back Again (21 page)

T
hings were going well for me so far. I was calling home every day, emailing with family and friends, and trying to fill my day by working out as much as I could. I had made friends, and the women respected me and, for the most part, left me alone.

Or so I thought . . .

I found out that lots of rumors were flying around the camp about me. One rumor? That I had hired a huge black woman with dreadlocks to be my bodyguard. I thought that was hilarious. I didn’t hire anyone to be my bodyguard, for God’s sake. When I first got here, though, this towering Big Bertha type told me on the sly that she would look out for me. Protect me. Kick anyone’s ass who dared to mess with me. I told her she didn’t have to do that, but she did it anyway. Wherever I went, she would sit near me and look menacingly at anyone who came near me. Maybe that’s where the rumor started?

One of my bunkies, of course, had dreadlocks, so when I told her what I’d heard, we both laughed. Then some people told me that there were rumors flying around that I was “popping pills to stay sane” in there. And that I was eating my stress away by gorging myself on cookies and cake. How did these stupid stories get started? I was barely eating pasta! Then I heard that I was causing trouble at “my job in the laundry room.” Oh my God. I hadn’t even been assigned a job yet. I had no idea where they were getting this stuff from . . . and I wondered if any of it was leaking to the outside.

Well, it was. Some of earlier stories about me said a woman with long dreads tried to become my bodyguard, but that I ignored her (kind of true). Another said I had found a personal trainer—a woman who taught exercise classes there, so I was working out all the time. (Also kind of true—I did work out a lot with Nikki, but she wasn’t my personal trainer. My God! Like you could have one in prison!) Another story said that inmates would leave out magazines with nasty stories about me on the cover, so I could see them and get upset. Not true
at all
. Yet another article said that I was lucky to get a top bunk. Well, dummies, the bottom bunk is the one you want, because it’s easier to get in and out of. Usually inmates with seniority get a bottom bunk. So they were wrong about that, too.

I knew people would be writing about me while I was in Danbury. But I didn’t like what they were writing and the slant they took—or that some people in the camp believed the things they were hearing. But again, people always love to gossip and make up stories—and from what I’ve learned, you have to do your best to ignore it.

Since I had no publicist at the time, my lawyer Jim had to field calls from the media—dozens and dozens of them—about everything from the true length of my prison stay to whether I sat on a toilet seat or not. The funny thing was, they weren’t reporting on the things that really
were
happening to me—like the nightly sex sessions my bunkies were having in our room with their partners. When I got back to my room at seven-thirty one night, early in my stay, after I had gone to the gym and checked my emails, the lights were out. Weird, I thought. Then I saw not one, but
two
roommates going at it with their girlfriends. I mean, come on. This was getting old. I sighed and climbed up into my bed. But with four women moaning, groaning, and breathing heavily, there was no way I could sleep. Plus, my stomach was killing me—again—from the food I was eating. It had been bugging me for a while. I was trying to eat well, but something in the food was not agreeing with me. At home, I only cooked lean meats, chicken, fish, and tons of vegetables in olive oil. I ate a ton of fruits and nuts. Maybe it was the dinner I’d had? Pasta and chili made out of chopped meat, salad, and bread. I didn’t know what was wrong. And I couldn’t stand being in the room with these four. So I climbed back down off the bunk and headed to Tonya’s room, where she painted my nails again. There’s nothing like a little girl time to make you feel better—even in prison.

I
was working out with Nikki the next day, doing this great Jillian Michaels workout DVD they had in the gym, when a woman with the frizziest hair I have ever seen came up to me to tell me to really be careful of certain inmates.

“There are good people in here, but there are also some really bad people, who want to become your friend for all kinds of reasons,” she said. “Don’t trust ’em.”

She told me that someone in there was leaking stuff about me to the media. I just ignored it because most of what was leaked was untrue. But still, I didn’t like being the focus of so many of these women, especially if they thought they could make money off me.

When the inmate left, Nikki said, “Just keep your eyes open at all times.”

I tried to shrug all of this off, but I still felt uneasy about it. I felt like everyone was always up in my business, and I was already getting sick of it. So I went to see one of the counselors who oversaw us (and who had processed me the night I got there). I liked her a lot. She was always fair with me, which I appreciated. I asked her if I could move downstairs to A Dorm with Tonya, where it was quieter, more private and there wasn’t as much sex going on. (Or so I thought.) I would only have one bunkie down there, which was more my style. I was tired of all the drama where I was living, and everyone having a say about every move I made (kinda reminded me of being on
RHONJ
 . . .). She said that some of my roommates who had been there longer would be moved before me and that I would have to wait. No surprise there, I guess.

Just like the real world, prison is all about location, location, location. You wanted the best real estate you could get. I started out in a room in a whole other block, which is where all the newbies go. But then, you could get moved to one of three different dorms: A, B, or C Dorm. I wanted to move to A Dorm, where Tonya lived. Now, everyone wanted to get into A Dorm, because they viewed it as the best one in the place, which is why they called it
bougie
—upper class or pretentious. I originally thought that there wasn’t much sex happening there, but later on I learned that there was so much boom boom going on, that they called it Vagina Heights! B Dorm, which is also known as “the Suburbs,” is rated as second best. Since there was always a lot of action going on there, it was considered one of the rowdier dorms. I later found out there was a row of girls there who were lesbians or gay for the stay—women who instantly became straight the moment they walked out of the prison doors. C Dorm was considered the worst of the three, which is why they called it the Ghetto. The dorms all looked the same to me, but other inmates viewed it as the difference between getting a room at a fleabag motel versus The Beverly Hills Hotel. The women there were very into status, and for whatever reason, A Dorm is where everyone wanted to be.

F
ridays were room inspection day, just like in the army. You had to clean your room like crazy before the officials came to look over every nook and cranny of your living space. Of course, that wasn’t a problem for me since I am beyond organized. I still felt like a little kid whose parents were checking to make sure my room was neat. But you know how it is with some people. They don’t care and leave their parts of the room a mess.

Our room failed that first Friday. That means we were now the last ones called to breakfast, lunch, or dinner until we cleaned up our act. I always went to the short line for my meals, when we got to eat earlier than everyone else, so that didn’t affect me . . . thank goodness.

While you stood up straight, by the side of your bunk, with your ID card visible, they would evaluate how your bed was made, whether your locker and the plastic bin they gave you were organized, and how clean the room was overall.

We failed because they found dust under two beds. My downstairs bunkie said they found the dust under the other bunks—not ours. I was happy about that because I always kept the floor clean in our room. I swept and washed it a couple times a week. I cleaned the area under my bunk, but now I would have to start doing the other ones, too. Whatever. Of course, they were also looking for contraband, and I had none, so I was good on that score. So far, none of my roommates seemed to have any either, which made me feel better. I didn’t want the officers to think I had anything to do with it if they did have something illegal in our room. (I asked one of them later on, “What if someone plants something in my room or locker?” His response? “Just make sure to always lock your locker.”)

I got invited to another party that night. I never expected they’d have so many parties in prison! This one was for Zeezee, who was going away to a drug program. They went all out for this party. There was a big spread—things the ladies got from the commissary and that they made themselves. When I worked on my cookbooks, I threw in some recipes that I had made up myself. Well, I found out that the women did the same thing at the camp. One of their favorite concoctions was the “potato log.” They would crush up a bag of potato chips, add water to that in a Tupperware container, and then mix that concoction with onions, peppers, cheese, chicken, sausage, or tuna fish, depending on what they had access to at the moment, and cook it in the microwave we shared. It was actually pretty good, though I’m not sure I will be making that at home . . .

I was chatting with a couple of the ladies at the party when a bunch of them started dancing. They were playing songs by Dr. Dre, Jay Z, Nelly, and 2 Chainz—and asked me to come dance. I was nervous to dance because I didn’t want that to get out and have it taken the wrong way somehow. I thought it was sad that I couldn’t even dance, which I love to do, out of fear that someone would leak it and it would get spun in a bad way, one way or another. It made me mad that I had to watch my every step, even in there. I danced anyway, and the girls there told me later that they loved that I got out there and did my thing (I am a former club girl, after all!). As I said early on, fame was a tremendous blessing—but it could be a big, giant curse at the same time.

When I was getting ready to leave, some of the ladies came up to me and asked me if I had a good time. One of them said, “I know this isn’t what you’re used to, but we try our best in here.” I told her I had a good time and thanked them all for inviting me. One of the things I truly learned in there was that every inmate is a person who’s made bad choices, or who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just because they—I mean
we
—were in prison doesn’t make us rotten to our core, and it surely doesn’t make us immune to emotions. I was just so happy that she’d even think to check in on me. It’s the little things that truly matter.

S
ince the day I got to prison, my stomach had been hurting. I came to learn that a lot of the food there had expired. You could see the freezer burn on the pork chops or the chicken sometimes. So I refused to eat some of the beef, pork, and even chicken, depending on what it looked like. If it looked even remotely bad, I wouldn’t touch it. Sometimes the hamburgers looked like hockey pucks. Even some of the food you could buy in the commissary had expired, like the potato chips. One day one of the women told me that the meat they were serving was two years old. I asked one of the officers about it and he said, “That’s not true.” So I asked my friend who prepared meals in the kitchen.

“Oh, no. It’s not two years old. No way. It’s one and a half years old!”

We laughed, because if we didn’t, we would cry.

Sometimes the food had maggots in it, too, like the rice, for example. To me, that was the worst thing I had ever seen. You didn’t want to eat for a couple days after that. That’s when I would head to the commissary and buy packets of tuna fish, peanut butter, rice cakes, unsalted peanuts, unsalted almonds, and honey whole wheat pretzels, in case I couldn’t bear to lift my fork off the plate in the dining room. I would say it took almost four months for my body to get used to the food there. I felt sick all the time.

The other ladies also taught me to buy mild pepper mix, jalapeño peppers, and Louisiana hot sauce to add to the food that they give us. Anything to make it go down better.

Don’t get me wrong. A lot of what they made in there was really good. I loved the ladies in the kitchen. They worked really hard and did a good job. It wasn’t them. Just look at what they had to work with.

So we would always inspect our food before we ate it, to see if anything was crawling around in there. Sometimes inmates found green bugs in the salad. One time my friend told me that a piece of her lettuce literally
flew
off her plate!

Although I only had boat shoes and no ruby slippers, I kept telling myself,
“There’s no place like home . . . there’s no place like home . . .”

T
he last time I was in school was when I went to Berkeley College in New Jersey, where I got my associate degree in fashion merchandising and management, so I hadn’t gotten a report card in decades. But one of the things I didn’t know about prison was that yes, you got report cards in there, too. Midway through my first month at Danbury, I had to go to my first program review. I had no idea what a program review was, but Jim told me it was like your prison report card and that down the road it could help, so he told me to be agreeable and positive.
This should be fun,
I thought to myself, but I went with a smile on my face, just like Jim told me. When I got my first report back, I saw that they had checked off Intellectual Functioning and said that I had no intellectual deficits and that I wasn’t mentally ill. Whew, what a relief (as if I didn’t know that already).