CHAPTER 13. Thirty-five and Still Alive

The red maple and sourwood trees were already starting to change color, which thrilled me with the promise of an early fall and the speedy arrival of winter. In Danbury I had learned to hasten the days by chasing the enjoyment in them, no matter how elusive. Some people on the outside look for what is amiss in every interaction, every relationship, and every meal; they are always trying to hang their mortality on improvement. It was incredibly liberating to instead tackle the trick of making each day fly more quickly.

“Time, be my friend,” I repeated every day. Soon I would go down to the track and try to chase the day away by running in circles. Even under very bad circumstances life still held its pleasures, like running and Natalie’s homemade cookies and Pop’s stories. It was these simple things that were within your grasp in the degraded circumstances of life in prison; the things you could do yourself, or the small kindnesses one prisoner could extend to another.

I needed some track time after a long day of painting the lobby down the hill. It was the new warden’s first day on the job, and to celebrate, I overheard that they shook down the whole FCI, a tremendous and rare undertaking encompassing twelve units of twelve hundred women and every one of their lockers. I was pretty sure the Camp’s turn would come quickly. The feds were looking for cigarettes.

The Bureau of Prisons had decreed that all of its institutions were to go smoke-free by 2008. It put financial incentives in place for prisons to do it even before the deadline. Warden Deboo’s parting shot to the women of Danbury was to impose the ban, to officially take hold on September 1. The preceding months had seen extensive communications about the ban. First of all, the commissary ginned up the demand for cigarettes in July, trying to get rid of their stock. Then in August everyone had one month in which to smoke their brains out before going cold turkey on one of the most addictive drugs known to man.

Truthfully, I didn’t much care about the smoking ban. I would never have admitted it to Larry or my mother in the visiting room, but I’d have a social cigarette now and then with Allie B. or Little Janet or Jae. A pal from the electric shop had taught me how to make a lighter out of a scrap of tinsel, two AA batteries, bits of copper wire, and some black electricians’ tape. But I could do without it all easily. Cigarettes were killing the “real” smokers, though, and the long twice-daily pill line included not just the people getting psych meds but also women who desperately needed their heart or diabetes medication to stay standing. According to the CDC, cigarettes kill over 435,000 people a year in the United States. Most of us in Danbury were locked away for trading in illegal drugs. The annual death toll of illegal drug addicts, according to the same government study? Seventeen thousand. Heroin or coffin nails, you be the judge.

When September rolled around, a lot of prisoners were flat-out depressed. They sneaked smokes in absurd spots, practically begging to be caught. Every time I rounded the track, I’d surprise a new group rustling in the bushes. Then the shakedowns began in earnest, and they started hauling people off to the SHU. The ever-canny Pop had negotiated with her work supervisor that she’d be allowed one protected smoke at the end of her shift and a safe hidey-hole in the kitchen.

The Camp population continued to dwindle, with many empty beds. The place felt quiet, which was nice, but I missed my loud friends and neighbors who had departed: Allie B., Colleen, and Lili Cabrales. As soon as the “Martha moratorium” was lifted, the Camp would get dozens of freaks rushed in, ruining our temporarily placid prison lives. Per Larry’s instructions, I had been watching more television but not the news. The presidential campaign was barely noted on the inside. Instead, I joined the crowd for the much-anticipated Video Music Awards in August. “What up, B?” asked Jay-Z, and the visiting room filled with squeals. In prison, everyone sings along.

SEPTEMBER 16 was the day of the prison Job Fair, an annual Danbury FCI event that paid lip service to the fact that its prisoners would rejoin the world. So far I had witnessed no meaningful effort to prepare inmates for successful reentry into society, other than the handful of women who had gone through the intensive drug treatment program. Maybe the Job Fair would impart some useful information to the crowd.

I was lucky to have a job waiting for me when I went home: a generous friend had created a position for me at the company he ran. Every time he came to visit me, Dan would say, “Would you hurry up and get out of here? The marketing department needs you!”

Hardly any of the women I knew in Danbury were as fortunate. The top three worries for women getting released from prison are usually: reuniting with their children (if they are a single mother, they have often lost their parental rights); housing (a huge problem for people with a record); and employment. I had written enough jailhouse résumés by now to know that a lot of the ladies had only worked in the (enormous) underground economy. Outside the mainstream, they didn’t have the first notion of how to break into it. So far, nothing about prison was changing that reality.

A bald guy from the central BOP office in Washington, who seemed nervous, opened the Fair and welcomed us. Programs were handed out, folded photocopies with a drawing of an owl on the cover. Below the owl it read: BE WISE-Women In Secured Employment. On the back of the program were Andy Rooney quotes.

Various companies had committed to participating in the event, many of them nonprofits. The day would include a panel discussion on “Emerging Jobs in the Workforce & How to Land One,” mock job interviews, and Mary Wilson, the legendary Motown singer from the Supremes, was going to deliver a motivational speech. That I had to see. But first, Professional Appareling!

Professional Appareling was run by Dress for Success, the nonprofit that helps disadvantaged women get business-appropriate clothes. A jovial middle-aged woman briefed us on the dos and don’ts of outfits for job interviews, then asked for volunteers. Vanessa almost broke her seatmate’s nose waving her arm madly, so the woman had no choice but to pick her. And then in the blink of an eye I found myself standing at the front of the room with my Amazonian neighbor, Delicious, and Pom-Pom. “These lovely ladies are going to help us to demonstrate the dos and don’ts,” said the volunteer brightly.

She herded us into the bathroom, then passed out togs. She gave Delicious a sharp, almost Japanese-looking black suit; Pom-Pom, a pink suit that looked like she was going to church in the South. I got a hideously dowdy and itchy burgundy outfit. And for Vanessa? A fuchsia silk cocktail dress with beading on the chest. “Hurry up ladies!”

We were like schoolgirls getting into costume for the senior show, giggling and fussing with the unfamiliar street clothes. “Is this right?” asked Delicious, and we fixed the long asymmetrical skirt on her. Pom-Pom looked pretty in pink-who knew?

But Vanessa was in a state of distress. “Piper, I can’t zip this, help me!” My neighbor’s pride and joy were busting out of the too-small cocktail dress. She looked like she was going to cry if she didn’t get to wear it.

“Oh, man, Vanessa, I don’t know. Okay, hold still… now suck it in!” I inched the zipper up. “Suck it in, bitch, it’s almost there!” She arched her back, sucked wind, and I got the back of the dress closed over the broad V of her shoulders. “Just don’t breathe, and you’ll be fine.”

The four of us looked each other over. “P-I Piper, put your hair up. Be more professional and shit,” advised Delicious. I scraped my hair back into a quick bun. Now it was time to show off.

We each got a turn on the catwalk, much to the glee of our fellow prisoners, who whooped and whistled. They went bananas when they caught sight of Vanessa, who basked in the glory, tossing her curls. Then we were lined up, and the volunteer explained who was a job-interview do, and who was a don’t. Delicious’s outfit was deemed too “edgy”; Pom-Pom’s was too “sweet.” Vanessa looked crestfallen when she heard that she was wearing “the last kind 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.

MARTHA STEWART 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 boards. It was like a big hotel.”

It was Levy, all right. After being whisked away to testify against her chiseler ex-boyfriend, she had reappeared in the Camp for one short week in June, and then she was released, her six-month sentence over. Apparently her stay had been far more enjoyable than she had let on when we had the pleasure of her company. She was singing the prison’s praises in the paper, going on about how much she had enjoyed the “wide range of classes” on offer plus:

“two libraries with a wide array of books and magazines, including Town and Country and People.” The food, Barbara said, was nothing short of “amazing.”

“This is a place that is so magnificent,” she said.

I pictured Levy, swollen with hives, looking like the Elephant Man, crying every single day over her six-month sentence and sneering at anyone she thought was not “classy.”

“I had my hair done every week,” Barbara said. “At home I don’t take care of me. I take care of my kids. I take care of my house. I had time there to take care of me. When I came home, I raised my standard of living a little bit.”

She hastened to add that the massages “are on the up-and-up,” and laughs when friends ask whether she was “attacked”-sexually assaulted-during her stay. “I’d say, ‘Are you kidding? Most people there were so classy.’”

The reporter got many minor facts wrong, such as that there were four nuns resident, and that we could buy CD players at the commissary. Women were outraged by the false claim that we could buy Häagen-Dazs ice cream. The Camp freaked out, issuing loud threats against the now-free Levy. Boo Clemmons was beside herself.

“Häagen-motherfuckin-Dazs! Hotel! That lying little bitch better hope she don’t violate, because if I get hold of her, she’s going to think she checked into Motel Hell!”

“I think Martha will be assigned to the kitchen and she will cook and she will be happy,” Barbara ventured.

I imagined Martha Stewart trying to take over Pop’s kitchen. That would be better than Godzilla vs. Mothra.

Pop was really upset, but not about the prospect of Martha in the mess hall. “Piper, I just don’t understand it. Why would she lie? You have the opportunity to get the truth out there about this place, and instead she makes up these lies? We have nothing here, and she makes it sound like a picnic, with her fucking six-month sentence. Try living here ten years!”

I thought I knew why Levy had lied. She didn’t want to admit to herself, let alone to the outside world, that she had been placed in a ghetto, just as ghetto as they had once had in Poland. Prison is quite literally a ghetto in the most classic sense of the world, a place where the U.S. government now puts not only the dangerous but also the inconvenient-people who are mentally ill, people who are addicts, people who are poor and uneducated and unskilled. Meanwhile the ghetto in the outside world is a prison as well, and a much more difficult one to escape from than this correctional compound. In fact, there is basically a revolving door between our urban and rural ghettos and the formal ghetto of our prison system.

It was too painful, I thought, for Levy and others (especially the middle-class prisoners) to admit that they had been classed as undesirables, compelled against their will into containment, and forced into scarcity without even the dignity of chosen austerity. So instead she said it was Club Fed.

MY NEIGHBOR Vanessa had given me an in-depth account of how, as young Richard, she had been banned from her high school prom for planning to wear a dress (she whipped up some sequined palazzo pants, found a sympathetic PTA mom to approve them, and attended in triumph). But I never knew what had landed her in federal prison, or why she’d first been designated to a high-security facility. I was pretty sure she wasn’t in prison for a drug crime, and I had a suspicion or intimation that she’d given the feds a bit of a chase before being taken into custody, which is probably why she’d ended up down the hill. She reminded me of the gay males and freshly females I had known in San Francisco and New York -smart, snappy, witty, curious about the world.

I was more curious about Vanessa’s history than about most of my fellow inmates, particularly after she made an unusual appearance in the visiting room one weekend. There she was, hair and makeup perfect, uniform pressed, towering over her visitor, a tiny, beautifully dressed white woman with snow-white hair. They stood together at the vending machines, their backs to me, the old lady in soft periwinkle blue, Vanessa displaying broad shoulders and narrow hips that any man would have envied.

“Did you have a nice visit?” I asked afterward, not hiding my curiosity.

“Oh yes! That was my grandmother!” she replied, lighting up. I was further intrigued, but not enlightened.

I was definitely going to miss her-she was going home in a few weeks. As her release date neared, Vanessa got increasingly anxious, with a decided uptick in religious observance. Many women grow very, very nervous before they go back to the outside world-they face uncertain futures. I think that Vanessa felt this way. But her nerves did nothing to stop our enthusiastic planning for her surprise going-home party, spearheaded by Wainwright and Lionnel.

It was a grand affair. Many cooks contributed microwave treats, and it resembled a church picnic, with all of the attendant food rivalries over who prepared the best dishes. There were chilaquiles, fried noodles, and prison cheesecake-my specialty. Best of all, there was a platter of deviled eggs-a really challenging contraband item to produce.

We all huddled in one of the empty classrooms, waiting for the Diva. “Shhhhhhhhh!! I hear her!” someone said, dousing the light. When we all shouted “Surprise!” she feigned astonishment graciously, although her fresh makeup had been applied with extra care. At this point the entire prison choir launched into song, led by Wainwright, who soloed beautifully on “Take Me to the Rock.” Tops in the singing department was Delicious, who had shaved for the occasion-Delicious had a voice that could really give you goosebumps, in a good way. She had to turn and face the wall while she sang for Vanessa so she wouldn’t break down and cry. After the singing and the eating, the guest of honor got up and called out to each person by name, cheerfully reminding us that Jesus was watching over everyone and had brought her to us. She said thank you, with beautiful sincerity, for helping her through her time at Danbury.

“I had to come here,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height, “to become a real woman.”

SATURDAY NIGHT, movie night, was special, in an old-fashioned let’s-go-to-the-picture-show way. But this particular Saturday was extra, extra special. Tonight the lucky ladies of Danbury were going to get a tremendous treat. The institutional movie this week was the remake of Walking Tall, the classic vigilante revenge fantasy, starring Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock.

I am confident that someday in the future The Rock, who was once a professional wrestler, will run for president of the United States, and I think that he will win. I have seen with my own eyes the power of The Rock. The Rock is a uniter, not a divider. When the BOP showed Walking Tall, the turnout for every screening all weekend long was unprecedented. The Rock has an effect on women that transcends divisions of race, age, cultural background-even social class, the most impenetrable barrier in America. Black, white, Spanish, old, young, all women are hot for The Rock. Even the lesbians agreed that he was mighty easy on the eyes.

In preparation for The Rock, we observed our usual Saturday-night rituals. After visiting hours and chow were over, Pop and her crew finished cleanup in the dining hall, and I was handed our special movie snacks-nachos tonight, my favorite. Then it was on me, the runner, to whisk the food out of the kitchen to safety without getting busted by a CO. I usually slipped through C Dorm, dropped my Tupperware bowl and Pop’s in my cube, and delivered bowls to Toni and Rosemarie, our movie companions.

It was Rosemarie who set up all the chairs in the visiting room for movie night. This meant that she controlled the setup of the special “reserved” chairs for certain people, including our four at the back of the room. Next to our reserved chairs was one of those random pieces of prison furniture, a tall narrow table, which served as our sideboard. I had the job of setting up another Tupperware bowl filled with ice for Pop’s sodas and bringing up the food and napkins when it was time for the movie. Pop, who reported for work in the kitchen at five A.M. and worked all day long through the evening meal, was rarely seen in anything but a hairnet and kitchen scrubs. But on movie nights, just before the screening was to begin, Pop would sweep into the room, freshly showered and clad in pale blue men’s pajamas.

The pajamas were one of those elusive items that had once been sold by the commissary but then were discontinued. They were the plainest men’s pajamas, of a semisheer white cotton-poly. (Pop’s had somehow been dyed for her.) I had wanted a pair desperately for months after arriving in prison. So when Pop presented me with a specially procured pair, I did an ecstatic dance around her cube, hopping madly until I beaned myself on the metal bunk bed frame. Now Toni and Rosemarie would say, “Do the pajama dance, Piper!” and I would dance around in my PJs, as ecstatic as Snoopy doing the Suppertime Dance. The pajamas were not for sleeping. I only wore them on the weekends, to movie night or other special occasions, when I wanted to look pretty. I felt so damn good in those pajamas.

Pop loved Walking Tall. She preferred a straightforward movie storyline, with maybe a little romance thrown in. If the movie was sappy, she would cry, and I would make fun of her, and she would tell me to shut up. She wept at Radio, while I rolled my eyes at the Italian Twins.

After House of Sand and Fog, she turned to me. “Did you like that?”

I shrugged. “Eh? It was okay.”

“I thought that was your kind of movie.”

I would never live down the shame of having enthusiastically recommended Lost in Translation when it had screened earlier in the year. The ladies of Danbury widely and loudly declared it “the worst movie ever.” Boo Clemmons laughed, shaking her head. “All that talking, and Bill Murray doesn’t even get to fuck her.”

Movie night was as much about eating as anything else. Pop would prepare a special Saturday movie meal that was a respite from the endless march of starch in the dining hall dictated by the BOP. The competitive tension of the salad bar on a rare day when broccoli or spinach or-miracle of miracles-sliced onions appeared was a welcome change from the monotony of cucumbers and raw cauliflower-I refused to live on potatoes and white rice. I would wield the plastic tongs with a smile, eyeing Carlotta Alvarado across the salad bar as we both tried to fill our little bowls with the good vegetables faster than the other-me to wolf down immediately with oil and vinegar, she to smuggle out in her pants to cook later.

Chicken day was pandemonium. First of all, everyone wanted to get as much chicken as the kitchen line workers would give them. This is where it came in handy to be in tight with Pop. The rules of scarcity govern prison life: accumulate when the opportunity presents itself, figure out what to do with your loot later.

Sometimes, however, there were plans for that chicken. Often on a chicken day Rosemarie would plan to cook us a special meal. Toni and I would be asked to abstain from chicken-eating in the chow hall and to instead stick the bird in our pants, to be smuggled out for use in some elaborate, quasi-Tex-Mex creation later that evening. This required a plastic Baggie or a clean hair net, procured from a kitchen worker or an orderly. Slip the foodstuffs into the appropriate wrapping at the table, shove it down the front of your pants, and stroll out as nonchalantly as you could with contraband chicken riding on your hip bone.

The list of important things a prisoner has to lose is very short: good time, visiting privileges, phone access, housing assignment, work assignment, participation in programs. That’s basically it. If they catch you stealing onions, a warden can take one of those things away, or can give you extra work. Other than that, the only other option is the SHU. So will a warden be willing to lock up onion thieves and chicken smugglers in Seg?

Let’s put it another way: room in the SHU is a finite resource, and the warden and his staff have to use it judiciously. Fill the SHU up with chickenshit offenders, and then what are you going to do with someone who’s actually done something serious?

BIRTHDAYS WERE a true oddity in prison. Many people refused to reveal theirs, whether out of paranoia or simply because they didn’t want it observed by others. I was not one of these holdouts and was trying hard to be upbeat about celebrating my birthday in Danbury, telling myself things like “At least it’s only one,” and “At least it’s not forty.”

In a peculiar Camp ritual, a prisoner’s pals sneak in the dark of night to decorate her cube with handmade “Happy Birthday” signs, magazine collages, and candy bars, all of which they would tape to the outside of her living quarters while she slept. These illegal decorations were tolerated by the guards for the day but then had to be taken down by the birthday girl. I hoped I would get a Dove chocolate bar.

The day before my birthday found me doing my laps after the dinner meal, when Amy materialized by the side of the track. “Pop wants you, Piper.”

“Can’t it wait?” This was highly irregular.

“She says it’s important!”

I trotted up the steps and started toward the kitchen.

“No, she’s up in the visiting room.” I followed Amy up through the double doors.

“Surprise!”

I was really stunned. Card tables had been pushed together to make a long banquet, and around the table were an odd assortment of prisoners, my friends. Jae, Toni, Rosemarie, Amy, Pennsatucky, Doris, Camila, Yoga Janet, Little Janet, Mrs. Jones, Annette. Black, white, Spanish, old, young.

And of course there was Pop, beaming and gleeful. “You were really surprised, weren’t you?”

“I’m shocked, Pop, not just surprised. Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me. Rosemarie and Toni planned the whole thing.”

So I thanked the Italian Twins, proclaiming the effectiveness of their surprise strategy and thanking everyone profusely. There were lots of Tupperware bowls filled with goodies. Rosemarie had worked “like a Hebrew slave” to produce a prison banquet. Chilaquiles, chicken enchiladas, cheesecake, banana pudding. Everybody ate and chatted, and I was presented with a big birthday card hand-drawn on a manila folder featuring a celebrating Pooh Bear winking lecherously. Jae slipped me her own handmade card, featuring leaping dolphins, the cousins of my tattoo. What she said in that card was echoed by the notes the others had written in the group card: “I never thought I would find a friend like you here.”

After the party had broken up, Pop summoned me to her cube. “I got something for you.” I sat down on her footstool and looked at her eagerly. What could it be? Pop wouldn’t have gotten me anything from commissary-she knew I could get anything I wanted myself. Maybe it was some treat from the depths of her giant locker-SPAM, perhaps?

With great ceremony she presented me with my gift-a beautiful pair of slippers that she had commissioned from one of the skilled crocheters, a Spanish mami. They were ingeniously constructed: double soles from shower shoes were bound together and then completely covered in pink and white cotton yarn crocheted into intricate designs. I held them in my hands, so moved I couldn’t speak.

“Do you like them?” Pop asked. She was smiling, a little nervously, as if maybe I wouldn’t appreciate the gift.

“My god, Pop, they’re so beautiful, I can’t believe it. I can’t even wear them to walk around in, they’re so beautiful I don’t want to ruin them. I love them so much.” I hugged her hard, then put my new handmade slippers on.

“I wanted to get you something special. You understand I couldn’t give to you in front of that whole crew? Ah, they look nice on you. They’ll look nice with your pajamas. Don’t let a CO catch you with them!”

That night, not long after lights out, I heard whispering and tittering immediately outside my cube. Amy was the ringleader of the decoration team, and her couple of shadowy helpmates sounded suspiciously like Doris and Pennsatucky.

In typical form she was soon cursing her accomplices under her breath. “Don’t stick that picture there. What are you, stupid? Put it over here!”

I kept my eyes shut and breathed deeply, pretending to be asleep. It must have been my dreams that were making me smile.

The next morning I stepped out of my cube to survey their work. Glossy photos of models and bottles of liquor decorated my cube, along with “Happy Birthday Piper!!!” I had my Dove bar taped to the wall, plus more candy than I would ever eat. I felt great. All day I received birthday wishes. “Thirty-five and still alive!” said my boss in construction, laughing when I made a face.

In the afternoon I found a delicate little white paper box perched on my locker, hand cut into lacy designs, with a card from Little Janet.

Piper, on your birthday I’m wishing you the best of everything good-health, strength, security, peace of mind. You are an extremely beautiful person inside and out and on this day you are not forgotten. You have been such a good friend I never thought I’d find that here. Thank you crazy girl just for being you. Stay strong and don’t ever feel weak, you will soon be home with the people who love & adore you. I hope you like the little box I made for you:) I made it thinking about you, of course it’s not much but it’s something that should make you smile and it’s different. I will have you in my heart from now and always.

Happy B-Day Piper, may you have many more to come.

Love, Janet

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