“Nearly four years in and I no longer felt like the fearful young woman, innocent of the crime and innocent of the ways of the gray world of prison. I saw them arrive, those youthful ghosts of me. Trembling, weeping, calling for their mothers. I felt for them, but I wasn’t kind to them. Kindness slows the hardening of the carapace you need in prison. Now I felt fully armored by my certainty that my life was fixed in the amber of prison rules, mores, and constant sense of threat – from fellow inmates, from randy guards. Some inmates got through by talking about what they would do when they got out, who they would see, what foods they would enjoy. Not me. By my fourth year, I had accepted this joyless, soul-dead life.”