Next we heard about housing. Housing, employment, health, family-these are the factors that determine whether a person returning home from prison will succeed or fail as a law-abiding citizen. I knew the guy who was leading this session from CMS-he was a nice enough guy. And he talked about what he knew-which was insulation, and aluminum siding, and the best kind of roof to put on your house. He talked about interiors too. I was so disgusted with the BOP’s farcical prerelease program that I just shut my eyes and waited for it to be over.

One woman raised her hand. “Um, Mr. Green, that’s cool and all, but I need to find an apartment to rent. Can you talk a little bit about how to get an apartment, and if there are any programs we could qualify for, you know, affordable housing and stuff? Someone told me I should go to a homeless shelter…”

He looked not irritated, but unsure. “Yeah, well, I don’t really know too much about that. The best way to find an apartment is in the paper, or there are websites now that you can search.”

I wondered how big the BOP’s budget for reentry was.

I STARED intently at Larry across the card table. He looked worn out, with deep dark circles under his eyes. I remembered something Yoga Janet had said to me about our boyfriends: “They do the time with us.”

Every visit now focused on a single topic: me coming home. It didn’t matter if it was Larry, my mother, my brother, or a friend. Among my people there was a collective sense of relief, a feeling that we were almost out of the woods. I didn’t want to be a killjoy, so I tried to hold my sense of dread about the possibility of Chicago in check.

It seemed like half the people in the visiting room would be going home soon-Pop, Delicious, Doris, Sheena. Big Boo Clemmons had gone home after Thanksgiving, and her girlfriend Trina had taken to her bed for a week.

Camila was going too, but not home yet. The Camp was about to send another group down the hill to the drug program, and she was among them. Nina was supposed to come back in January, having completed the program, before being released. I hoped that I would see her before I left.

I sat in Camila’s cube, watching her sort through her stuff. She had just given me a pair of big black work boots. The drug program was very strict, so she had to dispose of contraband before she went, and give away excess clothing. Camila was in a good mood. The drug program would cut her sentence by a year, from seven to six. I worried about her mouth; more than most of the women in the Camp, Camila would talk back to the guards if they made her mad, and she had a temper. The program was strict, and people got kicked out of it all the time.

“I’m going to miss you. Who will I do yoga with?”

She smiled. “You’re going home, tomorrow almost!”

“Camila, you have to promise me you will bite your tongue down there. It’s no joke.”

She made a perplexed face at me. “Bite my tongue? Why would I do that?”

“Bite your tongue. It’s an expression. I mean you can’t talk shit to the officers down there. Even if they’re like Welch or that asshole Richards.”

True to his word, Officer Richards was doing his best to make everyone’s life miserable in the Camp. If DeSimon had reminded me of a lost detachable penis, Richards was like a furious one. He was ludicrously angry; he always looked like his shiny bright pink head might explode at any moment. He was petty, refusing to give a prisoner her letters if she had not been present at mail call, and rigidly enforcing the TV hours, much to the displeasure of the insomniacs. I didn’t care about most of his new-sheriff activities, although Pop was bitter about having foot massages only when he was not on duty.

But he had one habit so evil that I wished debilitating illness would befall him. He screamed on the mic. All the time. The PA system was wired throughout the entire building, with multiple loudspeakers in all the Dorms. These were hung just feet from some women’s beds. And he would get on the PA and just scream invective at us, all evening long, at painful volume. Poor Jae’s bunk was right under a speaker. “Pipes, you think you can bring your electric skills over here?” That was something I was not confident I could do, or get away with, without electrocuting myself or going to the SHU. So we all had to listen to his abuse, and the word torture took on new meaning.

AS CHRISTMAS Day neared, Larry delivered the bad news from my lawyer: I would be called as a witness to Chicago. I felt ill. What if I missed my halfway house date? Actually, there was no question that I was going to miss my halfway house date. Right down to the wire, my past would get in the way of my freedom. And what if I saw Nora? No way were they summoning me and not calling her.

I was nervous, but no one noticed; the Camp was in the midst of holiday mania. It had been building since before Thanksgiving, but now it burst out in force with a team of prisoners busy preparing for the annual Christmas decoration contest. Every unit in the FCI competed-there were a dozen units down in the prison, and the Camp was considered one unit. Leftover decorations from previous years were already hung around the Camp, giant signs that proclaimed NOEL and PEACE in dingy red and white tissue. But the 2004 decorating crew had something new, something big up their khaki sleeves. They toiled in secret, hour after hour in an off-limits television room that had been officially commandeered for them. All we got a glimpse of were the strange papier-mâché creatures they were preparing. “Check out my faggot elf!” one volunteer boasted happily, showing me an odd little humanoid.

The day before Christmas the Camp decorating crew’s handiwork was revealed. It was, frankly, incredible: they had transformed a dingy beige television room with gray linoleum floors into a dazzling Christmas village on a winter night. The particleboard ceiling was concealed by an inky blue starry-night sky, a village was spread out as if in a mountain valley, and the workshops, the barroom, even the carousel were populated by little elves of debatable sexual preference. They frolicked in sparkling snow that drifted across the linoleum. Everything twinkled. Awestruck, we all examined the handiwork with glee. I still have no idea how they pulled it off.

We waited nervously all afternoon for the judging to come down. When the verdict was made public, for the first time ever the Camp was victorious! The guards assured us that the competition had been stiff-down on the compound the Puppy Program was housed in Unit Nine, which also included the psych unit, and they had fashioned antlers for all the Labrador retrievers and created a herd of reindeer. A herd of reindeer!

A special screening of Elf, with free popcorn to boot, was the entire Camp’s prize. Faith, my bunkie, surprised me in our cube: “Piper, do you want to watch Elf together?”

I was taken aback; assuming things went as they always did, I would be watching the movie with Pop, or maybe with the Italian Twins. But it was clearly important to Faith.

“Sure, bunkie. That would be cool.”

The movie was being screened in a different room than was typical, with several showings. Faith and I got our popcorn, grabbed two good seats, and settled in to watch together. We would not be making Christmas cookies, or picking out the perfect tree to decorate, or kissing the people we loved under mistletoe. But Faith could claim her special place in my life, and I had one in hers, especially at Christmastime. And it was cool.

ON DECEMBER 27 people got their Sunday New York Times in the Monday mail. I sidled up to Lombardi and asked, “Hey, could I have the Styles section?”

I scurried up to my bunk with the paper; Larry had a piece in it, and not just any piece. It was the “Modern Love” column, the weekly personal essay about love and relationships. He had been working on it for a long time, and I knew it was about our long-delayed decision to get married. Other than that, I had no idea what the Times readers and I had in store.