The audiobook version of Falling has just been released on Amazon and Audible.   Over the next month or so I will be sharing with you some of my favorites stories from Falling to enjoy while you exercise on the treadmill or take your daily walk. In Jail Meeting the Trio

Minimum: Mean Mug School

Halfway through my 6-year sentence, I believed I carried myself like a worthy seasoned felon. That is until I got set up by a conniving young woman with a pretty smile. Pretty Smile left me holding onto stolen property. I discovered the truth when I overhead a woman looking for the exact items before me on the table. I could have lost all my privileges. I could have been sent to The Hole. Sitting nearby were two women who witnessed the entire episode. I asked them, “Do I look like a punk?” 

They both giggled, “You look like a lady from the suburbs,” said the regal Cleopatra. “Show me your mean mug,” demanded Cleo, jutting out her chin and crossing her muscled arms. 

“Yeah,” said the second woman, Mi’ja. She crouched down and frowned, turning into a completely different person. She was frightening. “Mean Mug, OK, I know what that is,” I said. I thought about it like an actor. The girls both crouched forward, waiting and staring. Cleo rolled her jaw to one side. I took a breath, squished up my eyes, wrinkled my nose, and jetted my lips out in a pucker. The girls burst out in laughter. Cleo put her head on the table, her shoulder shook. Mi’ja lay backward on her chair, mouth open, no sound. Recovering, Cleo asked, You still got three year to do. How you gonna make it in here? Looking at Mi’ja, she said, “Maybe she should go to Mean Mug School, teach her the look?”

“I’m in!” I cried.

Miss Clever was released from The Hole after six months for making distributing, and consuming Pruno, homemade prison booze. If a woman was lucky enough to be released from The Hole, she returned to the general population emaciated, and tamed. I had to know what went on back there. Word had gotten around that I was writing. Miss Clever agreed to an interview.

“I was back there long enough to lose about fifteen pounds. Even my eyesight got weird. My ears echoed of months. I heard strange noises from the vent, I hallucinated. Some women swear they hear music or experience hot and cold phenomenon in the room, it’s called Seg-sickness.”

“I remember seeing you across the yard, in a dog kennel. You were waving and calling out our names. We were forbidden to answer. I felt sick inside. It was cruel and unusual punishment for both of us.”

G Unit was the discipline unit and housed the roughest women in the prison. Whether you are a from the Country Club or skid row, it is where everyone begins their prison time. It was where this volleyball mom met Celly, the Alpha of the prison, and my new cellmate. 

I had heard about her since my first days in the Intake Unit. I expected her to be hard-hearted and distant but, from the moment she entered the cell, she said hello with a sweet smile and a tattoo near her eye. As she settled onto her bunk. She began singing in soft beautiful voice. I wasn’t afraid.

“I like that little tattoo by your eye, it looks like a teardrop,” I said. She stopped singing immediately and peeked her head over the edge of the bunk, grinning. 

“You’re really green. You don’t know what that means, do you? I shook my head. “It means you have been to prison or you were ordered to do a hit, and you succeeded. I can mean you were raped.” She withdrew and didn’t offer an explanation for her tattoo. 

I the days that followed, one on one, late into the night, she told me the details of who she was. She was the step-daughter of a dominant Los Angles gang chief. She told her story in a soft voice that didn’t match the razors of her world.

G Unit was the discipline unit and housed the roughest women in the prison. Whether you are a from the Country Club or skid row, it is where everyone begins their prison time. It was where this volleyball mom met Celly, the Alpha of the prison, and my new cellmate. 

I had heard about her since my first days in the Intake Unit. I expected her to be hard-hearted and distant but, from the moment she entered the cell, she said hello with a sweet smile and a tattoo near her eye. As she settled onto her bunk. She began singing in soft beautiful voice. I wasn’t afraid.

“I like that little tattoo by your eye, it looks like a teardrop,” I said. She stopped singing immediately and peeked her head over the edge of the bunk, grinning. 

“You’re really green. You don’t know what that means, do you? I shook my head. “It means you have been to prison or you were ordered to do a hit, and you succeeded. I can mean you were raped.” She withdrew and didn’t offer an explanation for her tattoo. 

I the days that followed, one on one, late into the night, she told me the details of who she was. She was the step-daughter of a dominant Los Angles gang chief. She told her story in a soft voice that didn’t match the razors of her world.

G Unit was the discipline unit and housed the roughest women in the prison. Whether you are a from the Country Club or skid row, it is where everyone begins their prison time. It was where this volleyball mom met Celly, the Alpha of the prison, and my new cellmate. 

I had heard about her since my first days in the Intake Unit. I expected her to be hard-hearted and distant but, from the moment she entered the cell, she said hello with a sweet smile and a tattoo near her eye. As she settled onto her bunk. She began singing in soft beautiful voice. I wasn’t afraid.

“I like that little tattoo by your eye, it looks like a teardrop,” I said. She stopped singing immediately and peeked her head over the edge of the bunk, grinning. 

“You’re really green. You don’t know what that means, do you? I shook my head. “It means you have been to prison or you were ordered to do a hit, and you succeeded. I can mean you were raped.” She withdrew and didn’t offer an explanation for her tattoo. 

I the days that followed, one on one, late into the night, she told me the details of who she was. She was the step-daughter of a dominant Los Angles gang chief. She told her story in a soft voice that didn’t match the razors of her world.

Minimum: Mean Mug School

Minimum: Mean Mug School