I was about a month into my stay at Lee Arrendale State Prison, known as Alto, when everything changed in an instant. Every inmate is assigned a job detail eventually—it’s like the prison version of career counseling, except with super mundane jobs such as chow hall cook, janitor, and ground maintenance. I got assigned to the fire department, which is like winning a golden ticket by prison standards, That's a story for another time, though. The real perk, though, was getting moved to the honor dorm.
The honor dorm is home to the “lifers,” those women who’ve earned a spot after years of good behavior or who, thanks to life sentences, aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. It’s like being invited into a secret club, except no one wants you there, especially if you’ve skipped the years-long waiting list. I arrived, unceremoniously, like a party crasher.
My new roommates were a mixed bag of reluctant acceptance and thinly veiled irritation. Except for Lowe. Lowe was a stud—what you might picture as the resident tomboy, only with the kind of swagger you’d expect from someone who believes they were the first person to invent finger guns. She had short, rusty-blonde hair and freckles, and when I saw her ID tag with the name “Lorraine,” I had to suppress a smile. Lorraine. It felt like the kind of name you’d find on a florist, not someone who’s run drugs and perfected the art of prison tattooing.
Lowe was the first to welcome me, helping me make my bed for inspection without a second thought. This small gesture was a lifeline. In prison, everyone is either a threat or a potential ally, and Lowe seemed to have decided I was the latter before I even had the chance to screw it up. Typically, when someone offers you a favor or performs one without asking, it's because there are strings attached. Someone making your bed for you - a cornerstone in prison due to daily inspections and consequences - meant you owed them a bottle of Coke or a ramen soup once your were able to get commissary goods. No one does anything for free in prison, but especially the studs.
She was different from the other studs I’d encountered so far. Most are confident to the point of cockiness, strutting through the yard like they own the place, because in a way, they do. They offer companionship, protection, and—if you’re into it—the occasional romantic overture, all in exchange for adoration and commissary goods. It’s like being a minor celebrity in a very specific, very confined ecosystem. Lowe had an adoring fan club, and her girlfriend could change at anytime. Lowe offering kindness to me didn't have the same type of 'payment' standards.
The honor dorm itself was like stepping into a different world. Compared to the cement-and-metal hellscape of general population, it was downright cozy. There was carpet on the floors and a giant industrial fan bolted in front of the window, half-heartedly pushing the stale Georgia air around. We even had our own bathroom—three stalls and two showers—which felt like the Ritz Carlton after sharing a metal toilet two feet from your bunkmate’s head.
The noise level was less apocalyptic, thanks to the enclosed space and a smaller crowd. It was, in many ways, a relief. But that relief came with its own brand of anxiety. I was the new kid in a room full of lifers who’d waited years to be here, and I had zero credibility. They didn't know me, and someone coming into their world that they didn't know, that was a cold welcome.
Lowe seemed oblivious to any tension. She took me under her wing almost immediately, even as her girlfriend glared at me from across the room. The girlfriend dynamic was one I had to get used to fast. In prison, you can be a threat just by existing, which is both exhausting and oddly flattering.
One day, I was stuck in the dorm, waiting for a sick call appointment about my blood pressure, which was continually on the rise in prison. Lowe, who had already finished her early shift in the laundry, plopped down next to me with the day’s newspaper. She immediately flipped to the Sudoku puzzle. I watched, probably with a look of mild surprise.
“You know how to do those?” I asked, trying not to sound condescending.
“Yeah,” she said, filling in numbers with the kind of confidence that intriqued me. “I do them every day if I can.”
“What, are you a Sudoku master or something?” I joked, half impressed, half skeptical.
She glanced at me, grinning. “You’d be surprised how good people are with numbers in here. When you run drugs, you do a lot of math on the fly. It’s like second nature.”
This was one of those moments that prison gave me—a recalibration of my assumptions about the people around me. Lowe wasn’t just doing Sudoku because she liked puzzles. She was doing it because, in a weird way, it was familiar territory.
We became friends during my time at Alto, bonding over shared cups of coffee, as she was one of the few people I met that had a familiar sense of humor and positive outlook on the world.
Lowe had a side hustle—prison tattoos. You’ve probably seen those shows about prison ink, with makeshift tattoo guns and elaborate designs. Here at Alto, we didn’t have the luxury of that kind of creativity. Instead, Lowe used a sewing needle from the laundry detail, sterilized and ready, and pen ink. It was a slow, painful process, one dot at a time, but Lowe was an artist. She could turn a simple design into something beautiful.
I’d had my first tattoo years before—a rainbow African lizard on my stomach, something I really wanted at 19 (and one I still cherish today at 48, having been through childbirth and gallbladder surgery).
After watching weeks of Lowe tattoo other women in the dorm, I wanted something that felt symbolic of the strange, impossible resilience I was cultivating here. I asked Mike to send me a picture of a Japanese symbol for “strength.”
For the price of some number of ramen soups and cigarettes, Lowe chipped away at the tattoo on my ankle, one slow poke at a time. It took a few weeks because if you are caught getting or giving a tattoo in prison, there are serious consequences. I likely would've been kicked off the fire department and removed from the honor dorm if I'd been caught. But Lowe as a pro, so the risks were minimal.
When it was done, I looked down at the black ink, the symbol standing out against my pale skin. It was perfect. And to date, it's still my reminder that whatever difficulties I walk through, I've walked through worse.
It's a subtle nod to the time I spent in prison and to the quiet kindness of a stud named Lorraine. It’s a symbol of strength, yes, but also of the unexpected friendships that can bloom even in the harshest of places.
In the end, I think of Lowe not as the friendly stud or the tattoo artist, but as a reminder of the bizarre, beautiful diversity I found in prison. It’s a place where you meet the kind of people you’d never encounter in your regular life, people who surprise you in ways you never expect. And if you’re lucky, you might just find a Lorraine—someone who teaches you how to solve a puzzle, one block at a time.
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