English Studies Forum

American Pie

Maggie Jaffe

Corcoran Correctional Facility, the largest in North America, is known for its cramped and over-crowded visitor's center, making it difficult to monitor us.  To remedy this, officials divided the round tables into symmetrical quarters with white duct tape labeled "inmate" and "visitor."  The prisoner must sit facing the guards while his visitors flank him on all sides.  When I move my chair out of my designated quarter, a guard reprimands me.  Christopher and I go outside to the caged perimeter, stop to light cigarettes and to whisper.  I'm careful to hold onto the matches, but a guard confiscates them, and in a high-pitched voice she orders us to keep to the right.  We mock goose-step, circling soot-covered plastic tables bolted into cement.  I think of Tacitus hunched over a graffitied wooden table, draining his glass of red wine, transcribing the last days of Empire: 

The more corrupt the Republic,

the more numerous its laws.

So, how are you? C. asks, smiling.  Before I can answer, he whispers, Listen, slipping me a folded-up note under the table, there's something you have to do.