The Marijuana Chronicles

Of her eleven students, eight were African American; two were “white”; and one was Mattia, Joseph (she was certain now, the name had had an old-world religious association), who had olive-dark skin with dark eyes, wiry black hair, an aquiline nose, a small neatly trimmed mustache. Like his larger and more burly fellow inmates, Mattia was physically impressive: his shoulders and chest hard-muscled, his neck unusually thick, for one with a relatively slender build. (Clearly, Mattia worked with weights.) Unlike the others he moved gracefully, like an athlete-dancer. He was about five feet eight—inches shorter than the majority of the others.

In the prison classroom Agnes had found herself watching Mattia, in his bright-blue uniform, before she’d known his name, struck by his youthful enthusiasm and energy, the radiance of his face.

Strange, in a way Mattia was ugly. His features seemed wrongly sized for his angular face. His eyes could be stark, staring. Yet Agnes would come to see him as attractive, even rather beautiful—as others in the classroom sat with dutiful expressions, polite fixed smiles or faces slack with boredom, Mattia’s face seemed to glow with an intense i

Agnes had supposed that Mattia was—twenty-five? Twenty-six?

The ages of her students ranged from about twenty to forty, so far as she could determine. It would be slightly shocking to Agnes to learn, after the ten-week course ended, that Mattia was thirty-four; that he’d been in this prison for seven years of a fifteen-year sentence for “involuntary manslaughter”; that he’d enrolled in several courses before hers, but had dropped out before completing them.

The dark-eyed young man had been unfailingly polite to Agnes, whose first name the class had been told, but not her last name. Ms. Agnes in Mattia’s voice was uttered with an air of reverence as if—so Agnes supposed—the inmate-student saw in her qualities that had belonged to his mother, or to another older woman relative; he was courteous, even deferential, as her university students, who took their professors so much more for granted, were not.

Mattia was the most literate writer in the class, as he was the sharpest-witted, and the most alert. His compositions were childlike, earnest. Yet his thoughts seemed overlarge for his brain, and writing with a stubby pencil was a means of relieving pressure in the brain; writing in class, as Agnes sat at the front of the room observing, Mattia hunched over his desk frowning and grimacing in a kind of exquisite pain, as if he were talking to himself.

Sometimes, during class discussion, Agnes saw Mattia looking at her—particularly, at her—with a brooding expression, in which there was no recognition; at such times, his face was mask-like and unsmiling, and seemed rather chilling to her. She hadn’t known at the time what his prison sentence was for but she’d thought, He has killed someone. That is the face of a killer.

But, as if waking from a trance, in the next moment Mattia smiled, and waved his hand for Agnes to call upon him—Ms. Agnes!

She loved to hear her name in his velvety voice. She loved to see his eyes light up, and the mask-like killer-face vanish in an instant, as if it had never been.

Instructors in the composition course used an expository writing text that was geared for “remedial” readers yet contained essays, in primer English, on such provocative topics as racial integration, women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, freedom of speech and of the press, “patriotism” and “terrorism.” There was a section on the history of the American civil rights movement, and there was a section on the history of Native Americans and “European” conquest. Agnes assigned the least difficult of the essays, to which her students were to respond in compositions of five hundred words or so. Just write as if you were speaking to the author. You agree, or disagree—just write down your thoughts.

Most of the students were barely literate. In their separate worlds, inaccessible to their instructor, they were likely individuals who aroused fear in others, or at least apprehension; but in the classroom, they were disadvantaged as overgrown children. Slowly, with care, Agnes went through their compositions line by line for the benefit of the entire class. The inmate-students had ideas, to a degree—but their ability to express themselves in anything other than simple childish expletives was primitive; and their attitude toward Agnes, respectful at first, if guarded, quickly became sullen and resentful. Even when Agnes tried to praise the “strengths” in their writing, they came to distrust her, for the “suggestions” that were sure to come.

Mattia was quick-witted and shrewd, and usually had no difficulty understanding the essays, but his writing was so strangely condensed, Agnes often didn’t know what he was trying to say. It was as if the young man was distrustful of speaking outright. He wrote in the idiom of the street but it was a heightened and abbreviated idiom, succinct as code. From time to time Agnes looked up from one of his tortuous compositions thinking, This is poetry! When Mattia read his compositions aloud to the class, he read in a way that seemed to convey meaning, yet often the other inmates didn’t seem to understand him, either.

She couldn’t determine if the other inmates liked Mattia. She couldn’t determine if any of the inmates were friends. In the classes, it was common for inmate-students to sit as far apart from one another as they could, including in the corners of the room, since, in their cells, as Agnes’s supervisor had told her, they were in constant overly close quarters.

When, in class, Agnes questioned Mattia about the meaning of his sentences (taking care always to be exceedingly considerate and not to appear to be “critical”), Mattia could usually provide the words he’d left out. He seemed not to understand how oblique his meaning was, how baffled the others were.

“We can’t read your mind, Joseph”—so Agnes had said.

She’d meant to be playful, and Mattia had looked startled, and then laughed.

“Ms. Agnes, ma’am, that is a damn good thing!”

The rest of the inmate-students laughed with Mattia, several of them quite coarsely. Agnes chose to ignore the moment, and to move on.

During the ten-week course, Mattia was the only student not to miss a single class, and Mattia was the only student who handed in every assignment. Though she was to tell no one about him, not her supervisor, not her fellow instructors, and not her husband, Agnes was fascinated by this “Joseph Mattia”—not only his writing ability but his personality, and his presence. It had always been deeply satisfying to Agnes to teach her university students, but there was no risk involved, as the university campus represented no risk to enter; there was no prison protocol to be observed; as an Ivy League professor, she knew that if she’d never entered her students’ lives, their lives would not be altered much, for they’d been surrounded by first-rate teachers for most of their lives. But at this prison, Ms. Agnes might actually make a difference in an inmate’s life, if he allowed it.

Mattia’s prose pieces grew more assured with the passage of weeks. He knew Ms. Agnes thought highly of him: she was one of those adults in authority, one of those members of the white world, who held him in high esteem, and would write positively and persuasively on his behalf to the parole board.

I am happy to recommend. Without qualification.

One of my very best students in the course. Gracious, courteous, sense of humor. Trustworthy. Reliable.

It was evident from Mattia’s oblique prose pieces that he had committed acts of which he was “ashamed”—but Mattia had not been specific, as none of the inmates were specific about the reasons for which they were in the maximum-security prison. Only after the course ended did she learn that Mattia had been indicted on a second-degree murder charge, in the death of a Trenton drug dealer; in plea bargaining negotiations, the charge had been reduced to voluntary manslaughter; finally, to involuntary manslaughter. Instead of twenty years to life for murder, Mattia was serving seven years for manslaughter. Agnes told herself, Probably he was acting in self-defense. Whoever he killed would have killed him. He is not a “killer.”