Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

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SOMETIMES I THINK I’M good and sometimes I think I’m bad. I wish I could make up my mind, so I’d know what stance to take.

The first thing Warden Gadmore said to me was, “Basically, you’re not a bad person, Kunt.”

“Kunt,” I said quickly, pronouncing it the right way, as in koont. “With an umlaut,” I explained.

“A what?”

“Umlaut.” I poked two fingers into the air, as though blinding an invisible man. “Two dots over the U. It’s a German name.”

He frowned at my records. “Says here you were born in Rye, New York.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. Wry, New York.

“Makes you a U.S. citizen,” he said, and peered at me through his wire-framed spectacles, challenging me to deny it.

“My parents came from Germany,” I said. “In nineteen thirty-seven.”

“But you were born right here.” He bunk-bunked a fingertip on his desktop, as though to suggest I’d been born in this office, on that desk.

“I’m not denying American citizenship,” I said.