Thoroughly Modern Emancipation

Lisa nodded again. Where was this leading to?

"So, let's give you a moment of freedom, shall we, dear?" announced Tatyana. "Like a little bird. Free to flap your little wings. Take flight as you circle round the room let loose from your cage. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

Despite her fear of the consequences of even a moment of expressing herself openly, Lisa nodded. What she wanted more than anything was Freedom and a way to escape forever and return to sanctuary in Newfoundland.

"So, let's get you dressed and out of the house before your mistress...er, before Colette wakes up. Though that's not likely to be for a long time, I'm sure. Do you have any clothes?"

"Not suitable ones, madam," said Lisa. Like most slaves, the way she dressed made her subordinate role very apparent. No free woman would choose to wear the functional unbecoming outfits worn by slaves unless they'd lost their freedom by other means and were thus incarcerated for their crimes.

"I anticipated that and it's fortunate that I always keep a change of clothes here," said Tatyana. "You never know what might happen when I visit and, indeed, in truth you don't..." She swirled her wine about in the glass and grimaced slightly after taking a sip which at this time in the morning no longer tasted so pleasant. "Colette proposed to me, you know. We're going to get married. We might have to go to Russia to perform the ceremony: they're a lot more liberal about things like that in the Empire, you know, ever since the Tsarina came out publicly."

Tatyana pulled out a dress and shoes she'd hidden under the kitchen table. She'd been waiting for Lisa and had evidently already made arrangements. Lisa could sense a relentless flow of events that only her fear of punishment could bring to a premature end. There was no underwear, but that wasn't what really bothered Lisa who hadn't worn such things for a long time.

"Do you have a scarf, madam?" she asked.

"A scarf? It's not cold outside, is it?"

"For my neck..."

"Oh, the collar. Of course. Yes," she said as she walked into the hallway with Lisa trailing behind carrying the shoes and dress in her arms as if she was about to lay them down on a bed. "Ah, here's a nice silk scarf. All the way from the Empire's Polish territories. Pretty isn't it, dear?"

Lisa nodded.

"Well, put it all on and get out the door before I change my mind, dear," said Tatyana. "We'll see how much your mistress really is the thoroughly modern liberal, how much she really believes in the emancipation of slaves, what she really thinks..."

And then Tatyana did a truly amazing thing. She let Lisa get dressed and then unlatched the front door and opened it wide. Outside, Lisa could see the tree-lined avenue tempting her with its suburban tranquillity. Swallows were swooping through the sky. Grey squirrels were gambolling in the trees and racing across the well-mown lawns. The early morning sun was casting long shadows in which could be seen daisies, tulips and daffodils. A small van drove past with its delivery of fresh croissants and groceries.

"Come on, then!" said Tatyana.

Fuck the consequences, thought Lisa. How many such opportunities would she ever have in a life of slavery that stretched ahead until death or, if Colette had her way, until tax-funded slave retirement when she was no longer economically viable. She strode forward, not bothering to look behind her or at Tatyana who was still holding open the door, and then she was walking beyond the door-steps, through the metal gate between her mistress' brownstone house and the avenue beyond, and continued to stride in the direction she knew would soonest take her off Fairmount Avenue and to where she might truly escape.

She walked fast—or as fast as she could in the slightly-too-large stack-heeled shoes that Tatyana had given her—in the attempt to put as much distance as she could between her and her mistress' home. She couldn't walk as far as Newfoundland, of course. Not that she was certain that the newly rechristened Territory of Newfoundland was the right place to go, though that was where her friends and family lived; or at least those who'd not been shot or hadn't also become enslaved. Perhaps she should head south, though, of course, all of the Caribbean and most of Central America were either states incorporated into the Union, like the States of Belize and Yucatan, or were dependent territories awaiting incorporation. Perhaps given that she was still on America's East coast she should head further in that direction across the Atlantic Ocean to the European Union, the only part of the world other than the Antipodes and Japan that had entirely renounced the institutions of slavery.

As she walked along, she could see daily life in the city as the sun began its slow climb. Commuters emerged from their homes and strode purposefully towards the subway or train station to take them to the office. The less wealthy, but still free, were opening shops, driving by in delivery vans, or walking with purpose but not a lot of haste to their places of work. But those who were not free, the slaves of America, they were the ones who weren't going anywhere, or if they did, generally in the company of their masters, their mistresses or their masters' children.

The slaves didn't need collars to betray their status, although, by law, all of them had to. Their downtrodden demeanour, their shuffling stooping locomotion, their lowered heads and turned-away faces, their ingrained habits of servitude reinforced by fear of the consequences of transgression: all these were evidence as much as any collar, chain or manacle of a state of subservience. Most were black or brown. Many were Asian, from the slave-exporting nations to the south of Russia and to the north of Australia that as Tatyana had remarked were supplementing Africa's traditional role as the main source of human traffic. And there were those, like Lisa herself, who came from the New World, so long considered the importer rather than the exporter of slaves: the result of America's aggressive prosecution of the Monroe doctrine that had made most of South America a bottomless source of war booty and had cowed the last vestiges of independence in the Northern Hemisphere.

Slaves were denied even basic dignity. How many freemen or freewomen were allowed to be naked in public gaze? Even in the public stocks which could be found in every public square or municipal park, only the slaves were denied clothes even though a free person guilty of crimes for which a slave would expect immediate death by hanging or lynching was just as likely to be punished in what was considered a cost-effective deterrent to crime. At least they no longer exhibited decapitated heads outside government buildings for the crimes of treason or un-American activities.

Lisa strode hurriedly onward as if expecting to be stopped at any moment. She hurried through the parks, keeping in the shadow of the trees that lined the paths. She strode alongside the shop-windows that exhibited riches rare in Newfoundland but were on promiscuous display for the much wealthier citizens of the United States. She walked beneath the suspension bridges that spanned the river. She followed the path of the freeway along which trucks roared by. She walked beside the administrative offices of the Federal and State governments, whose uneasy relationship with one another caused more debate and disagreement amongst American voters than ever had the institution of slavery that a minority like Colette Tuchman-Lee campaigned against.

And eventually she paused, as she had to, right by a monument to the fallen soldiers in the Japanese War: the sole armed conflict in which America had failed to triumph and thereby still remained an affront to its national pride. Opposite her was a statue of President Joseph McCarthy, one of America's most liberal presidents, and just beside that an idealistic portrayal of Liberty with her sword unsheathed and the slogan beneath her bare sandaled feet: "Give me liberty or give me death." The monument beside and above her showed brave American soldiers, with their rifles thrust forward and bearing a look of determination, little knowing how desperately the Japanese would defend themselves. Indeed, so entrenched was American resentment of its defeat that had Japan not invented the Atom Bomb at about the same time as America and Russia, who knows how history since then might have been.

"And at last she sits down!" said a voice from another figure that towered above Lisa. "I thought she'd never stop walking."

"She's led us a real fucking merry chase, ain't she?" said a figure beside him.

Lisa looked up with fear and apprehension and she was right to do so. Just above her were two policemen both armed with gun and nightstick.

"Are you talking about me?" she asked nervously.

"Who the fuck else is there, Lisa," said the first policeman.

"Did you really think you'd get away with a collar round your neck, you little slut," said the other. "Or don't they have chip implants in fucking Newfoundland?"

"What's going to happen to me?" implored Lisa.

"You should be fucking glad you've got that do-gooding cunt Tuchman-Lee as a mistress, bitch," continued the second policeman. "I don't know what the fuck you should expect..."

"Fifty lashes and a week in solitary at the very least I'd have thought."

"Instead it'll be nothing worse than a couple of hours in the stocks..."

"...And you, as a white bitch..."

"Like a fucking whore!"

"...can expect some leniency I guess. Nothing worse than a few rotten tomatoes and a mouthful of sewage..."

"...or horse manure."

"You can consider yourself fucking lucky!"

"And I bet your fucking nigger dyke mistress ain't even gonna give you the beating you deserve when you're returned to her..."

"In fact, I bet she'll stop at the whip..."

"Me? I'd fucking cripple a slave of mine who'd absconded like you did, Lisa."

"So, come along now, dear, and don't cause any trouble."

"Because, believe me, any fucking excuse will do..."

And so Lisa's brief moment of freedom was over all too soon. She had to face up to the fact that there was no likelihood of her ever being free for as long as she was a slave in the United States of America.

And how could it ever have been any different?