> -----Original Message-----
> From: Melinda Martin
>
> "He dragged me off into the overgrown garden and I was
> quickly bound, blindfolded and gagged, thrown over His
> shoulder and taken to a car..."

V. looked down at his hands uncomfortably. He felt like he should
apologize, wished he could take away the ugliness... but it wasn't something
he could fix. So he just listened.

> "Property does not have the right to argue, does it?
> So He ripped my collar off, slapped me, and left - the
> next morning, today, that letter was here and He was
> gone."
>
> She looked Him directly in the eye. "You wonder why
> I'm lost?" Somehow the words didn't sound as bitter
> as they should have. "I've lost my reason for being,
> which is why You came to me, found me watching the icy
> coldness daring it to come and take me." She wiped
> the very real tears out of her eyes, willing herself
> not to cry.

This last part had V. agape. "I had no idea... but you poor thing, you
don't even realize what it is you are truly missing do you? You've been
treated like chattel for so long you believe it. Not just this slavery, but
from the very beginning."

"I'll just bet I know what you were like as a little girl. It was Sunday
morning, some time when you were five or six years old. Your mother got you
out of bed at 6:30 so you could be bathed and primped and dressed like a
porcelain doll. Little frilly skirt, black patent leather shoes with white
knee-high socks, dainty little lace top. And because your mother still had
an hour before she would be primped herself, she sat you down in the hard
chair in the hall and told you to not move a muscle. And you did for a
while, you were a good little girl. But little girls forget. And so you
got down off your chair, drawn outside by the chirping of the birds and the
buzz of the honeybees in the perfectly manicured rosebushes outside. And
you sat on the lawn, picking dandelions and clover from the yard, unmindful
of the green and brown stains on your clothes. And when you mother came
outside, she was furious. She screamed incoherent words, and she dragged
you into the house by your arm, and you didn't understand why she was
yelling. You were taught every day that it wasn't who you were that
mattered, but how you looked for other people, how you represented them, and
you were beaten for failing to live up to their impossible standards."

"And then you were ripped from one hell to another. And you were treated
the same way - maybe the details were different - more adult, more
brutalizing - but the message was the same."

"My dear, you have a gift. You have been set free. You are no-one's
property but your own. And I'll defend your right to self-ownership to the
death, you can bet on it. You probably don't realize what that means, but
you will. You've lost sight of yourself. I will do my best to help you
find you."

Sitting back from what may have been the longest speech of his life, V.
looked intently at Mariel, hoping he hadn't frightened her with his
aggressive pro-independence stance.

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Verloren