Chapter 4

"Do I still have to go to school?" I wondered.

"Of course," Mr. Reiser laughed and he was driving us to a restaurant, even though my mom had prepared a dinner for him, for all of us.

We hadn't stayed very long after Mr. Reiser had fucked me. Just long enough for me to take a shower and double check the bag my mom had packed for me. Enough time for my mom to wash the semen stains out of Mr. Reiser's trousers. He'd borrowed a clean shirt from my dad, it was a salmon colored Izod polo that my dad liked to wear for golfing. Letting Mr. Reiser borrow it because I'd cum all over the man's white dress shirt probably seemed funny, but Daddy hadn't complained and Mr. Reiser hadn't even blushed.

"Can I go to the same school I'm going to now?"

"No," he shook his head. "There's a segregated school for domestics, you'll go there in the morning."

"Oh." I tried to hide my disappointment. "How long will you keep me?"

"As long as I want," Mr. Reiser said. "Maybe forever."

"What?" I giggled. "You can't keep me when I'm old. I was freeborn."

"The law says I can keep you until you're thirty-six," Mr. Reiser shrugged. "Twenty years. Do you think you'll want to leave me when you're that old?"

"I don't know." I frowned at that because I couldn't even imagine being twenty.

"Most slaves don't," the man told me, sounding like he knew all about it. "If they're kept that long it isn't because they're slaves."

"It's not?"

"It's because they want to stay," Mr. Reiser said.

"Maybe they're scared to leave."

"Same thing, isn't it?" Mr. Reiser asked me with a glance and I shrugged because I didn't know.

"Maybe," I finally allowed.

"Imagine a girl who's been a slave for twenty years being set free. She has no money; her parents are old and she has no husband, or even a boyfriend. She might have some children, if she's been bred by a careless Master. Some half-white bastards who can't get any kind of social services, no school or medicine, just handouts from the Salvation Army on Christmas Eve. She's cold, hungry, and alone ... Don't you think she'd rather stay?"

I shivered, not liking that picture very much at all and not really understanding what he was trying to tell me. A girl couldn't be a slave longer than twenty years, not a freeborn one anyway, and that was what I was. He'd have to let me go and most freeborn were set free after just a year or two. My mom had been a slave from thirteen until she was barely twenty and her Master had set her free so she could marry my daddy. We were the minority, less than ten percent of all blacks were freeborn, and the abolitionists called us Uncle Toms mostly, or Poster Niggers, cause we were the black people who made the South look good. I didn't know much about that stuff though and mostly I didn't want to.

"You don't have to think about any of that," Mr. Reiser frowned. "I shouldn't have said it. You're too sweet to worry about such things."

My mood had changed now and I was feeling homesick, just fifteen minutes after leaving. I knew I was a slave and that didn't bother me, it had to happen sooner or later and I was lucky it was Mr. Reiser. Being a child of free parents, I enjoyed some rights and privileges, not many, but more than most black people, the ones who worked the factories and fields, the ones who were bought and sold everyday and would never be free. My parents, my daddy especially, had hoped that me being girly like I am, a sissy and queer, would keep me safe. A lot of freeborn weren't ever taken into slavery. My mom had her own reasons for treating me as a girl, but she'd been hopeful too, and now I imagined she was crying.

I was in the minority, a small class of people who were neither black nor white, really, but grey somehow. I just had to do my time in chains and then ... I didn't want to think about what Mr. Reiser had said. I would never have tried to look that far into the future by myself and I doubted too many other sixteen year olds would either. It was how the country kept the grey class grey and small and easily managed. One child was all they could have and that one could be taken away any time after age twelve, to be returned later at the whim of his or her owner. People like my parents were grateful for that. I was grateful and even sitting there, reasoning it all out for the first time in my life, I couldn't find the strength to rebel against it.

Some did, a very few, but I wasn't one of those.

"Here we are. Smile for me now, we'll have a good time," Mr. Reiser said, parking his car while black valets opened our doors. "This is an Owners Club."

"Owners Club?" I forced myself to smile and got out carefully, wearing my same outfit from Saucy's, including my thong, still damp and stained with sperm. He hadn't let me wash or change that. I'd just put it back on after my shower.

"This is where Masters bring their mistresses," Mr. Reiser chuckled. "That's a bad pun, I know."

"Oh!" I giggled lightly but I didn't really get it at first, not until we were inside.

"Wait," he told the valet and I stood near the steps as Mr. Reiser retrieved a plastic bag from the glove compartment. He nodded then and closed the passenger door, letting the boy drive off.

"You need this now," my new Master told me and it was a red bag, waxed shut and marked with the state seal.

"Yes sir." I swallowed hard and I knew what it was.

Mr. Reiser broke the seal and removed a square of thin plastic, or some other material. I have no idea what it was made of and I'd never seen one for real before, but I knew what it was. All black people did. I held out my left arm for him, wrist up without being told to do so and Mr. Reiser handed the empty bag to one of the servants who were standing there and then peeled the plastic away, much like a decal and he pressed the rubbery part of it to my skin, squeezing it to my flesh for ten or fifteen seconds, maybe longer, and then he pulled it away.

"That should do it," he said and we both looked at my arm, but of course there was nothing to see.

"Thank you, Master," I said softly and it may seem strange, considering I'd just been tattooed a slave.

He took the plastic envelope back and put the marker inside it, folding it into his jacket. He'd have to submit it with my paperwork for ownership the following day. I was scanned at the door, a black man using a blue light to make the tattoo glow and it was for Mr. Reiser's satisfaction more than anything else, since the servant had just seen it applied to me. The tattoo wouldn't wash off or wear off, it was as permanent as they could make such things and I'd have it until I was set free again.

"Now you're mine," Mr. Reiser smiled and I nodded, feeling nothing at all at his words, except perhaps a sense of relief that it was done. I was officially a slave, as my mother had been, and her mother before her.

The place he'd brought me was an old plantation manor, or maybe a new building just made to look that way. It was located on the edge of the city proper, set back across a vast lawn with a long drive lined with big old cottonwood trees and well maintained shrubs. It was all very impressive, even at night, especially as the house was lit up from within and without, with gleaming white columns and steps and huge golden windows set in the alabaster façade. Just inside the main entrance, Mr. Reiser was greeted by a very large black man wearing a burgundy uniform and it was all very formal it seemed to me.

Every man there, except for the employees of course, was white, and every one of them was accompanied by a black girl, so far as I could tell. This was where the Masters slipped away from their white wives to enjoy an evening with their black slaves, Mr. Reiser explained as we were walking slowly through the first floor. They couldn't be seen like this in a normal restaurant or club, the best places were all segregated anyway and a black girl wouldn't be allowed inside, slave or not. So for the last sixty years or so, slave owners had formed and joined private gentlemen's clubs, owner's clubs like this one. They'd probably done it before the First Civil War as well, but I didn't know for sure. It was upscale, very expensive to join, and offered a discrete, yet public outlet for these men to enjoy their slaves in the company of other owners.

So many of the older women I saw were beautiful and they were dressed much better than I was. I felt very self-conscious in that slutty outfit I was wearing, but Mr. Reiser didn't seem to notice at all. I did see some other girls my age too, black slaves in their teens and dressed rather sexily, even whorish some of them. Perhaps it was an age thing, I wasn't sure, but I definitely noticed that the women in their late twenties or early thirties were all nicely dressed, many of them wearing jewels and gold and looking very proud and pointedly ignoring girls like me. Their white Masters fawned over them, some of them, and it was obvious that at least a few of the couples I saw were in love.

The younger girls were giggling and smiling, flirting shamelessly and drawing attention to their blatant sexuality. They made me nervous, the way the older women made me shy. I saw a girl on her knees in an alcove, mouthing her Master's cock, and another was plainly fucking her Master on a loveseat, her skirt modestly covering their union, but the look on her face was one of pure rapture and their orgasms couldn't be far off. Such scenes were the exceptions however, as most of the people were more restrained in their behavior. It wasn't an orgy or anything, but it was clear that the morals of the place were completely relaxed. It was difficult for me not to stare at some of the people as we made our way through the house and it was a large one, a true mansion with sitting rooms and a lounge with a bar, and a black man playing a piano. I heard the clink of billiards from somewhere, the dull talk and laughter of men drinking, and smelled food finally. It reminded me that I was very hungry just then.

"If you'll excuse me, Dani, I'm going to change my clothes," Mr. Reiser told me. "Jacket and tie required for dinner, I'm afraid. I'll be right back. If you want to freshen up, it's just there." He pointed towards a door marked Ladies Powder Room and I nodded, but I didn't need it.

"Yes sir," I was all I said, being unsure exactly how I was supposed to behave in that place.

He went through a door marked Gentlemen's Dressing Room and that made sense, I supposed. I wondered if that was the men's bathroom too, because I was hopeless new to all this. I looked around and there were plenty of chairs and sofas and loveseats, arranged in the spacious halls in between the drawing rooms and whatnot. The whole place was rather intimidating to me and I finally settled onto a leather sofa near the wall, crossing my legs and sitting very stiffly as people passed, black employees and white members, and of course their black female guests.

"Hi." A girl sat down next to me, a black girl maybe a year or two older, and dressed in silver short-shorts and a matching silver bikini top.

She looked so completely out of place like that, I just stared at her for a moment, but then I supposed it was no worse than what I was wearing. There was just a lot less of it, but we were both showing a ridiculous amount of skin. She was pretty too, with large breasts that I envied and a large round ass like a lot of black girls have. I didn't envy that so much, I was happy with my smaller, firmer and certainly no less round butt.

"Hello," I said after my initial hesitation and she was opening her purse, fixing her lipstick.

"New here? You gotta be freeborn, huh. Me too. Just get picked up?" she asked me and she liked to talk, I could tell.

"Um, yeah. I guess so," I nodded. "My uh ... Owner is changing."

"Owner, yeah," she laughed. "It's okay, everybody has one. Mine's calling his wife."

"Oh."

"She hates me. See?" She leaned forward, pulling left bikini cup down and I could see some long thin scars on her skin, around the girl's big black nipple. Some whitish and older maybe, others sort of pink and red and looking fresh.

"What happened?" I blinked at that.

"She whips my tits. My ass too," the girl shrugged.

"What?" I frowned. "Why would she do that?"

"Because her husband loves me." The girl smiled. "Why else? White people are so weird."

"Doesn't he get mad?" I asked.

"Well, yeah, but what's he gonna do about it? She's his wife." The girl put her makeup away. "Your owner married?"

"I don't know." I swallowed hard.

"Probably, huh?" She shrugged. "It's the wives you gotta watch out for, believe me."

"Okay."

"None of the girls here like the wives!" she giggled. "Unless they're dykes or whatever, but they have their own club, so ... I gotta go. See ya."

"Yeah, okay," I said, but she was already bouncing away towards a short fat white guy who was smiling at her.

That gave me something new to think about. Was there a Mrs. Reiser? And if there was, what would she think of me? Was she going to be mad because her husband had sex with me? Was she going to punish me for it, as if it was my fault that he'd bought me? Because that was what he'd done. He'd just have to pay the government for the right to own another person; my parents didn't get a dime of that money. Was Mrs. Reiser going to hurt me? I was already nervous enough, confused and homesick and now this on top of it.