The Blueprint

by Rae Giana Rashad

The captain of L’Aliénor had the first pick of the wenches. This he coveted. He chose from the comely—the tawny, copper, or yellow, as described in his slave manifests.

I imagine there were dozens. Henriettes, scattered and windblown through the port of New Orleans like ashes.

The year is 2030. I am Henriette’s descendant.

Children anchor you to the home and to the man the algorithm assigned you to. The more babies, the less likely you are to run.

Julian Garnier, his chief strategist and master negotiator, would remind him I have layered security—cameras, shadows, and Source’s monitoring software embedded in the chip in my left thumb. In everyone’s left thumb. The software Bastien wrote himself.

We didn’t think about the algorithm or the assignment system. We ignored that as female descendants of slavery, our lives lay in the hands of the Order’s men—our father, the patriot who paid to hold our contract, and finally, a husband.

THE PATH WE WALKED TO BECOME Black women wasn’t straight; it was a loop. Starting from nowhere, it brought you back to nowhere. A man at one end, a man at the other, humming the same song, “It’s just a body. Nothing special.” If that were true, why did they want it? Why couldn’t it belong to me? Mama called it child’s want, something you grow out of. But the moment I recognized this loop existed, I poked holes at it to find an exit.

From six years old to fifteen, Mrs. Guidry trained you to survive men. After fifteen, school was no longer necessary for Black girls, Descendants of Slavery, DoS.

A patriot corrected her behavior then sent her home to marry a Black man. We were expected to have three children by twenty-two, four if at least two weren’t boys. The endless supply of soldiers for the borders.

We didn’t miss their smiles of approval when hearing about a DoS who maneuvered her way into emancipation and moving to Louisiana, the only state where she could be free.

A white man’s signature on a certificate of emancipation can free you from all men. Never take him at his word. Get him to write it or it’s not real. Never ask for that signature. Asking could make things go wrong. A smart girl made men believe everything good was his idea.

A Black girl gives and gives, why is she wrong when she takes? If you had to have a cage, it was better to have a beautiful one. Wasn’t it?

We served the patriots we were assigned to until they sent us home to become soldiers’ wives. That part was almost certain.

“Read her story so you learn early what too many of us learn late. First, never hang on to anything too tight. Second, nothing in this world, not even the Order, is enough to kill you.”

hair. I would never know how it felt to walk boldly because this world wasn’t mine. My tears would never be a weapon. There was no patience for my softness, my wounds, my unraveling. There was no protection for me, a Black girl, no tender touch, no consideration for a delicate exterior. No space to scream.

They identified as either Traditionalists or Modernists. The main difference between them was their philosophy on DoS. Traditionalists believed in strictly adhering to the Founders’ original framework where rights were almost nonexistent. Modernists flirted with the idea that DoS deserved some autonomy, mainly based on reports of abuse and letters written by lobbyists, white women like mama’s friend Margaret Ann.

I was the storm. That’s what Abraham said when I was sixteen. Now I was the uprooted tree the storm sent careening through windows. I would wreck everything.

In Africa, I would be a Fulani girl. Before the second civil war, I would be a Creole in Louisiana. In the Order, I was a descendant of slavery.

There were insurgents found huddled in basements, restaurants, and bank vaults, planning assassinations that would result in the reinstatement of the US Constitution. Abraham had already had three near misses on his life.

They hated this disruption, being torn between ignoring me because of my skin color or honoring me because the official treated me as his wife. I liked the disruption. At least here I existed. Outside our fence, I was no one.

“We move forward with Proposition Forty-four. A yes vote amends the Order’s abortion policy to include an exception for rape, incest, or to save the life of a pregnant woman,” Abraham said. The votes followed without a single man voting in favor.

It was a ploy to weaken a man’s right to the highest honor—contributing his progeny to the Order. Provide women the verbiage to end a pregnancy, and that’s the verbiage they would use to end every pregnancy. It was sinful, criminal, and unconscionable to not protect the Order’s most vulnerable citizens.

“Louisiana’s asylum policy is necessary,” Councilman Russell said. “No man, Black or white, should have the power to interfere with asylum. It was part of the Treaty of 1960 after Civil War II.” He blinked at Bastien’s left hand curling into a loose fist. “For the Order. For Texas.”

“Plans to reintroduce Proposition 1077?” Julian asked. “It’s dead. Six to five, split between Modernists and Traditionalists. Modernists cannot comprehend how dangerous this policy is. I don’t foresee that changing.”

“‘Bastien Martin, Traditionalist in legal rooms, Modernist in his bedroom, and never the twain shall meet . . . until a weak moment in his tenure as councilman, and it does.’”

I decided then to never love a man, not when his absence singed edges of you, creating different versions that not even your mirror double recognized.

Why have a girl the world would treat like nothing or a son who’d die in the Code?

Nobody owns you unless you believe they do.”

Bastien reviewed eighty years of data, and the conclusion was clear. Children anchor DoS. Give her a child, and she’ll never leave. A child would reduce his stress by ensuring I would never disappear like the rain. In his head was the crisp image of a child with his coloring, eyes, and beliefs—his DNA diluting any part of me. I never wanted children. It was the quicksand that grabbed at us, filled our eyes with grit, and pulled us into nothing more than mama.

“Your life. My love, all that you are or will be—every cell in your body—belongs to me. Without end. Without fail.”

Baths and dresses meant it was time for another piece of her to be clipped off.

But mercy didn’t come for her. No, it never did for Black girls.

If the Order erased these stories, where in history would I exist?

She kept giving, and he kept taking, until she was no longer a little girl at all.

“One day, when you understand what it means to need, you’ll forgive me for clenching my fist with you inside.”

“What would you do if you could prevent anyone from ever leaving you?” I thought of Daddy, Mama, Dalena, and James. The answer came easily. “I’d make sure I never lost that power.” He opened his eyes. Found me waiting, withered enough to fit neatly in his palm. “We should go to bed now.”

“What am I doing, Solenne?” he asked from inside me, where neither of us was alone. That was the last time he asked.

Before me lay a state of strangers. Behind me, the man who vowed to never let me go.

“You ain’t fooling nobody, girl. I saw the bulletin. That crazy-ass man put a bounty on your head an hour ago. He put our Black asses on notice. Three hundred thousand for any information on your whereabouts. A million-dollar fine for anybody caught harboring you. Said if it’s a man stupid enough to keep you, fines plus twenty years in Huntsville prison. Day for day, hard time. Translation? The official will break his foot off in the hind parts of any man who gets the notion he likes what he sees. Ten years in the fields upon release, if anything’s left of him.”

I ran five hundred miles away, resisted his messages, killed his software in my body, walked to a stranger’s house in the dark, and I still missed him. Why couldn’t anything ever be easy when it came to him?

“You don’t like bacon?” Grease bubbled on top of crisp curls of meat. “No ma’am. Bastien doesn’t eat pork.” “I don’t recall asking what he eats. I asked if you like bacon.”

“Those patriots . . . faces don’t move, hunting folks, taking girls from their homes. I don’t think they come from Europe at all. That type of evil is not of this world.”

understood now why that line didn’t exist. We never truly leave any part of ourselves behind, no matter how much we change.

I know how quick being with a man who could never love you breaks you down.”

“It can’t be love when he holds that much power over you.”

Can’t tell a man what you want when you’re still a child, and you can’t make heads or tails of what love is when you don’t even understand who you are. He knows that. Always did.

You can’t have freedom while lying in the bed of a man who writes laws to oppress you.”

“I cannot send you to Louisiana right now. It’s unconscionable. When you’re older and can handle the instability of Louisiana, I’ll write your emancipation papers.”

THE COUNCILMEN SAID A NATION WAS only as strong as its hold on its women. They had to squeeze the life out of women’s liberations movements, give it no air, they said. It begins at home with the wives.

tell me how hard he cringes when he thinks about you with a Black man. Next, tell me how many soldiers had Black women and Black children at home but marched off to fight for the Confederacy. If sex ended racism, racism wouldn’t exist.