Maybe it’s true that slaves should not bear children, she muses, staring dully out the window: yesterday the first snow fell, but now it’s melted, only the windshields of cars parked up and down the street look like wet spots on newborn calves. A man—black skin, bright red jacket, blue baseball cap—bounces down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets: it must have gotten colder. Because what is slavery, if not infection by fear—she draws toward her an open notebook half-filled with such lukewarm aphorisms that move you about as much as a textbook in formal logic. Slavery is the state of being infected by fear. And fear kills love. And without love—children, poems, paintings—all is pregnant with death. A+, girl! You have completed your research.