The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [44]
Afraid I would get pregnant, the sticker freaks kept me locked inside a high chain-link fence and rarely walked me. I humped anything soft I could steal and hide in my house (mostly what I’ve already mentioned; lots of throw rugs, the rag-rug kind).
It’s an instinctual, uncontrollable thing, very similar to human puberty. There’s no real joy in it, but we do it anyway because we have to. Our masters don’t like witnessing it, because humans tend to have sexual hang-ups. To them, we seem shameless and stupid, which, if you really look at it, is just another way of saying free and simple.
It’s not the size of the dog in the fight,
it’s the size of fight in the dog.
Mark Twain
When they landed in Tortuga, island men flew up the ropes and stormed the boat, grabbing and groping any woman they could find. Emer hid beneath a bunk and shivered. In the melee, she heard women scream and slap, she heard men laugh hearty laughs and slap back. She escaped quietly, by way of the small ladder that led to the forecastle quarters.
After months below in the sweltering heat, Emer stood on deck and enjoyed the gentle breeze. She refastened her blond hair into a tight bun, exposing the back of her neck, and removed her overskirt, revealing a ragged sheer slip that kept the coarse wool from scratching her legs.
Emer listened carefully to what was going on beneath the deck. The crew had arrived, and forced manners onto any buccaneers who crossed the line. An ease swept through the ship, as the women thought about their past strife in Paris and realized that this Tortuga might not be so bad after all.
She headed back to her small bunk and retrieved her things—nothing but smelly garments that she had worn onto the boat, and her crucifix—and walked slowly toward the slatted plank that led to the shore. When all of the women were off the boat, some already holding hands with the first men they’d found, a black-haired Frenchman approached her. He was followed by a servant of some sort, who glared at her.
At first, the black-haired man spoke in French, but when he realized she couldn’t understand him, he switched to a fluid English that Emer could nearly understand. She thought he said, “I have chosen you as the leader of these women.”
What he’d really said was, “I am the leader of this village, and I have chosen you for myself.” Smitten at first sight, the Frenchman watched her every move.
Emer smiled and replied, “I am honored.”
It was only when he placed his rough hands on her breasts that she realized her grasp of the English language was rusty and inaccurate. She flinched and wiggled free, embarrassed. He grabbed her right wrist and placed his lips on her neck; she struggled to not cry or scream out.
Only a few paces from the dock, where the other women stood watching, she felt ashamed that she could not let him have his way. All during the journey from Paris, Emer had felt like a simple Irish girl compared to these women. Prostitutes had no trouble accepting advances. They had no scruples in the captain’s cabin during the night, volunteering for duties she was still unfamiliar with. Emer felt stupid and naïve for all the nights she lay thinking about Seanie instead of reality. But the truth was, she would not be able to save her virginity for her true love. As with the rest of the women she had traveled with, her virginity meant nothing at all to these foreigners, nothing but a sort of trophy. Who else could claim that from a boat of prostitutes and beggars, they’d landed a true virgin?
The Frenchman knew, from the moment she flinched, that he’d done the impossible. He’d landed the virgin. And it excited him and depressed him at the same time. He let go of Emer, allowing her to walk away from him, and quickly found a suitable older woman to drag to his hut.
Emer felt even worse shame after that, but soon remembered what her mother would say: she