“I hate him,” said Brenda Hamilton to herself.
She struggled, but could not free herself. The members of the group looked at her, curiously.
Then she hung again, quietly, wrists lashed apart over her head, helplessly.
Horror came into her eyes. She saw another face among the others. But it was not a human face. She cried out in fear, seeing Ugly Girl.
The members of the group turned to see at what she might have cried out.
Ugly Girl frightened at seeing the eyes upon her, turned away, her head low on her shoulders, her dark hair like strings, her rounded shoulders cowering, and tried to shuffle away. She was naked and squat, thick legged, long armed. No ornaments had been given to her. Brenda Hamilton saw, startled, that her ankles were fastened together, about a foot apart, by a knotted rawhide strap. One of the children, the leader of the children, a blond girl, comely, one developing, one perhaps some fourteen years of age, one Brenda Hamilton would later learn was Butterfly, reached down to. the strap on the ankles of the shambling girl and jerked back on it, throwing the girl to the dirt, and then she leaped over her and began to strike her, repeatedly, with her open hands. Four other children then, two boys and two girls, began to follow her lead. Ugly Girl rolled on the ground, covering her head and face with her arms, howling, and then, breaking away, followed, crept whimpering between the huts.
Brenda Hamilton felt sick. Never had she seen anything as repulsive as Ugly Girl.
She was horrid.
She found herself pleased that the strange girl, so horrifyingly ugly was not of the group.
She would avoid her, continually. She made her sick.
She heard again the screams of Ugly Girl, now from between the huts. Then she saw the homely fellow, with the large tooth, still followed by children, go to drive the other children away from the squat, hideous creature. She heard him cry out angrily at the children, and heard their shrieks and protests; he must, too, judging from the cries, have struck one or two of them. Soon, the blond girl, and the other children, came back to the rack. The fellow with the tooth turned away, and went to the other side of the camp. He seemed angry. The two children still followed him.
Spear turned away from the rack. He nodded with his head toward the other set of poles, from which hung strips of meat. “The meat is almost dry,” he said to Stone, and the others. “Tomorrow we will go for salt and flint, and then return to the shelters.”
The men nodded.
Brenda Hamilton saw that the younger man, who resembled the leader, could not take his eyes from her body. She hung, wrists apart, frightened, scrutinized. Then she saw a blond girl, lovely, bare-breasted, with a necklace of shells and claws, hold him by the arm, trying to pull him away. He thrust her to one side. The girl looked at Brenda Hamilton with hatred. It was Flower. Then she approached the young man and knelt before him, and with her lips, began to touch her way upward along the interior of his thigh, timidly, and then she thrust her head up, under his skins. He laughed and seized her, and dragged her from the group back between the huts, pulling her by the wrist, she, laughing, pretending to resist.
Flower, boldly, bad won his attention away from the new slave.
Brenda Hamilton shuddered.
“Old Woman,” said Spear.
Brenda Hamilton saw a hag emerge from the others. She was partly bent, white-haired. She wore skins covering her upper body as well as her lower body. There was much wrinkled skin about her eyes. The eyes, however, were sharp and bright, like those of a small bird.
She was the only one among the women who did not seem to fear the men, or show them deference.
Spear pointed to Brenda Hamilton.
“What do you think of Tree’s catch?” he asked. “Can she bring children to the men?”
The old woman’s hands were on Brenda Hamilton’s hips. Brenda felt her thumbs, pressing into her flesh, feeling her body, measuring it. “Yes,” said Old Woman, “she has good hips, wide hips. She can bring to the Men many children.”
“Good,” said Spear. His own woman, his first woman, Short Leg, had had only one child, and that had been delivered stillborn. Life in these times was precarious, and a good breeder, one who could bring many children to the group, was highly prized. Without such breeders groups died.
Brenda Hamilton felt the old woman’s hands on her breasts.
She looked away, miserable.
Spear looked at Old Woman.
“When the time comes,” said Old Woman, “she will not need Nurse.”
Spear nodded. That was good. Some of the women in the group did not have enough milk, and there was already much work for Nurse.
It was important for a female, if possible, to give suck to her own young.
“It is too bad,” said Spear, “that she does not kick well.”
The old woman turned to Brenda Hamilton. “Is it true, my pretty,” she asked, in the language of the Men, “that you do not kick well?”
Brenda Hamilton looked at her blankly. Her shoulder hurt, where she had been thrown to the dirt by Tree. And, too, her wrists hurt from the thongs. She could scarcely move her fingers.
Old Woman repeated her question in the language of the Bear People, which she had never forgotten. Many years ago she had been purchased from the Bear People by Drawer, who had become Old Man, whom Spear had killed when he had gone blind. Old Woman had been fond of Old Man.
“You must learn to kick well, my pretty,” cooed the old woman, kindly, to Brenda Hamilton.
Brenda Hamilton struggled, trying to escape the old woman’s hands. But she could not do so. With her left arm, the old woman held her still, and, with one finger, not entering her, very gently, on the side, tested her.
Brenda Hamilton hung miserably on the pole.
“Well?” asked Spear.
Old Woman removed her hands from Brenda Hamilton, and turned to face Spear.
“Her body is alive,” said Old Woman. “I do not understand why she would not kick well.”
Then she turned again to Brenda Hamilton, puzzled.
Brenda Hamilton looked at the other women standing about Never had she seen such women. They seemed vital, sensual, alive, half animal. Their femaleness seemed one with their person, as much as a smell or a pigmentation. How different the men and women seemed, the men hard, strong, tall, the women so much smaller, so lusciously curved, so vital, so shamelessly female.
These, of course, were women from before the agricultural revolution, before a man became bound to a strip of soil, and became obsessed with the ownership of his land, the authenticity of his paternity, the reliability and legitimacy of inheritances. These were times before a man owned, privately, his land, and his children and his women. The economic system was not yet such that, before effective birth-control procedures, it was desirable to inculcate frigidity in females, a property useful in the perpetuation and support of patriarchal monogamy. The cultural conditioning processes, abetted by religions, whose role was to support the institutions of the time, had not yet been turned to this end.
Brenda Hamilton, looking on the women of the Men, realized that they had not been taught to be ashamed of their bodies and needs.
They are like animals, she thought. Brenda Hamilton, though enlightened, though informed, though historically aware, was yet a creature of her own times and conditionings, of a world in which her attitudes and feelings had, without her knowing it, been shaped by centuries of misery,. un – happiness and mental disease, thought to be essential in guaranteeing societal stability, thought to be the only alternative to chaos, the jungle and terror. Fear and superstition, often by men whose gifts for life were imperfect or defective, and hated or feared life, poured like corroding acids into the minds of the young, had been a culture’s guarantee that men would fear to leave their fields, that they would keep the laws, that they would pay the priests and the kings, that the hunters would not return.