Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

Next morning, the windows were turning a light grey, telling her it was time to get out of bed and do her chores. She had to milk the cow and feed the hens and the horse. But she didn’t want to get out of bed ever again, so she hugged the blanket tightly around her and put her head beneath it so she could pretend it was still nighttime. She felt if she stayed in bed, she could pretend what had happened never happened. Morag wished she didn’t have to live in a man’s world.

She was no longer frightened, crying, or scared. Now, she just had a depressing and sad feeling; her world had grown forever cold. She lay like that for hours, ignoring the mooing of the cow, the whinnying of the horse, and the cackling of the hungry hens. She buried her head beneath the pillow.

The door of the cottage suddenly burst open. 

Morag sat up in bed. She was naked, and just stared at the wall, waiting. 

“How come urr ye nae dressed ‘n’ taking care o’ th’ animals. Th’ animals are hungry ‘n’ th’ cow needs milking. Urr ye nae feeling well?” her grandma asked her. 

Morag pulled the blanket over her nakedness, and lay down on the bed again. 

“Ye dae nae seem weel,” her grandma said with a worried look on her face.

Morag’s grandparents had returned home after visiting Moire MacQuarrie, her grandmother’s second cousin. Moire was still clinging to life, but it couldn’t be long now. 

“It’s nothing grandma, ah juist hae a wee pain in mah tummy,” Morag managed to answer.

“It’s a’richt lassie. Juist ye stay in bed. Ah wull look efter th’ animals. Ah wull mak’ ye some soothing tea, ‘n’ then ye wull soon be braw.”

Morag still felt despondent, but thought to herself, “Life goes on, despite tragedy.”  

“About suffering, I’m not the only one,” thought Morag. “What of old Moire – at least I still have my grandma and grandpa,” she tried to console herself.

“The burn is running past our cottage, as if nothing has happened – likewise, the hens are still pecking the seeds on the ground. Our horse, what does he care, or our cow for that matter.”

“They were all happily sleeping nearby while I was being violated.”

“The stars didn’t even blink an eye at the crime that was committed beneath them.”¹

The days pass by like many other days, but for Morag, the days and nights become longer than they were before. She felt like the candle on her table when it happened; the flame of the candle was the only thing in the room she was looking at while Ruaridh was violating her, for she could not look at his face. Just like that candle, she’s slowly melting away. 

She never heard from him again after that night. With a heavy heart and a broken soul, she tried to continue her old everyday life as if nothing had happened, as if there was no part of her Ruaridh had not defiled and broken. 

But life is really cruel to her. Some months later, one morning, while she was on her way home after washing clothes at the burn, she suddenly felt dizzy. Her body, which she felt was getting heavier and heavier over the past few days, fell to the ground. “Maybe this is the end of all the pain,” she thought to herself. “Maybe this is just it. She smiled as if it were the last time before her world snaps into darkness and she falls into the abyss – she feels happy – perhaps this is the end of her misery.”

It was her grandma who Morag saw when she opened her eyes. “I’m still alive,” she disappointedly thought to herself.

“Whin did ye last bleed?” Her grandmother asked her with suspicion, giving her an accusing look. 

Morag was a young girl, but she wasn’t that naive; she had heard of other girls who had experienced ‘sickness’ some months after a brief moment of pleasure. But in Morag’s case, it wasn’t a moment of pleasure, but a moment of pain and degradation. 

Morag realised she couldn’t hide the truth from her grandmother. But she remained silent, the tears escaping her eyes and rolling down her cheeks.  

Morag thought she would take her ‘dirty’ secret to her grave without ever letting anyone know, but she couldn’t. She could maybe lie to anyone else, but not to her grandmother. Of course, the old woman knew what was happening to Morag, as she herself had given birth to many children; she knew all the signs of a pregnant woman. 

The old woman’s heart sank when she realized her granddaughter was with a child without the poor, naive young girl knowing. She hugged Morag just like she did whenever she cried as a small child.

Unsure of what the future had to offer, Morag closed her eyes and hugged her too. The old woman and the young girl held each other in a tight embrace which they hoped would never end. Their unspoken feelings seemed to span the generations of women in their kin. Morag was learning at an early age what it meant to be a woman in a man’s world. But her grandmother’s love gave her strength, so she no longer felt so alone in the world. 

Sources

1. <sup>Inspired by Auden’s, “Musée des Beaux Arts.”
   
   About suffering they were never wrong,
   The old Masters: how well they understood
   Its human position: how it takes place
   While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
   
   How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
   For the miraculous birth, there always must be
   Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
   On a pond at the edge of the wood:
   
   They never forgot
   That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
   Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
   Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
   Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
   
   In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
   Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
   Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
   But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
   
   As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
   Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
   Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
   Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.</sup> ↩︎