The Skye in June

by June Ahern

  He said, “Speaking of my mother. . .I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Just in case you didne give me a son again, I’m naming the baby Elizabeth, in her memory.”

  She had no choice but to tell him the truth. Cathy knew the name she chose was not the kind of name given to a Catholic baby. It was Catholic tradition to name a child in honor of a saint. There were no saints with this name. “I’ve named her already,” she said hurriedly. “It’s June. And I’ve made up my mind on that.”

  Jimmy leaned away from his wife with an incredulous look on his face.

  “What do you mean you’ve made up your mind? Och, stop your blethering about you’ve made up your mind. What’s wrong with you?”

  With her mouth set in determination, Cathy thought how cruel he could be at times. It’s my wean. I gave birth to her, she argued inwardly. She looked directly into her husband’s eyes. His haggard face caused her to reconsider continuing the quarrel. It was true that he was more bad-tempered than ever since taking a second job. Still his hard work had afforded them a larger, more expensive new flat with a separate bedroom for the girls, an inside bathroom with a large bathtub and even a parlor, Cathy’s favorite room. It was much nicer than their previous cold-water flat with a kitchen, one small room and a toilet in the outside hallway that was shared with two other families. Her faced softened and she leaned back on the pillow.

  “Look hen, that’s a heathen name,” he said. “She’s no a pagan baby. I’ve picked a name. A good Catholic name––a saint’s name. You know she’s got to be named for a saint. All our girls are named after Catholic holy women; Katherine, Anne, Margaret, Mary, and Helen.”

  A fiery anger filled Cathy’s stomach, spreading upward past her heart and lungs. She didn’t want to hear him sweet-talk her with hen or any other pet name. “Jimmy! Just this once I’ve decided something. Just once. I’ve said that I’ve made up my mind and that’s that! If you don’t like it. . .” she hesitated before continuing in a tight voice, “. . .you can bloody well go to Hell.”

  He clenched his fists as though preparing to launch them. He’d been in many a fight and even the bravest men backed away from him. This was his wife and he meant to get his way.

  “Jesus, woman! Don’t be cheeky with me! I’ve spoken! Her name will be Elizabeth!”

  They stared at each other. Unable to withstand his wife’s steely glare, Jimmy was the first to look away. Cathy knew she had won.

  Jimmy stood outside the ward with his hands in his pockets, waiting for his wife and new daughter to join him. Cathy came out of the ward holding her small cloth bag in one hand and Baby June, swaddled in a pink blanket, in the other.

  As the MacDonalds turned to leave they saw Dr. MacFadden sauntering down the hallway of the maternity floor. The doctor adjusted his glasses as he came closer to them.

  “Hello there, Mr. MacDonald.” He extended his hand to Jimmy. “You’re no leaving us already are you, Mrs. MacDonald?” the good doctor said with a warm smile.

  “She’s better off at home where she’s needed.” Jimmy’s answer sounded gruff to Cathy. When she had told her husband the doctor said she needed extra bed rest and ordered her to stay a week, instead of the usual five days allotted new mothers, Jimmy had disagreed. Cathy knew her husband wasn’t too fond of “the big chucker” as he called Dr. MacFadden. When he spat out the derogatory term for a county lad, it was on the tip of Cathy’s tongue to remind him that even though the doctor grew up on the rather isolated Isle of Skye, he was still smarter than Jimmy would ever be.

  The doctor motioned Jimmy to step over to a quieter place away from the busy corridor. Jimmy told Cathy to wait before he followed the doctor further down the hallway. Dr. MacFadden leaned his shoulder onto the wall. The doctor, with his powerful build, youthful complexion and dark, wavy hair, didn’t show his age of forty-five-years. Jimmy, in his worn clothing and thinning hair, looked older than his forty-one-years. He straightened himself to match the doctor’s towering presence. It was useless. He was still a full head shorter than Dr. MacFadden. Jimmy leaned back and crossed his arms. “Is there a problem?” he asked tersely.

  “Aye, sorry to say but there is, Mr. MacDonald. This birth was exceptionally difficult on your wife. I’m recommending that this be her last baby. It will be very dangerous for her health if she were to birth again. Something is not right with her and…”

  “Aye, something is wrong with her, alright,” Jimmy interrupted him. “As for what happens with more children, I can’t say. God decides that. No you or me.”

  The doctor rose to his full height, accentuating every inch of their differences. Impatiently, he said, “Mr. MacDonald, if your wife gives birth again, she’ll be seeing God before you know it.”

  “We’ll talk to our priest,” Jimmy responded with his arms crossed tightly on his chest.

  “Did you no hear me right? We’re talking about your wife. If it were my wife…”

  “But she’s no, is she?” Jimmy argued. “I’ll make the decisions for us.”

  “Good. Then I recommend condoms.”

  “Doctor! You being a Catholic, you ought to know better than to talk about that!”

  “My God man, it’s 1950! We’re living in modern times. Give your children a chance for a better life.”

  “I take care of my family just fine.”

  Without waiting for a response, Jimmy quickly walked away while angrily rummaging through his pockets for a cigarette.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 3

  THE GYPSY FORTUNE TELLER

  FEBRUARY 1951

  A TINY GYPSY WOMAN walked through the mist in Partick, a working class neighborhood in Glasgow. When she came to the tenement house at Twelve Dumbarton Road. The sounds of the bells on her bracelets preceded her as she walked up to the first of the four landings in the building. Her craggy face peeked out of her cowl. Her boney knuckles rapped on the first door. She pressed an ear to it in hopes of sounds of life.

  The laughter of young children grew closer from behind the closed door.

  Cathy MacDonald flung open the door to find the gypsy. The old woman stood still, except for her eyes, which slowly peered up at the younger woman. A tiny smile crept over the gypsy’s face. “Read yer fortune, missus?”

  Mary and Maggie, Cathy’s two middle children, stared at the old gypsy woman with wide-eyes. Maggie loudly announced the gypsy, “Granny! Come see the witch!” Mary jumped up and down. “Witch! Witch!” she chanted. Baby June perched on Cathy’s hip began to babble along with her excited sisters.

  Exasperated, Cathy’s eyes didn’t meet the woman’s as she sighed and said, “No, I don’t think so.” She started to close the door.

  The gypsy moved quickly, placing a hand flat on the door to stop it from closing. “Ah can see ye long for a lost love.” She peered into Cathy’s face. “Am I no right, missus?”

  Startled, Cathy locked eyes with the gypsy. She opened the door a little. The two girls stood motionless on either side of her, mesmerized by the tinkling of the gypsy’s bracelets. “Come on, gie’s yer hand. I’ll tell ye more for just a shilling.”

  Digging into her faded, flowered apron, Cathy pulled out a couple of coins.

  Granny B popped her head out from the kitchen and looked down the hallway toward the front door. “Tell that tinker to go away. You’re too busy for that malarkey!” she yelled.

  Quickly, the tiny old woman grabbed the coins out of Cathy’s hands and stashed them in her tattered clothing. “Let’s see yer palm, lady.”

  Cathy looked nervously over her shoulder and down the hallway. The two girls tried to see what was happening, but she eased them out of the way to conceal what the gypsy would say. Balancing the baby on her hip, she held out her free palm. The old gypsy gently cradled it in her hands and moved her fingers across Cathy’s palm as though to smooth out the crisscrossing lines.

  Suddenly, baby June reached out to the old woman’s face, touching a deep crease. The ragged gypsy reciproca
ted and patted a curl of the baby’s flaming red hair. “Aye, this wee lassie, Ah can see she’s a special wean. The seventh child of seven, is she no? That’s good luck. She can see what others canne. She’s fey,” the gypsy declared, nodding her head knowingly.

  Cathy was surprised to hear that her youngest child was predicted to have the inner sight.

  “And ye, dear,” the gypsy’s dark-brown eyes looked up to the sky-blue eyes of the young woman. “Yer going to move far away from here,” she said and then sighed loudly. “Sorry to say but ye’ll nay find the happiness ye seek there.”

  The young mother moaned lightly. The old woman, seeing sadness cross the younger woman’s face, added soothingly, “Sometimes we think that we’ve lost something only to find that it was still there all along. Ye ken?”

  No, she didn’t understand the mysterious message. She sharply pulled back her hand and put it on the door behind her. “But this wee one,” the old gypsy nodded to June. “She’ll bring ye the love yer aft’r.”

  Granny B’s voice interrupted them. Cathy placed a finger over her lips to quiet the gypsy.

  The door suddenly swung open. “Away with you,” said Granny B, angrily waving a dishrag at the gypsy. “An’ you, get in here,” she said as she pulled Cathy into the flat.

  “Them tinkers. The whole lot nothing but troublin’ thieves. You didne give her any money, did you?” Granny B asked.

  Cathy walked silently past her into the kitchen. “You’re so gullible, girl,” chided Granny B. “You’re lucky she didne steal one of your weans right out from under your nose.”

  “Oh, Mammy. They can’t even feed their own weans, let alone mine. Anyway, I felt sorry for the old woman. Her hands were like ice.” She put June on the floor and handed her a rattle to play with.

  “Well, maybe you’re right. This is the worse chill we’ve had in February for ages,” Granny B conceded.

  Annie, the eldest MacDonald child at six-years-old, stood on a chair next to the stove and stirred a pot of thick Scotch broth soup while Maggie and Mary took turns licking a big wooden spoon dripping with sweet batter.

  Granny B turned her attention to the two sisters who were now fighting over the spoon. “See, you two! You put that down! Annie, hand Granny that thingamajig,” she said, pointing to a large rolling pin dusted with flour. The quarreling girls ran screeching out of the kitchen when their grandmother raised the rolling pin above her head in a threatening manner.

  “Them twins. A right handful, they are,” Granny B muttered. She often referred to Maggie and Mary as “the twins” or “the Irish Twins,” a term for children born less than a year apart.

  A small whimpering sound came from the crib next to the fireplace. It was Helen who, at twenty-months, was not round and rosy like the other MacDonald girls. She was a quiet toddler, a sweet child who still preferred to lie in her crib or be held. Cathy saw her as more like a pale elfin child, but without the mischievousness.

  Cathy bent down to her daughter and noticed that the toddler was tugging on her ear, which was a painful red. The wheezing from Helen’s lungs had gotten louder all day. This damp weather will be the death of us yet, Cathy ruminated as she picked up her sickly little girl.

  “Tsk. Poor wee soul. Sick again?” Granny B asked worriedly. Her home remedies hadn’t worked their usual magic. The women had discussed taking Helen back to see Dr. MacFadden, but Jimmy discouraged it, saying it was a waste of money. “She’ll grow out of it,” he had said.

  Easing her tired body into a rocking chair, Cathy tried to soothe the crying child. June watched Helen intently as her sister sat on their mother’s lap. She held up her hands and started to babble, signaling to her mother that she wanted to be picked up. The tired mother gave a small gasp as she scooped up the baby, placing her next to Helen. The girls straddled their mother as all three rocked back and forth. The toddler looked at her baby sister with heavy eyes. June placed her tiny hand delicately over Helen’s red ear. The sick toddler soon quieted as she sank deeply against her mother’s body. Cathy saw the redness in her ear fade to a pale pink. She had observed how June’s touched always seemed to help Helen.

  In a rare and blessed moment of silence, Cathy took a prolonged inhalation and closed her eyes. After a few moments, she looked over at her mother who was preparing supper. “Mammy, didn’t you tell me that you had a wean born dead?”

  “Aye. Sad. Just like wee Kit.” Granny B continued her baking preparations and said no more about the infant Kit, or Katherine, who had been her namesake. The baby had lived for only a few days. “Both of us have suffered the deaths of our first born. God giveth and God taketh away. Tsk. Aye, it’s a sair fecht.”

  No matter how sore the subject was as Granny B said, Cathy wanted to solve the gypsy’s message. “It is indeed,” she said before forging on. “So that makes me the seventh child, right?” An awkward stillness filled the kitchen. The only sound was the big black kettle on the stove that had started to boil. Granny B ignored her daughter until Cathy said, “You never talk about it, Mammy.”

  The older woman stared at her daughter with hands on her hips. “Leave the past alone, lassie. Nothing can be done about it. Why you asking? Did that tinker say something?”

  Cathy shrugged and said nothing.

  The conversation was interrupted by a big bang coming from the other room. “Tsk, for God’s sake! Will you no see what those wee devils have destroyed now! Here, I’ll take Elizabeth. Come on to your Granny.” Granny B reached to take June.

  Cathy’s face darkened as she laid Helen on the big overstuffed chair and held June tightly to her chest. “Oh Mammy! You and Jimmy! You’re only confusing her. Her name is June, Mammy. No Saint Elizabeth or Mary Queen of Heaven or any other bloody holy name. It’s June and that’s that.”

  The kettle began steaming as Granny B rushed to quiet its whistling. She picked it up off the stove and placed it harder than usual on the counter, spewing water all over.

  “Well, Elizabeth is her baptismal name. Thank God for that,” she muttered as she crossed herself.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 4

  THE ORANGE WALK

  JULY 12, 1953

  THE STONE LANDING outside the MacDonalds’ flat quickly picked up the heat that came with the weather change, and although it had drizzled the day before, producing a refreshing low fog, the heat of the July afternoon now permeated the atmosphere. The flat soon became hot and stuffy.

  Jimmy and Granda B had stepped out onto the landing to get out of the way so Granny B could prepare the meal.

  “Things are going to be hot today,” Granda B mused as he carefully lowered his whiskey glass from his lips, enjoying the last drop of Johnnie Walker Red, his favorite whiskey.

  The revelry of laughter, singing, and the banging of drums from the nearby parade belied the upcoming clash of Glasgow’s citizens. If history were its gauge, the day would most assuredly grow in violence that would last well into the next day.

  Granda B’s tawny brown eyes flickered over to Jimmy, his son-in-law. The old man watched Jimmy’s strong muscular body tense up with each drumbeat that, like an anxious heartbeat, grew louder and louder. While the two men were very different in looks––the elder was tall, white-haired and slender, whereas Jimmy was short and stocky with dark brown hair––they were very much alike in their strong beliefs on family and religion. Both were proud men. They had a right to be, they thought. They had managed to keep a decent job in a town where Catholics often found good work opportunities difficult to come by. Jimmy had done so well in his day job that recently he had finally given up his second one. That was until last week when he was let go from his job.

  Granda B’s low, calm voice cut short his son-in-law’s growing anger. “Aye, it is a shame, son. I told you my cousin would take you on at his electrical shop.”

  “It’s no just that, Dad. It’s the whole thing of being let go like I was. Just like that,” he said snapping his fingers loudly and grimacing with an
ger. “All because some bloody proddy comes along every time and takes our jobs away. It keeps me from getting ahead.”

  Granda B had the same distaste for the proddies as the Catholics called the Protestants in Scotland, having lived with their prejudices against Catholics much longer than Jimmy. But he knew not to agree with his son-in-law. Jimmy would anger at the drop of a hat and the whiskey might encourage him to do something that would bring trouble to the family.

  Still, Jimmy’s words caused Granda B to think back to the day, many years ago, when his youngest son, Francis, had died. Granda B’s stomach started to burn as it always did when he remembered that horrible time. Against his father’s orders, Francis had gone with some friends to watch the Orange Walk, a parade of Glasgow Protestants celebrating their 17th century victory over Catholic rule and religion. Also, against his father’s warnings, Francis had worn a bright green scarf, which alerted the Protestants (whose color was orange), that he was thumbing his nose at the Orangemen (as the Catholics called them.) A brick tossed from the crowd of Protestants had struck Granda B’s beloved son, killing him instantly. Months later, Granda B told his wife that Francis’ spirit had visited him during Mass. The spirit had instructed him to help unite the two religions. Soon afterward, Granda B began his crusade by founding and raising funds in the Francis Buchanan Glasgow Youth Soccer League, an organization for children from both religions. Although the program had brought him some comfort, his grief and anger over his son’s untimely death never stopped.

  Speaking with the wisdom of time, the old man said to Jimmy, “It’s a bit better with them now than in my days. Just be patient, son, you’ll get another job.”

  The men were interrupted by the voices of two young girls, one crying and one yelling, coming up the stairwell.

  “You’re the stupid bugger!” Annie yelled at her unseen target as she stomped up the stairs onto the landing with her crying sister in tow.