The Skye in June

by June Ahern

  When they were a block away Annie had said, “Don’t you think he looks so handsome in his alpaca sweater?”

  Their friend Jeannie sneered, “His pants are pegged so tight his legs look like sticks.”

  Annie’s friends said he was a bad kid. It was true, he was. The rumor mill spread the story of how he had crashed a stolen motor scooter into a palm tree on Dolores Street and ran off before the police arrived. Jeannie told her he had been kicked out of Mission High School and was now a student at a trade school. In agreement with her girlfriends, Annie knew he was not a good match for a Catholic schoolgirl.

  “You love him, huh?” Mary playfully elbowed her sister.

  Annie blushed, squeezing her brush against her chest.

  Pleased somebody had finally tongue-tied their older sister, June listened while the others teased Annie unmercifully about the boy. Excited by the fun, she piped up, saying Annie was “moonstruck.”

  Mary responded to June’s comment by making a funny face like a person who was swooning and moaning. “I’m mooning over my lover boy,” she kidded.

  June liked seeing Annie moonstruck. It added a pink glow around her body.

  “I sure hope he’s there today,” Annie said longingly.

  June had never heard her sister speak so pitifully.

  Maggie assured her she had heard he would be there. She advised her sister on how to act when she saw him. “Give him a real quick look. Maybe a tiny smile. But then turn away fast. Flip your hair, like this.” A demonstration was given. “Act like you don’t care a thing about him. That’ll get him real interested.”

  June covered her mouth and tried not to snicker.

  Annie’s eyes portrayed her dismay at her sister’s advice. Maggie kept brushing Annie’s straight blonde hair, trying to make it curve around her face a bit. Finally realizing it was hopeless, she pulled it back into a high ponytail like her own.

  “Mary, go get your black scarf,” Maggie instructed. “We’ll hide the rubber band and it’ll look really neat.”

  Mary jumped at a chance to help Annie’s transformation and ran to her room.

  “How can she flip her hair if it’s tied up?” June inquired.

  Maggie ignored the question and turned up the small transistor radio sitting on the dressing table. She finished Annie’s hair and held up a few lipsticks for Annie to choose from.

  “Pink,” Annie said

  Maggie tossed the lipstick into a large handbag along with her black eyeliner pencil, rouge, mascara and a can of Aqua Net hairspray. “I’ll do your make-up when we get to the Callaghans,” she said.

  “Daddy’ll get mad if she paints her face,” June reminded her sister.

  “Well, only if big mouths squeal on us,” Maggie told her. “Anyway, Annie’s fourteen. That means she’s a woman. Not a little girl, like some people we know.”

  Mary popped back into the room to announce, “It’s almost noon, let’s beat it.”

  The girls left for the movies together. When reaching the Callaghans’ house, they separated. The two younger sisters were told to go on ahead and save a place in line. When Mary started to protest, Annie reassured her, “We’ll be right down. We’re just going to get Jeannie.”

  Mary hesitated as she watched her older sisters bouncing up the steps. Rebelling against her task, it was on the tip of her tongue to yell out, “Why am I always stuck with June?” Then she remembered it was her little sister’s birthday so she just turned away and started walking rapidly down Castro Street.

  Brian Callaghan came out to join June. The youngsters followed behind Mary, happily talking to each other as best friends do. When the three arrived at the Castro Theater, the line of kids was already up to Market Street. There were lots of greetings and chatting with friends as they moved to the rear of the line.

  June kept bobbing her head out of the line, looking for her two other sisters. Finally, she saw them racing up the street toward the theater. Annie trudged behind Maggie, Jeannie and Loretta, which June thought was weird because Annie usually was in the lead. When they arrived, June saw why her big sister was hiding.

  Maggie had generously applied pale pink lipstick on Annie’s thin lips and drew black lines along the upper lids of her big sister’s gray-blue eyes. Black mascara was added on her blonde eyelashes. The make-up had an amazing effect on Annie’s eyes. The blueness became magnified, giving them an alluring appearance.

  The four older girls stopped where Mary, June and Brian waited in line.

  “Va-va voom,” Mary said to Annie, who rolled her eyes and blew out her pink lips.

  “She looks boss, huh?” Loretta said.

  “Move over, Brian,” Jeannie ordered.

  The kids behind them in line heckled the four girls when they cut in. But the disgruntled crowd clammed up when Eddie Gallagher and his sidekick, Larry Owens, showed up. Maggie flashed Eddie a Mona Lisa-like smile with her orange colored lips and black pencil-lined eyes. He looked adoringly at her. He leaned in close to hand her something and his hand brushed against the front of her black sweater. June felt Mary’s stocky body next to her tighten at the sight of them knitted together. Annie looked away disgustedly.

  Maggie thanked Eddie and sent him on his way. “Hey, here’s passes to get in,” she said to her group. “Be cool. Just walk over to Mr. Newman,” she instructed, jerking her head toward the pudgy balding man in a lumpy gray suit taking tickets at the door.

  “I’ve got money for June and myself,” Annie hissed to Maggie, who shrugged her shoulders and turned away from her older sister.

  “It’s wrong to use those tickets. It’s like stealing,” Annie said trying to reason with her. June knew, as did her sisters, Annie thought it was her duty to teach her sisters not to sin.

  In a hushed tone Annie reminded Maggie it would be an insult to the kindness of Mr. Newman, the Castro Theater’s owner. He gave Holy Savior School free movie passes to reward deserving students––such as the crossing guards––for their community service. Eddie Gallagher and his buddies would sneak into the small hall closet by Mother Superior’s office where the tickets were kept and take a few extra ones for themselves.

  Maggie turned away from her big sister ignoring Annie’s righteousness. She made a detour toward the back of the line to a classmate. Pulling him out of the line she brought him to join her group. The kid hung back with uncertainty, not wanting to draw attention to himself. June felt sorry for Tim, the boy caught in Maggie’s grasp. He was new at Holy Savior and the only African American there. In fact, he was the first Negro student to ever attend the neighborhood parochial school. Maggie had become his first friend. Annie and Mary agreed with Maggie about how out of place he must feel, having experienced that several years ago when they first came to America. June couldn’t remember that time, but she did know how difficult it was to be different from others. She always said a happy, “Hello!” to Tim, to help him feel liked.

  Maggie, Loretta, Jeannie, Mary, and Tim disappeared into the movie house. Annie pushed the little kids ahead and moved toward the cashier’s box.

  “Did Maggie commit a sin?” June inquired.

  The youngest MacDonald wondered if Maggie was a bad Catholic as she had been accused of being. Although lately she had begun to feel released from her past sins, June still needed to learn more about how to be a good Catholic girl so as not to upset the nuns or her father. If anyone knew how to be a good Catholic, it was Annie. With her face furrowed in a worried frown, she waited the verdict on Maggie.

  “Yes,” her sister replied piously.

  Anxiety continued to gnaw at June. She wanted to know if it was a mortal sin––a sure-fire ticket to hell.

  “A mortal or venial sin?” June asked, wanting to understand the severity of Maggie’s action. Annie didn’t hear her. She had already stepped up to the cashier’s box with her little white coin purse opened to pay the fifteen-cent entrance fee.

  June hoped Maggie’s sin wasn’t mortal. Sister St. Pius warned the
class that anyone who committed a mortal sin would go to hell after death, never to see God. It must be the lesser sin, June thought, like when your mother tells you to say she’s not home when a salesman is at the door. That wasn’t a really bad lie nor a bad sin.

  The whole group met in front of the candy counter inside the theater. As part of her birthday celebration, Annie handed June ten cents and told her to choose two candy bars. The birthday girl chose a Peppermint Patty to share with Mary and a Big Hunk, from which she might give Maggie a bite.

  The opening scene of the first movie, “The Diary of Anne Frank,” had just started when they entered the darkened theater. An usher led them down the aisle with his flashlight and sat them two rows down from a row of older boys. June tightly held onto her candy bars as she stared at the screen, entranced by the face of the young actress playing Anne Frank.

  A tremendous sadness overcame her. Although she didn’t know what the film would be about, she knew it would be painful to watch. She wished the second movie, “Darby O’Gill and the Little People,” would have been shown first so they could have left earlier for her big surprise.

  Halfway through the film, popcorn started hitting Annie’s hair. June was just about to ask her who was doing that bad thing when Jeannie’s husky voice hissed, “It’s gotta be Dave.”

  “Be quiet,” Annie whispered, not turning her head around to see who it was.

  “That’s the boy who likes Annie,” June informed Brian.

  “Yeah, I heard Jeannie tell Sadie all about him,” he whispered back.

  June was still not used to hearing him call his mother by her first name. No other kids did that, but the Callaghans were different.

  “Is he nice?” she asked. She wanted Annie to have a nice boyfriend.

  “Dunno. Jeannie said he hangs around the park. I saw him there a lot, smoking.”

  June knew a bunch of big boys and girls hung around the park. Her father had warned the girls not to go near them. He said they were punks.

  Brian cupped June’s ear and whispered, “I heard he did a real bad thing.”

  June pulled away from him, wondering if Dave was a sinner, because that’s what bad people are. Curiously, she stretched her neck and turned to look behind her at the row of boys, but it was too dark to see him.

  The older boys behind them started making loud kissing sounds. A few others called out Maggie and Jeannie’s names. Neither girl turned their heads to acknowledge them, although both giggled quietly.

  “Let’s go to the bathroom,” Maggie whispered to Annie. Not wanting to be left behind, June joined the herd of girls who simultaneously got up and emptied the row of seats. Brian started to leave with them, but June said, “We’re going to the Ladies Room.” He sat back down. They scooted up the darkened aisle past the teen boys who watched their exodus.

  The dim lights in the Ladies Room made it difficult for June to clearly see the faces of the teenagers lounging on an old overstuffed couch and passing a couple of cigarettes between them. The teen girls, ranging from fourteen to sixteen-years-old, eyed the newcomers with a head nod. A few mumbled, “Hey.” Although the girls didn’t all attend the same schools, they were all Eureka Valley girls and therefore knew each other to some degree.

  Annie ignored the teens and walked past them and into the other room where the toilet stalls were located. Maggie went to the long vanity counter with a large mirror running the length of it. She motioned for Loretta to join her. Jeannie leaned against the wall, hands in her jeans pockets, a small smile on her face, eyes diverted from anyone’s face. June stood between the rooms looking shyly at the teens.

  Mary squeezed onto the couch next to an older, tough looking girl. “Hey, what’s happening?” she asked.

  The older teen sucked deeply on her cigarette “Hi, kid,” she said blowing out smoke rings. The other girls resumed their ruckus, laughing and gossiping about boys. The tough teen sat listening, not joining in the conversation.

  Carmen O’Connell, the tough teen, had eyebrows penciled in a black arch and wavy black hair stacked around her long, thin face. She had a bad reputation with a lot of the older girls at Holy Savior. To her face the girls acted friendly, afraid to do anything else. Behind her back they called her a slut and said she hadn’t run away from home the year before. The rumor was that Carmen was at St. Elizabeth’s home for unwed pregnant girls.

  June didn’t like the judgmental gossip. She liked Carmen’s red lipstick mouth with its full lips. She thought the teenager looked like a movie star, but when she looked at Carmen she saw a frightened and lonely person. Maybe it’s because she’s from a broken home, June thought, not truly understanding what that meant.

  Her assumption was based on a conversation she had recently overheard her mother having over the backyard fence with a neighbor about the bad kids in the neighborhood. Carmen O’Connor’s name had been mentioned.

  * * *

  The neighbor, an amply built Irish woman, rolled her eyes to heaven, clucking her tongue. “Oh sure, it must be hard for that girl, being a half breed and all,” the neighbor had said. “They say her mother’s some kind of Indian and nobody has seen a father in the home. But he must be white because the girl’s skin is as white as milk.”

  Both women had stopped their conversation long enough to dip down for a piece of laundry to hang on the line. “Pssst, Missus,” the neighbor continued, nodding her large head at Cathy, motioning her closer to the fence, Cathy had shooed June away, not wanting her to hear the ugly gossip.

  “Did you hear about that boy, Dave?” the neighbor asked and not waiting for Cathy to answer said, “I hear the police are after him. He’ll be off to the pokey in no time.”

  The women shook their heads in disgust at the bad youth. June had been annoyed at her mother’s behavior, for was it not she who had told the girls gossiping was unkind? June was not aware that her mother’s true purpose for participating in the conversation was to find out more about the boy her daughter was mooning over.

  Based on the change in her daughter, Cathy had recognized Annie was smitten and she soon figured out the boy’s identity. One day after school Annie had met her so they could shop on Castro Street for groceries. When a tall boy passed them and smiled at Annie, her daughter had become quite flustered. Cathy decided to keep it a secret from Jimmy, since he had forbidden their daughters to have boyfriends until they were eighteen.

  “It’s a true shame for them kids, it ‘tis,” the neighbor continued. “What can you expect, them being from broken homes?” She bent behind the fence with a “humph,” picked up her empty laundry basket in one hand and waved good-bye with the other. Cathy had begun to worry how she could help this boy fit in so Jimmy would accept him.

  * * *

  June watched Carmen hunched on the couch, sensing the tough teen felt very unloved. The little girl wanted Carmen to feel happy. She projected onto her the color of a summer sun.

  Suddenly, the sullen-faced teen shuddered. “Shit, this cigarette is stale, man!” Carmen said gruffly. She handed the cigarette to Mary, who had never smoked before. She took a drag and sputtered out a series of coughs. Almost everyone in the room, except Annie, laughed.

  “Mary! Put that disgusting thing down! It’s bad for you,” Annie protested.

  “Yeah, okay, Mother Superior. Always telling us what we can and can’t do,” Maggie smirked, crossing her legs.

  Annie glowered at her sister for only a second before crossing the short length of the room to grab her arm. “Let’s go,” she ordered.

  Maggie pushed her away. Annie grabbed her sister’s arm again and jerked it. An intense tango of pushing and pulling began between the two. With faces only inches from each other, Annie shot forward with a hard punch to Maggie’s shoulder. Maggie quickly regained her balance and rolled her hand into a fist and hit back. Their Scottish anger erupted into a volley of punches.

  The room burst into a chaos of shrieking and pushing females. Some girls backed away from the due
ling sisters, while others rushed into the melee. When Maggie lost her footing and fell against the counter, Loretta pushed her back up into Annie.

  Mary stayed put on the couch, moving her feet out of the way when necessary and babbled on to Carmen about how her big sisters were so stupid to fight all the time. The tough teen asked if their dad beat on them. “Yeah, kinda,” Mary mumbled, to which the teen answered, “Well, there ya have it.”

  In an effort to quell the madness, Jeannie yelled out in a firm, calm voice, “Hey guys! Remember the surprise?” Miraculously, she had interrupted the battle long enough for her to move through the group of girls to get between the sisters.

  Red faced and panting heavily, both sisters dropped their arms and released the grip they had on each other. Jeannie gently nudged Annie toward the front door. Because of her anger, Annie missed her natural instinct to remove June from the bad influences. Instead, she stormed away from the scene in the bathroom.

  June vacillated, not sure whether to follow her or hang on and wait for her other sisters to leave. She had seen the sisters fight before, although it wasn’t as common as when they were younger. Annie always won anyway. Besides, she was very curious about what the other teens in the room would do next.

  The room sat silent until the tough teen, searching her large baggy purse, brought out a bottle and held it up over her head. “What’s the word?”

  “Thunderbird!” the older teens answered. They sang loudly, “You got a nickel. I got a dime. Let’s get together and buy some Thunderbird wine!”

  The bottle came around to Mary, who didn’t take it at first. She hesitantly looked over to Maggie who bit her lower lip and shook her head “no.” But Mary couldn’t resist; she tipped the bottle up to her lips, letting the cheap wine tumble down her throat. June froze in place, shocked her sister drank the alcohol. Why would Mary drink that bad stuff, she wondered. The very thing that caused so much trouble in their home was when their father was “under the influence,” as her mother would put it. Mary grinned foolishly before passing on the bottle, keeping an eye on it as it made its rounds.