by June Ahern
He walked briskly away from the school with his wife scurrying behind him.
Riled by what she thought were unfair accusations about her daughter, she said, “Och, for God’s sakes Jimmy! She’s not excommunicated, just expelled.”
Jimmy got into the driver’s seat of the car and slammed the door closed. For a minute Cathy thought he’d drive away without her. Finally, he unlocked the passenger door and she got in.
Violently, he threw the book onto the dashboard and yelled at her as he fired up the engine. “Oh, aye. Poor wee June. Nobody understands her. Isn’t that right?”
Cathy trembled as his rage escalated. His Scottish brogue thickened as he continued ranting. “And you tell Annie, scholarship or not, she’s going to no bloody university. I need her to keep her job and help out at home. College for a woman! What a stupid idea! What she’ll be doing is getting married and having weans. That’s that.”
A fire leapt up from the pit of Cathy’s stomach as she spat out angrily, “Jimmy, you can’t force them to live as you want. And those people,” she said, pointing back toward the school, “can’t tell me any of my girls are bad. I won’t have it. I won’t!”
“Woman! Be quiet!” He put a fist close to her face. “You’re a lousy mother. You’re lucky I took you as you came.”
Shrinking away, Cathy silently prayed to Our Lady to protect June.
The old black station wagon careened up Castro Street as Jimmy continued raging about the evils of his daughter’s heathen ways. Cathy couldn’t wait to escape from him. The tires squealed with a fast and furious turn onto Liberty Street, causing the car to fishtail and forcing him to slow down. The air was heavy with tension.
Jimmy spotted a girl leaning into a ‘55 Chevy parked in the middle of the street a few doors from their house. Her rear end was pointed up in the air and swayed side-to-side, causing her short skirt to swish around her hips. Cathy saw her too, and from the long skinny legs she knew which daughter it was. Jimmy slowed down the car and watched her.
“She’s up to no good,” Jimmy sneered.
Maggie flipped her hair and threw back her head laughing. Engrossed in her flirting, she didn’t see the station wagon park and her father leaping out from it.
“Margaret!” Jimmy bellowed as he stormed up to the car.
He pushed Maggie aside and leaned into the car filled with a gang of pimply-faced teen boys staring back at him. In fright, they paled at Mr. MacDonald’s furious face.
“You punks get out of here before I kick your bloody arses,” he shouted at them.
The car squealed away. With his fist up in the air, Jimmy yelled after them to leave his daughter alone.
“Look at her face all done up. There’s one of your good Catholic girls, mother,” Jimmy spat.
Cathy was shocked. Maggie didn’t look like the same girl who had left home that morning in a crisp, clean school uniform. Instead of her clunky oxford shoes, she now wore white vinyl go-go boots with her uniform skirt rolled up short, showing off her boney knees. Her hair was backcombed high on top of her head. Her pale pink lipstick accentuated the blackness of the eyeliner around her striking green eyes.
Jimmy made a quick thrust and grabbed at his daughter’s neck, but she sidestepped him. Cathy nudged Maggie behind her. They stared at him like animals facing a hunter.
“You look like a bloody whore!” Jimmy shouted.
“I do not. And I’m not a whore. I am a virgin,” Maggie said defiantly.
“That’s enough cheek from you,” her father sputtered. Regaining his wits, he shouted, “Where’s June?”
Self-consciously, Maggie wiped at her eye make-up with the cuff of her sweater as tears began to well up in her eyes.
“I don’t know. Maybe at the Callaghans,” she answered meekly.
“The Callaghans? She better not be! Cathy, didne I tell you not to let them go to that den of iniquity? Those two women, a bunch of man-haters.”
“Jimmy, please, not so loud,” Cathy said, fearing the neighbors might hear him.
“Shut your mouth, woman.” To Maggie he yelled, “Go get your sister!”
Hesitating, Maggie stared at him. Quietly said to her mother, “I don’t want to bring June back here.”
“Now!” Jimmy ordered, his voice booming.
“Better do as he says,” Cathy said, her face pale.
As commanded, Maggie took off running down the street. Cathy thought of the many times, when the girls were young, she had stood on the front porch and enjoyed watching Maggie and June skipping down Liberty Street, hand-in-hand. The memory would have been sweet had it not been darkened by the present situation. Cathy’s heart thumped in anticipation of the scene yet to unfold.
A figure turning the corner at the bottom of the street caught her eye. It was Annie coming home from work. Cathy felt a leap of gratitude knowing her eldest would be there to help, if need be, against Jimmy’s anger. Then she shuddered recalling the week before Annie had told her she was fed up with the worsening MacDonald dramas. She said she wanted to find a place of her own to have a little peace of mind.
Sun filtered through the curtains into the spacious Callaghans’ living room. Five teenagers lounged around on the floor on a pile of large, multi-colored pillows. Like bookends, June and Brian leaned against the large doorway to the room. The older teens didn’t really encourage the younger ones to hang out with them, but they didn’t exclude them either.
Music blared from a hi-fi. An empty bottle of wine and several glasses were scattered around a dark lacquered coffee table. The room swarmed with spiraling smoke as a joint was passed among the teens. Jeannie sat on the floor next to Tim, a handsome African-American teenager who had been good friends with both Jeannie and Maggie since his first difficult days at Holy Savior. He sucked the joint deeply and blew out smoke.
“Look, I just came to get stoned, not for religion class,” he said jokingly.
“Tim, this is about freedom, man. Something your people have been fighting for,” Jeannie said energetically. “We women are also oppressed by religion and society. It’ll be you and I who will change the existing social and political environment. Can you dig it?”
“Yeah, yeah. God’s really black. No, wait! God’s a woman,” he chortled as he stretched over to crank up the volume of the music. In his baritone voice, he began to sing along with the song playing, “She’s Not There,” by the English band The Zombies.
“Hey man, ‘member you’re getting high on a woman’s pot,” Mary quipped, snapping her fingers for him to pass the joint.
Several rapid knocks at the front door interrupted the party. Loretta, who was snuggled on her boyfriend’s lap, jumped up as though she had been sitting on hot coals. A month ago she had asked June to put a spell on her parents to help free her from their control. They had forbidden her to see “those hoodlums,” referring to the MacDonalds and Callaghans. Plus, she was tired of hiding her relationship with Alejandro, a Puerto Rican kid from the lower Mission District. Like the others in the room, except for Mary and the two younger ones, she would be graduating from high school in a few weeks. Her parents were planning her marriage to a newly immigrated Italian man. Loretta said she was sure they had imported him for that very purpose. “He’s so ancient, twenty-eight-years old,” she had cried. Jeannie suggested she run away, since she wasn’t strong enough to tell her parents no. June said she hadn’t yet found the right spell to help her.
“Somebody open a window. Hurry,” Loretta begged.
The teens started to giggle nervously. Tim turned off the music. Soon they were spilling over each other, dashing around and fanning the smoke with their hands. Mary yanked open a window. June lit a stick of incense.
“Thought Sadie and Bernice were out for the night?” Jeannie whispered hoarsely to her brother.
Brian shrugged and hid the glasses under the coffee table after taking a gulp from each one.
“Maybe it’s the fuzz,” someone said.
After another i
mpatient knock sounded, June peered through the peephole.
“Guess who?” she said as she backed up, retreating deeply into the shadow of the hallway.
Jeannie took her place at the peephole. “Hell! You scared the shit out of us!” she said as she pulled open the door widely.
Maggie pushed past her and stormed into the living room. Everybody stared at the black make-up smeared in big circles around her eyes. She looked like a raccoon. They all burst out laughing.
“What?” she spat out breathlessly.
Their laughter ebbed away.
Mary sucked on the joint. It sparked. She handed it to Maggie as she blew out smoke. “Mellow out,” she croaked out.
“Jesus, Mary!” she said, knocking it away.
“And Joseph,” Mary teased.
Her sister narrowed her eyes. “I’m not kiddin’ around. Something’s come down at home.”
Mary sat back down on a lime-green cushion. “Why? Is the Big Bad Wolf pissed at us again?”
“Heck yeah, it’s bad. Mom looked really bummed out.” Maggie told Brian. “Get June.”
June had heard the conversation and could tell from Maggie’s quivering voice the news was very bad. She walked into the room with a small scythe in her hand.
“Omigod! Who you gonna use that on?” Maggie said, her voice nearly hysterical as she moved away from the point of the knife.
“Relax, I just cast a spell. You should be squealing soon,” June said snootily.
“Unless you can do a spell for disappearing, you better get your butt home,” Maggie shot back.
June stood very still and studied Maggie. Pictures of her father and his emotions from the day’s events appeared in June’s mind. She quivered.
Guilty at being so sharp-tongued, Maggie added in a kinder tone, “It’ll be okay, Annie’s there.”
“He knows,” June said quietly, but loud enough for all to hear.
Solemnly, she moved to Brian and passed him the scythe, as if in a ritual. No one spoke as June walked out the front door.
* * * * *
Chapter 30
THE CONSEQUENCES
JUNE PLODDED UP the hill toward her home. She was leery as to what lay ahead. She wanted to make the short distance between the Callaghans’ and her house last longer.
Maggie and Mary walked behind her. Not wanting to disturb her, they whispered cautiously as they passed her on the hill. She ignored them, not wanting to build her anxiety by speculating with them about her father’s anger. She didn’t want to be part of any fearful discussion about the consequences. Instead, she softly sang, “Sweet Mother, in danger defend us, in sorrow befriend us…” from her favorite hymn, “Bring Flowers of the Rarest.”
As her sisters scooted up the stairs, June lingered at the bottom staring at the dark, thick fog hovering over Twin Peaks. Soon it would drift down to mist The Valley. Taking a deep breath she went up the stairs. She hesitated at the threshold before entering the house. She saw her mother and sisters down the hallway standing at the kitchen doorway. Annie grimly held the old wooden rolling pin brought from Scotland.
Before June could take another step, an arm rocketed out, grabbed her hair and pulled her inside the living room. Without a word, her father started to smack her head and face with the book. She fought back in a panic, screaming in pain with each hard hit. Jimmy shoved her further into the room and pulled the door closed. In a second, Annie yanked it back open and barreled in with the others like a wailing horde of banshees descending upon an ill-fated soul. They surrounded him, shrieking.
Alarmed by the unexpected onslaught, Jimmy dropped his hold on June and backed away until he was pressed up against the fireplace mantel. Annie madly swung the old rolling pin around in the air overhead.
“Never again!” she screamed over and over.
Her father lunged at her and grabbed the weapon. Mary joined the struggle of tugging and pulling. The three spun wildly around the room, grunting and cursing, wrestling for control of the weapon.
“Stop! Or I’ll call the police!” Cathy yelled. The chaos ceased abruptly.
An intervention by law enforcement was never before threatened when the MacDonald household erupted in pandemonium. It would have been an embarrassment if the police were called to the house. The police, whose authority would overshadow Jimmy’s, might not be sympathetic to his predicament. Not with all the hysterical females telling tales of woe, he rued.
“You crazy bitches,” he snarled. He pushed through the panting group to grab his frayed work jacket from a peg by the front door and stormed out of the house.
Cathy nursed June’s swelling eye with an icepack and gave soothing words of sympathy. To each daughter she gave a gentle kiss and then fell exhausted into bed. She hoped for sleep to take her away from what she knew lay ahead. Jimmy would come home later, drunk. She feigned sleep when Annie popped her head in the bedroom, asking if she was awake. Cathy didn’t need to be questioned again from her eldest about her plans to stop the abusive behavior. She too, was sickened with the escalating family conflicts, but knew of no solutions.
Eventually, by ten o’clock that night, all the females were in their bedrooms and the house was quiet. Soon after, the sound of the front door banging woke Cathy up.
By eleven-thirty, she had had enough of the noise downstairs. After all, tomorrow was a workday. Padding barefooted down the carpeted stairs, she mumbled, “Damn foolish bugger.”
Sharply, she jerked open the kitchen door, ready to face the problem. Jimmy sat in his usual chair facing her. The Formica table was littered with scraps of half eaten fish and chips laying in newspaper. Malt vinegar, the salt container spilled over on its side. A bottle of Johnnie Walker Red sat on the table. The glass in his hand was now empty.
He raised his head to squint at his wife and then lowered it again. He continued his loud drunken singing of his favorite Glaswegian tune, “I belong to Glasgow. Dear old Glasgow town. There’s something the matter with Glasgow, for it’s going round and round. I’m only a common old working chap…”
In her long-faded flannel nightgown, arms folded across her chest, Cathy stood watching him. With his bleary eyes, thinning gray hair in disarray and dark-blue shirt opened to show a stained tee-shirt beneath, she realized how old he had become. Calmly, she said, “That’s enough, Jimmy. Come to bed.”
He stopped singing and looked at his wife, trying to focus his eyes.
“You’ve turned them all against me,” he said, dejected.
“You’re doing that on your own,” his wife answered, brusquely.
“I’m no good enough for you. Right? I’m no some brave soldier going off to war for his lovely lady. Aye, I’m only a common old working chap.”
He moved his hand toward the whiskey bottle. In one swift motion, Cathy reached out and grabbed it away. Surprised by her action, his mouth opened to order her to give it back, but her scowling face challenged him. He decided against it.
“No more of your silly talk. Come on,” she said, putting the bottle in a cabinet over the kitchen sink.
“Your father and mother thought I was a good man for you. Wasn’t I a good enough husband for you, Cathy?” he whined.
“It’s no that,” she said gently.
“Then what is it, Mrs. MacDonald?”
He stood up. The two faced each other. Only the ticking clock could be heard. The scent of fried fish and strong vinegar mingling with his alcoholic sweat repulsed Cathy. With tears forming in her tired eyes, she was the first to look away.
“Couldn’t you have just accepted her?” she asked in a barely audible voice.
He backed away from her and shook his head “no.”
Stretching out her hand as though to touch him, she pleaded with him, “Before it’s too late. Take some time to know the girls.” She stopped, dropping her hand to her side.
He turned his face from her, mumbling, “I just don’t know any more. I love my girls, Cathy, but I’m afraid.” He cupped his head in h
is hands and he sobbed quietly, his shoulders shaking.
Confused by his display of emotions, she hesitated before taking his arm. “Come on, let’s go to bed,” she said, hoping to quiet him.
In bedrooms across the hall from each other, the girls stood, two to a room, with their ears glued to their doors. They listened with bated breaths for the signal their parents were asleep. After ten minutes of escalating snores signaling it was now safe, Annie carefully eased open her door. At the exact same moment, as though on cue, Mary popped her head out of the other bedroom and flicked on a flashlight. She playfully placed it under her face, rounding her eyes wide. Annie stifled a laugh and put her finger to her lips, mouthing “Shh.” Maggie’s head appeared above Annie’s. She went into a fit of silent giggles when she saw Mary’s funny face. June was in no mood to join the mirth. She hurriedly snuck downstairs. The other three followed suit.
At the bottom of the landing, Annie gestured they shouldn’t use the hallway’s creaking basement door. Stealthily, they moved through the kitchen and out the backdoor. The fog had settled, nourishing the flowers and wetting everything else. The new moon void of any light, gave them no guidance. The black night sky accentuated the whiteness of the damp sheets hanging on the clothesline. The four stopped to watch the sight.
“Looks like ghosts,” June whispered for all to hear.
She was surprised Annie, ever the responsible one, didn’t stop to grab them off the line or remind Mary of her unfinished housework.
In procession behind the flashlight, Annie ushered the group across the yard and down into the basement. Maggie grabbed a tight hold of her older sister’s checkered cotton bathrobe, afraid she’d slip on a slug slithering in the yard. Hand in hand came the younger ones. June looked up to the tall walnut tree and sensed the eyes of the cats watching them. She breathed in deeply the cool night air and fought back the dread of the unknown.
Arriving at the laundry room, Mary went to the trunk and took out the shoebox she had turned upside down and covered with a pale blue scarf embroidered with tiny red roses. Maggie took out two half-burnt white candles and the small brass candleholders. She lit the candles and placed them on the altar.