The Skye in June

by June Ahern

  Cathy scooted closer to her. She tried to say something, but between the noise of the cable car and the blowing wind, June couldn’t hear the words. She leaned closer to speak directly into June’s ear, “I’m sorry for all the times I hurt you. Please forgive me.”

  This time June heard her. She tightened her lips, not wanting to accept the apology. Casting her eyes upward, she blinked away her tears. She noticed the rain had finally lessened and patches of blue sky shone through. No matter how much she wanted to keep blaming her mother for all her unhappiness and stay angry at all the times she was disappointed by her, June couldn’t. She loved her mother and wanted to be close to her. If she wanted her mother to accept her, June would have to accept her also.

  The grinding noise of the cable car’s brakes as it slowed to their stop was ear-piercing. June stood and took hold of the metal pole. She swayed outward as she readied herself to jump from the platform when they reached the intersection of Powell Street at Market Street. The thrill of hanging out of the cable car and the feel of the brisk wind against her face had charged her energy. She felt a sense of freedom.

  As they lurched to a stop she hopped off and hollered to her mother, “Did you get a transfer?”

  Cathy nodded a “yes,” and gingerly stretched out a foot to get down from the cable car. June took hold of her arm.

  When Cathy was steady on the sidewalk, June threw her arms around her mother in a tight bear hug. “I love you, Mommy,” the teen said, to Cathy’s surprise.

  She returned the hug, clinging a bit longer than normal before letting go and remarking, “You’re taller than me now.”

  Arm in arm, they walked over to the Woolworth’s department store on Market Street to look at the items for sale in the window.

  “We could get that for Maggie’s baby,” June said pointing to a pale-pink baby jacket and hat.

  “I’ve already crocheted a yellow and white set,” Cathy said.

  “Bet it’s a girl,” June said.

  “Making a prediction?” Cathy’s eyes twinkled in mirth.

  June smiled and shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe. I think you’re a good witch like me. You can join my coven. Only Brian’s in it. That’ll make three of us.” She smiled shyly at her mother.

  “Okay. I could show you a thing or two, Missy Witchy,” Cathy laughed bumping her shoulder against her daughter.

  “Do you have psychic powers, too?” June asked, curiosity sharpening her eyes.

  “Nothing more than the usual mother’s intuition. I was always interested in people like you who do though.”

  June was happy to hear her mother believed in her. “I thought all witches would have them,” she said.

  “I said I was a pagan, not a witch. Eilidth warned me to never use that word because of the bad connotations associated with it. It’s true pagans are often highly sensitive to the changes in nature and how it influences their lives. Some pagans have the ability of second sight. We call them fey in Scotland. Others have different gifts. Eilidth was a well-known herbalist. She used the local plants and flowers to heal her family and neighbors. Her sister was a storyteller who kept alive Highlanders’ legends in the Gaelic language the English had banned.”

  “Is bidh sàmhach a Gaelic word?” June asked, saying the words to sound more like, bee savax.

  Her mother laughed loudly in surprise. “Yes! It means to be quiet. How’d you know? Oh, never mind. I know. Your angel told you.”

  Cathy’s usual pallor now glowed with a pretty soft pink coloring in her cheeks.

  “You were happy there, huh?” June was eager for more information about her mother’s past.

  “Very. Skye is a beautiful and magical place. And Eilidth was so kind to me. Never once did she tell me what I had to do to fit in. Did you know her name translates to Helen? I think I was trying to bring that happiness of being with Eilidth back to my life when I named your dear sister after her. But I couldn’t talk about my life in Skye to my family in Glasgow. I had to keep it secret. Always the damn secrets.”

  June didn’t want Cathy to sink back into unhappy memories. “Let’s celebrate. We’ll call Mary and have her walk down to meet us at South China for dinner,” she said referring to the popular Chinese restaurant in The Valley. June and her sisters had often sat in the wooden booths designed for privacy and dined on several plates filled with a variety of good food with Dave and the Callaghans.

  “Annie will be just getting off work. She can meet us there, too,” June said.

  She wanted to include her eldest sister, who worked at Hibernia Bank on the corner of Castro and Eighteenth Streets. Since her marriage to Dave, Annie had lived in a studio apartment on Hancock Street. It was an easy walk from Liberty Street to visit and keep her company while Dave worked at night and went to the Police Academy through the day. June could tell Annie was lonely for her family’s company.

  “Can’t. I’ve got to get your Daddy’s din…” Cathy suddenly halted and said enthusiastically, “That’s a grand idea, pet!”

  At their bus stop in front of Woolworth’s June dropped a dime into a pay telephone. It rang a half-dozen times before she started to hang up, disappointed. Then she heard a snappish, “Yeah?”

  “Hey Mary, it’s me. I’m with Mommy and…”

  “Let me talk to her,” Mary said brusquely.

  June handed over the phone scowling at Mary’s rude tone.

  Cathy listened with wide eyes. “Right. Where? Leave a note for Dad.”

  She hung up the phone and filled June in. “Annie was outside when you called. She was in the car waiting for Mary. They’re on their way to drive Maggie to the hospital. She’s in labor. Now, which bus takes us to St. Mary’s Hospital?”

  They stared out at the bustling crowd and full buses going past on Market Street and started to reconnoiter a route to their new destination.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 37

  BLESSED BE!

  SAINT MARY’S HOSPITAL sat across from Golden Gate Park. Three nuns glided past Cathy and June in single file. They wore large white-winged headdresses and soft dove-gray habits with white collars that dipped down their chests. Reverently, Cathy lowered her eyes and greeted them softly, “Good evening, Sisters.” The three gave a slight nod and smiled benevolently.

  June spotted Annie sitting uncomfortably on a sagging, dark-brown couch in the visitor’s lounge. In her seventh month of pregnancy, her stomach was so big that she looked like a butterball.

  Across from her Mary sat splayed out across one of the twin couches.

  “Thank God, you’re here, Mom,” Annie said as she struggled to get up, her belly challenging an easy rise from the low couch. Her mother went to help.

  “We’ve got to get the story straight,” Annie said bossily.

  “Let’s go to Maggie,” said June.

  “In a minute,” Annie answered impatiently.

  Under her breath, June whispered to Mary, “Man, you’re stoned. Why now?”

  Mary tapped her chest. “Mea culpa.”

  Annie gestured for the family to form a huddle. She explained the importance of coming up with a story about the whereabouts of Maggie’s husband.

  Usually, young women in Maggie’s predicament were sent to San Francisco’s St. Elizabeth’s Home for Unwed Mothers. Or they left town and returned without a baby. Either option was better than bringing shame to their families.

  “Why did she have to pick a Catholic hospital?” Annie complained. “She could have gone to San Francisco General Hospital and we wouldn’t have to fake her being married. I hope we don’t have to lie to one of the nuns.” She was worried because many of the hospital’s nurses were nuns.

  No one had a ready answer to the unacceptable situation.

  Mary finally offered a solution. “Say her husband is a soldier stationed at Camp Pendleton.” That was the Marine Corps Base in Southern California where Eddie had trained.

  “Tell them her husband went to war in Vietnam. They’ll fee
l sorry for her,” June said, keeping her voice low and enjoying the intrigue.

  “I tried to put my wedding band on her, but her finger’s too fat.” Annie ignored her sisters’ ideas and kept focused on the issue of her unwed sister.

  “Oh goody, Maggie’s fat,” Mary said gleefully.

  “I’ll put my ring on her. Let’s go. She’ll be needing me,” Cathy said.

  “Wait. That’s only part of it. What’ll we say if the baby comes out black?” Annie fretted.

  The four looked at each other, puzzled and unsure of what might happen if their milky-white, strawberry-blonde relative produced a black baby. No one had an answer to that one.

  The hallway was becoming busy with visitors arriving and milling around them.

  Their silence lengthened.

  At last, June spoke. “How about saying the baby is a Black Scot. You know, like the Black Irish?”

  Mary guffawed loudly.

  “It’s no joke!” Annie hissed.

  Cathy said sternly, “Girls, that’s enough. The only important thing we should worry about is that the baby be healthy.” She then abruptly broke away from the huddle and hurried off toward the elevators. The sound of her heels clicked rapidly behind her.

  “Let’s skedaddle,” Mary said.

  The sisters followed their mother to the elevators and into the maternity ward where a nurse directed them to Maggie’s room. Writhing beneath a white sheet was a very pregnant Maggie, looking quite woebegone. With her face scrunched up with pain, she stretched out her hand to her mother to plead for help.

  “Now, now, pet. Don’t make it worse for yourself. You’ve got to relax,” Cathy said, trying to ease her daughter’s grasp. “Go with the contractions. Breathe deep, in and out.” Cathy breathed deeply to show how it was done.

  A seasoned nurse, stern of face and round of girth, came bustling into the room. Her mouth set tartly when she saw the group gathered around her patient. “Visitors are not allowed in the patient’s room. You may wait in the lounge on the first floor.”

  The family began to shuffle away from the bed.

  The nurse’s wide body knocked June out of the way as she tried to squeeze past. She took hold of Maggie’s wrist and checked her watch. After returning her patient’s hand to the bed, she turned, and with one hand on each hip, announced, “You’ll be notified when the situation changes.”

  Pleadingly, Cathy said, “Please, this is her first, and she’s frightened to be alone. I’m her mother and these girls are…”

  “Where’s the husband?” the nurse queried, her lips pulling into a tight line. Her narrow eyes roved around each family member.

  In no coherent order, the three sisters burst forth with the tale of Maggie’s husband’s whereabouts.

  “He joined the army?” Maggie asked faintly.

  Cathy shushed her. “You know how they are at this stage.” She smiled hopefully at the nurse.

  Annoyed by her mother’s kowtowing to the nurse, June intervened. In her mind’s eye she conjured up an imaginary wand that she could wave to dismiss the irritating nurse.

  The nurse ignored Cathy’s comment and turned to Maggie. “You haven’t signed the necessary forms to receive a saddle block. That’s what you asked for, right Mrs.…?”

  No one offered up a last name.

  Maggie gurgled some response between gritted teeth.

  “Well, I better get that going,” the nurse said pulling a sheet tight over Maggie’s protruding belly. “She’s got hours to go. There’s coffee in the cafeteria, second floor,” she informed the others. She then bustled out of the room, leaving the door wide open as a reminder that the family must leave.

  Scooting back to Maggie’s side, Cathy tried unsuccessfully to force her wedding band onto her daughter’s swollen finger. “This baby will be born within an hour,” she predicted.

  “Mom, I think the nurse knows better about these things,” Annie said crisply. She wanted to become a nurse. Dave promised that she could go to nursing school as soon as he completed one year with the police force.

  “I think I know the signs after seven babies,” Cathy responded. She gave up on the wedding ring and dropped it into her coat pocket.

  Perplexed by what her mother had said, June corrected her. “Six babies,” she said.

  A riveting scream followed by wretched groaning took the attention from June. Mother and sisters quickly clustered around Maggie to offer soothing and helpful advice. “Breathe.” “Be brave.” Cathy brushed back Maggie’s hair and Annie wiped perspiration from her forehead.

  Another contraction brought forth horrific screams, accompanied by a string of cussing.

  The scene disturbed June. She felt helpless to stop her sister’s pain. Moving away from the bed, she pressed her back into the wall and tucked her head down low between her shoulders.

  The nurse swept into the room and gruffly reprimanded Maggie for being so loud. Following her was a nun.

  “Hello Mrs. MacDonald,” the nun sang cheerfully. “I’m Sister Mary Dorothea.”

  June’s head popped up at the sound of the gentle, accented voice to find an angelic ebony face enshrouded in a winged headdress and round glasses framing her bright black eyes.

  “Sister,” Cathy bowed her head slightly.

  “Mom, she’s talking to Maggie,” Annie whispered.

  “Now, let’s see how Baby MacDonald is doing,” the nun said to the whimpering patient.

  In one quick motion, the nurse pulled off the sheet and pushed up the hospital gown, exposing Maggie’s nakedness to everyone in the room. The family turned their heads away in embarrassment.

  The nun’s gloved hand examined her patient.

  “Oh my! The little head has dropped. Baby is raring to get here,” the nun said joyfully. “By the time your husband arrives, he’ll get to hold his baby right away.”

  “She’s not married,” Cathy spoke out boldly and then reverently added, “Sister.”

  Both nun and nurse stared at her with mouths opened in a silent O.

  The old nurse dropped the sheet and tsked-tsked loudly.

  “If that is the way it is, so be it,” the young nun said with a kind smile. “Margaret, you are blessed to have your women folk here with you.” She pulled up the side rail on the bed and said, “Off we go to the delivery room.”

  The nurse yanked up the other railing and helped the nun to wheel Maggie out of the room.

  “Visitor’s lounge,” the nurse said dramatically as she clicked off the light.

  “Meanie,” June said, wondering why her telepathic message of, “Be nice to us,” hadn’t worked. Must be too much going on, she concluded.

  “Yeah, the old bat,” Mary said supportively.

  “We should go to the waiting room,” said Annie standing at the opened door.

  Cathy moved to the window and parted a slat in the blinds to peek outside. “I think we’ll wait here.”

  June noticed how pale and tired Annie looked against the harsh light of the hallway. She called to her, motioning to the lone chair in the room. Annie happily plunked down and sighed loudly.

  Milling around the room looking for a place of comfort, Mary finally chose to slide slowly down a wall to sit Indian style on the floor. She delved into her big leather handbag and fished around in it. She pulled out a half-eaten bologna sandwich wrapped in wax paper and offered it to Annie, who gratefully accepted it.

  Leaning against a wall, June watched Mary nervously tap her foot. She knew her sister was in need of a nicotine fix. She was curious about what else Mary had in that big bag.

  Mary delved back into her bag and took out a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum. She popped a fresh stick into her mouth and vigorously chomped it.

  Cathy tugged up the blinds and stood looking out the window. Dusk was slowly turning into nightfall. Across the street in Golden Gate Park, she could see tiny pink flowers beginning to bloom on the tree branches. Soon, spring flowers would adorn the park and the days would be lo
nger. A crescent moon drifted onto the night horizon, casting a mere slit of light across the darkened room. “Look, it’s waxing.” She beckoned the girls to the window.

  Before joining her mother, June closed the door to give her family privacy. Mary scrambled up from the floor to stand at the window by her mother.

  Grunting, Annie rose from the chair and waddled over. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she squinted out the window and asked, “What does that mean?”

  June noted how luxuriously healthy Annie’s hair had looked since her pregnancy. Finally she’s happy, June thought. Aloud, she said, “That’s the time when the moon is growing rounder until it becomes full. Now is the best time to think of things you want to grow––like getting a bigger place before the baby comes.”

  “For the love of God, not now, June,” Annie objected, rubbing her eyes and yawning.

  “The crescent moon is a female symbol,” Cathy said.

  “Maggie’s going to have a girl,” June announced. They looked at her. She gazed trance-like at the silver-white moon shining in the heavens.

  “Fortune-teller,” Mary said with a hint of laughter. She knew her sister hated that name and instead preferred to think of herself as being “aware of the unseen world around her.”

  “Let’s make a wish for our new baby. Hold hands,” Cathy said. She held up her palms. June and Mary each took one.

  “Falling under June’s pagan influences?” Annie questioned her mother.

  “It’s a wish for your sister and her baby. Is that a bad thing to do?” Cathy asked.

  Annie lowered her eyes and gave her mother a mini-smile to show she was willing to be part of their ritual.

  “Long ago, the first time I called down the power of the moon, I stood on a hilltop in Scotland. I wished for a life full of happiness with many children and with a man I loved deeply. At least half of my wish came true.” Cathy looked at each daughter.

  “Is this like a story where we learn a lesson?” Mary asked.