The Skye in June

by June Ahern

  “I hope so. I learned a very important lesson today,” Cathy said. “Keeping secrets in a family doesn’t necessarily mean we will be happier.” Her eyes glistened with tears. “Girls, I need to talk.”

  Haltingly, at first, she retold her secret story, starting with her journey from the Glasgow train station where she had met Malcolm, the love of her life. She ended by confessing her pagan practices on the Isle of Skye.

  Annie slumped back into the chair with her mouth agape. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Mary kept repeating, “damn” over and over.

  Annie was too shocked to reprimand her for swearing. Cathy was too focused on telling her story.

  Then she came to the part of her story when her words became bitter. “Granny and Granda B said I could only return home to Glasgow if I agreed to marry your father. They didn’t care how I felt. They were only worried about how I’d look in the eyes of the Church.”

  Protesting their mother’s criticism of their beloved grandparents, Annie and Mary reminded her how well Granny B had taken care of them all, especially with the cooking and cleaning. And Granda B had been great fun, especially at Hogmanay.

  Cathy thought of what they had said. “I know Granny thought she was helping me. She wanted me to have a good marriage. To her, cooking a good meal and going to Mass together on Sundays was a good life. My Daddy, your Granda, fought hard to keep his family taken care of. I know he wanted just the best for his family. And he wanted me to stay his wee pet forever. He couldn’t accept that I had grown up and become a woman. And besides, I did a terrible thing. I ruined his Hogmanay that year when he came to Skye. Granny had told me it was a time of hope for him that life would be better in the New Year. We all knew how badly he needed hope, especially after the deaths of my two brothers. He hardly spoke to me after we returned from Skye. Aye, they did the best they could, considering the alternative; to leave me in Skye half crazed with grief, with an old woman.”

  The revelation of their mother’s rift with her parents seemed to stun the girls, for they said no more after seeing the great pain that showed on her face.

  “You’ve been angry at them all these years. Is that why you didn’t answer Granny’s letters?” Annie asked gently.

  Cathy nodded “yes,” and tears formed in her tired eyes. “I wasn’t very forgiving. I was unhappy and wanted to punish her. I realize now how much she must have missed me when I left Scotland for America. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of my parents and hope they forgave me.” She looked sadly at June. “I only wish that I had Dr. Weissman to help me a long time ago. Because of him I now understand I’ve been suffering from depression for all these years.”

  June put an arm around her mother’s shoulders and said, “Granda and Granny loved you. They forgave you a long time ago.”

  Cathy smiled at her shyly. She still felt guilty for her years of emotional separation from her daughters. “Did you know that Granny B believed you had special powers with Helen?” Cathy asked June. “When she was sick it was you who helped her rest. Maybe it was your angel guiding you.”

  “My angel didn’t speak to me in Scotland,” June told her. “I remember the very first time I heard her. It was when we were on the plane to America. Daddy was reading me a book with a picture of a big boat. I heard a girl’s voice saying we had fallen off of it and were in the water. I asked Daddy if I fell off a boat. He said no and kept reading to me.”

  June didn’t mention her father had slapped her leg hard for asking too many questions. She pretended to fall asleep so he wouldn’t do it again.

  “Man, you give me the heebie jeebies when you say you hear voices. It’s kinda spooky, huh?” Mary said, looking to Annie for an agreement.

  “I thought you believed in my psychic abilities,” June said, surprised by her comment.

  “Thought it was the tarot cards,” Mary shrugged.

  “Gee, thanks a lot,” June said.

  Annie interrupted their bantering with her sniffles. “I couldn’t imagine Dave dying and not having you to comfort me, Mom. Or worse, having to marry somebody I didn’t love. Then losing two children. I’m so sad for you. You’re braver than I thought.” She gave her mother a woeful stare.

  “Annie, I’m so grateful to you for all the years you took care of the family,” Cathy said sorrowfully. “I’m sorry for all the years I wasn’t the kind of mother you needed. Maybe I can make it up to you when you have your baby.”

  “No one’s perfect. Let’s leave the past behind us,” Annie said, wanly as she rubbed her belly.

  “Do you feel okay?” June walked over to Annie and gently put an arm around her sister’s shoulder and a hand on her belly.

  “The baby is kicking up a storm. Hey, it just stopped. Guess you do have the magic touch.” Annie breathed deeply. “Yes, Mom, I’ll need your help.”

  “Thank you. It’s going to be nice to have babies around again. I’m going to buy a stroller and walk all over The Valley,” Cathy said happily. She then returned her gaze to the moon. “Three weans I lost,” she said sorrowfully, squeezing her eyes shut to keep back the tears.

  “We know about Kit and Helen. Who was the other kid?” Mary asked.

  Cathy bit her lower lip under the scrutinizing eyes of her daughters. There was no going back. She longed for the blessing of absolution and to be free of the shame that burdened her for so many years. Her parents were dead. Her marriage to Jimmy did not redeem her sins. She suddenly realized that no one could punish or condemn her anymore, not even the Church.

  “June knows her, I think,” Cathy said, forging on with her commitment to stop the secrecy.

  All eyes went to the youngest sister.

  June closed her eyes and her lids twitched a bit. When she opened them, she looked wide-eyed at her mother. “My angel is yours and Malcolm’s daughter?”

  A dual gasp came from her sisters.

  “Did she die, too?” June asked.

  Chatting and laughing voices from the hallway filled the void as the girls waited for her answer.

  “Hear the visitors coming to see the new wee babies?” Cathy said merrily, postponing an answer. “It reminds me of when I was in St. Andrew’s Infirmary. That’s the hospital you girls were all born in. Annie, you probably remember Dr. MacFadden, don’t you?” Not waiting for an answer, she chatted on, “He’s the doctor who helped bring all my weans into the world. He was so gentle. He saw me through all my difficult births. And when my girls died, he was there, too.”

  June saw a warm orange glow spreading around her mother as she talked about the kindness of the handsome Highland doctor.

  “He knew about my true feelings more than anyone ever had. Aye, the good doctor was my trusted friend.”

  Other than Malcolm, June had never heard her mother speak so lovingly about anyone from her past. She sensed there was more to the story about how Dr. MacFadden had gained Cathy’s trust.

  “When did you two first meet, Mom?” she inquired.

  “Actually, I got to know him through the letters he sent Malcolm when we were living in London. He had been Malcolm’s childhood friend. They stayed pals even after he had left for medical school in Edinburgh. Then he went into the army and Malcolm, to the navy. I met him in Skye…in a rather awkward position.” Her sudden laughter startled the girls. They looked at her curiously.

  Still smiling, she continued, “It was late spring. Malcolm was away at war and I was in labor with her. Callie was her name. There I was, a young woman like Maggie, only I wasn’t in a hospital. I had her in a small cottage by the sea. I was having terrible labor pains with a baby that wouldn’t come easy into the world. She was breach. That’s when the wean’s bum comes out first. It’s not a good thing for the baby or mother. The midwife was busy, miles away, with no car to get to me. Eilidth and her sister, older than the hills she was, were doing their best to help me. After a long night, morning finally came. There was a knock and in poked a head. It was Harry MacFadden, home for a vis
it from his war assignment. That’s when I met the good Dr. MacFadden, at Callie’s birthing. Don’t know if I could have made it without him. He was able to move Callie around and help her out and into my arms.”

  “Holy moly! What a story. Do you have a picture of him and Malcolm?” Mary asked.

  “I have some hidden away.” She winked at the girls.

  “And the baby? Our sister?” June asked with great interest.

  Cathy didn’t answer. Instead she told them about Malcolm’s ship being torpedoed and his body washing ashore near his home.

  “I saw him lying there on the beach so peacefully, as though he were asleep. Only he was dead. I went mad with grief. After that I couldn’t nurse Callie anymore. I didn’t even want to hold her. You see, girls, I was no good as a mother to her either. Eilidth finally wrote to my parents that I needed their help. My wee Callie was only six months old when I left Skye. Granny B promised me I could bring her home later, after your father and I married. She thought he was a kind man and would accept Callie.” She shook her head sadly. “But Granda forbade me to tell your father. He said no man wants to take in a bastard child. That’s what they used to call a baby borne out of wedlock. I felt so ashamed of what others would say, so I wallowed in my misery. It’s a sair fecht.”

  “It is,” Annie said, her voice cracking. She searched through her pockets for a hanky and came out with rosary beads. Mary offered her a Kleenex from her handbag.

  Their mother continued, “So when I left Skye, I kept a secret from my parents. Eilidth would send me an occasional letter through Harry, who by then had set-up a practice in Glasgow. She would write me all about Callie’s life. But when Helen died…” she stopped and sighed deeply, before continuing, “well, I no longer wanted any more news about Callie. I couldn’t take any more pain of being without my lassies. Like I did with Kit and Helen, I buried her, too.”

  “For me, it wasn’t buried deep enough,” June said sadly.

  Putting her arm around June’s shoulder, Cathy said kindly, “I think we’ve learned you can’t really bury the past. When you were just a baby in my arms, a gypsy came to the door and said it would be you who would bring my love back. I thought only of Malcolm as my love, but really it’s our child, Callie, that is the lost love of my life. That gypsy also predicted we’d move far away from Glasgow and we did; we came to San Francisco.”

  “June’s always attracted strange people,” Mary said mockingly.

  “Is Callie like me?” June asked.

  “You both have that flaming red hair, just like Malcolm. When I found out I was pregnant with you and you’d be born in early May, I rubbed my belly and asked you to please wait until June the first. That’s Callie’s birthday, too. I imagined if I had another baby on that day, then somehow it would be like she was back in my life.”

  “You can ask an unborn baby to wait?” Annie said incredulously.

  “I did and June must have heard me,” Cathy said. A wide smile spread across her face and her eyes shone with tears. “That night when I stood under the moon before entering the hospital, I felt Callie so strongly in my heart, I knew she and I were connecting once again.”

  June saw an aura of pale-yellow and dark green manifesting in front of Cathy. She was enthralled to see the spirit images held within it. She saw Malcolm, Helen, Baby Kit, Granda, and Granny B, and the old crone from her vision of the beach she now knew was Eilidth. June’s hands fluttered in the air in front of her as though trying to reach for someone.

  “The grief of the past is waning and the power for us is now,” June said dreamily.

  She continued to move her hands around as though wanting to embrace the unseen forces. The group of spirits parted and a young woman came forward. She had an abundant head of red hair swirling around her shoulders with blue eyes nearly as dark as her irises. She held out her arms in a welcoming gesture to Cathy, who couldn’t see her.

  In the background, June could hear her mother saying, “Malcolm’s body was found on the first of November, the day honoring the goddess Calleach. On that day the goddess sends a banshee–– that’s a woman spirit––to unite the living and dead. I have little faith in ever seeing Callie again. For all I know she’s dead.”

  June shuddered remembering what Mrs. G had told her many years ago. “You and your angel are duchy siostrzane.”

  “She’s alive! Callie’s waiting for me,” June said excitedly.

  “Creepy,” Mary said as she stepped away from her sister.

  “We gotta find her! She’s our sister, part of our clan,” June stated boldly.

  “Oh, I can hear Daddy now,” Mary said, giving a wry grin.

  “He can’t do anything,” Annie said, her square jaw jutting out.

  “She’s still my angel you know. I’ll send her a telepathic message wherever she is,” said June assuredly.

  “Eilean a’ Cheò ,” Cathy whispered.

  “Is that her full name?” June was giddy with a feeling of divine connection between her and the angel.

  “No. That’s Gaelic for the Isle of Skye. It means the Isle of Mist. It’s where Calleach, that’s Callie’s full name, might be, or not. It was a long time ago.”

  “The goddess is calling me into the mist,” June whispered very softly.

  She had so many more questions for her mother. Still, the ones that had been answered had cleansed away much of the angry hurt that had divided mother and daughter for so long. June felt a surge of confidence. It was just as the gypsy had predicted; she and Callie would find each other. June was satisfied for now.

  “I remember the last words Eilidth whispered in my ear on the night I left Skye. She said, ‘Pray to the goddess and all will set itself right in time.’ Now you say the goddess is calling you. It seems as though this is the time for setting wrongs right,” Cathy said hopefully.

  Just then the door swung open and Sister Mary Dorothea came in holding a small bundle swaddled in a white blanket.

  “Aha!” she exclaimed. “I thought I’d find you here. Margaret is doing well.”

  A sound of relief vibrated throughout the room.

  The nun held out the baby. “A new MacDonald girl to play with,” she said, grinning from ear to ear.

  Without hesitation, Cathy’s arms opened wide to accept her first grandchild. The girls crowded around. June folded back the blanket to a see a chubby-faced infant with a small, flat nose, plump pink lips and long slanted eyes. June thought how the baby’s light brown face looked so pretty against the white blanket

  “Look, her hair has a reddish tinge,” she exclaimed, touching the strands of frizzed hair.

  “She’ll be a strawberry blonde like her mother. Can we keep her here for just a bit?” Cathy asked.

  The nun hesitated. “I’m supposed to take her to the nursery.”

  Annie held her hands, wrapped in her rosary beads, in a gesture of prayer. “Sister, we want to pray to Our Lady in gratitude for this blessing,” she said innocently.

  The young nun’s eyes shined with reverence at the idea. Cathy hoped she wouldn’t offer to join them.

  “Blessed is she amongst her kin women. Yes, most sacred. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Sister Mary Dorothea left humming “Ave Maria.”

  Mother and daughters formed a circle next to the window where the crescent moon, nestled between two soft gray clouds, shone upon them.

  June felt sheer joy at seeing her mother and sisters poised under the moon, ready to consecrate the newest family addition to the goddess. She thanked Our Lady for the years of guidance.

  “Catholic girls can make good witches,” she said with a smile.

  June raised her arms to the moon. “We declare our new MacDonald girl to be a child of the goddesses, blessed with much love. So mote it be!”

  ~ The End ~

  ###

  NOTES

  Banshee – The Banshee (pronounced BAN-shee) also spelled Scottish bean shith or bean shidh; Irish bean shidhe – is a Celtic mythological “w
oman of the fairy mounds,” a female spirit usually seen as an omen of death and a messenger from the Otherworld (where one goes upon death.) The woman is heard wailing as a warming to a family that one of them will soon die. The banshee could also link or unite the living with the dead. (Chapters: The Orange Walk and Blessed be.)

  Calleach or Caileach – (say Kalleach) the Gaelic Scottish goddess know also as La Fheill Brighde, Beira, Queen of Winter and Calleach Bheur, dies of old age and is reborn over and over again into a young body. The goddess of death and rebirth, Calleach was said to frequent parts of the Scottish Highlands bringing cold weather, stirring up great storms and creating mounds, hills and mountains. She is especially thought of during the month of February. In Irish and Scottish mythology, the Calleach (Kalleach) is a divine hag or creatrix (creator of the world) and possibly an ancestral deity. The word simply means ‘old woman’ in modern Scottish Gaelic and has been applied to numerous mythological figures in Scotland and Ireland. (Chapters: May Day, Swimming with the Mystics, The Circle Widens, and Blessed Be)

  Fenian – Refers to Catholic Irish and Scottish revolutionaries seeking independence from

  Britain in the 1850s to early 1900s. The uprising was ill-planned and thus was unsuccessful. The Fenian Boys, known also as the Fenian Brotherhood and Irish Republican (IRB) were fraternal organizations dedicated to the establishment of the independent Irish Republic. Fenian refers to warrior bands of young men in Gaelic Ireland who live apart from society and could be called upon in time of war. (Chapter: Holy Savior School)

  Imbolc – a festival dedicated to the goddess Brigid (Brighid); adopted by Christians as St. Brigid’s (Brigit’s) Day. Imbolc is a time for festivities bringing in spring. It is a time of weather predictions and its tradition of watching to see if serpents of badger come from their winter dens; is thought to be the precursor to Groundhog Day. Fires to purify are important aspects of Imbolc. Brigid is the goddess of poetry, healing and smithcraft. As both goddess and saint, she is associated with holy wells, sacred flames, and healing. (Chapter: Cleansing June’s Energy.)