The Skye in June

by June Ahern

  “Let’s see your face, June,” Annie said, gently taking the younger one’s face in her hand. She used the flashlight to get a clearer view.

  June’s left eye was puffed up and almost shut. It had a deep purple bruise running from her temple down the side of her swollen cheek. She winced when Annie touched it.

  “Mother of God! I can’t believe he hit you with a book,” Annie exclaimed. To Mary she said, “Go upstairs. Get some ice and the aspirins in the kitchen cupboard.” Mary was the most light-footed amongst them.

  Soothingly, Maggie stroked June’s hair, while telling her, “My beautiful little sister. I’m so sorry for everything.”

  June shivered. Her lower lip trembled. She was overcome with the uncommon sympathy.

  “Cold?” Maggie cooed. “Here, put my robe on. There’s a clean hanky in the pocket.”

  Anticipating tears, June pulled out the hankie and a square white package toppled out of its folds. Annie picked it up and held it in the beam of the flashlight.

  “Maggie! What are you doing with these? Catholics can’t use birth control,” Annie scolded.

  “You and your Protestant boyfriend better be careful then,” she answered, snidely.

  “You’re disgusting. We don’t do it,” Annie said curtly.

  “Oh, well then, poor Dave.” Maggie smirked.

  Annie tsked. “You better be careful. Someday you’ll be sorry.”

  “You’re such a big bummer,” Maggie retorted.

  No one heard Mary coming back into the room. In her hands she had a kitchen towel, a bowl of ice, a bottle of aspirin, and something hidden under her arm.

  Ignoring Maggie, Annie wrapped the ice in the towel and carefully put it on June’s face. Her father’s cruelty made her temper boil.

  “Mom may put up with his bull, but I won’t,” Annie said. “How could Our Lady let this happen? I pray for Her help all the time.”

  “It’s not Her, it’s him. The Big Bad Wolf. I told you long ago we should have gotten rid of him,” Mary chimed in her two cents worth.

  “So, what’s the plan? Poison or bat?” Maggie inquired wickedly.

  “Something better. We’re going to cast a banishing spell. Ouch.” June said as Annie held the cold compress against her eye.

  “A spell? Is that what you learned from that book? Don’t we have enough trouble?” Annie asked sternly.

  “THE book,” Mary said holding it up.

  Annie tried to grab it from her, but Mary pulled it back.

  “Hey, Bossy!” Mary said loudly.

  Her sisters hissed, “Shh.” All eyes rolled to the upstairs. Everyone held their breath, listening. But no sound came from the house.

  “Witchcraft!” Annie said fiercely, crossing herself. “That’s a sin! We’re Catholics, for God’s sake! That’s what caused all this trouble––this pagan stuff.”

  “You’re getting more like Daddy every day. I guess you think we’re all going to hell in a handbasket too, eh? May as well make it a party,” Mary said, grinning devilishly.

  “It’s not the book that caused this. Mary’s right. It’s him. He’s afraid of anything different from his beliefs,” June said.

  “Yeah. To him it’s all evil if it isn’t his way.” Maggie agreed with the others.

  “Our religion hasn’t made us happy, or Daddy either. You don’t want to be like him, do you?” June asked Annie.

  Annie cringed. “How could you ask that? I’ve always protected you! Besides, I am happy with my religion,” she said piously.

  “Maybe you don’t understand. Why don’t we just listen to June’s ideas about witchcraft?” Maggie smiled, wanting to appease her older sister.

  Hoping to make Annie understand June said, “I guess Daddy was right from the beginning. I am a pagan. Maybe Mommy knew that in some way and that’s why she didn’t name me after a saint. I did try to be a good Catholic. I always liked the magical part.”

  “Don’t you realize witchcraft is evil? It controls people’s minds,” Annie said firmly.

  “Oh, and we’re not told what to think or how to act like good Catholic girls so we can get to heaven?” Mary said, ever the smarty-pants.

  “If a Catholic girl can become a witch, maybe a witch can be a good Catholic. So, there’s hope for June yet,” said Maggie philosophically.

  “If you have to change religions, at least pick a Christian one. Like how about Episcopalian?” Annie suggested, looking hopefully at June.

  “Is that what the proddy boyfriend is? Oh, Daddy will love that!” Mary teased.

  June answered Annie by shaking her head back and forth with a strong “no.” Resolvedly, she said, “Only witchcraft lets me use my special powers and feel like I have a religion, too.”

  “I don’t want any part of this witchcraft stuff. Something bad is going to happen,” Annie warned them, wagging a finger at her sisters.

  “I’ll do a white magic spell. I’ll block him from hurting us. I won’t hurt him,” June declared.

  “It’ll be you, I worry about,” said Annie, putting out a hand to rest on June’s shoulder.

  Mary took out incense and a red and black candle from the trunk. “Come on, join the party,” she said placing the items on the altar.

  Annie shrunk back away from the three, saying, “I never would have helped you with this altar if I thought you’d be involved with this…wickedness. Don’t you know you’re opening the door for the Devil to come in?”

  They just stared at her.

  Miffed at her sisters, she continued, “Then I’ll leave you to your own devices.” With those words she departed, stealing back upstairs through the darkness.

  June fought back tears. She felt how deeply Annie was hurt by her choice of witchcraft over the family’s religion. The two of them would sit at the altar, praying the Rosary and talking about the lives of the saints. Annie had always trusted June. She shared her feelings of feeling unloved by their mother. Annie said Granny B was the only one who ever really cared for her until she met Dave.

  When Uncle Peter had telephoned with the news about Granny B’s death, it was just days before Annie’s graduation. She had run to her bedroom grief-stricken, sobbing sorely. June had found her in bed, rosary beads clutched in her hands, crying “Granny,” over and over. In vain, June had tried to comfort her big sister. Cathy didn’t try to console her or the other girls. Instead, she went quietly upstairs to bed and remained there for two long days.

  The sisters sat in a circle around the small altar. “Let’s get on with it,” June said. Maggie lit the incense sitting in an ashtray while June lit the two colored candles between the white one. Mary reached into the pocket of her red flannel bathrobe for her comb and put it next to the altar. June picked up the ashtray with smoldering incense and walked around the four corners of the room. Starting with the east and then going south, west, and north, she called in the energies from each direction. Next, she placed the incense back on the altar and circled once again, pointing with her finger.

  “The circle is cast. The spell is made fast. Only good can enter herein,” she chanted softly.

  The spiraling smoke and scent from the frankincense gave off a mystical aura that surrounded the room. Solemnly, June prayed, “We invoke the Goddess Juno, Warrior Woman and Protector of Females. We ask for her protection from Jimmy MacDonald. Bind his power and banish the seed of his rage. So mote it be.”

  Her sisters repeated the phrase “So mote it be,” an old pagan expression meaning, “So may it be.” It declared that the truth be known and was similar to saying amen after a prayer.

  June picked up the comb and untangled a couple of strands of hair she tossed into the ashtray and set on fire with the red candle. Smoke smoldered up. The smell of burnt hair mingled with the incense. She slowly picked up the black candle and circled it around the altar. She placed it down and began to sway back and forth, her arms stretched over the candle flames.

  In a dreamlike state, she began to speak. “I sense hi
s fear…he’s afraid…can’t control. No control. He’s so afraid. Afraid of me.” With her voice escalating, she said, “I banish you, Jimmy MacDonald.”

  In the magical swirls of incense and glow of candle flames, June envisioned a raven flying around and around a snarling wolf cowering low, trying to get away from it. The flame of the red candle expanded, leaping high. Suddenly, the sleeves of June’s robe burst into flames and rushed swiftly up her arms. Mary knocked over the altar as she jumped up to beat at the flames. Maggie, screaming for help, tried to rip the robe from her sister’s small body. Chaos erupted once again in the MacDonald household.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 31

  SHRINKING JUNE

  CATHY FELT CROWDED in the stuffy office filled with heavily packed bookcases lining the walls. In front of her was a large desk cluttered with files, stacked one on top of the other. She fidgeted on an uncomfortable white plastic chair.

  Next to her sat Jimmy, his head hanging low staring at his calloused hands clenched on his lap. His worn, lined face, mottled with broken veins and haggard from lack of sleep, gave him the look of a man much older than fifty-four. Cathy’s heart had not softened, though. He’s not so bloody angry this time, she thought. She noticed his jagged breathing was different from the time they had met with Mother Superior. Then he had been full of irritation and sounded like an impatient steam engine.

  Cathy was furious with him for agreeing to have June transferred from the burn center to the psychiatric ward for a mental evaluation, without first speaking with her about it. But most of all Cathy was angry with herself. She exhaled loudly, settling as best she could on the chair. She mused over the many times June had attempted to engage her in conversation about memories she felt were too heartbreaking to discuss. If she hadn’t been so stuck in the miseries of the past, perhaps she could have helped June understand her visions. Guilt gnawed at her like a hungry rat in a garbage heap.

  But now I will speak up my wee darling, if it’s not too late, Cathy promised inwardly. Her lips moved as she mutely repeated the vow she had made to herself during the ambulance ride that fateful night of the fire.

  None of the girls spoke to her about the night of the accident. Annie became more distant than ever and often didn’t come home until after dinner. Maggie remained in her room and played loud music and Mary only came home to sleep. Jimmy listened, but said nothing when Mary and Maggie claimed they had been in the basement praying for the family after the big fight. Cathy knew better. She knew her girls had been cooking up something when Annie first announced they were going to do the ironing in the basement. Mother’s intuition had told Cathy that when revealed, something would happen which would impact them all.

  When she took the girls to visit June in the hospital, they showed no shock at the sight of her burned face and hands. Instead, like Scots do during times of adversity, the girls showed strength and cheerfully chatted about what they’d do when June returned home. Annie pulled out the many get-well cards the neighbors had sent. Maggie pinned blue barrettes on either side of, what was left of June’s hair. And Mary teased her about how her burnt skin matched her red hair.

  However, Cathy shuddered with sickness whenever she recalled that night. She had woken from her light sleep disoriented and feeling as though she were on a distant shore. Thinking she had heard Mommy being screamed over and over, she elbowed Jimmy to try to get him to stop his loud snoring. Without success she sat up in bed, cocking an ear to the stillness of the house. Something seemed eerie to her; dread coursed through her body. Her intuition told her one of her girls was in trouble. Slipping out of the bedroom, she met Annie on the top landing.

  “They’re in the basement,” her daughter whispered.

  The smell of burnt clothing permeated the air in the basement. There was wretched sobbing and incoherent mumbling. In the dark room Cathy couldn’t see who it was. She stumbled to find the light switch. She saw what appeared to be a heap of smoldering rags between Mary and Maggie.

  “Don’t die, please,” Mary cried as she patted the rags.

  Maggie fanned her hand across the red hair spread across her lap.

  Realizing the pile of rags was actually June, Cathy became an efficient machine, springing into motion and taking full control of the emergency. Later she would wonder how she was able to do it.

  Liberty Street was alive in the midnight hour with small knots of gathered neighbors speculating on what might have happened in the MacDonald house. The headlights from the rescue vehicles illuminated the street as though it was a movie set. The Irish woman next door wrapped a wool blanket around Cathy and another around Mary and Maggie, who shivered more from shock than the cold. Jimmy talked with two of the four police officers. Annie stayed next to him, listening carefully to what her father might say about the accident. He said nothing more than he was asleep and had no idea why his daughters were in the basement.

  An old weathered-faced police officer informed Jimmy and Cathy that one parent could ride in the front of the ambulance and the other could ride with him to the hospital. When Jimmy stepped up to the door of the ambulance, Cathy pushed him aside roughly, saying, “June’s going to want me with her.”

  Jimmy stood stunned, dwarfed between two burly cops. It was the last image Cathy had of her husband before the ambulance sped off with sirens screaming.

  Unlike what she had seen in movies, Cathy wasn’t allowed to hover over her daughter in the back of the ambulance. Instead, she rode in the front with the driver as he sped down the Noe Street hills toward St. Luke’s Hospital. Although the hospital was only ten minutes away, to Cathy it was too far.

  As the siren screeched the urgency Cathy searched her soul. She trembled as she imagined the pain her daughter must be experiencing. This was her baby, her youngest.

  Wistfully, Cathy thought of the night June was born and she had pulled down the energy of the moon in hopes of reconnecting to a wish made long before on the Isle of Skye. It had been a young woman’s wish to have a life full of passionate love and many healthy children. Her days on Skye had been a magical time. Unfortunately, the goodness of that time had retreated deep into the dense fog of her psyche. Nonetheless, she realized no matter how futile her attempts to banish her memories of Skye and to make a new life with Jimmy, those memories had found a way into June’s spirit. How could she tell June her natural attraction to witchcraft was inherited? Would her daughter still love her if she confessed June’s angel was a vision of a special someone she had left behind in the Highlands?

  Her throat tightened as she held back tears and recalled the time she yelled at June when she had shown her a picture in a magazine of two lovers kissing at a train station. She should have said, “Yes, that could have been me,” rather than rejecting her young daughter’s vision. She chastised herself for not accepting June’s psychic gift without judgment. There was the gypsy who had predicted the eight-month-old June was fey. Her mother, Granny B, had put aside her religious beliefs and also recognized how June’s special touch had calmed Helen when she was sick.

  Only I didn’t want to believe it even when Sister Noel told me after the May Day fiasco June was a visionary. I’ve been denying it too long, Cathy thought.

  Mrs. G’s dark, knowing eyes flashed into her mind as the ambulance sped past a red stop sign. She wondered if the old Polish woman would have reminded her it was she, Cathy, who set June’s fate by choosing not to give her child an acceptable Catholic name. Could it be a child inherits a parent’s past sins, just as they inherit eye color? If so, then June became heir to my pagan ways, she concluded.

  Shamefully, she acknowledged to herself she had not protected June or her other children. She wanted to profess her sin and be absolved so life could start over.

  As the ambulance swerved to avoid a slow moving car, Cathy’s determination to keep the secrets of the past crumbled like the stone walls of a Highland castle pounded down by too many battles. She knew there was only one way to help her daugh
ters.

  The ambulance jerked to a stop at the emergency entrance of St. Luke’s Hospital and June was whisked into surgery. Jimmy joined Cathy and the two sat together in the stark white waiting room until dawn. Neither said a word about the accident.

  A young doctor with a no-nonsense attitude gave the MacDonalds the news about June’s burns. Although some small areas on June’s arms and hand were third degree, other areas were less serious second-degree burns, thanks to the quick actions of her sisters. He said, because of her age, she would heal quickly and without too much scarring. It was her state of mind, which concerned him the most.

  “Your daughter told me that she held her arms over candle flames until she caught fire,” the doctor said. “Has she tried to hurt herself before, Mrs. MacDonald?”

  Cathy quickly corrected the doctor by saying the girls were getting ready to pray by first lighting a candle. June must have said that because she was delirious with pain, the anguished mother told him. The doctor didn’t believe the explanation. He said it seemed there was more to the story. He felt strongly June had hurt herself on purpose; a statement that would result in her admittance to the hospital’s well-respected psychiatric ward.

  A pretty woman in her early forties with dark brown hair bobbed below her ears, entered the office carrying a briefcase. She was dressed in a stylish striped gray suit with a pearl pink blouse. Her blue eyes were large and round and made her appear surprised. She flashed the MacDonalds a friendly smile that produced dimples on each cheek, which helped to soften her square face.

  The woman greeted them in a bland voice. “Glad you could make it with such short notice. My schedule is very busy. This is the only time I have available to talk with you.” She introduced herself as Dr. Schmidt.

  The MacDonalds knew Dr. Schmidt was the head of the psychiatry department, but had no idea the doctor would be a woman. Cathy watched her move across the room with short, solid footsteps as though marching to her post. It wasn’t just woman’s intuition that caused Cathy to be on guard, it was the doctor’s whole demeanor.