My mother, who was ironing and listening to her soap operas' on the radio, told me, “That’s your Great Grandmother Margaret
Scott.”
Margaret Scott and the family came from the peat bogs of Ireland
to Angel Island for processing and then were placed in tenements near Mission
Dolores along with all the other Irish immigrants. The ‘troubles’ were left
behind along with the British soldiers.
Great grandmother and the other women found day work in the
grand houses on Nob Hill, while the men wandered the streets of, “No Irish Need
Apply,” America.
The men finally found work as laborers in the San Joaquin Valley
working on the great canal farms and for ranchers in the area. The 'Canal Farm System' was a huge project to bring water to the valley for irrigation; up until the canal project the area practiced dry farming. They also worked for other famers and land owners in the area including my great grandparents from Denmark. It's not clear when they went from laborers on the canal farms to farmers on their own land but it all seemed to hinge on Grandfather Fred Fisher who died the year I was born.
When the wives and children came from San Francisco to join
their Irishmen in the valley I wonder where they lived? What were the laborers quarters like on the great canal farms? If the later migrant shacks were any example of the laborers quarters then the living was poor at best. There is still only one
ranch house with outbuildings on the original 'Fisher Ranch' land.
Originally their quarters must have been makeshift at best.
My mother told me that
when she was a still a girl, a fire burned down the original barn and a
bunkhouse. How they accumulated the money to purchase the property is a great mystery if they were day laborers.
When I was a little girl I romanticized Margaret Scott; envisioning a
laughing, dark-eyed, young girl in lush, green surroundings being married,
having children and enduring the long, hard voyage to America in the bowels of a ship.
On the home ranch in San Joaquin Valley Margaret Scott lost an
infant son within weeks of his birth; and then valley fever took her twelve
year old daughter, Martha. Sometime after that the family committed her to a
Agnew State Mental Facility in Santa Clara County.
Occasionally, I thought about Margaret Scott, my withered, lost,
lonely great grandmother. Her story made
me sad and I wanted to hug her.
Hot, dry, flat San Joaquin Valley must have been a shock to the
girl from damp, green Ireland. Was this the final blow that crushed her spirit
after surviving famine, the ‘troubles’, too many children, and steerage?
I made up stories in my head, trying to understand what happened
to great grandmother. In one of the stories, she had postpartum depression;
lost her infant son and twelve year old daughter, and then began her fall into
deeper, darker depression. I guessed that no one wanted to help shoulder the
load while she recovered. I guessed that
not one of the Danes or men cared much about that used up Irish woman, so they
committed her to a mental hospital.
Margaret Scott was cut off from her family, her own children,
her homeland, and deserted in a foreign country. She finished her life locked
away in a mental hospital. I often wonder if I’m the only one who mourns
her.
At my father’s funeral or maybe it was my mother’s funeral my
cousin and I looked up Margaret Scott’s location in the cemetery and visited
her grave.
My great grandmother appeared quite sane in the snapshot; but
she looked worn, drained, and desiccated. Or, maybe she was just another
‘Lizzie Borden’, an axe brandishing, homicidal maniac. My mother heard screaming banshees all of her
life, was it Margaret Scott she heard?
It may have been his Irish brogue or smiling Irish eyes; but one
of the sons of the immigrant Irishwoman, Margaret Scott, charmed the daughter
of one of the ranchers they worked for as laborers and the fine Danish daughter, Dora, married her Irishman and
we became one family.
Later, I know that Grandmother Dora regretted the marriage
bitterly from the way she introduced me to all of the little Danish boys and
girls and warned me away from all others.
I’m curious about Grandmother Dora. She was a very attractive
young woman and it begs the question; why was she still single at age twenty
five in those days; and worse, why she married an Irishman?
After my grandfather died; family lore says from drinking too
much Irish whiskey, Grandmother Dora raised her four boys and saved the ranch
through hard times and a world war while my mother ran the house. Mother always
claimed that she was treated more like a servant, than part of the family.
Grandmother Dora gave up her bib overalls, hay pitching and cow
milking of depression and war days; married her Danish widower, moved into town
and took her rightful place in society. Grandmother Dora was strong and implacable; she had to be to achieve
what she achieved. She was a tall, powerful bowsprit from a Viking ship,
cinched into a girdle, smelling of bath powder, and looking down her nose at
everything that was unsuitable.
Grandmother's well-to-do,
Danish widower and the Fisher's became ever so proper and learned to be like the Danes. By the
time my brothers and I were born the clash was over and the Druids were dead,
but mother passed on her ghosts.
I only had to spend a short amount of time with Grandmother Dora
each summer. Their little town in the San Joaquin Valley had parades, street
dances, the Odd Fellows’ Hall, and carnivals to celebrate the Holy Days, shades
of St. Patrick.
The town’s park was
across the street from grandmother’s house with the swimming pool, the
veterans’ memorial drinking fountain, and the library where Miss Petersen
worked because she never married. I planted a bed of Zinnias’ in Grandmother Dora’s yard every
summer and served tea to ‘the ladies’ when they came to call. I went to the Odd
Fellows’ Hall and did the Polka with my new step grandfather. It was pretty
easy and a card to the small town library was the reward along with visits to
my Great Aunt Blanche, paternal grandpa’s sister. It seemed more than a fair trade
to me.
Grandmother’s grip on the reins loosened when she moved away
from the ranch and her Irish mistake. She and step grandfather spoke Danish and
had a smoothly running household with no surface ruffles to mar
appearances. It reminded me of a
metronome. Grandmother Dora gave me a copy of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy
Tales one Christmas and I thought they were horror stories. She sent me boxed,
story book, dolls long before the days of Barbie and I never knew what to do
with them.
Mother told me that her grandfather would sit her down on his
lap and tell her tales about Ireland in his heavy Irish brogue. I have a picture of him tending the kitchen
garden at the home ranch. He looks O.K.,
but it was hard to like him because of what he did to his wife, Margaret Scott. None of the uncles look a bit like him. Great grandfather was black Irish and
he looked more like the Irish Catholic side of the family; small, dark, and a
bit furtive.
Whatever he told my mother in his thick Irish brogue, I doubt
that my mother was ever a Christian. She was infused with the tales she heard
as a child. Mother was afraid of
everything inexplicable and angry about everything else. Her gods were not kind gods. Maybe she was
afraid she would end up like her crazy grandmother.
When my mother lay dying I asked her if she wanted to talk to a
clergy man but she refused to speak to anyone from the church. What kind of
pact had she made with what kind of demons?
It felt as if her soul never had light and warmth to grow. She was
driven to have what she could get while here, but she knew she it wasn’t much
and that it was her lot in life.
Mother was christened as an adult, when my brothers and I were
christened, and after I finished catechism class.
It was probably something Grandmother Dora said about catechism that
brought on my parent’s sudden church attendance. Grandmother Dora believed in
training; and catechism was training so mother, ever needing Grandmother
Dora’s approval, somehow managed to effect the change in our lives.
I’m not clear if mother was being christened for the first time;
it’s a great puzzle if it was her first christening, and just as great if it
was a rechristening. I’m connfused by what it means in terms of the family; what
possible reason could there be for failing to christen a baby?
There are other family puzzles.
While Grandmother Dora and her Irishman lived on the ranch all of his
brothers and sisters left and there was a great family schism with generations
not speaking or having any contact.
There were also schisms between Grandmother Dora’s people and
the Irishman’s people with ensuing feuds or silence. My cousin and I breached some of those gaps
and found some pretty great people on the other side of the family 'iron curtain.'
Whatever happened, it must have been major because relations
between the Irish Catholics and the Irish Protestants were always pretty
cordial despite the ‘troubles’. So, what lay at the root of the big feuds and
schisms?
I don’t know what happened to my mother on the family ranch in
San Joaquin Valley when she was a child.
She was always afraid. She was
afraid of thunder and lightning, of screeching banshees, of the little people,
of death, of cellars and sirens and black cats and ladders. Mother hated everything that didn’t frighten
her.
Her mind had dark compulsions that she tried to impress onto me.
She hungered for her mother’s love so she accepted the role her mother gave
her. My mother’s violent temper and warped
version of love repelled and frightened me so I emptied myself of feelings for
her.
I learned as a teenager that my withdrawal bothered my mother. Dad
took me for ‘a talk’ and told me she was my mother and so I had to love
her. I told him that love is reciprocal
and had never, ever been part of our relationship.
Mother was at a loss; she was playing the same cards that her
mother played, what went wrong? Did she
really think I was her clone? Fortunately, my paternal grandparent’s loved all
of their grandchildren and so I understood what real love was.
Mother passed along the distortions of her childhood to
me. Her stories were not passed along to
my brothers. It was as if the female
blood carried the shame and guilt of the family and the responsibility for its
transfer to the next generation.
My mother’s new, church attendance enthusiasm only lasted about a
year. Luckily for my parents, one of the bars they frequented was on the way
home from their new church. Actually,
there were three bars on the way home from church.
My brothers and I got up early on Sunday, dressed up in church
clothes and then spent the afternoon and evening in one of the three bars or in
the car while my parents got drunk. It was
better when Lil was cooking ‘chicken in the basket’ at the Inn because the
chicken was better than our usual coke, chips, and dried shrimp Sunday dinner.
The restrooms were filthy when we were allowed in to use them
and the people were drunk. They could have taken us home; but then the fiction
that they were only stopping for one drink would
crumble and our lives were bordered by their rationalizations.
As a child I believed that my mother had ghosts. I looked for my mother’s ghosts on the family
ranch during the summer; but, I couldn’t find ghosts that only lived in her mind.
The family ghosts came through my mother from the lap of my
great grandfather. She often told me that her grandfather loved her. Why had he disposed of his wife, Margaret
Scott? Did she have the same ghosts my mother had roaming the dark corridors of
her mind? Or, maybe they were his ghosts?
Years later I cared for my mother while she was dying of cancer.
She told me, “My mother never loved me.” My soul echoed, “My mother never loved
me.”
I had a great used bike when I was a little girl that dad bought
from some guy in the bar. I rode that bike for miles every day; but when I heard
the four o’clock whistle blow at the cement plant, I’d peddle like blazes to
get home before dinner.
When I got home, my brothers would be in the street playing with
the neighborhood kids. Mom and Dad were in the kitchen. She was cooking, a drink within reach. He was drinking Rainer Ale and reading the
paper at the old gate-leg table in the kitchen.
She hollered and he smiled.
He’d mention something in the news and a political discussion was on and
she hollered for us to stop arguing. She
never got that we were just having fun. I never got that she needed to talk to
him about her day. He probably just
wanted his beer and the paper.
We are no longer Irish.
The melting pot and grandmother chewed us up and spit out generic
WASPs. Robbed of our Celtic heritage we
were lumped in with the Anglo-Saxons. They were the enemy who raided our coast,
took our women, looted the churches, and then sailed away; later, the British
soldiers came to Anglicize or kill us, bringing the ‘troubles’ to Ireland.
I understand why it is so distasteful to check the box labeled
white. I guess it was a one size fits all designation; but genetic and
epigenetic forces still stir my blood and rouse my anger. My Anglicization by culture, school,
grandmother, pirates and soldiers left vents where hot springs leak through and
hot geysers rise to the surface. It reminds me of the ‘kindly’ assimilation of
Native Americans.
Does Margaret Scott’s Celtic blood still course in the veins of
her laborer son and in the veins of his children and their children? Do the
banshees still scream?
Would Margaret Scott think that all of her pain and hardship had
borne fruit? In later years I realized
that mother’s darkness had a foothold in my head; no longer a savage tornado
but the path of destruction was still evident. Are ghosts inevitable even if
you don’t believe in them?
Copyright May 2013 @Akarenmaceanruig
