Molly and the Epitaph
A bull ant crawls across a curse. The bull ant’s head is blood red and it stops and starts and stops and starts and moves on through a chiseled gravestone letter C and Molly Hook, aged seven, wonders if the bull ant has ever been able to see the whole of the sky given all those magic gravity angles bull ants walk. And if it has no sky to see then she will make a sky for it. The bull ant follows the curved bottom of a U and moves to an R and winds through a twisting S and exits through an E.
Molly is the gravedigger girl. She’s heard people in town call her that. Poor little gravedigger girl. Mad little gravedigger girl. She leans on her shovel. It has a wooden handle as long as she is tall, with a wide dirt-stained sheet-steel blade with teeth on its sides for root cutting. Molly has given the shovel a name because she cares for it. She calls the shovel Bert because those side teeth remind her of the decaying and icicle-shaped fangs of Bert Green who runs the Sugar Lane lolly shop on Shepherd Street. Bert the shovel has helped dig twenty-six graves for her so far this year, her first year digging graves with her mother and father and uncle. Bert has killed a black whipsnake for her.
Molly’s mother, Violet, says Bert is Molly’s second best friend. Molly’s mother says her first best friend is the sky. Because the sky is every girl’s best friend. There are things the sky will tell a girl about herself that a friend could never tell her. Molly’s mother says the sky is watching over Molly for a reason. Every lesson she will ever need to learn about herself is waiting up there in that sky, and all she has to do is look up.
Molly’s bare feet are dirt-stained like the shovel face and there are copper-colored lines of cemetery clay where her elbows and knees bend. Molly, who is right to consider this rambling and run-down and near-dead cemetery her queendom, hops onto a slab of old black stone and kneels down to put a big blue eyeball up close to the crawling bull ant and she wonders if the ant can see the deep dark blues in her eyes and thinks that if the ant can see that kind of blue then maybe it will know what it feels like to see all of the vast blue sky over Darwin.
“Get off the grave, Molly.”
“Sorry, Mum.”
The sky is the color of 1936 and the sky is the color of October. Seen from the blue sky above and looking down and looking closer in and closer in, they are mother and daughter standing before a goldminer’s grave in the furthermost plot in the furthermost corner from the gravel entrance to Hollow Wood Cemetery. They are older and younger versions of themselves. Molly Hook with curled brown hair, bony and careless. Violet Hook with curled brown hair, bony and troubled. She’s holding something behind her back that her daughter is too busy, too Molly, to notice. Violet Hook, the gravedigger mum, always hiding something. Her shaking fingers, her thoughts. The gravedigger mum, burying dead bodies in the dirt and burying secrets alive inside herself. The gravedigger mum, walking upright but buried deep in thinking. She stands at the foot of the old limestone grave, gray stone weathered into black; porous and crumbling and ruined like the people who paid for the cheap graves in this cheap cemetery, and ruined like Aubrey Hook and his younger brother, Horace Hook—Molly’s father, Violet’s husband—the penniless drunkards who are tall and black-hatted and sweat-faced and rarely home. The black-eyed brothers who inherited this cemetery and who reluctantly keep its crooked and rusted gates open, overseeing cemetery business from the pubs and the gin bars in Darwin town and from a lamp-lit and worn red velvet lounge five miles away in the underground opium brothel beneath Eddie Loong’s sprawling workshed on Gardens Road, where he dries and salts the Northern Territory mullet he ships to Hong Kong.
Molly plants her right hand on the grave slab and, because she wants to and because she can, she spins off the gravestone into a series of twirls executed so wildly and so freely that she’s struck by a dizzy spell and has to turn her eyes to the sky to find her balance again. And she spots something up there.
“Dolphin swimming,” Molly says, as casually as she would note a mosquito on her elbow.
Violet looks up to find Molly’s dolphin, which is a cloud nudging up to a thicker cloud that Violet initially sees as an igloo before changing her mind. “Big fat rat licking its backside,” she says.
Molly nods, howling with laughter.
Violet wears an old white linen dress and her pale skin is red from the Darwin sun, hot from the Darwin heat. She’s still clutching something behind her back, hiding this thing from her daughter.
“Stand beside me, Molly,” Violet says.
Molly and Bert the shovel, stout and reliable, take their place beside Violet. Molly looks at the thing Violet seems struck by. A name on a headstone.
“Who was Tom Berry?” Molly asks.
“Tom Berry was a treasure hunter,” Violet says.
“A treasure hunter?” Molly gasps.
“Tom Berry searched every corner of this land for gold,” Violet says.
Molly finds numbers beneath the name on the headstone: 1868–1929.
“Tom Berry was your grandfather, Molly.”
There are so many words beneath those numbers: cramped and busy and too small, filling every available space on the headstone. It’s less an epitaph than a warning, or a public service message for the people of Darwin, and Molly struggles to fathom its meaning.
“What’s all the words for, Mum?”
“It’s called an epitaph, Molly.”
“What’s an epitaph, Mum?”
“It’s the story of a life.”
Molly studies the words. She points her finger at a word in the second line.
“A maker of magic,” Violet says.
Molly points at another word.
“Bad magic for someone who might deserve it,” Violet says.
The child’s finger on another word.
“Kin,” Violet says. “It means family, Molly.”
“Fathers?”
“Yes, Molly.”
“Mothers?”
“Yes, Molly.”
“Daughters?”
“Yes, Molly.”
Molly’s right forefinger nail scratches at Bert’s handle.
“Did Longcoat Bob turn your heart to stone, Mum?”
A long silence. Violet Hook and her shaking hands. A long lock of curled brown hair blowing across her eyes.
“This epitaph is ugly, Molly,” Violet says. “Your grandfather has tarnished his life story with bluster and vengeful thoughts. An epitaph should be graceful and it should be true. This epitaph is only one of those things. An epitaph should be poetic, Molly.”
Molly turns to her mother. “Like the writing on Mrs. Salmon’s grave, Mum?”
HERE LIES PEGGY SALMON
WHO FISHED FOR LOVE AND WINE
THOUGH IT WAS NO FEAST NOR FAMINE
SHE ALWAYS DROPPED A LINE
“Will you promise me something, Molly?”
“Yes.”
“Promise me you will read all of the poetry books on the shelf by the front door.”
“I promise, Mum.”
“Will you promise me something else, Molly?”
“Yes, Mum.”
“Promise me you will make your life graceful, Molly. Promise me you’ll make your life grand and beautiful and poetic, and even if it’s not poetic you’ll write it so it is. You write it, Molly, you understand? Promise me your epitaph won’t be ugly like this. And if someone else writes your epitaph, don’t make them struggle to write your epitaph. You must live a life so full that your epitaph will write itself, you understand? Will you promise me that, Molly?”
“I promise, Mum.”
Molly wobbles her knees. Molly is restless. Because she wants to and because she can, Molly drops Bert on the dirt and executes a cartwheel beside her grandfather’s grave and her yard dress falls down over her face and she’s blinded and she can’t nail the cartwheel’s landing and stumbles and falls into the dirt in a mess of legs and arms.
“Not very graceful, Molly,” Violet says. “Those poetry books will teach you how to be graceful.”
Molly brushes her floppy hair from her eyes and smiles. Violet directs the gravedigger girl back to her side with a sharply pointed forefinger. Molly picks up Bert the shovel and resumes her place close to her mother’s hip.
“Be quiet now,” Violet says.
The stillness of this cemetery, this sun-baked dead collective. Dry season Darwin and every tree in the cemetery wants to burn. Darwin stringybark eucalyptus trees leaning over graves so old their owners can’t be identified. Woollybutt trees and their fallen and dead orange-red flowers surrounding each trunk like fire circles, growing in gravelly soil for fifty years and climbing as high as the shops on the Darwin Esplanade. Wild weeds and grasses creeping over memorials to carpenters, farmers, criminals, soldiers and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. Kin.
The earth is swallowing up Hollow Wood Cemetery. The dirt below it has eaten the dead and now it chews on the evidence of their living.
Molly breaks the silence. Molly always breaks the silence.
“Is my grandfather down there?” Molly asks.
Violet takes a moment to answer.
“Some of him is down there,” Violet says.
“Where’s the rest of him?”
Violet looks up at that blue sky the bull ant hasn’t noticed yet.
“Up there.”
Molly flips her head back and takes in the sky, her eyes squinting in the Darwin sun at full height.
“The best of him is up there,” Violet says.
Molly readjusts her footing, shifts her right foot back, never turns away from the sky. There’s a single dry season cumulus cloud on the left side of Molly’s sky, a fluffy and heaped floating metropolis of warm rising air that looks to Molly like the foam that forms when Bert Green drops a scoop of ice cream into a tall glass of sarsaparilla. Everything to the right of that cloud is blue. Violet Hook follows her daughter’s gaze to the sky and she stares up there for almost half a minute, then she turns back to stare at something equally expansive: her daughter’s face. Dirt across her left cheek. A blotch of breakfast egg yolk hardened at the left corner of her lips. Molly’s eyes always on the sky.
“What is this place, Molly?”
Molly knows the question and she knows the answer. “This place is hard, Mum.”
“What is rock, Molly?”
Molly knows the question and she knows the answer. “Rock is hard, Mum.”
“What is your heart, Molly?”
“My heart is hard, Mum.”
“How hard is it?”
“Hard as rock,” Molly says, eyes still on the sky. “So hard it can’t be broken.”
Violet nods, breathes deep. A long silence now. Then four simple words. “I’m going away, Molly.”
Molly shifts her bare left foot and turns her head to her mother. “Where ya goin’, Mum?” she asks, her right hand driving Bert’s blade haphazardly into the dirt. “You goin’ to Katherine again, Mum?”
Violet says nothing.
“You goin’ to Timber Creek again, Mum? Can I come, too?”
Violet’s eyes turning up to the sky now. Another long silence.
Molly banging her right heel into the dirt, waiting for her mum to respond.
And Violet seems lost in that sky. Then she closes her eyes and reaches her right arm out to her daughter and Molly watches that hand come all the way across to rest upon her left shoulder. Her mother’s fingers are shaking. And Molly can see now that her mother’s arms are thinner than she’s ever seen them. Her skin, paler.
“Why are your fingers doing that, Mum?”
And Violet opens her eyes and studies her shaking right hand, close up, then hides it once more behind her back. She turns her eyes again to the sky. “I’m going up there, Molly,” Violet says. “I’m going up there to be with your grandfather.”
Molly smiles. Turns her head back to the sky. Eyes alight. “Can I come, too?”
“No, Molly, you can’t come, too.”
And Molly feels thirsty now and her belly turns inside her and the toes of her right foot dig into the red earth beneath her and she makes nervous fists with her hands and the longest nails on her fingers dig so deep into her palms that they dig through the skin. Turn again to the sky. Turn again to Mum.
“I’m not coming back down again, Molly.”
Molly shakes her head. “Why not?”
“Because I can’t stay down here anymore.”
Molly raises her eyes to the sky again. She searches for a town up there. She searches for the house her mum will stay in up there. She searches for streets in the sky and lolly shops and liquor stores. The town beyond the clouds. The town beyond the sky.
“This is the last time you will see me, Molly.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going away.”
Molly drops her head. Toes digging deeper in the dirt. And she wants to know how her mother pulls this magic trick, how she turns so quickly from the light and into the dark. She’s daylight switching straight into nighttime, Molly tells herself. Day sky to night sky, with no living done in between. No time in between. No chores. No afternoon tea. Day sky blue with dolphin clouds to a night sky only black.
“What are you feeling inside, Molly?” Violet asks.
“I feel like I want to cry.”
Violet nods her head.
“Then cry, Molly,” Violet says. “Cry.”
And the gravedigger girl’s eyes squint and her body shudders like it wants to vomit and her neck jolts forward and she sobs. Two brief sobs and her eyes have to open wide for a river of tears that turn to tributaries that split through the dry dirt and dust on the girl’s face, and these new water lines on Molly’s cheeks look to Violet like the creek systems she would see on her father’s gold fossicking maps as a girl.
“Keep going,” Violet says. And the girl cries harder and she puts her hands to her face and fluid runs from her nose and saliva drips from her lips and her mother does not touch her. Does not hold her. Does not reach for her.
“Cry, Molly, cry,” Violet says softly.
The gravedigger girl howls so loud that Violet turns her head, instinctively, toward the cemetery house beyond a cluster of trees, just in case that sound is loud enough to wake her husband from a long daylight liquor sleep.
“Good,” Violet says. “Good, Molly.”
And Molly cries for a full minute more and then she swallows hard and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. She grips a fistful of her dress and lowers her face to wipe it clean.
Violet stands in front of her child now, hands still behind her back.
“Are you finished?”
Molly nods, snorting fluid back up through her nose.
“Did you get it all out?”
Molly nods.
“Now look at me, Molly,” Violet says.
Molly looks up at her mother.
“You will never weep for me again,” she says. “Not a single tear will you shed for me from this moment on. You will never feel sorrow. You will never be afraid. You will feel no pain. For you are blessed, Molly Hook. Never let a single person tell you any different.”
Molly nods.
“What is this place?”
“It’s hard, Mum.”
“What is rock?”
“It’s hard, Mum.”
“What is your heart?”
“My heart is hard, Mum.”
“How hard is it?”
“Hard as rock. So hard it can’t be broken.”
Violet nods.
“No one can ever break it, Molly,” Violet says. “Not your father. Not your uncle. Not me.”
Molly nods. She watches her mother look back to the cemetery house. There is fear on her face. There is worry.
Violet turns back to her daughter. “Now is there anything you want to ask me before I go?”
Molly’s head down, staring at the dirt. Staring at a platoon of ants marching toward her grandfather’s grave.
“Will I still be able to talk to you?”
“We can talk anytime you want to talk,” Violet says. “All you have to do is look up.”
“But how will I hear you?” the girl asks.
“All you have to do is listen.”
Molly’s head stays down.
“No, you can’t be doing that,” Violet says. “You can’t be keeping your head down like that, Molly. You must look up. You must always look up.”
Molly looks up. Violet nods, half-smiles.
“Is there anything else you want to ask me?”
Molly scratches her face, twists her left foot in the dirt, something on her mind.
“What is it, Molly?”
Molly’s screwed-up face.
“You’re gonna miss my birthday,” Molly says.
“I’m gonna miss all of your birthdays, Molly.”
Molly drops her head.
“I won’t get any more gifts from anyone,” Molly says.
“You’ll still get gifts from me.”
“I will?”
“Of course you will.”
Molly points to the sky.
“But you’ll be up there.”
Violet smiles.
“That’s where the best gifts come from.”
Violet looks at the sky again.
“The rain, Molly,” Violet says. “The rainbows. The dolphin clouds. Elephant clouds. Unicorn clouds. The great big bolts of lightning. The sky gifts, Molly. I’ll send them all down for you.”
“The sky gifts,” Molly says. She likes those words. “Just for me?”
“Just for you, Molly. But you have to keep your eyes on the sky. You have to keep looking up.” Violet points at the sky. “There’s one falling now.”
“Where?” Molly gasps, scanning the blue sky.
Violet points to the sky again.
“There,” she says. And Molly squints her eyes and shades her face with her hands to block the glare.
“It’s a gift from your grandfather, Molly. It’s something he wants you to have.”
Molly bouncing on the spot now. “What is it? What is it?”
“It’s how your grandfather found his treasure,” Violet says, staring at the sky.
“Treasure!” Molly says.
“We all have our own treasure to find, Molly. He wants you to find yours.”
Molly stares harder into the sky, but she can’t see the falling sky gift.
“Keep looking up, Molly,” Violet says. “Just keep your eyes on the sky, Molly. Don’t look away or you’ll miss it falling.”
Molly stares harder into the sky, but she can’t see the falling sky gift.
“Keep looking up, Molly,” Violet says. “Just keep your eyes on the sky, Molly. Don’t look away or you’ll miss it falling.”
Molly feels her mother move closer to her. Molly feels her mother’s arms wrap around her shoulders. She feels her mother’s lips against her temple.
“I’m going now, Molly,” Violet says. “But you must not watch me go. You must keep looking up. You must keep your eyes on the sky.”
And Molly looks at the sky and looks and looks and she wants to turn her eyes away but she listens to her mum, she believes in her mum, she believes her, and she never takes her eyes off that high blue roof and she feels her mum move away from her, hears her mum’s sandals crushing leaves and grass shoots behind her, and she wants to look away from the sky and turn her eyes toward those sounds but she listens to her mum because her mum is always right, always true, always graceful.
“You can write your own epitaph now, Molly.” Further away.
“It won’t be written for you. You can write it yourself. Just keep your eyes on the sky, Molly.” Further away.
“Keep your eyes on the sky, Molly.” Further away.
“Keep your eyes on the sky, Molly.” Too far away.
Molly keeps her eyes on the sky and she stares up at that sky for so long she tells herself she will only stare at that sky for sixty more seconds and she counts sixty seconds in her head and when she has only five more seconds to count she vows to count another sixty seconds and she does. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
She still can’t see the sky gift, so she turns her eyes away from the blue and she sighs, her belly still turning inside, and she whips her head round to where the last sounds of footsteps came from. She looks for her mother. But there are only trees and graves and weeds and mounds of pebbled clay covering the dead, nothing else. And she stares into that still cemetery space waiting for her mother to walk back into it. But she does not.
An image enters the gravedigger girl’s mind. A bull ant crawling across a curse. A single word carved in stone. Bad magic for someone who might deserve it. She turns to read her grandfather’s epitaph and resting upon the slab of stone by her twig-thin shinbones is a flat, square cardboard gift box. It’s wrapped in a ribbon tied in a bow. The color of the ribbon is the color of the sky.
Molly leaps on the sky gift and shakes it in her hands. She rips at the ribbon and her belly isn’t turning anymore. Her dirt and sweat fingers claw at the sides of the box. At last, an opening, and her fingers rip the thin, cheap cardboard roughly across the bottom edge and something metal—something hard—slides out of the box and into her hands.
She holds it up to the sky. A round metal dish. Solid copper. Old and caked in dirt. She thinks it’s a dinner plate at first. Maybe a serving dish for sandwiches. But the dish has raised, sloping sides and a flat base, and it’s not much smaller than a car’s steering wheel. And Molly’s seen one of these before. In the back of her Uncle Aubrey’s red utility truck, in the old metal box where he keeps his fossicking tools. It’s not a plate, she tells herself. It’s a pan. A pan for finding gold. A pan for finding treasure. And Molly Hook, aged seven, knows not what to say back to the sky for such generosity, so she looks up to it and says what she can only hope is graceful. “Thank you.” And in the silence of the cemetery the gravedigger girl waits patiently for the sky to say something back.
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