Molly and Pim and the Millions of Stars (18 page)

Molly's mama opened her mouth to talk, but Ellen's mother quickly intercepted. ‘There's
no need to explain. We're relieved you're back, and we only came over to thank you
and Molly for making Ellen well again. We're so very grateful.'

Molly's mother smiled.

‘It was Molly who helped Ellen, not me.'

Molly looked up at her mama, and then at Ellen's mother, and then at Ellen. Everything
was as it should be.

Ellen looked at Molly shyly. She opened her mouth to say something, but when Molly
winked at her, she closed it and winked back.

Molly whispered, ‘Thank you for coming.'

Ellen took her mother's hand and waved goodbye.

Only Pim remained. He turned to Molly, his face plastered with the broadest grin.

‘Not exactly plan B, but brilliant anyway.' He shook his head. ‘And you showed those
brutes.'

Molly grinned. Without Pim, her mama may well have ended up as a half-chopped tree,
but her mind couldn't find the words to properly thank him. Instead, she scooped
up her mama's sunhat, which had fallen to the ground exactly where the tree had once
stood. She frisbeed it to Pim. ‘Just so you don't wake up in the morning and think
it was all in your imagination.'

Pim laughed. ‘And, just so you know, you were right: that was the most interesting
situation I've ever been involved in.'

He tucked the hat under his long arms and threw the other arm indelicately into the
air, as if throwing it away, in an awkward fit of jubilance.

As he walked towards the gate, Molly's mama called out, ‘Nice tackle, Pim. Thank
you.'

Pim saluted again, then jumped over the gate and rode off on his bike.

CHAPTER 26

Pinholes of Light

Molly and her mama lay head-to-head on the seesaw and ate what was left of the chocolate
balls. They both had clean, wet hair and scrubbed feet and were dressed in their
most worn-in comfortable clothes. Maude lay happily at the foot of the seesaw, and
Claudine sulked warily on the fence. The Gentleman crowed, even though it wasn't
dawn. He must have sensed the evening's triumph and wanted to add his own note to
it.

‘She's cross with me for going away,' said Molly's mama, who had given Claudine a
tickle
under the chin to try to coax her down. ‘She does take things to heart.'

Molly tried to imagine Claudine taking things to heart. Claudine never seemed to
feel anything except from a distance, a place above them all, a clean, quiet, properly
ordered place.

‘But could you see, Mama?' asked Molly, sitting up and wondering if her mama had
watched the whole drama.

‘Well, I could feel you; I could feel quite a lot actually. But it wasn't till I
felt that you needed me that I found the energy to turn myself back.'

She sat up and faced Molly on the seesaw. Molly squirmed and let out a long sigh.
She wasn't
sure she wanted to think about that, especially all those tears. She sensed
her mama was working up to one of her talks. There she was, though, her real mama,
exactly as she always was, still slightly messy and mismatched, a faded T-shirt,
blue spotty skirt and bare feet.

Her mama gazed intently back: a little thought danced across her eyes. She smiled
and, leaning forward, she put her hands on Molly's cheeks.

Here it comes, thought Molly.

‘You know, Molly,' she said. ‘There's a lot of brave people out there in the world—fighting
wars, risking their lives, making speeches—but there's another sort of courage. What
you did took real courage. You showed your heart to everyone. You didn't care what
anyone thought. If you hadn't had that courage, I would still be a tree. Now, that's
a kind of magic you didn't know you had.'

Her mama laughed. Her hands fell to her knees and she bounced the seesaw high.

Molly was still confused. ‘But Mama, I didn't even know what I was doing.'

Her mama leaned forward and slapped the seesaw triumphantly. ‘Exactly. You followed
the wisdom of your heart. And you gave me the last bit of strength I needed.'

‘And Mama, all the time I wanted to be just like Ellen, but now I'm glad I'm just
like me. I can be Ellen's friend and Pim's friend, and I can be me.'

Molly liked the way this felt. It was as if a great weight had fallen from her, and
she bounced the seesaw as high as she could and felt she might float up into the
evening sky. Her mama laughed too and all the laughing tumbled out, careless and
free, filling the air with its own sort of weather.

The evening was deep and low and quietly hovering on the edge of night. Cockatoos
shrieked now and then in the pines. Everything seemed to brim and swell and to stand
poised, ready to turn, or change. Molly felt ready. For what, she wasn't sure, but
it seemed something had opened inside her.

There was a strange order of life, and she could feel it around them right now.

‘Pim looks like an interesting boy,' said her mama.

‘Yes, he is. Come and I'll show you the picture he drew.' Molly jumped off the seesaw
and her mama followed. The drawing was still pinned to the ground with stones. They
bent over it and read out the things Pim wrote about trees, and Molly's mama nodded
and seemed impressed that Pim was so very thoughtful about things that weren't quite
certain and measurable.

Finally, Molly's mama groaned and unbent her knees and windmilled her arms in the
air and said she had to walk, after having been a tree for so long.
The worst thing
about being a tree, she explained, was that you couldn't walk or run or leap, and
these were all the things she was aching to do.

So they went with Maude, running and walking and leaping up the hill. They stood
on the top of it in their favourite spot next to the two gum trees, which always
seemed like two old men, watching and sharing the occasional observation on the game.
From there the town was a huddle of roofs and trees and streetlights, and on the
other side of the hill lay the train tracks and the cricket oval, all bare and shorn
like a bald spot.

Above them was the darkening sky and the large white moon. One bright star shone
in the sky, but all the others, the millions of others, weren't there yet.

Molly thought about all the stars, getting ready to shine, waiting for the dark.
They needed the dark. She slipped her hand into her mama's. The air was cool; the
low sun shone through the long, dried summer grass, and made it look as if
their
hill was covered in fine golden straws.

‘Mama, even though it is the most terrible thing to have your mama turn into a tree,
now that it's over, I think I am almost glad it happened.'

‘Why is that?' Molly's
mama asked.

‘Because now I have been the child of a tree. Imagine. But, also, now I know how
it feels to have a terrible problem, which is something nearly everyone knows some
time or another.'

Molly stood tall and she imagined herself for a moment on a horse, looking down at
the world, ready to save it, ready to let her heart pound, ready to shine out in
whatever darkness came at her.

‘But no one can do anything good without a little bit of help,' she went on, thinking
mostly of Pim. And Ellen. Ellen attacked Mr Grimshaw with a bunch of roses. Molly
laughed to herself. She was looking forward to going back to school with her two
friends. Pim would keep things interesting, and Ellen would keep things real.

‘You know what?' Molly said to her mama. ‘I'm starting my own notebook on plants,
just in case you go disappearing again, or I do. There's stuff I'm going to want
to know.'

As they walked back, the stars began to break through, like shining pinholes of light
in the dark above them, but Molly was too busy thinking about Pim and Ellen to notice
the millions of tiny stars.