Everyone looks past her as she struggles to get on the packed bus with her baby, buggy and bags full of shopping. We sit there, motionless. Something holds us back from helping her. A strange urban force that pins us down in our places, making us incapable of interacting with our neighbours.
It takes her at least 3 minutes too long to get on. The mob doesn’t appreciate the wait, so it starts firing the killer looks and sharp tuts. She doesn’t even flinch, and bulldozes past the glares with her thousand-yard stare, and parks the buggy in the pram space next to the swarm of fly-girls waiting to squat her. It’s like she can’t hear their sniggers and snide comments. Her face a gnarled prison wall, that’s being constantly chipped away at.
She sits and looks out the window at the continuous line of cement, pebbledash, fences, barbed wire, alarms, anti-climb paint, arguments, bums and drug deals. The kid now with a face like mashed banana and peach, screams blue murder. For the murder of her mother. You can see the evidence in Mum’s dead eyes, her glazed glass eyes that have been swallowed and then spat out. Piss holes in the dirt.
Even when her kid cries she doesn’t stir. She doesn’t even blink, just sits and stares out the window. Maybe that’s the best way to look after children. Ignore them. That way you can’t be blamed for how they turn out. Eventually she plugs the hole with a plastic nipple and the wailing stops immediately. From the dark shadows under her blood shot eyes, you can tell she lives for the bottle. It’s a great tranquilizer. Hers just contains warm milk.
Although from the way the kid’s dressed you know she’s loved. Matching pink shoes, coat and hair bands, then there are her bright eyes with a spark that sets off smiles all round the bus. Her soft, glowing, comfortable skin. All the care has been sucked out of the mother and into her, and I think about who’s there to take care of Mum. Some woman looks at the kid and starts to pull stupid faces. The kid giggles. It carries on for a while, but the mother barely acknowledges this tender interaction. For a good few minutes she has a respite from her persistent job and can relax and let people baby-sit for a change.
Harder than any knife-carrying gang member, the mother carries on relentlessly day after day with the odds stacked against her. I see her doing this journey everyday. Not for herself, but for her kid. It’s as if she’s not actually living in the present at all, but in the future. Maybe that’s why she can’t hear those snide comments. And I wonder what she actually sees out that bus window.
I watch her take great effort to get off at her stop, manoeuvring with difficulty past all the people standing in her way. But she makes it. I hope I see her again tomorrow. Somehow her presence is comforting.
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