The Footscray line

The Melbourne heat pushed its dry fingers through the shutters on the tram windows and stroked her face in long, harsh lines. Her pale blue eyes gazed ahead but saw nothing. Not the other passengers, lazy and rocking in their seats, their eyes closed against the sun. Not the Shrine of Remembrance, or the Flinders Street Station clocks, or the Burke and Wills statue. Each passed in a blur.
His first face was already a blur. A smudge of pink, crumpled like paper and as a small and tight as a fist. He never cried. Not when he was born and not when the nurses bundled him up into a cocoon of blue towelling and passed him to the doctor who looked down at that funny paper-ball face and frowned. Why wasn't he crying?
She pressed her silent baby to her breast and his mouth stayed closed.
Don't worry, he's taking a little time to get used to the world, one of the nurse's soothed, but her smile was weak and floated away the moment her face was turned.
She worried for three weeks until the doctors gathered by her bed in a group of three and said he would be transferred to Melbourne to be treated for hepatitis. She had an answer for her baby's silence.
When she later stood with her husband in the office of the specialist in Melbourne she felt small and rural with her clumsy handbag and sensible shoes that looked nothing like those worn by the ladies who clattered on heels along Collins St.
He is a mongoloid, the doctor said.
She heard him speak, but asked him to say it again.
Downs Syndrome. He has Downs Syndrome. A door closed behind her. Her husband was saying something to the doctor but all she could see was his mouth moving, gaping like a goldfish as the sea rushed into her ears. A door closed inside her.
They had left him there, at the baby hospital, like a box of shoes, or a family trinket to be stored in a safety deposit box.
It is better this way, the doctor said and her husband agreed, his hat in his hands and his heart already tightening against any memories of his son. He would never see him again.
Better than what? She wanted to scream, but country ladies with sensible shoes didn't make a scene.
Today was her third visit back to the hospital and the worst because she no longer recognised him easily among the mass of babies and tiny bodies writhing and wriggling on the floor in the recreational room. Panic fluttered in her chest as she scanned the room for her baby's face and none brought relief. Which one was he? How could she forget?
But his face was changing and he did not look like her or his father.
The tram rocked, rocked, rock-a-bye baby, and her head swayed gently with each turn as the tracks took her further down the line and away.

Somer