Smacked in Dublin: - A five year olds odyssey

“Get down. Get down from there.” The words were drawn out longer than is usual, even for a Dubliner accent. The woman who was slowly and passively pushing the words out, was speaking to a little boy. Maybe five years, six at best.

The kid in his dark blue tracksuit bottoms and red t-shirt was climbing on the back rests of the Luas between Blackhorse and Jervis. He first caught my eye as I had got on the Luas, standing beside his mum in a ‘don’t fuck with me because I’m tougher than you’ fashion. It was obvious, he was already a man. I suppressed a smile.

As I sat watching the unlikely couple, I noticed the time warped movements of the woman as she stared into a space beyond any of the faces in the carriage - only occasionally drawn back into the here and now to call her son to caution about climbing over the seats. She was dressed in tight light yellow clothes and brown boots. Her body was compact and strong, her face calm and her eyes turned inwards. Her sleeveless top revealed no track marks on her arms but then my gaze fell onto her hands and the blue purple tinted spots aligned along the protruding veins lifted the fog from before my eyes. She was smacked out and barely able to keep herself upright.

As she had resigned herself to the flow of what was flowing through her veins, the little boy had assumed an expression of fear that seemed fixed to his face. Too young to understand what was really happening but old enough to know that somebody had to be in charge he climbed onto the back rests to give him the extra meter in height that he was still lacking. Just behind Heuston Station a man in a grey tracksuit stepped up and revealed himself as a ‘friend’. The little boy however, did not seem to think so as he shouted “Leave my mammy alone!”

A fifth of the size of the man, the boy bravely soldiered on kicking and pounding him. It all seemed to be a cute and funny joke as they stood laughing, attempting to turn this desperate situation into a play-fight. The boy was not laughing. The man left and the kicking stopped.

The boy - with the gestures of a man already and yet still nothing but a boy - got off at Jervis glancing around the carriage one last time before he was lifted off the tram by the flow of the people, along with his mother.