cksA Mother's Love

Medda knows that she isn't anyone's idea of a maternal figure, but for the street children of New York she's as close to one as them come.

She sees them every night as they enter Irving Hall, their battered hats pulled low over their grimy faces. She smiles at them, giving each her special wink. If they look especially down, she blows them a kiss. With her personal favorites she even drops the horrible Swedish accent that made her famous, letting them in on the secret of her Brooklyn roots.

She's fond of the children, she says whenever she's asked. Plus, they are good for business. How many times has she seen one of the regulars bring in a new boy, giving up a precious penny so that the other can enjoy the show? A couple of free 'newsies only' events and a never ending supple of licorice whips is hardly a drop in the bucket in comparison.

But that's not the real reason behind her philanthropy. The boys are a proud lot. Who wouldn't be? Working from sun up to sun down, supporting themselves in a world where even adults have a hard time making ends meet. They don't take charity. They wouldn't dream of begging for a treat. But they will come out in droves to see the new act, free of charge because it's not yet perfected, and she's yet to meet a boy of any age who will turn down a sweet when offered.

She wonders what they see when they look at her, their typically dull eyes shining with excitement. Do they see the pock marks under the rice powder? Is the paint she uses as gaudy as to them as it is when she sees it reflected in her mirror? How does the bright red of the rouge play under the bright stage lights? Can they see the turned seams of her costumes or detect the stuffing that lines her bodice? She hopes not.

Let them have this little magic, she prays. Let the children forget their dreary lives for an hour at least. She twists and twirls, her head thrown back in mock ecstasy, her hands sinuously caressing the air and wonders if the boys in the audience know how much they mean to her. She preens and parades, her eyes wide with exaggerated delight, as she croons about lovers she's never had for the only children she ever will.

Medda's not a maternal person by any account. She never had the desire to bare a babe of her own. Once, when she was younger and still blind to the realities of the world, she believed she would marry and have a proper home with a man to call her own. But never, even in the innocence of her youth, did she populate that household with chubby cheeked children. It is the great irony of her life that she does so now.

Not with cherubs with golden curls and dewy eyes. No. The angles she wants to give a home are sunken eyed delinquents with nothing to recommend them besides the tiny hands, dirt entrenched under their nails, and smiles rendered no less charming by the rotten gaps in their teeth.

She's worked hard to fill the house that she made for herself with the unwanted offspring of others

She knows she wouldn't be considered fit company for a child by any standards. She would laugh as loud and as long as the rest if it were suggested that she were. Yet, inside of her heart she nurtures the thought that she gives these boys comfort. Her thrills are cheap and easily bought, but she hopes they see through it all to the woman inside. The woman who loves them in spite of their flaws. The woman who cherishes a hope that each one will someday beat the odds and end up with a generous slice of that fabled American pie.

Send them someone to love them, she thinks as she dances. Give them something more in life then the vaudeville stage and the affections of a player past her prime. And when you do, she prays to the God she still believes in, let them remember me fondly. Let them know that I did what I could for them. Let them know it was done with a mother's love.