TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/032690/0326170.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.9 KB | 163 lines

                                                                                AMERICAN SCENE, Page 9

Houston, Texas

So Small, So Sweet, So Soon


Too many babies die before their first birthday. Joan Mahon and
a corps of volunteer mothers are trying to save their lives

By MICHAEL RILEY


    Babyland -- that's what the gravedigger called it. Then he
pointed to the far side of Houston's Hollywood Cemetery, where
a sea of tombstones gives way to a grassy hillside. A dainty
marble cherub, its head severed at the neck by vandals, guards
the spot. Surrounding the lifeless angel are scores of infants'
graves, most with modest plaques, one raising a silent protest:
SO SMALL, SO SWEET, SO SOON.

    In a far corner lies a new grave, the bare earthen mound not
yet pounded flat by rain. A miniature Christmas tree, a few
cheap ornaments clinging to its brown branches, adorns the
tomb. Two tiny Santas in plastic bags, a mud-spattered price
tag still attached, poke up out of the dirt. No plaque marks
this resting place, perhaps betraying a neglect born of the
longing to forget.

    Too often on Houston's impoverished Northside, dead babies
are forgotten. The infant-mortality rate in this Hispanic
barrio rivals that of Poland. Almost 16 out of every 1,000
babies will perish before their first birthday, compared with
a national infant-death rate of 10 per 1,000 Countless others
are born too early or too small, presaging a wretched future
of long-term health and learning problems. The U.S. is a First
World nation afflicted by a Third World curse.

    Every day immigrants from Mexico and Central America seeking
a better life flock to Quitman Street, the barrio's main drag.
Most don't speak English, and many lack documentation. They are
confused, afraid and poor: half the families earn less than
$12,800 a year, and 19%  are on welfare. More than one-third of
the Northside's 13,500 residents are women able to bear
children, but until last year, no one had mounted a committed
effort to prevent unnecessary infant deaths. Then Joan Mahon
appeared.

    At first, the people surveyed the community-health nurse
with suspicion. But soon Mahon, blessed with a quick smile and
caring eyes, gained converts to a program called De Madres a
Madres -- from mothers to mothers. Her grass-roots scheme,
hatched with a colleague from Texas Woman's University and
underwritten by the March of Dimes, calls for training mothers
from the barrio to reach out to the ghetto's endangered women.
Texas mothers, particularly Hispanics, are among the least
likely in the U.S. to receive early prenatal care. So Mahon has
been arming volunteer moms with information to help them save
their neighbors' babies. The volunteers not only persuade
pregnant women to seek prenatal care but also find them food,
get them to a doctor and help them locate jobs and housing.
Their aid forms a safety net of community support.

    Like a cop on a beat, Mahon patrols the Northside, stopping
to chat with anyone who will return her smile. At the Fiesta
Mart, the noisy, pinata-bedecked hub of the neighborhood, Mahon
stops to urge a security guard to bring his wife to a Madres
meeting. Then she walks over to Edith Espinoza, who is wrapping
food under a blinking red neon light trumpeting FRESH
TORTILLAS. Espinoza, about eight months pregnant, knows Mahon
but doesn't know English. So, with some help from the store
manager, she informs Mahon that she is going to the hospital
the next day for amniocentesis. "No pro blema for me?" asks
Espinoza, her eyes dark with worry. "No mal," Mahon reassures
her.

    Almost every Monday, Mahon and several mothers stake out a
small brick bungalow across the street from Holy Name Catholic
Church, where about 180 families wait in line for bags of food.
Babies chugging from bottles lounge in shopping carts, while
toddlers diligently pile pebbles in the driveway. Mothers and
a few fathers stand stoically in the warm sun, their blank
stares reflecting hunger, poverty and fatigue. Yet their ennui
dissolves in the face of the Madres' perky compassion.

    This afternoon, volunteer mother Connie Garcia, a
grandmother with a saint's heart and a tiger's tenacity,
latches onto a 28-year-old undocumented refugee from Nicaragua.
The woman eagerly shows off her food: tortillas, beans, a head
of lettuce, one apple, a bag of stuffing. But it's not enough
to feed her family. Last year she and her husband, along with
five-year-old daughter Sylvia, a beauty with sparkling green
eyes and boundless hugs, walked from Mexico to Texas. When they
reached Houston, Sylvia was battling bronchitis. Her parents
had no idea where to turn for help. Then they met Mahon. She
guided them to a local medical clinic, and before long the fire
returned to Sylvia's eyes. "This is the only help I have,"
explains the woman, who speaks no English. "Without it, my baby
would've died."

    Yet her troubles are not over. Her husband works odd jobs,
earning $30 on a good day. They live in a $130-a-month hovel
that makes a shanty sound luxurious. An old sofa draped with
a sheet, a small wooden table and two battered chairs grace the
living area. Three store calendars supply the only color on the
drab walls. As a fly buzzes lazily by, Connie asks if she is
afraid living here. "I'm not scared," she replies. Connie
shakes her head and declares, "I'd sleep with a gun."

    But guns won't solve the barrio's problems, which include
domestic violence. Mahon has discovered that wife beating is
common. One volunteer mom knows this dark secret all too well.
She has survived her own tormented marriage, but a teenage
friend has a boyfriend who beats her. "No man that hits you
loves you," the volunteer told her. But the advice did not take
hold, for her friend, now pregnant, is back with the boyfriend.
So the volunteer is determined to get her friend the prenatal
care she never got. "I'm going to show her that she doesn't
have to go through it, not alone," she says. "`You want to have
a healthy baby, hold it in your arms and love it?' I ask them.
They say yes. So I tell them they have to go get medical
attention."

    At 6 a.m., another woman, Victoria Sanchez, does just that,
catching a bus for the hour-long trip to Lyndon Baines Johnson
General, a new brick public hospital that delivers 15,000
babies each year. Inside, its long halls reveal a modern-day
baby factory. Low-birth-weight babies, smaller than Cabbage
Patch dolls, crowd nurseries designed for big healthy babies.
In the intensive-care unit, doctors and nurses handle about a
thousand babies annually, twice as many infants as they should,
according to the unit's medical director Dr. Joseph
Garcia-Prats.

    "We still don't have a tradition in our country that says
you will get prenatal care," he laments. "Each day costs
taxpayers a bundle to keep a tiny, often sick, baby alive. One
infant, here since October, has already cost almost $200,000
in hospital charges alone. If that money were invested instead
in prenatal care, the future savings would be astounding, with
each dollar spent today saving up to $10 tomorrow. It's like
the mechanic says, `You can pay me now, or you can pay me
later.'"

    "My main concern is about losing the baby," says Sanchez,
her dark, sad eyes clashing with her flowered maternity top.
Neighbor Maricela Morales, a mother of two, has helped bring
Sanchez under the Madres' comforting wings. "Don't be afraid,"
says Morales, "because I've lost three, and it's God's will."

    The Madres are trying to save lives. But first they must
overcome the barriers of language, fear and poverty. "The
priority is survival," explains Mahon. "If you get a woman
food, they're all going to know that you care. You're going to
start building trust." So far, the volunteer mothers have
reached about 3,000 women, and they are making a difference.
For too many infants, though, the change is coming too late.