Houston, Texas So Small, So Sweet, So Soon

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 problema 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.