Mandela House

By DENNIS WYSS

The day after welfare checks arrive in her East Oakland, Calif., neighborhood, Minnie Thomas sees the ghosts of mothers shuffling in the winter chill. They are emaciated from crack-cocaine binges, and their hair is wrapped in rags to hide patches where clumps have fallen out. Thomas sees them glance at the children draped carelessly on their hips, then down at the sidewalk. "A woman's eyes are a window to her soul," she says. "Those eyes tell you clear as day that they've blown their check on crack."

Nestled in a tidy, working-class area just three miles away is Mandela House, a residential program founded by Thomas over a year ago for crack- addicted pregnant women. In a cozy five-bedroom home that smells of baby powder and food cooking on the stove, fingers that recently clutched glass crack pipes now rest upon distended bellies. From a back room floats the sound of a baby's cry and a soft, throaty voice singing, "Runaway child, runnin' wild, / . . . go back home where you belong./ You're lost in the great big city."

In the four years since crack hit U.S. streets like hard rain, hospitals have experienced an epidemic of sick, undersized newborns. Crack affects the fetus by constricting the baby's blood vessels and restricting passage of nutrients and oxygen. Even one "hit" can cause fetal damage. At Oakland's Highland General Hospital, doctors say about 18% of some 2,400 births in 1988 were crack-afflicted babies.

The problem of pregnant crack-addicted women is relatively recent, and programs aimed at treating them are scarce. Thomas, a counselor to ex- offenders in Oakland for eleven years, had no model when she began her program in December 1987. But with the dramatic increase of crack-contaminated infants, she did not wait for someone else to show the way. "There was a void in the system," she explains. "People who needed help the most were being ignored." Thomas received her inspiration from the ex-offender mothers she had worked with, who fought to turn their lives around. Her plans received support from officials who knew and respected her work. She named her program for Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned South African black leader Nelson Mandela.

Mandela House these days is home to four mothers and their babies and three mothers-to-be. Residents receive prenatal care, drug counseling, classes in child development, personal finances and career guidance. They also share child care, housecleaning and cooking. "Mine is reality treatment," says Thomas. "I'm trying to put some order in their lives." Women are referred to Mandela House from jail, court and county protective services. The program is funded by the county, a private grant and donations.

On a typical Monday morning, the neatly dressed mothers gather on living- room sofas for a counseling session led by Thomas. Longtime residents express unfettered affection for their tall, slim mentor, dressed today in a red jumpsuit, brown tweed jacket, black high heels and silver bracelets. "She doesn't judge you from what others say, she judges you from what you say and do," says Monique Gray, a Mandela House veteran of one year. "You can't fool % Minnie," four-month resident Patricia Rodgers admits.

When Beverly Dynes, now seven months pregnant, had been in Mandela House for only one month, she confided, "I keep asking myself, 'If I was back out on the streets and offered some rocks, what would I say?' Before, my answer would be 'yes!' But now it's 'probably.' God, that's a big step." Another woman responded, "Amen." But Thomas' steady message, then as now, is "You say you're better, but just how much better are you?" She tells the groups, "You've got to remind yourself every day why you're here because the closer you come to leaving, the closer you'll come to temptation time."

Mothers at Mandela House have more than addiction in common. They're mostly poor and black. All have other children in family and foster homes. Beatings by boyfriends and husbands were regular. What brought their world crashing down was an out-of-control lust for the intense feelings of power and well- being that flow from a hit of crack. "Crack has taken away these women's pride," says Thomas. "By the time they find their way here, they'll beg, steal and trade their bodies to the dope man for more." The mothers uneasily deny that their babies were affected by crack, but Thomas says all the children have shown signs of their mothers' drug use.

Thomas, 55, illustrates her lessons with examples from her own life of trials. Her husband was killed in a fire at his foundry job, leaving her with three young children. While working full time, she earned a degree in sociology from San Francisco State University. Several years later, she was almost killed in a fire that destroyed her house. Today, living in the neighborhood that many of her mothers come from, she is often awakened at night by dopers going to and from a "rock house" across the street. "I tell the women constantly that I'm part of them," Thomas says, remembering her own youthful wildness, pain and disorder. "I tell them, 'I was you.' "

Thomas' rules are as unforgiving as the deadly streets of East Oakland. Drugs, violence and profanity are outlawed. Mothers cannot leave the Mandela House grounds during their first 30 days; trips to doctors' appointments or court dates must be made with Thomas or one of her small staff. Residents are randomly tested for drugs. Eventually, women can earn short leaves, phone calls and family visits. School and jobs follow when the resident and Thomas agree it's time.

Many of the women have a lifetime of experience to overcome. Rodgers' earliest childhood memory was watching her heroin-addict mother stick a needle in her arm. Until recently, Rodgers was lost in a haze of cocaine smoke and subsisted on leftovers pilfered from a fast-food restaurant. Now she sits in the Mandela House kitchen, which is rich with the smell of baking meat loaf.

"The first time I hit the pipe, I thought, 'Wow! Home run!' " says Rodgers, a beautiful but hardened 29-year-old former dealer who is pregnant with her eighth child. Beneath her gold-tinged curls, a small metal plate covers a hole smashed in her skull with a board swung by an angry boyfriend. Her dark eyes glitter when she speaks of crack. Then she looks weary, confused and angry. "When I came here, I figured I'd get a place to sleep and some food, and then split and get an abortion and get high once in a while," she says. "But I was just lying to myself, lie after lie after lie."

Several women have been expelled or have bolted from Mandela House. One was a mother whose legs Thomas held in the hospital all night while she was giving birth. Two weeks later, the woman suddenly left with her baby. "I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach," Thomas says. "For the first time, I cried."

But others, proud, and more than a little scared, are preparing to graduate. One is Gray, 27, who is attending college, lining up a job and planning to leave with her eleven-month-old son. "All my life I was told I was nothing but dirt," says Gray. "Minnie made me believe I wasn't dirt and could do anything I wanted and that I didn't need drugs to do it."

Mandela House has more than 60 women waiting to take Gray's place. The task is monumental, but Thomas perseveres even when mothers she loves desert her and return to the seductive glow of the crack pipe. "If they don't hear me now, they'll hear me later," she says. "Some will leave, start smoking rocks again and sink back to the gutter. But even when they're down there, they'll keep hearing Minnie. And they'll be back." It is a blessing that Minnie Thomas will be waiting.