A Mother in Prison
State, The (Columbia, SC) - Sunday, December 12, 1993
 
Author: CLAUDIA SMITH BRINSON , Senior Writer
 
At the entrance, the ruby begonias sparkle from a watering. Inside, the green grass is being mowed, its fresh-cut scent sharp. Between inside and outside, razor wire slices blue sky.

Inside is where Lori Hino Branham lives, in the Women's Correctional Center on Broad River Road. This is where she might live until at least February 2002, as the baby she carries is born, learns to walk and talk and read.

Branham is one of 15 pregnant women at WCC, the average in any given month. Between July 1992 and December 1993, 22 women had babies. As the number of women in prison grows, the burdens of paying for pregnancies and dealing with broken families grow heavier -- particularly in the state with the nation's highest incarceration rate.

When WCC Warden Vannie Toy began her work in 1963, there were 60 women at Central Correctional Institution, segregated by race and gender; now, the state has 1,120 women in prison. Since 1980, the rate the nation imprisons women has grown faster every year than for men -- mostly because of drug offenses.

Eighty percent of the women imprisoned across the United States are mothers, who leave behind at least 167,000 children. Ten percent of the women entering prison are pregnant; an additional 15 percent have just delivered a baby, according to the Bureau of Justice.

In July, in her sixth month of pregnancy, Branham avoids thinking much about herself and this baby. Instead, she obsessively mourns Mike Branham , her husband, the man she shot and killed in an argument in their Lugoff mobile home in May 1992. Mike and the shooting and their violent relationship, that's really all she thinks about, talks about, cries about.

When she is taken to Richland Memorial's Obstetrics Ambulatory Care Clinic in shackles at the wrists, waist and ankles, she thinks, not about her growing belly, but about the chains and Mike. "It's humiliating. I want to blurt out, 'It wasn't because I knew I was committing a crime. I was just in self- preservation. I was in a reaction.' "

Branham was jailed the morning of the shooting. Her husband's 12-year-old daughter bicycled to relatives when she heard the shot about 3 a.m.; the cousins called 911 and arrived to see Mike Branham fight off the ambulance attendants and, perhaps, die, as he was carried out.

Lori Branham was held on a murder charge until June 5, 1992, when she was released on a $50,000 bond. She lived with a girlfriend, then her father, then a brother and a friend who became a lover, while awaiting her trial March 16. She didn't know she was pregnant when she pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 18 years.

But it seems much of the town knew about Mike and Lori Branham and their fights.

Alfred Branham , Mike's older half brother and best friend, says, "Several times they'd call me and I'd go talk to them when there was a fuss or argument. It ended up what it is. My Daddy blames Lori because she killed his son, but Daddy wasn't there seeing everything I seen."

What Alfred Branham and the Kershaw County Sheriff's Department saw was years of abuse of cocaine and alcohol, violent fights, 911 calls, calls to relatives, emergency room visits, bruises and stitches.

Alfred Branham chain-smokes in his kitchen; his bright blue eyes water. "The onliest thing is I told them about that gun. Every time they'd start an argument, one would get the gun, him or her. It was Daddy's gun. Daddy loaned it to Mike for protection up to his house. I tried to tell Daddy, 'Take that damn gun back.' "

Throughout the month, Lori Branham replays the fights: the night she was five months pregnant and her husband "bashed my window out and pulled me out of the car and started beating me." The night "he got the shotgun out of the closet and held it to my head. I was on my knees on the floor naked, and when I'd put my head down, he'd thump me and make me look. I was so scared, I peed on the floor and I cried and cried."

And the romance: "He'd buy me flowers, roses, candy."

And the drugs: Several times Branham moved in with girlfriends, "but I'd go home on the weekends because I knew I'd get high, or he'd come look for me and say, 'Come on, I've got an eight-ball.' "

She got caught selling in March 1991, was put on two years probation and quit using. "I thought, 'He can do the stuff and control it, and I'm too weak, and it's killing me.' "

Kershaw Chief Deputy Steve McCaskill, who sits in an office cluttered with evidence -- potted marijuana plants, tagged rifles -- says, "They both had substance abuse problems, but they were good people. It tore the community to pieces.

"Those two could have had anything, as hard as they worked, as smart as they were."

What's lost

The road to WCC is long and curved, curling about a pasture with a pigeon coop and grazing cows, past a lake, past a greenhouse. Past the loud metal click of the gate opened by the control room, WCC looks like a technical college campus, with low, brick dorms, a gym and cafeteria, a well-tended quadrangle.

But the "dorm" rooms are tiny, with a narrow metal bunk bed, a four-door metal locker and a table. The flowers are tended by the hard-hatted shock unit; the women with their plastic IDs are tended by blue-uniformed guards.

So you might think doctor's appointments a boon, a chance to leave prison and cruise the outside world, but the rides to the Richland Memorial clinic depress Branham . "I worked out here. I see the Bojangles, all the routes I've driven before. It really hurts to go by those places, and I can't get out."

Branham 's appointments are weekly because her pregnancy is high-risk: She's 35; she has had three C-sections and a tubal pregnancy; she has a sugar intolerance.

LPN Rosanna Salley announces Branham 's weight, "160 1/2"; her gain, "2 1/2, which isn't bad for one week"; her blood pressure, "good."

In late August, Branham 's black Travis Tritt T-shirt is tight. Her belly is too big for shackles now, too big to ignore. "It's a lot more emotional now; I've slowed down to feel it. I've been so tied up in self-pity, trying to deal with being in here."

A few weeks before, Branham lost another child when the adoption of her 5- year-old daughter by friends became final. "Somebody needed to take her and give her everything she needed."

The friends tell her she shouldn't stay in contact, that her daughter "deserves a childhood." Branham struggles with that. "I'm not a bad person. I don't think my daughter should be sheltered from me."

The father and stepmother of her son have asked her not to write. "They felt psychologically he'd be better without ties, which I can't understand. I'm not trying to ruin their lives; I'm their mother."

Branham 's own mother died when she was 15, two years after an older brother named Mike was killed in Vietnam. Her list of losses is long: the brother in 1971, her mother in '73, a six-month marriage in '78, her oldest brother in a mining accident in '82, a baby with birth defects in '84, that marriage five months later and the surviving son of that marriage to her ex- husband in '85. In '87, she and Mike Branham moved in together, before he was divorced.

Lori Branham was born in France, while her father was in the Army. Just after her brother was killed, the family moved from Dentsville to Lugoff. When her mother died of a heart attack, "I started going wild. I started smoking pot, drinking on the weekends.

"When Daddy started dating, he'd take off for the weekend, and he'd lock me out of the house. He nailed the windows shut; he padlocked the doors; he told me to find someplace else. I'd try to get in the windows, and I'd be pulling out nails and crying and crying and thinking my Mama was dead and he was all I had and he didn't love me."

The homecoming queen and cheerleader became an 11th-grade dropout. She ran away to the beach and worked for a week as a waitress. She lived with a brother, then with another family. Eventually, she earned a GED and an associate degree in accounting.

Branham has been thinking about this past with the help of one of WCC's two social workers. Her issues are common: Two-thirds or more of the women in prison started using alcohol or drugs and running away from home as teens and have been physically or sexually abused, according to a 1990 American Correctional Association study.

But to think about being pregnant is to think about the future. "I feel the baby's my responsibility. Whoever has her, they're not going to do the job I would do, and I should be there, and instead, I'm adding to their stress."

In studies of women in prison or correctional officers' conversation, this is the big issue: Female prisoners are prone to depression, much of it because of worries about their children. "It's a bad situation for the mother and her emotional health," says Joann Morton, a professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina. "And for the child. One study says they're five times more likely to end up incarcerated."

When T.A. Ryan, a Lexington psychologist and correctional expert, surveyed 18,651 female prisoners in 1988, she found three-fourths had two or more children. She also found 43 percent of pregnant offenders' babies were taken at birth, 53 percent within one week.

Branham says, "I won't be there when she talks, when she takes her first step, crawls, rolls over, when she's screaming in the middle of the night, 'Feed me.' And it worries me, not knowing how old she'll be when I get there, or that somebody will say, 'Boy, I can't handle this child.' It's scary."

She adds, "I couldn't think about being pregnant until I started getting big. It just doesn't fit to be pregnant in here."

'M' stands for . . .

Weekdays Branham works 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the apparel plant, where work clothes and linens are made for Prison Industries, about $97,000 worth a month from WCC.

She sits with the production managers in a glass booth surrounded by whirring sewing machines. On her side of the glass is taped a cartoon, Garfield chained to the wall with the caption, "This is only temporary."

Branham is allowed visitors on the first and third weekends of the month and any fifth weekend. Inmates are allowed 15 potential visitors, three of them friends.

No one visits on her weekend in early September. Without a visit, she sleeps, writes, listens to the radio, tries not to think. "How do you cope on days when you can't cope? It's hard to let it sink in. I'll be here next month; I'll be here next year." Branham lowers her head; tears are always hidden here.

Weekdays and nights, she keeps busy with work, tutoring in the prison school, attending battered women's and grief groups. For every two days she works, a day is taken off her sentence.

But the weekends are long. "I try to stay busy; I really do. Seems everything catches up with you when you're still. If you're real quiet, you can hear somebody crying every night."

This summer the baby's father stopped writing and visiting, started dating someone else. "It was tough; it hurt me, rode me hard. Then after a couple of weeks, we started talking again. I have to take one day at a time. What you can get, you take." Now, the father of her child and his mother have agreed to keep the baby.

Branham says, with no irony, "It's a happy ending compared to some of these girls here."

Then she adds, "My daughter who's 5, I wonder how old she'll be when I get out. They do these 'Mother' cards; M stands for . . . O stands for . . . What will mine stand for? 'My mother lives in a visiting room in WCC.' "

She wrote her stepdaughter, "I know you're mad, sad, angry. I know you feel like kicking me and hating me. That's OK. I still love you."

When she thinks of her baby, she begins to cry again. "I admire women who make the decision to give a child up so she can have a normal life."

Until 1960, several states had prison nurseries. Today, only one state, New York, does. Mothers and babies stay together for a year, with a six-month extension if the mother is facing release, says J.T. Smith , deputy superintendent for programs at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, which has run a nursery since 1901. Because most women's sentences are short, two-thirds of the mothers and babies are never separated. The program is run by Catholic Charities and funded by the state because, Smith says, "it's in the best interest of the baby."

S.C. Corrections Commissioner Parker Evatt is impatient with even the idea. "I don't have enough money, I don't have enough staff to do what I am doing."

Branham 's body won't let her forget she's pregnant anymore. A snack of nachos kept her up on Maalox. Her back hurts. Her feet are swollen. Contractions awaken her each night. But "I'm excited now, for a change. It was up to my seventh month before it hit me: I'm pregnant. There was so much going on."

At her Sept. 24 appointment, a C-section is scheduled. The baby's father has time to buy diapers, bottles, a crib. Branham 's smile over his running around fades. "I don't know how I'm going to feel after this baby is born. This is one more stab in the heart."

Delivery and separation

At 3 a.m. Oct. 7, Branham wakes up "feeling a lot of pressure. I didn't know if it was labor or not."

A correctional officer drives her to Richland Memorial Hospital, which is so busy Branham is stashed in a recovery room. An IV to stop or slow her contractions is hooked up.

Six hours later, like a plane circling Atlanta, Branham waits. The baby's father stands by the bed, holding Branham 's foot.

In the hall, Cpl. Donna Conyers stands guard, arms crossed. "I feel sorry for the children," she says. "They didn't ask for this."

By noon, Branham 's elation is gone. The contractions hurt, as will the consequences of delivery. "She's been with me every day. I do want to look at her and hold her, but I don't want to give her up."

By 2:30 p.m., Branham is surrounded: six men and women working on the C- section, three more at her head watching monitors, three more waiting at a bassinet for the baby. The baby's father, in scrubs, sits at Branham 's head, stroking her hair and watching the mirror high on the wall opposite them.

At 2:45 p.m., a baby girl is lifted into the world. She squalls, her father stands to see, and Conyers raps on the glass, a telephone in her hand, her mouth forming the words, "What is it?"

On the other side of the glass, the father is telling Branham , "I can see her; I can see her; she's huge."

At 2:53, Branham looks upon her daughter, held by a nurse, and the clock measuring their relationship begins ticking. If this had been a normal delivery, there would have been six hours left. Because it was a Caesarean, Branham has two to three days.

The baby has stopped crying, and her father carries her to the nursery, where a nurse coos, "Oh, my goodness, you got a present. Santa Claus done come a few times today."

Joretta Martin weighs the baby -- 8 pounds, 9 1/2 ounces -- stretches her out to determine her length -- 19 1/2 inches -- and inks her kicking feet for footprints. The father announces her name, Lauren Nichole.

A part of you missing

Five hours go by before Branham and Lauren are reunited.

"It's strange," Branham says. "What if I could take her back? With 250 girls on the compound, I'd be lucky to get her two days of the year. A lot of them have called, and I'll say, '8 pounds, 9 ounces,' and I can hear others in the back, like an echo."

Branham is allowed a visitor's list of 10. Her stepmother, sister, best friend and a woman she lived with after her mother died come; Lauren's father brings his mother. They decide Lauren has her mother's eyebrows and her father's nose.

Twenty-four hours a day, a correctional officer sits by the hospital bed, writing everything down: visitors, medical checks, Branham 's behavior.

By Friday, Branham is taking slow, cautious walks. Occasionally, she and Lauren's father sneak a kiss by the bathroom door.

Saturday is hard. Lauren sleeps most of the day. Branham cries over her lunch. "I don't want to leave; it's not right," she says.

Saturday night, the last night, is worse. Branham and her daughter both cry most of the night. "When I had her in me, she'd wake up at 11 (p.m.) and have the hiccups. It's so sad."

Sunday morning, the discharge process starts. A nurse matches the numbers on Branham 's and the baby's wrist bracelets and reminds the father of the first pediatrician appointment.

Lauren is barely visible in the frills of a pink dress and the folds of a yellow and pink blanket. Branham touches her arms, her legs, her face.

Branham is crying; she hides her face. "I feel like she's dead to me. It's terrible." The grandmother, who has temporary custody, whirls into the bathroom to cry.

Branham tells her daughter, "You can see the cats and pull their tails." She kisses Lauren's tiny fists.

She is sobbing now, and charge nurse Ahlan Abu-Abdo says, "I know it's difficult. I'm sorry. The baby being so little . . . you want to wait?"

"No," Branham says. "No." She stuffs Lauren's possessions into a diaper bag: formula, shampoo, powder, a tiny bear. She buries her face in a hospital blanket that covered Lauren.

Cpl. Evelyn Randolph says, "I'll have to restrain you when you sit in the wheelchair. The van's downstairs."

Branham and the baby's father buckle Lauren in her car seat; they walk to the hospital room's door. He bends his head toward Branham 's. When he looks back up, his face is flushed with tears. He kisses her, blurts, "I love you," and rushes down the hall.

Branham turns. She is slapping her hands against the air over and over again, so fast they're blurred, as if she could beat away her despair.

"I'll come back when you're calm," Abu-Abdo says.

"No," Branham says, "I'm ready." She crouches on the bed.

Randolph says, "To have a baby and have her go away, especially after carrying her nine months, it's a part of you missing. If there was some way to have mothers and babies together . . . I couldn't imagine them taking my babies away."

Abu-Abdo begins instructions: Branham can take a shower, not a bath. Hot water will help breast engorgement. Keep the incision dry and clean.

"It just kills me," Branham says. "She'll be a week older when I see her. Then two weeks. I didn't figure it would be so bad. The first day, you ask, 'Who is that?' Then you examine her ears and count her toes and five fingers each hand."

Randolph helps Branham into the wheelchair, then handcuffs her. Branham is weeping steadily and says, "I didn't have this much trouble when I was sentenced."

She sobs, and Randolph says, "Don't cry. You're going to see your baby again."

Nursing tech Vanessa Sinkler wheels Branham to the elevator. Sinkler is crying, too.

Randolph helps Branham into the correctional van, and while Branham holds up her manacled hands, buckles her in.

"Your baby's being taken care of," Randolph says. Branham awkwardly wipes at her tears, and the doors of the van, with their grilled windows, close.
 
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Posted with permission from The State Newspaper, Columbia, South Carolina. Copyright and all rights reserved by The State Newspaper.