Croweater: Brandi
Full Name: Brandi-Jeanne Louise McCall
Hometown: Hickory Valley, Tennessee
Birthday: August 13th
Height: 5'8"
Hair: Blonde
Eyes: Green
Bust: 38DD
Favorite Son: Herman Kozik
Biography: From a town in Tennessee that boasts a population of only 99 people and named after both of her grandmothers, Brandi McCall brought a slice of the South to the SAMCRO clubhouse. She was born the fifth of eight siblings to a farmer and his wife, and was eventually raised by her maternal grandmother in Chickasaw, Alabama when she turned 12 and began hanging out with boys, smoking, drinking, and doing everything she could to scandalize her conservative Christian parents. At 16, Brandi ran away from home and hitchhiked to California, eventually ending up in Seattle, Washington. She says she spent most of the next few years working as a waitress, a bartender, and a stripper, occasionally selling herself for sex to rich older men when she needed money to fund her drinking and partying habits.
Brandi was first introduced to the Sons of Anarchy when she met Herman Kozik, a member of the Tacoma charter, at a bar where she worked as a waitress when she was 20. He asked for her number and she gave it to him, because according to her, she liked "blonde biker boys" and he liked her Southern accent. Eventually he brought her around the SAMTAC clubhouse for parties, where she quickly fell into the hard-partying, hard-drinking crowd. She and Kozik developed a relationship, nothing serious, but they were "sorta-kinda exclusive". Two months into their relationship, Brandi discovered Kozik had a hidden addiction to heroin, and soon she was shooting up right alongside him. His fellow club members tried to help both of them get clean once they found out what was going on, and Brandi was able to briefly get herself clean (and Kozik did as well) when they discovered she was pregnant. She relapsed while three months pregnant, and their daughter Cheyanne was born at 26 weeks, 5 days, weighing only 2 pounds and addicted to heroin. State Social Services immediately came in when Brandi and the baby tested positive for heroin in the hospital, and Cheyanne was removed from Brandi and Kozik immediately. She stayed in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for several weeks, but when she was seven weeks old, Cheyanne died of complications from her premature birth and the course of medications being given to her to prevent withdrawals. The state of Washington considered pressing charges against Brandi for her daughter's death, but the week after Cheyanne's death, Brandi overdosed on heroin in an attempt to kill herself and was later declared to be unfit mentally to go through court proceedings.
During this time, she and Kozik had split up, and Brandi says she spiraled into a deep depression where she would go for days or weeks at a time without bathing, eating, or even sleeping. She attempted to kill herself three more times, twice by overdosing on heroin and alcohol and the third by slitting her wrists. She survived all three attempts, and after that she decided that she was going to get clean, get herself together, and do right for her daughter. After enrolling in a rehab program, Brandi served 180 days there and moved into a halfway house after her release. She spent 2 years there before she felt comfortable moving back out on her own, relocating to Charming, California with a friend she had met in rehab, Wendy Case.
Wendy was the ex-wife of the president of the Sons of Anarchy mother chapter, Jax Teller. Like Brandi, she'd also given birth prematurely because of drugs, but unlike Brandi, Wendy's son was alive. Brandi and Wendy lived together for six months, and even briefly had a relationship, but they parted ways when Brandi began hanging out around the SAMCRO clubhouse. She fell into a group known as the "croweaters", a group of women who hung around the men for sex or whatever else they might request. Wendy didn't agree with Brandi's lifestyle choices or the fact that she began drinking again, but their friendship was broken irreparably when Wendy discovered Brandi had slept with her ex-husband Jax at a party one night. Wendy then packed up and moved to Oregon, leaving Brandi on her own to immerse herself deeper in the croweater lifestyle. For the next few years, Brandi worked as a waitress and bartender, hung around the clubhouse and supplied the men with sex. She had successfully kicked her heroin addiction, though her alcohol consumption rapidly rose.
One evening, while the clubhouse was preparing to go into "lockdown", Herman Kozik walked back into Brandi's life. He had come on loan from the Tacoma charter as extra muscle, unaware that his former girlfriend and mother of his child would be waiting there. Their first few encounters were awkward, as Brandi was reluctant to let him back in when he had just walked away from her after their daughter's death, but soon they ended up in bed together, and after that they were always with each other and Kozik stopped her from being a part of the croweaters. He was off the needle too, and Brandi says these were the happiest days of her life, when he came back and they made a decent go of it. He went back and forth between Charming and Tacoma, eventually transferring to the mother charter so that he could stay in Charming with her. They moved into a home he bought, and he asked her to marry him. She got his crow tattooed on her hip, cementing her as an official "Old Lady" and no longer a croweater.
Two weeks before they were due to be married, Kozik was killed during the war with the drug cartel after he stepped on a landmine that exploded. Tig Trager, Kozik's longtime frenemy, broke the news to Brandi and told her that Kozik had asked him to watch out for her in case anything ever happened to him. Kozik's death caused Brandi to relapse once again into heroin addiction, becoming so depressed and despondent that Tig finally moved her into his house so he could keep an eye on her at all times. He would find her unconcious several times a week, usually able to rouse her or having to take her to the hospital so that Narcan could be administered. Tara Knowles, Jax Teller's now-wife and highly-lauded doctor at St. Thomas, began taking care of Brandi off the books so that the hospital would not get the law involved due to the astronomical amount of times Brandi came in overdosing. Brandi's "rock bottom" point came when Tig came home from work one night to find her high on heroin, attempting to cut the crow tattoo off of her leg with a razor blade and sobbing over a photo of herself and Kozik. She didn't manage to accomplish the job, just leave behind a patchwork of scars over the tattoo once it healed, and Tig immediately had Tara send Brandi to the psychiatric ward of St. Thomas, where she remained for several months. She was again weaned off of drugs, as well as diagnosed with and treated for bipolar depression.
Once she was released from the hospital, Tig again let her move in with him so that he could watch out for her, following Kozik's wishes. Brandi apologized for all that she had put him through, as well as thanking Tara for all her help. She stayed straight, still hanging around the clubhouse but being careful to lay off the alcohol. Occasionally she still took part of the fun as a croweater, but she and Tig had settled into a sort of domestic setup without actually saying they were in a relationship. They weren't exclusive, as he still slept around with the croweaters and she sometimes let herself be taken a dorm room, but everyone knew at the end of the night she would go home with Tig. He didn't take well to anyone being rude to her, or being rough with her, because despite their stormy past he was doing as Kozik asked and watching over his Old Lady.
After Tig's daughter Dawn was burned to death by Damon Pope, Brandi never left his side, taking her turn to comfort him as he spiraled in a psychotic depression. She didn't feel right in leaving him at his darkest when he had been there for her through so much. Tig gradually recovered in a few months, though he was never quite the same. His soft spot for Brandi had gotten even softer thanks to all her months of standing by him, and they gradually moved into a mutually exclusive arrangement. Brandi got a job working as a receptionist at Nero Padilla's Diosa escort service, and she gradually faded away from the croweater scene, though she remained close to Evelyn "Evie" Satterly, who she had become close to during her time as a croweater.
After the death of Jax Teller, most of the croweaters were sent away from the clubhouse and gradually left Charming, although Brandi stayed behind with Tig. She and Evie (who by this time had become the Old Lady of new SAMCRO President Filip 'Chibs' Telford) were two of the only croweaters who hung around, mostly due to their relationships with Tig and Chibs.
Tig and Brandi currently live together in Charming. She doesn't identify herself as Tig's Old Lady, as she still wears Kozik's crow tattoo and still says she loves him, but she says she has a part of her heart that will always belong to Tig because he took her in and cared for her in her darkest times after Kozik's death, and she will never be able to walk away from him because they need and depend on each other for stability now. They aren't interested in being married or even putting Tig's crow on Brandi's body, instead choosing to live in an "unofficially committed" state.