Not without my daughter - and another chicken taco

Two years ago this month, I was living in an apartment in a nice section of Guatemala City.
It was a cute little spot, not far from the main avenida, with several little restaurants and shopping areas nearby. It was very safe. It was extra safe, in fact, because the International Olympic Committee was holding its annual meeting a block away to decide the venues for upcoming Winter Olympic games, and there were soldiers with machine guns on every corner. So it was very safe in a terrifying sort of way.
My infant daughter and I had just been released from a Guatemalan hospital, where she had been treated for viral pneumonia, a staph infection in a weeping wound on the back of her head, thrush in her mouth, dehydration, malnourishment and chronic diarrhea. She wasn’t really an infant anymore -- she was 9 months old -- but she weighed just 11 pounds and she didn’t smile, so she was very babyish. I slept in the bed with her every night because she wouldn’t let go of my hand, and I learned how to say, “Can you check this I.V.?” in Spanish. The coffee was excellent.
My Guatemalan attorney - let’s call her Idi Amin - told me to just go home and let her handle everything, but Husband and I decided that this skinny little unsmiling urchin simply needed us. Plus, the doctor said she would die if she went back to the orphanage.
We rented the apartment so that we could take care of her while we waited for the paperwork to clear. Husband stayed home in the U.S. to take care of the other two children, though he came down once so I could fly back to see them.
On pleasant afternoons, I’d stroll the baby -- she wasn’t yet the Tyrant - down to the Taco Tico for lunch, where I’d chat with Mario the manager and order the chicken tacos. During one particularly surreal dining moment, I sipped my El Presidente beer, ate my tacos and listened to “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” on the stereo system. Mario knew the words.
It would have been a nice little life, had I not been 2,000 miles away from my family and desperately fearful of Idi Amin coming to steal my child. Also, the machine guns kept me slightly on edge.
Though the baby slept a lot, I was very busy keeping all her medications organized, at least at first. After she got better, I stayed busy getting to know her. We watched “Good Morning, America” every day together. Actually, we watched it about 12 times a day, because that’s how often The American Network played it.
One day, Idi Amin called to say that she was going to visit the judge who had the power to sign my paperwork and let us go home. I don’t like to hate people, but if Idi Amin was in a room with me, I would feel perfectly comfortable chopping off her arms. But at the time, she had legal custody of my daughter, and I had to constantly reassure her that she was indeed the most brilliant, compassionate, powerful woman to ever walk the planet.
After she called, while the baby napped, I got on my knees and began to pray. I had not prayed in a long time, and I was not convinced that it would do any good, but it was all I had. Next door to my apartment a political rally was being held, so the background to my fervent pleas to God was a lot of fervent Spanish chanting.
I cried until I began to heave, and heaved until I choked. I knew we would never leave this child, but I couldn’t fathom how we could make this work.
The judge did not sign my paperwork that day, nor that week, nor the next. She didn’t sign it for four more months, in fact. By that time, I had returned home and left the baby with a family I’d met through friends of friends. She was far outside of the city, away from the hands of Idi Amin, and I returned to Guatemala to check on her every three weeks.
The baby was 13 months old when she came home to us for good, and ruined the Pterodactyl’s life. But that’s another story entirely.