American Daughter

by Stephanie Thornton Plymale

  During a low moment, a moment when it seemed that the nightmare of waiting would never be over, I had coffee with a friend who had since adopted from China. I cried at the table, and she took both of my hands in hers.

  “I remember it all like it was yesterday,” she told me. “They make you jump through dozens and dozens of hoops, and fill out reams and reams of paperwork, and fly thousands and thousands of miles, and pay tens of thousands of dollars. And then . . .”

  Here her voice broke and suddenly she was crying too. “Then you finally show up at the designated place on the designated day and they hand you a human being.”

  SO IT WAS with us. One day, without warning or fanfare, the long-awaited email from the agency appeared like a miracle in my inbox. Attached was a photo of a newborn girl: tiny, sleepy-eyed, and nestled amid pink blankets.

  “This is Andrea,” the caseworker wrote. “She’s a healthy and beautiful baby girl. Do you want her?”

  Less than an hour later, I burst into my husband’s office in the middle of his workday.

  “Jim!” I cried.

  He glanced up from his computer with a look of alarm. Tears were splashing out of my eyes as I thrust my phone at him, brandishing the photo from the agency.

  “Our daughter is born!”

  IN MY ROOM at the Heathman, I sat by the window and let myself remember how Jim managed to embrace me that day at his office.

  When did the adoption turn from something I wanted into something we wanted? I never saw it coming. One Sunday morning, when I opened my eyes, Jim was lying next to me, already awake and staring at the ceiling. This was unusual. Usually he was out of bed well before I was, making coffee in the kitchen, bringing it to me in a mug. Today he was very still.

  “Hey,” I said, reaching over to touch his chest. “Good morning.”

  He turned his head without lifting it from the pillow and put his hand on mine. “My heart has changed,” he said.

  I regarded him for a moment in silence, bewildered. “What do you mean?” I finally asked.

  “I think I can love this little girl,” he told me. “And I want to.”

  Now I went still, hardly daring to breathe, barely able to believe what I was hearing.

  “Are you . . . are you talking about Andrea?” I asked in a hush.

  “Who else could I be talking about?”

  “Do you really mean it?”

  My husband looked straight into my eyes and tightened his grip on my hand. “I really mean it.”

  How can I describe the grace of that statement? It was among the most profound gifts of my life. From that moment forward, he was in all the way.

  And yet the next six months were a hellish blur, a time I can hardly bear to look back on. The political situation in Guatemala worsened. Then a series of scandals broke, throwing a spotlight on the rampant corruption within the adoption industry, which involved children abducted and sold for money.

  One morning in August, midway through a client meeting, a call from the adoption agency came in on my cell. From the caller I.D., I could see it was Rebecca, the director herself. I stood up, cutting the client off in mid-sentence.

  “I have to take this,” I said. I left the conference room and walked down the hall to my office. I would have walked out of the Oval Office if I’d seen Rebecca’s name on my caller I.D.

  “Stephanie,” Rebecca said. “Are you sitting down?”

  I sank into my desk chair, clutching the left armrest with one hand and my phone with the other. “I am now,” I said. I felt myself starting to hyperventilate, and it was all I could do to stay upright. “What is it?”

  “I have terrible news,” she said. “Guatemala is suspending its international adoptions, effective immediately.”

  With the news that the entire adoption process was threatened, its completion uncertain, my life tipped into an unrelenting hell.

  For the first time ever, I felt lost inside my everyday life. I spent whole days in tears. Some mornings I could not get out of bed. It was very hard to concentrate at work, and when I managed to show up for tennis matches, I lost—the only time in fifteen years of competitive tennis that I ever lost.

  Each day I sought reassurance that Andrea’s adoption, initiated before the suspension, would be allowed to proceed, and every day I was left frantic and uncertain. I followed the news of the region on an hourly basis. I hired a Spanish translator to assist me with phone calls to the PGN, the Procuraduría General de la Nación, the government agency overseeing foreign adoptions—and together we called them again and again, begging for updates, only to be told there was nothing new to report.

  Summer ended and fall began. I took no joy in the crisp boots-and-sweater weather, the fiery leaves, the scent of wood smoke in the air, the electric beginning of a new school year. All the pleasures of the season—hot mulled cider, a fire in the fireplace, Halloween decorations appearing in all the yards—were like so much dust collecting on the sill of a window I was looking through.

  Jim was as kind to me during these long terrible months as any man could be. He took over any tasks he could, at the school and at home. He loaded my truck and processed all my invoices. He helped the boys with their homework and made them dinner. Sometimes he held me in bed without saying a word, both arms around me, pressing my back to his chest, as if keeping me afloat on the raft of himself.

  Thanksgiving that year was muted and sad. I went through the motions of creating the holiday dinner, but it was nothing but another chore to me. We were no longer a complete family. Our daughter was missing from our lives, as missing as one of those children pictured on the milk cartons of my childhood. How could we celebrate in her absence?

  By the end of the month, I came to a last-ditch decision. If I could do nothing in my power to bring my baby to me, then I would go to her.

  Chapter 15

  HAVE YOU EVER been hospitalized for an illness or injury? If so, please list the circumstance(s) that resulted in a hospital stay.

  I was applying to the Guatemala Immigration Department for a temporary residence permit, filling out the section on my medical history. I’d resolved to move to Guatemala in January if the process was still on hold. I’d met another adoptive mother in the same position as me, a woman who shared my despair. We’d made a pact to share an apartment in Antigua, to take over the care of our children from their foster families, and to be in daily contact with the PGN until our adoptions were official.

  As I wrote the answers—poison oak, broken arm—I actually shuddered at the memory of each of these incidents. They both sounded ordinary, well within the range of commonplace childhood mishaps. But each one involved the kind of suffering I associate with torture victims.

  I WAS IN the third grade when I broke my arm. It happened on the school playground at recess. I was nine years old and wanted to be a gymnast. It was the era of Nadia Coma˘neci’s seven perfect tens at the Olympics, the year she won three gold medals at the Games, and the maudlin strains of “Nadia’s Theme” were inescapable in elevators, in supermarket aisles, and in the repertoire of any girl learning to play the piano.

  On the blacktop each afternoon, I loved to lose myself on the high bar. Recess was a respite from the rest of the school day, where I remained all but mute and mostly friendless. I still lagged in every subject; I remained barely able to read. I had thrift store clothes and a lazy eye.

  But outside on the playground for a precious half hour each weekday, I pulled admiring eyes my way as I flew up and down and around the pull-up bar, doing flips and tricks and tumbles beneath the wide blue sky. My academic and social troubles faded. Nothing was left but the iron bar and my body and breath.

  I thought I’d perfected the cherry drop, a trick where I hung by my knees and swung back and forth until I’d gathered enough momentum to flip free and land on my feet. Only this time, one of my feet got caught and I landed on my right arm. The explosion of pain was like nothing I ever felt before.

  When a coup
le of teachers lifted me to my feet, I saw fear on their faces. My arm was dangling from the socket like a marionette’s might if you cut the string. A throng of staff and kids followed as they ushered me to the office.

  “Oh my goodness,” said the school secretary, paling at the sight of me. “That looks like a very bad break. You poor thing. We’ll call your mother right away. You can have a seat just outside in the hall.”

  I sat on the wooden bench by the office door, hunched over with tears sliding out of my eyes, cradling my hurt arm against my body.

  “Mrs. Haskell?” I heard her say. “This is Helen Miller, calling from Forest Park Elementary School.” I couldn’t hear everything she said above the din coming from the nearby cafeteria, but I caught a few phrases: I’m afraid your daughter Stephanie . . . rather serious injury . . . looks badly broken . . . will need medical attention.

  A moment later, she appeared beside the bench and knelt to meet my tear-stained gaze. “I just spoke to your mother,” she told me. “She said she’ll come right over and pick you up. Can I get you anything? Would you like a cup of water?”

  I shook my head.

  The clock on the wall said eleven forty-five. The pain in my arm was like a firecracker bursting each time I moved, so I sat as still as I possibly could, holding it close to my torso with my other hand, barely able to breathe. I heard myself whimpering like a kicked dog that didn’t have the right to howl.

  I sat there while the clock made its slow progress to half past the hour, then quarter till, then one o’clock. I sat there through English period and on into Social Studies; I felt the ringing of the bell inside my bone marrow. I sat there as the gym teacher, Coach Alex, led her class down the corridor and out to the track.

  “You’re still here?” she asked in surprise as the kids filed by me, staring at me with interest and alarm.

  When I was still there half an hour later, Coach Alex stopped on the threshold of the office on her way back to the gymnasium. “Helen, can’t you get ahold of anyone at Stephanie’s house?” she asked. “That poor kid is still here.”

  “Oh my goodness,” I heard Mrs. Miller say. “I did reach her mother, and she said she was coming. I’ll call her again.” And then, a moment later: “Mrs. Haskell, you’re still at home? Didn’t you hear what I told you before? Your daughter’s arm is broken.”

  “All right, she said she’s coming now,” Mrs. Miller reported after she’d hung up again. “Of course, that’s what she said before. I hope she means it this time.”

  Coach Alex trotted down the hall to rejoin her class, shaking her head as she went. I heard Mrs. Miller muttering to herself as she went back to working the mimeograph machine. Gosh almighty, I heard her say. That woman doesn’t seem right in the head. It was one fifteen.

  When my mother still hadn’t shown up by two forty-five, Coach Alex announced she was driving me to the hospital. I had been sitting on that bench for over three hours.

  “I didn’t see any reason to rush over,” my mother told me later. “It wasn’t a life or death situation. I did come to pick you up when school let out, but you were already gone. Someone took pity on you, I guess.”

  My mother arrived to sign the papers authorizing surgery on my shattered arm. I would be in a cast for the rest of that year.

  * * *

  MY OUTBREAK OF poison oak happened in seventh grade. It began on the Saturday of a three-day weekend: a prickly, insistent itch that started on my left leg, as if hundreds of frenzied fire ants were swarming over my shin. The skin flared bright red, and blisters broke out along the length of my lower leg.

  “Look, Mom,” I said, showing her the inflamed patch of skin.

  “Ugh, that looks awful,” she said. “Did you get too close to poison oak? Keep your hands off it.”

  I tried not to scratch, but it was almost impossible. The rash crept up my leg and over to the other. It laid siege to my torso, spreading across it like wildfire, moving to my arms and face. By evening, I was broken out everywhere.

  “Mom, can you take me to a doctor?” I asked. I was maddened by the itching, feverish and bleary-eyed.

  “You don’t need a doctor,” she said. “It’s just a rash. Poison oak might be uncomfortable, but it isn’t an emergency. It’ll go away on its own.”

  I lay awake all night, crying, clawing at my own body, feeling as if I’d been laid low by a witch’s curse. The itching sensation gave way to a full-body burn. The rash did not spare my private area, and by morning it was agony to urinate.

  “Something’s wrong, Mom,” I sobbed, standing in front of her in the kitchen as she drank a cup of tea. “It doesn’t just itch anymore. It hurts. It hurts so bad everywhere. It hurts to pee.”

  “You are fine, Stephanie,” she said. “I don’t have time for this. No one ever died from a poison oak rash.”

  “It looks bad, Florence,” said her boyfriend at the time. I don’t remember his name, just his slight and slouching form at our kitchen table, his red ball cap, and the five o’clock shadow dotting his jaw. I’ll call him John.

  His gaze found mine, and in that moment, I felt a flash of hope, because in his expression I saw mercy and concern: emotions that were missing in my mother’s.

  “Help me,” I mouthed to him, eyes wild and begging.

  “Tell you what, Florence,” he said. “I’ll just run down to the drugstore and see if I can get her something to put on it. I know you don’t want to pay a doctor bill but I can shell out a few bucks for something off the shelf.”

  “You can get me a pack of Camels, if you’re going,” my mother said.

  He came back half an hour later with a bar of Fels-Naptha.

  “There was a lady at the pharmacy with three little kids,” he reported. “I figured she would be a good one to ask. She said she uses this to get poison oak out of clothes. So it stands to reason it’ll get it off your body.”

  I took the green and white box from him. Beneath the product name, it said Laundry Bar & Stain Remover. The yellow brick inside resembled a regular bar of soap.

  “Go get in the bath and wash yourself all over with that,” he said.

  “Did you get my cigarettes?” my mother wanted to know.

  Upstairs, my teeth were chattering as I stripped naked and tried to ease myself into the tub of warm water. The rash was like a live thing, a full-body scorpion burn. I knew better than to make the water as hot as I usually liked, but even the mild warmth was scorching on my blistered skin.

  I stood in the ankle-deep bath, dipped the yellow bar beneath the surface of the water, and tentatively rubbed it on my arm. It was as if I’d poured acid on that spot, and I cried out.

  “What is it, Steph?” John called from the hall outside the bathroom.

  “It burns,” I cried. “The soap. It hurts to wash with this soap.”

  “You gotta do it, honey,” he urged through the closed door. “It’ll be good for the rash.”

  I stood there shivering and sobbing, trying to work up the nerve to go on. It took me forever to wash myself all over and then stagger back to my bed, clad only in a towel. Bathing with that detergent felt like scouring myself with steel wool.

  That evening, my blisters blew up into amber beads, like droplets of honey all over my body, sweating and leaking pus. I felt myself raging with fever, burning and freezing in wretched succession all night long. In the morning, my sheets were damp and sticky from the fluid oozing from all over my body. My eyes were nearly swollen shut, and tears leaked steadily from the slits they had become. A sickly odor like snot hung in a cloud around my bed, and every patch of visible skin on my torso and limbs was discolored, shading from deep ravaged pink to wine red to deep purple.

  I felt the life leaving my body, and I knew I was going to die. It was a harrowing effort to pull myself out of bed and make my way down the stairs to my mother in the kitchen.

  “Mom,” I said. “Please take me to the hospital.”

  She looked taken aback at the sight of me.


  “Wow,” she said. “That is some rash. I never saw a poison oak rash like that. What did you do, take all your clothes off and roll around in it?”

  “Mom,” I said desperately. “If you don’t take me to a doctor, I’m going to die.”

  “Okay,” she said. “We can go a little later, I guess.”

  “Mom, please.”

  “Okay! I said I would take you. I’m having my tea now,” she said. “Don’t rush me.”

  An hour or so later, in the shotgun seat of her car, I clung to the armrest on the inside of the door and heard myself baying softly like an abused puppy.

  “Stop being so dramatic,” my mother said. “This is not easy for me. I could get in a lot of trouble showing up at the hospital again. Last time we were there Rick and I got busted for stealing pills.”

  I was staggering when we reached the hospital, leaning on my mother, barely able to drag myself along. My limbs felt weak and slack, and I was perilously dizzy. The moment we came through the emergency room doors, a triage nurse took one look at me and came running over, calling over her shoulder for a wheelchair. Another nurse brought one and—as if I’d just been holding on, keeping myself upright, long enough to reach safety—I collapsed into it. I wavered in and out of consciousness after that and can recall only sparse details of the next hour, overheard phrases that lodged in my mind, isolated images and impressions.

  I remember the phrase trauma call for twelve-year-old girl in probable septic shock, and how swiftly I was wheeled into the trauma bay. And I can remember the conversation between the medical personnel and my mother as they took my vitals and began intravenous rehydration.

  “How did she get such extensive burns?” the attending physician asked.

  “They’re not burns,” she said. “It’s just a rash from poison oak.”

  “Poison oak doesn’t look like this,” he said. “Was some caustic substance applied to her blisters?”