Trying to place a long-distance call to Bolivia was a hit-or-miss proposition. Sometimes you could try for days and never get through, and sometimes you could get through on the first attempt. This particular time, the line crackled and I faintly heard Nila's voice as she answered.
"This is Catherine," I began in Spanish.
There was a short pause, then Nila unleashed a flood of angry words. Among other things she demanded to know why I had "done it." Done what? I realized she must be referring to some story Freddy had told her. Ignoring that, I plunged ahead.
"Are Jane and Michael there with you? Is Federico living there with you?" I asked.
"No, they have not arrived yet. They are not here."
That meant they must be on the way. She went on in a strident voice, telling me that the children were among family, that they were loved and well cared for and would lack for nothing.
"Except a mother," I said. "They won't have a mother. Did you know that Freddy took the children away from me without my knowing? Did he tell you he kidnapped them?" Nila was silent for a moment as she absorbed this. Maybe it was news to her.
"Freddy had no right to take Jane and Michael away. He's committed a serious crime in this country."
My worries about not remembering the language disappeared, as I slipped into the idiom that used to come more easily to me than English. I struggled to maintain control of my quivering voice as I reminded her of how she used to praise me for being such a good mother. How could she think I had changed so much?
"No matter what Freddy has told you, I'm still a good mother. Freddy had no right to make the children pay for our problems."
Nila continued with vague accusations about how we never should have left Bolivia in the first place, but she didn't seem as sure of herself as she had a moment before.
"Please,” I said, “Tell the children that I love them."
She said that she would. Then there was a dial tone. She had hung up.
Shaking, I laid the receiver back in its cradle. Susan put her hand on my shoulder.
"You said all the right things. You didn't even need me."
But what had I accomplished? Nothing, except to find out that, sooner or later, Jane and Michael would show up at Nila's house. Maybe she was lying and they were already there. If so, it meant Federico had no intention of letting me talk to them.
For a few more days I kept calling Nila to find out whether the children had arrived. She began hanging up as soon as she heard my voice.
I then turned to Federico's brother Edgar. He was devoted to his own two children, and, so, I reasoned, he would understand my anguish. Maybe he would reason with Federico's family on my behalf. During our first phone call he was as soothing and sympathetic as I'd hoped he'd be. He told me that Jane and Michael were with Federico in Tarija.
"Don't worry, Catherine, the children are fine. I'm sure they'll be back soon. I am sure that Freddy will let you talk to them as soon as they arrive in La Paz."
I called him every few days for an update, and he strung me along for two weeks with the same story. Mr. Rosenthal was skeptical but said little. I guess he didn't want to burst my bubble, figuring it would eventually collapse on its own.
Meanwhile, early in December, I also called an old friend in La Paz, Russell Hall. When I was working at Food Aid International, Russ had been a volunteer there. Now he was the head of the La Paz office. Now, after most of the other volunteers I'd known had gone back home, Russ was still in Bolivia.
He said he would talk to Edgar to try to find out what was going on. When I called back a few days later, Russ had already been to see Edgar.
"He acted like he really wanted to help," Russ said. "But he told me the same thing he's been telling you, that Freddy and the kids are in Tarija and they'll be back any day."
"Is that all? Did he say anything else?"
"Well, yes." Russ seemed reluctant to discuss it.
"What else?"
"Apparently Freddy told him some pretty bad things about you."
He didn't have to go into details. I knew what they were: I neglected the children. I left them alone at night and then came home drunk. I had a boyfriend who was a drug dealer, or else I had an eighteen-year-old boyfriend. Or he might have combined the two and said that I had an eighteen-year-old drug dealer boyfriend. Or maybe he'd told Edgar the continuous-stream-of-one-night-stands story. Of course, none of it was true. But Federico was good at talking. I was sure he'd convinced his family of whatever he'd said. Maybe he'd even convinced himself.
Russ kept checking with Edgar every few days, and Edgar kept telling him the same thing. But one day in mid-December when I called Russ he had different news.
"Cassie, I saw Jane and Michael. They're in La Paz."
My throat squeezed shut. "Where?"
"They were walking down a street with Freddy, in Obrajes."
Obrajes was a residential area of La Paz. We'd rented a house there during our last few years in Bolivia.
"How did they look?"
"They seemed to be fine. Jane and Michael were walking in front of Federico. They were holding hands."
I cried tears of relief. Finally my imagination had an image to hold onto and surroundings to place them in. I was grateful that Jane and Michael were so close. They would stick together and be a comfort to each other.
"After I saw them I called Edgar, to see if he'd tell me the truth," Russ continued. "But he told me the same story about the children being in Tarija. Apparently he's been lying all along."
There was still one brother left to approach: Manuel, the psychologist in West Berlin. Before Federico and I were married, he had visited us once in Austin. We'd given him a Texas-style tour and Manuel, despite his rudimentary knowledge of English, entered readily into the spirit of things. He did the Cotton-Eyed Joe at a country-western dance hall, ate enchiladas at a Mexican restaurant, and in nearby San Antonio, toured the Alamo and strolled the Riverwalk along the San Antonio River. Manuel was sensible and intelligent and human. Surely he would listen.
I wrote a long letter to him. After weeks without a reply, I decided he wasn't going to answer. Then one morning at 3 A.M., Manuel called.
"Catereen?"
"Yes," I said groggily.
"This is Manuel." Then he began speaking in Spanish. "I received your letter. I knew that Freddy and the children were in La Paz, but I did not know that he'd kidnapped them from you. That is not the correct way to do things."
He promised to talk to Federico in April, when he and his wife would be traveling to La Paz.
April seemed a long way off. Still, if anyone could convince Federico of how damaging all this was to the children, it was Manuel. Yes, I thought, they would listen to Manuel. Logic and reason would prevail at last.
After appealing to Federico's family in every way I could think of, I threw myself on the mercy of the Catholic Church. I made an appointment to see Father Ivan, a Cuban priest at the Catholic Church Federico had attended in McAllen. If I could get the Church to intervene on my behalf, I thought, Federico's family would surely listen. Nila was especially devout—early each morning she walked several blocks to attend Mass. A priest's word would carry a lot of weight with her.
Father Ivan was a big man, tall and heavily built, with thinning gray hair and a no-nonsense manner. I explained the situation briefly and asked if he would help.
He spoke with a slight Cuban accent. "I didn't know Mr. Bascope very well. I was a little put off by him, actually. He made an appointment to see me, to talk about his divorce. The first thing he said was that he came to me, a priest, because he couldn't afford a real psychologist." Father Ivan shrugged. "Then he quit coming."
Father Ivan said he would do what he could. The Vatican had a papal nuncio in La Paz. Father Ivan would get in touch with someone there, and that priest would in turn contact Federico.
"The only thing we can do is try to persuade him to meet with you somewhere and discuss a compromise."
/> Father Ivan's brows drew together. "But I don't think that you should go to Bolivia for such a meeting. Ugly things could happen to you there."
Ugly things did happen in Bolivia, but they were usually politically motivated. I couldn't imagine Federico carrying out anything so evil. But then, during the past year he'd done many things I couldn't have imagined him doing.
After my conversation with Father Ivan, I was hopeful again. But as the weeks passed, this faded, too. Eventually, a priest in La Paz did call Nila. She told him that it was her son's business, and she didn't want to be involved in it. Apparently feeding and sheltering Federico and the children didn't count as involvement.
Time passed slowly. I couldn't get used to the stillness of the apartment. Where once there had been a constant stream of neighborhood children running in and out, now the doorbell fell silent. No toys were strewn across the living room, no fingerprints smudged the door. I didn't have to hurry each morning, waking the children up, getting them breakfast, getting them dressed for school. I didn't have to rush home to cook supper, run baths, pack lunches. Like all mothers of young children, I never seemed to have any time for myself, except in those precious hours after they were in bed at night.
Now I had all the time I could ever want. The only problem was I couldn't remember what it was I had been so eager to do. I never touched my ballet slippers again after the "Ugly Duckling." I quit writing book reviews.
At some point I shut the door to the children's room so I wouldn't have to look into it at every turn. Friends urged me to pack up their toys and clothes. Kathy offered to come over and help me do it. But that would have been an admission of defeat, so I left their room as it was. Sometimes I'd go into it, walk around, and touch their things. I'd bury my face in their still unwashed sheets, where the scent of their bodies was becoming fainter and fainter.
I was tortured by the “what ifs.” What if I hadn't been so caught up in "doing my own thing"? What if I'd called the children that Saturday? What if I'd monitored airline reservations, kept closer tabs on Jane and Michael, done a thousand other things that might have made a difference?
There was no comfort to be found in my faith, either. All of a sudden I found it difficult to pray. Had I displeased God? Was He punishing me by taking away what was most precious to me?
None of it explained why the children should suffer. I was seven years old and my mother was thirty-six when she died. Now I was thirty-five and Jane was six. Was history repeating itself? Was there some kind of hidden logic in it all? For the first time in my life, I felt completely helpless to change my situation. Every avenue I'd tried had come up a dead end. I began to develop a fatalistic attitude.
One day at lunch, I told Kathy how I felt. She had just told me that she'd prayed for me every day.
"What do you pray for?" I asked.
She looked surprised. "Well, for you to get your kids back, of course."
"Maybe it's not supposed to happen. I'm afraid to pray for what I want anymore. I prayed that we wouldn't have to go through a jury trial, and I got what I wanted. But look how it happened. I'm afraid that if I pray for the kids to come back, it'll happen, but in some terrible way. Or maybe I'll get them back but it won't be good for them, living here. Maybe for some reason I'll never know, they're better off with Federico in Bolivia, and that's why the whole thing happened."
Kathy frowned.
"I know that I want them. But so does Federico. Why should God listen to my prayers and ignore his?"
"I admire your Christian attitude. If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't give a hoot what Federico wanted," Kathy said.
"There's nothing Christian about it."
In fact I had never felt so far away from God. He had abandoned me—or maybe, in shame, I had hidden myself from Him. Maybe I'd brought it all on myself. I spent a lot of time brooding about the whys and wherefores of it all. Why was it that as women we put up with things until we can’t stand it anymore? Don't we deserve to enjoy our lives, too? But my first attempts at enjoying life seemed to have brought me nothing but trouble.
In the meantime, I settled into a routine again. I went to work and to church and visited Susan, even though it felt strange to be there without my children to play with hers. I started seeing Marco again. There was no reason not to anymore. On the outside I seemed to have it together. On the inside there was a gaping emptiness that nothing could fill. I struggled against slipping into despondency. I ached for my children, but all I could do was wait and hope. As Christmas approached I felt almost desperate to see Jane and Michael. On Christmas Eve, I made one of my periodic attempts to call Nila. To my surprise, she talked to me this time. She was even civil. She explained that Freddy and the children were out, but that they'd be back by six o'clock. But when I called back at six, there was no answer.
A few days after Christmas, I got a report from Paul Anderson at the State Department. Someone from the American consulate had finally visited the children. Paul told me that he had received a long cable from La Paz, saying that the children were indeed living with their father in Nila's high-rise condominium. They seemed to be healthy and well cared for. Had the consular representative made it clear to the children that he had come on my behalf? I asked. Yes, they'd told the children that their mother had requested the visit. Anderson added that according to the cable, Freddy had been pleasant and cooperative.
He must be feeling pretty confident, I thought. Well, at least he wasn't hiding out. And it was a relief to know the kids were all right. But I got the feeling Anderson wasn't telling me everything he knew. The cable was long, but he'd told me only a few things. Too many questions were left unanswered.
It wasn't long before I got another report, this one from Russ.
"I just wanted to tell you that I delivered your Christmas package to Jane and Michael."
Finally, a first-hand report on how they really were. "Did you give them the presents?"
"They didn't open the box while I was there. But I told Jane and Michael it was from you."
I had sent a box of presents in care of Russ, thinking that if I sent it to Federico, he might not give it to the children. I'd packed some of Jane's and Michael's old toys as well as new ones, and their favorite pajamas. Tucked throughout were little notes from me, saying that I loved them and missed them. There were also some Christmas cards that Michael's preschool class had drawn for him and letters from both children's teachers in McAllen. In an attempt to soften up my in-laws, I packed tins of Christmas cookies for them, and even threw in a box of Triscuits, Federico’s favorite snack food.
Russ told me that Federico and Nila welcomed him in and even invited him to stay for lunch. From Nila he got an enormous midday meal, and from Federico he got a first-hand recital of my imaginary sins.
"How were Jane and Michael?" I asked.
"They were a little shy. I don't think they remembered me." Russ and the other volunteers had been at our house a few times when we lived in La Paz.
"What did they say when you told them the box was from me?"
"They didn't say much. They were pretty quiet."
"Did you tell them that I love them?" I had asked Russ to be sure to remember that.
"Yes, I told them that two or three times."
"Did they seem to be okay? Pretty happy?"
"Yes."
Russ said that when he brought up the subject of me visiting the children, Federico and his mother were adamant: Jane and Michael would stay in Bolivia with their father, and the sooner they forgot about me, the better.
Chapter Seven
About a month had passed since I'd seen my children. My strategies to get through to Federico and his family through common sense and persuasion had come to nothing.
I called the State Department and talked again to Paul Anderson. He gave me some disheartening facts: there were hundreds of parents in my situation whose children had been kidnapped and taken to South America and other parts of the world. No extradition treatie
s for parental kidnapping existed between the United States and any Latin American country. My only chance of getting Jane and Michael back, Anderson said, was to go through the Bolivian court system.
He added parenthetically, "Unless you go down and kidnap them back. But of course the State Department couldn't have anything to do with that."
"How often does that happen—I mean, successfully?"
"We don't keep statistics on it," he answered shortly. "But I can tell you we don't recommend it. You could end up in a Bolivian prison, with even less hope than ever of seeing your children again. And the U.S. Government wouldn't be able to bail you out."
The sentiment among expats everywhere is that if you find yourself in trouble in a foreign country, don't waste a phone call to the U.S. Embassy. I wondered how true that was.
I asked him what he thought my chances were of recovering Jane and Michael legally.
"It depends on a lot of things. The laws and judicial system are similar to ours—on paper, anyway. In reality, it depends a lot on how influential your husband and his family are."
"Well, he knows a lot of people. A lot of his old high school friends have held positions in the Bolivian Government. Maybe some are in it now."
Never mind that in Bolivia, governmental appointees changed with bewildering rapidity. But I knew that the current President, Victor Paz Estenssoro, was from Federico's hometown, and that Federico had at least a passing acquaintance with him. Considering the fierce regional loyalties in Bolivia, just being from the same town could carry a lot of weight.
"If your husband doesn't have that much clout and can't prove that you were a bad mother, you have a chance."
"How often does that happen, that the American parent wins custody in a South American court?" I asked.
Where Are My Children? The True Story of a Mother Who Risked Her Life to Rescue Her Kidnapped Children Page 6