Julie’s Journal Entry 9/97
9/97
My son is from Guatemala. His home, he says, his true country. Why didn’t they show Guatemala in the Olympics?
He loves it, this place he can’t remember, this home different from where he lives, form where he has ever lived. We won’t take him there. Everyone says it’s not safe. When I was there to get him, I was told don’t tell anyone why you’re here. Don’t say anything to anybody. A year later an American woman was stoned. They thought she was stealing babies for medical experiments.
We have a Guatemalan painting on the wall. It’s beautiful. “Campesinos Atitlán.” It shows the mountains, the coffee-picking peasants. It doesn’t interest my son. Whatever this home is he yearns for, it’s not in the picture. It’s a place that’s real – my real home, my real parents, he’ll say. Give me my real passport. Red strange smelling leatherette cover. Still strange smelling after all these years. Stamped once – his picture, just a baby. But it’s my thumb in the picture holding him up to the camera.
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