DURHAM - Lori Russell mothers across an ocean. From her apartment on North Duke Street, she patches through unreliable Internet phones to sing songs with a West African girl named Awa. Russell asks her adopted daughter, 8, if she has bathed and finished her math homework. She teaches Awa new words in English.

Russell signs off after 15 minutes or so, rolls her eyes to pull back a tear and takes out a book of court briefs and prepares for class at Duke University Law School.

"It's so hard to sit and talk and not hold her," Russell, 26, said after a call with Awa last week. "I feel like I should still be talking to her or I should be there. What am I doing?"

While millions of American mothers pull their children close today on a holiday that celebrates mothers, Russell will fret about a daughter who can't join her in the United States without a U.S. visa from the government. A maddening tangle of long-standing immigration laws keeps Awa apart from the American couple who adopted her in 2007 while volunteering in the Peace Corps.

To the West African nation of Togo, Russell and her husband, Michael Russell, are Awa's legal parents, young volunteers willing to adopt a child whose parents didn't want her. To the United States, Awa is a foreigner adopted by Americans through a means not sanctioned by U.S. immigration law.

To Awa (pronounced AH-wah), Russell and her husband are saviors, parents who promise schooling and holidays and food she can't yet pronounce. To Russell, Awa is a heartbreak of a gift.

In a few weeks, Russell will board a plane for Africa.

She has no return ticket. She won't buy one until she can buy two.

Girl adopts Americans

Lori Russell never meant to be a mother now.

She planned to finish law school first and pay down her student debt. She and Michael would settle into a house and get their careers in order. Then, she'd welcome a child into her life.

But sometimes, Russell has learned, a child picks her mother.

"She claimed us from day one," Lori Russell said. "She decided."

The Russells, childhood sweethearts from Elon, joined the Peace Corps after graduating from Emory University in Atlanta. In 2005, they were sent to Togo, a land where temperatures top 100 degrees in the hot season and villagers farm in dry, cracked soil.

At 5, Awa was the smallest of the gaggle of children who came to peer at the funny white Americans sent to teach their villagers how to better market their wares and manage their crops. By day's end, Awa had crawled into Lori's lap. Within months, Lori was scooping her a serving of pasta at their dinner table and filling a tub to bathe her.

Awa's family struggled, the Russells said. She was the youngest of her father's brood. Awa shared a home with siblings decades older and had lived there with another woman who also claimed her father as a husband. Her mother left before dawn, returning well into the night. Her father, already in his 70s, lingered at their compound, barely able to move his crippled legs.

Russell said Awa was left to fend for herself. She ate at friends' homes when their mothers had enough to share. She often turned up at the Russells' with a growling belly.

But it was the burns and bruises and bumps that troubled Lori and Michael Russell most. Awa said she'd been pushed into a fire by a sister and knocked on the head when she wouldn't hand over her dinner to a sibling.

'An indomitable spirit'

"She never complained," Lori Russell recalls. "She has the most indomitable spirit I've ever seen."

The Russells shuddered one night as Awa's screams pierced the still night air. They willed themselves to stay put, knowing if they barged into Awa's compound they would violate the culture's deference to letting families work out their own affairs.

Awa turned up the next morning, a goose-egg knot on her head.

Russell said Awa's mother soon followed and asked if they'd keep her for good. The Russells offered her excuses in the broken tribal language: We're too young. The Togo government will never let us take her back to America. Wouldn't she miss her family?

The mother disappeared.

The Russells asked themselves if it was possible. They tried to block images of Awa working in brothels as a young teenager, a certain fate, they feared, if she stayed in Togo.

Lori Russell had fallen in love with Awa, then a lanky 5-year-old who cracked jokes and had taught herself French. Already, Lori Russell had started to feel like a mother. Lori taught her ballet and asked women in the village to teach her how to wind Awa's hair into thick braids. Lori ordered matching dresses for Awa and herself from a local seamstress. Lori cuddled with Awa at night. She marveled at Awa's capacity to love despite her troubled life.

In 2007, a trio of Togolese men in black robes grilled Awa's mother and father about their desires to give their daughter to the Americans. Her parents insisted she'd be better off.

Within hours, the judges announced their approval of the adoption, making the Russell family three.

Struggling for a visa

Lori Russell boarded a plane in July 2007 and told herself again and again she'd see Awa and Michael soon.

She had earned a spot in Duke's law school. Orientation started in two weeks.

She would set up their apartment and start applying for Awa's visa. Michael would stay behind with Awa until he had to come to America for an interview and home inspection by a child services organization -- part of evaluating families for adopted children. The director of the Togolese Peace Corps program offered to keep Awa with her until they could get it sorted out.

Michael Russell came home in October and found a job working with Duke undergraduates at the university's Global Health Institute.

They decorated a room for Awa in their apartment. Lori Russell spread a pink lace comforter on a twin bed and perched a Hello Kitty doll on top.

The Russells figured they'd have the visa application squared away in a month. One month became five; Awa settled in for a long stay with the Peace Corp director in Togo's capital city.

Lori Russell tried to focus on contract law and exams. She tried to tell herself that she was doing all she could and that navigating immigration law could be tough. As a mother, she was heartsick. She stopped walking into Awa's room, unable to look at the stack of little girl's outfits her family helped assemble. She has found herself staring at other little black girls, trying to figure out how she'll fix Awa's hair when she comes to Durham. At restaurants, she would study the menus to try and figure out what she'd order for Awa.

"I wanted to walk away from law school so many times," Lori Russell said. "My child is a world away."

Finding a way

The United States grants visas to children in nations without formal adoption regulations when the child has been forfeited to an orphanage or the native country's government. Or, visas can be earned when the Americans have been the legal and physical guardians of the child for two years in her native country. The Russells had spent but one year in Togo after the courts granted them legal custody.

They applied for a visa anyway, convinced immigration officials would see their case as unique and find an exception to grant one. In October, an ominous letter from immigration officials warned them they were mistaken. Her visa would be denied.

The Russells called their legislators and begged for intervention. Their family and friends wrote letters to politicians. Strangers signed petitions to bring Awa to America.

They hired a lawyer to help with the only other option -- an exception in the law called humanitarian parole. It was a last-ditch effort for Americans who face hardship because a foreign family member cannot come to the United States. It's a long shot. Only about one-third of children's applications are granted.

The Russells sent their application last week.

Lori Russell knew it was dangerous to set her sights solely on humanitarian parole. She refused to go on with her life in America without Awa. If Awa can't be here, Russell says, she'll go there and finish their two-year legal custody requirement.

Duke is allowing Russell to put law school on hold while she sorts out motherhood. Lori Russell is not sure when she'll see her husband again; he must stay behind to work and support them. Two and a half months is the longest she and Michael have been separated since Lori kicked the back of his seat on a field trip in the third grade.

Lori Russell's heart belongs to another now.

"Being a mother makes you live for someone else," she said. "I never knew that before."

'No provision' in law for U.S. visa

"Upon review of this petition, this child had two biological parents who have given this child to you by adoption. This is a private adoption, and not an orphan. At the present time, there is no provision in U.S. Immigration law to allow for an international adoption of a child who has two living biological parents, even if those parents have allowed the adoption."

(AN OCTOBER LETTER FROM U.S. CITIZEN AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES, ADVISING THE RUSSELLS THAT THEY COULDN'T QUALIFY FOR A VISA FOR AWA)