Betrayed (2 page)

“Won't I see any more?” Tracey piped up. “Can I play with my ball? Can I drive a motorbike when I get big?”

Many months of treatment followed, but luck wasn't on our side. The scarring did move and my little girl was classified as partially sighted in her right eye. Some days it seemed to bother her more than others and she often compensated by turning her head to look with her good eye. When she cocked her head like a robin we knew she was having a “bad eye” day.

Despite the handicap, her spirit remained indomitable, her energy boundless, her sunny nature undimmed – until one Saturday morning when she was five.

“Come Tracey,” I called to her where she was playing in the garden. “Time to go shopping.”

Her faced was streaked with dirt, her knees grass-stained and her clothes covered in mud. Deciding it was “clean” dirt, I wiped her face and hands
with a damp cloth, bundled her into the car and drove to the shopping
centre nearby. Tracey prattled away, pointing out what she spotted on the
side of the road – a street vendor selling artwork made of tin, a strange-
looking postbox, a game of baseball that she asked if we could stop and watch. I was so used to her hopping from one item of interest to another that I ignored the question, knowing she would soon be distracted by something else.

I took her hand and she skipped along next to me through the parking lot, the faint painting of freckles on her face framed by a smudge of dirt I had missed. At the stationers she asked if she could go and look at the magazines in the next aisle.

“As long as you don't go anywhere else. And remember, look but don't touch,” I warned.

With a happy smile she bounded off while I gathered the few items I needed. Suddenly I felt Tracey's hand sneak quietly into mine. I looked down and saw her head hanging, her shoulders hunched. I crouched down and gently moved her hair away from her face.

“What happened, angel?” I asked. Tears formed tracks down her grubby little cheeks but she shook her head without uttering a sound. More frightened by the silent tears than I would have been by frantic sobbing, I saw
that she had wet herself. I tried to coax her into telling me what had hap
pened, but again she shook her head and said nothing. I decided that the
rest of the shopping would have to wait for another day and took her straight
home, where she went to her room and sat quietly looking at her storybooks,
subdued. I told my husband Buddy what had happened, but neither of us
could get anything out of her. That night she started sucking her thumb in her sleep. She also wet her bed. This was not like our Tracey at all.

On Monday she trudged to nursery school, but didn't give me her usual cheery smile as she waved goodbye. After a few days a half-smile started to make fleeting appearances and she seemed to be getting some of her impishness back, but she was still wetting her bed and sucking her thumb every night. I asked Dr Trickie's advice about taking her to see a child psychologist and made an appointment for the following week.

The next Saturday I told Tracey to get ready to come to the shops with me as usual. At first she dumbly shook her head, but I had no one to leave her with, so I persuaded her by promising not to let go of her hand. She al
ways loved dancing around, pointing out all the toys and books she wanted
, so it was heart-breaking to see her cling to me like a limpet. We were walking from one shop to another when I noticed a man sitting in the photo booth, dirt-encrusted fingers resting on grubby grey trousers. The curtains were closed so I didn't see his face.

“It's him! It's him! It's him!” Tracey screamed, pulling her hand from mine and running away like a hunted animal.

The curtains of the photo booth were yanked open and a pale man with long, greasy hair ran off in the other direction. Heart pounding, I chased after Tracey before she could run blindly into the oncoming cars. I grabbed her shoulder and hugged her close, gently stroking her back and telling her it would be okay. Shopping abandoned, I carried her to the car and drove silently home, tormented by the thought of what this man might have done to my child. She lay curled up on the back seat, thumb jammed in her mouth, eyes screwed shut as tears squeezed through her lashes.

We had a partial answer to what had changed our child, but what exactly had this man done? Tracey wouldn't or couldn't tell us, but it made my skin crawl to think that she had recognised him by his hand alone.

I reported the incident to the shopping centre's management and to the police. Apparently he was known to both of them and it wasn't the first time something like this had happened at the complex. The man was eventually
arrested for his crimes, but Tracey wasn't needed as a witness because there
was enough other evidence against him. I heard later that another prisoner
had beaten him severely when he found out about the things he had done.

Neither doctors nor psychologists ever discovered exactly what had hap
pened; all we knew was that this pervert had stolen Tracey's innocence and
trust of people. As the months passed her adventurous spirit slowly started to re-emerge but for the rest of her life in times of severe stress she would
suck her thumb in her sleep. For the rest of her life she covered her body un
der oversized T-shirts and refused to wear revealing clothes or a swimming
costume.

“Mommy, Mommy, how many more nights till big school?”

It was a question we had heard a hundred times in the four weeks since Christmas. Now at last the big day was here and Tracey was grinning as she put on her school uniform, the gap where her front teeth used to be making her look like a mischievous imp.

She bounced on the car seat in excitement. Oh, how she hated to sit still.

“I'm going to be gone all morning,” she told her little brother importantly. “But I promise I'll tell you a story when I get home.” Then she sprang out at the school gate.

“You don't have to come with me, Mommy. I know where to go.”

With a sad heart I watched my little girl get swallowed in a sea of children,
all wearing the same dark blue uniform.

Tracey loved school. Every afternoon she would be fizzing with stories about her new friends, her teacher, what she had done that morning.

“I have a special friend,” she said on a day that smelt of hot grass and nasturtiums. “He's very small and thin. He cries a lot and he's got white hair. He's only my special friend because he hasn't got any other friends.”

She had always had a soft heart when it came to animals or children she believed needed protection. She would willingly take them under her wing and defend them with every ounce of her being. I was glad that she was settling in so well and enjoying school, so it was a surprise when the headmaster phoned in the second week of term, asking to see me when I picked Tracey up from school.

“Has she been hurt?” I asked. A brief silence.

“No, she has been fighting.”

I couldn't believe my ears. Tracey wasn't a violent child. I was embarrassed, feeling as though I was back at school and had been called in to the headmaster's office for something I had done wrong.

“There's no reason to punish Tracey,” he said evenly when we met in his office, “but I think you need to speak to her about what happened today. She got involved in a fight with four older boys at lunch break. None of them are hurt, except for their dignity and pride, of course.”

I leant forward in the chair, almost holding my breath as I waited to hear more.

“We have a young boy who is very shy and withdrawn,” he explained. “Tracey seems to have made friends with him. Apparently, at break today some of the older boys started teasing him, calling him a girl and a sissy because he was friends with a girl. He started to cry and Tracey laid into them with her hands and feet. Before anyone could stop her, we had four young men lying on the grass.”

Although I was shocked that Tracey could behave like this, I was also battling to contain my laughter at the mental picture of four bigger boys lying on the grass while Tracey stood, hands on hips, glaring down at them in righteous indignation.

“Not many children will defend the underdog, so don't be too hard on
her,” the headmaster smiled. “But she does need to know that fighting won't
be tolerated.”

I apologised, thanked him and went down the corridor to fetch Tracey from
her classroom. She peered up at me with wide eyes from under her fringe.

”Am I in big trouble?”I glared at her for a moment without speaking.

“They asked for it!” she cried. “He's my friend. I had to defend him because he's too weak to do it for himself.”

“That may be, but fighting is never the answer to anything. I'm glad you stuck up for your friend, but I don't want you getting involved in a fight again. Do you understand me?”

“Okay,” she muttered darkly. “But they did ask for it.”

Once I start to trawl through the sea of memories the strangest things get caught in my net. Sometimes I can pull them out and look at them and they are as clear as if they happened yesterday, the images still sharp and the colours bright. Like the time when Tracey heard an impala barking on her first visit to the Kruger National Park and squirmed round in her seat, asking “Where are the puppies?” Or her first sight of a bathroom shower while on holiday at the age of four. Stark naked, with a shower cap pulled low over her eyes, she folded her arms and objected, “I don't bathe in the rain.”

She and her little brother Glen loved the sea. Every summer we made a pilgrimage to a caravan park at the coast, armed with buckets and spades. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? How much longer? Hot, sticky, happy days. Tracey hurled herself into the waves like a dolphin, her dad never far away, on the lookout for a rebel wave. The children built sandcastles and
she decorated hers with “mermaid flags” made of seaweed. Then she
would
pull me to my feet.

“Come on, Mom, let's walk through the pools and catch fish. Please, please, please!”

If she found something in one of the pools she would keep it in her bucket with some seawater until it was time to leave the beach. Then she would gently tip it back into the rock pool, saying “Bye bye, little fish, go back to your mommy.”

Or her attention would turn to the clouds.

“Look Glen, that one looks like a dragon.”

So many hours she spent finding pictures in the sky and weaving stories for her brother from these cloud paintings. From the day he was born she adored him. Exactly two years apart and as different as chalk and cheese. Whenever the house was quiet I would shout, “Whatever you two are doing, stop it!” That usually led to muffled giggles, even if she was just reading to him or telling him stories. Oh yes, they could fight like any brother and sister, but no one dared say a bad word about him in her hearing because she would jump to his defence.

“Tracey, let your brother speak for himself!” I would say. “He'll never learn to stand on his own feet if you keep answering for him!”

“Okay Mom, but I know what he's thinking.”

So many memories, memories I would love to share with the person who made them.

Desperate to find my missing daughter, I spent much of that first
day driving around with my mom, son Glen and friend Kat, attempt
ing the impossible. One place we were drawn to was about six kilo
metres from my home, a stretch of land where the police told us they
had found Tracey's car, although we didn't know the exact spot.

The road stretched out in front of us like a dull, grey ribbon and
long grass hid a rusted barbed wire fence. Fields of mealies reached into the distance, their stalks waving in the wind. Beer cans, bottles and rubbish were scattered along the verge. Huge trees broke the skyline on the horizon, sheltering farmhouses from view, and a lone
windmill stood tall nearby. Small dirt tracks spread like spiders' webs across the landscape and the glint of the sun reflected off a farm dam
in the distance. Not even a bird call broke the silence.

I stared around me, helpless. We debated walking into the mealie
fields to search for Tracey, but realised there were too many acres of farmland for just four of us to cover. I decided that my time would be better spent in talking to the police, letting them do the search. If
I had known then what I know now, perhaps things might have
been different.

The sun was in sharp descent over the horizon when I pulled into the police station to find out what they were doing to find Tracey. A constable told me that no detective had been assigned to the missing
person's case yet because the detectives only worked office hours
and not over weekends. My mouth fell open, my mind reeling with shock at his words.

I went back to my car, feeling as though I was trapped in a glass-
house. I could see everything, but couldn't reach out and touch realit
y.
Sounds were muffled as if they were coming through thick glass
and drawn curtains, yet my inner feelings were so intense that every
nerve ending was raw and exposed. A life was at stake, but in a coun
try
where almost fifty murders take place every day, human life is
so cheap it can be filed as a single page in a brown folder.

Disbelief was being replaced by anger that no one would help
me.
Bitterness began to corrode my reason. I pushed these feelings
aside. They would only cloud rational thought and I needed to think clearly.

I had come to know and respect one of the investigators at the po
lice station near the rehab centre where Tracey had gone for help a year earlier, so I phoned to ask if he would meet me. The office was
closing, but he agreed to wait for me and see what he could do to
help. One thing he was able to clarify was about the broken car win
dow. Apparently, the officers who found the car had noticed evi
dence
that black plastic had been taped over the window, so they realised
it had been broken previously, not at the time the car had been aba
ndoned on the highway.

But our hurried chat left me feeling no better. He appeared di
s
tracted, offering lip service rather than action. Although I under
stood that missing persons weren't his area of expertise, I was certain
he must have contacts whom he could ask for help. He peppered
his conversation with complaints about working conditions and the
lack of tools for his job. Doors banged as he and his fellow officers
packed up for the weekend. There were grumblings of how short-
staffed they were, remarks about how they couldn't wait to get away
from the police force. Doubts started to trickle into my mind about
the commitment of our law enforcement agencies to fighting crime. “To protect and serve” seemed to have no meaning on that Friday.

Back home, rage engulfed me. Emotionally exhausted, I lay on the
bed and tried to close my eyes, but appalling visions gave me no peace
.
Nothing was calm; nothing was quiet. Brutish, unspeakable thoughts
beat endlessly against the walls of my skull. Frustration at my helplessness mixed with fury at how my family had been treated, especially my missing child. I was thinking in circles instead of focusing
on what could and should be done. I dug the heels of my hands into my
eyes and rubbed them hard, trying to concentrate. First, I decided, I
needed to get someone with authority to start treating my daughter'
s disappearance as serious.

A puzzle of pictures was running through my head, images flitting
and flashing. Suddenly I sat bolt upright. Like the bright flare of a
neon sign, I remembered that the 4x4 Club of South Africa had a
search and rescue unit. I jumped up to hunt down the telephone
number and was soon explaining my predicament as concisely as I could to a member of the rescue unit.

“I'll be at your house within an hour,” he promised.

I paced like a predator on the prowl. All eternity seemed to pass. Then I saw his headlights approaching the front gate. Within min
utes we were sitting at the kitchen table and I was telling him the little I knew about what had happened. Believing honesty was the
only way I would find my daughter, dead or alive, I explained that
Tracey had a history of drug use but had been clean for a year. I
confessed my suspicions over the last month or two that she may
have relapsed, but not to the extent that she was using daily. We co
n
sidered the possibility that she might have run away, but agreed tha
t she was an independent young adult who could come and go freely; there was no reason for her to run away.

Two cups of coffee later, he alerted the rescue unit that they should
be on standby. A search was organised for six the following morning,
on the understanding that I wouldn't go anywhere near the search area. Reluctantly I agreed and he left me to face my waking night
mares, my head a cesspit of hideous thoughts and images.

My life had become a living hell. Minutes passed slowly, painfully, until the new day dawned. The rescue unit phoned to say they had co-ordinated with the police to set up a search centre. The leader of the unit and a police officer had gone to Tracey's cottage to ask a few questions and to get an item of clothing for the SAP K9 unit's sniffer dogs to use to track her.

Forced to sit on the sidelines, I was agitated, on edge. The waiting
was killing me. Stop, stay, linger, do nothing. I couldn't sit at home
and let time pass idly by. Not knowing what else to do, I set off in the
car with Glen to put up posters and missing person's pleas on every
shop window and filling station that would allow us to do so.

Nothing felt or seemed right. While I was busy with one thing, my
mind hopped to something else and I changed direction in the middle,
only to swerve back again. At home, I wanted to be out doing some
thing constructive, anything to keep busy, to move things forward.
Now I was worried about being away from home for too long, in case
the search and rescue unit had some tangible news. Every thought turned into something else until none of it made any sense at all. So
we returned home to pace the floors once more, impatient and un
easy.

My friend Carolyn dropped in to offer her support, making coffee
and trying to be as useful as possible without being intrusive. More
time passed. At midday, the rescue control van pulled into the drive
way. Blood drained from my head and my limbs felt heavy, as if I
was moving through a sea of mud.

The expression on the rescuer's face said it all. The SAP K9 dog unit
had called off the search, saying it was too dangerous an area for the 4x4 Club volunteers to be working. Evidence of armed robbery and
other violent crimes had been found in the area; it was known to the
police as a den for drug dealers and prostitutes, as well as various
other criminal activities; car hijackers and smash-and-grabbers fre
quented the area. My mouth was parched, my lips dry. This, then, was
the place where Tracey might be lying scared, cold, even dying.

The rescuer explained that the dogs had caused some excitement
when they picked up the scent of a decomposing cow's head in a dump
not far off the road, but they had discovered no trace of Tracey's
scent anywhere near where the car had been found.

Alarm bells went off in my head. If she had left the car voluntarily
,
on her own two feet, surely traces of her scent would have been on
the road, in the grass, somewhere. Or was the information about where
the car had been found false? There were no answers.

As I shook the rescuer's hand, thanking him and his colleagues
for their help, a niggling thought swam dimly at the back of my mind
, out of reach. But I couldn't quite pluck a fully formed question from those depths into the light.