Betrayed (11 page)

The year she was going to be twenty-one, Buddy entered her in a competi
tion to win a three-month job as a counsellor in a summer camp in the United
States. She was over the moon when she won, scooting around the house like a soccer star after scoring a goal. We had less than a month to get her
passport and visa, but the competition organisers and camp managers
in the States helped in every way they could. Then, in mid-June, we got an
e-mail saying Tracey had to be in New York two days later. That was impossible, given the traveling time from South Africa, but we booked her on the earliest flight we could.

Because of her delayed arrival, she would miss the bus taking the rest of the group to the camp and would have to get there under her own
steam.
The people in charge gave us detailed instructions of which buses she
would have to catch to get there – four changes over a two-day trip. Tracey
had never had to use public transport in her own country and now she was
going to have to find her way from New York almost to the Canadian border.

She took the wrong bus from the airport and landed up lost and alone in the Bronx. But she fell on her feet when a member of one of the local gangs took her under his wing, looked after her and helped her on her way the
next morning. It was a story she loved to tell. How scared she was of the
decaying environment, the graffiti, the heavily tattooed men; then the
meeting with one gang member who looked on a lonely and frightened foreigner with compassion and kindness.

Time flew and Tracey loved every minute of her time in the States. Working with six- to twelve-year-olds, her job was to organise sporting events between teams of children, supervise their swimming and free-play time, read to them, help them keep their rooms tidy and get to bed on time. She also had to talk to the children and build their confidence, especially those who had never been to camp before. Tracey being Tracey, she didn't just supervise their play, but was more than willing to take part. Cowboys and Crooks was a favourite. With a scarf over her face, cowboy style, toy gun in hand and “victim” in her clutches, a senior staff member reprimanded her for being too rowdy before he realised she was a camp counsellor, not one of the campers. The kids loved it.

She wrote brief, chatty letters to the family and phoned as often as she could. As the weeks passed it became clear that my little girl was growing up and maturing with her new experiences.

She arrived home on 8 September. I tried to encourage her to travel and see some more of the world, but she said couldn't afford it. There had been some misunderstanding between the camp management and the competition organisers; instead of Tracey's ticket being paid for as we had thought, the cost had been deducted from her earnings. She had less than $200 to her name.

All that first day when she got home, Tracey chattered like a chipmunk about her experiences at the camp and her stay with friends in Manhattan,
who had taken her to a pub on the eve of her twenty-first birthday just a
fortnight earlier.

“They wouldn't let me in because I was under twenty-one,” she said. “I tried explaining that I'd be twenty-one in just fifteen minutes because by then it was already quarter to twelve, but they didn't want to know about it. They just told me to come back in twenty minutes!” she laughed.

The day after she got home, two airplanes flew into the Twin Towers buildings
in New York and the world stood aghast. My selfish relief knew no bounds. Tracey had been in Manhattan, but she was safely back home before di
saster struck. But the horror of what had happened, and of not knowing
whether her friends were dead or alive, hung like a black cloud over Tracey. Three days later, she heard that they too had left New York just before 9/11 and were safe.

A few months before she went to the States, Tracey told me she had been involved in a same-sex relationship.

“All my relationships have ended in heartache and pain,” she said. “I'm finished with guys.”

“You know, Trace, it doesn't matter if it's a hetero- or same-sex relationship
, no relationship is guaranteed not to bring heartache,” I warned.

On her return from her adventures in the States, Tracey got in touch with Darlene again, and soon the two of them were back together. Darlene was
a nice young woman and we welcomed her into our home, even though I
worried that my daughter was looking for love in the wrong direction. A few months later the two set up home together and everything seemed to be going well for them.

That Christmas was our first without Tracey at home to wake us at the crack of dawn, as excited as any four-year-old, but she and Darlene came to us for Christmas lunch. Back at work after the holidays, I was at my desk when the security guard phoned to tell me Tracey was at the gate to see me. Wondering why she wasn't at work, I asked him to buzz her through. She
stood before me, white as a ghost, eyes wet with tears, ugly black bruises
around her neck. I was horrified.

“How can someone I love so much do this to me?” she asked.

“My God, Trace. What happened? Has this happened before?”

She wouldn't discuss the relationship, wouldn't admit or deny any previous violence. But she did acknowledge that there had been serious fights in the past, when she discovered Darlene had been seeing somebody else. I knew there had been some problems between them, but never dreamed the relationship would end in physical violence. For Tracey's own safety, she moved back home, but would never say a bad word against Darlene.

“I still love her, Mom, but I'm scared of her.”

Believing she was not pretty enough, not strong enough, not worthy enough to be loved, Tracey slipped back into darkness. She isolated herself
from family and friends. She spent hours reading the letters and poems Dar
lene had sent her over the months they had been together. I despaired that
she was going down the same route she had trodden before, swallowing
her feelings and facing her demons alone.

Weeks turned into months and one night she slipped into my bedroom and started talking; and so again on another night. Perhaps remembering
what the psychiatrist had told her, she was finally starting to share her
thoughts, give expression to her pain. Much of it harked back to Peter. Why
did Peter have to die? She was consumed with his death and her girlfriend's betrayal.

“I'm so lonely,” she said.

“Oh Tracey, you have so many friends,” I objected.

“Yeah, but very few real friends. Maybe one day I can get married and
have children and then I won't be so lonely anymore.”

On these quiet nights, she told me about her fears. Fear of not having
a decent job and earning an income, fear of the dark, fear of her granny get
ting older and one day dying, fear of the death of her much-loved dog, a
liquorice allsort pavement special with a hint of King Charles spaniel in her.
How she hated to be anywhere without music, hated quietness, hated being alone without some “noise” around her. She also spoke of her dreams, her love of sport and how much she would love to be able to play softball in the States.

She was playing very little sport now and still spending a lot of time alone
in her room. Her commitment to her jobs was a thing of the past and she
was frequently out of work. Again the thought of drug use flashed through
my mind. I noticed she was drinking a lot more during the week and at
weekends. Our arguments over her behaviour were again becoming more and more frequent. She would storm off to her bedroom and slam the door behind her, or disappear in her car for a few hours without telling me she loved me, as she always had in the past. It hurt. One evening I found her drunk in the driveway, sobbing her heart out about Peter.

In March, a phone call from my son brought things to a head. Tracey was causing mayhem – with the brother she adored, of all people. Refusing to
go away when he wanted to be alone, being uncharacteristically nasty
about the state of his garden cottage on our plot, his clothes, the TV channel
s he wanted to watch, smoking dagga and becoming obstreperous, refusing
to relinquish the TV remote, wanting everything her own way. I drove home
from work, not knowing what I would find.

“What are you doing here?” Tracey demanded, defiant as a two-year-old
caught in the act of doing something wrong. Her pupils were pinpricks.

“Trace, what are you doing? Why are you picking a fight with Glen? I'm worried about you.”

She replied with a string of words that didn't make much sense, but her
antagonism was hard to miss.

“You have to be honest with me about drugs,” I urged. “If you're using,
please tell me. I can't help you unless you admit you have a problem.”

“I don't have a problem,” she said smugly. “I control the drugs; they don't control me. I only use socially at weekends.”

“I don't think you're being honest with yourself, Trace. Denying your problem
to yourself won't help you.”

“What a crock,” she scoffed. “And anyway, what's your problem right now? I haven't used today so why are you going on about it?”

I was trying hard to control my anger at her denials, her hostility. I loved
my daughter but I had the surreal feeling this wasn't her standing in front of
me.
I was powerless and perhaps because the feeling scared me, I cracked.

“I want you to clean up your act and get out of my house until you do!” I shouted. “I'm not prepared to support anyone's drug habit – least of all my
own child. I won't have the rest of the family destroyed because of your
dependency. Now give me the keys to your car and get out. Don't come
back till you're ready to face your problems. I'll be here for you then.”

She stuck out her chin, eyes blazing as she swaggered outside. With a bruised and shattered heart, I tried vainly to distract myself with a jigsaw
puzzle, keeping one eye on Tracey slumped in the driveway. After nearly
two hours she came into the kitchen.

“Can I have something to eat?” she asked.

“No, get out.”

It was the hardest thing I had ever had done, but I had a sense that if I backed down now I wouldn't be helping her. I wrote two telephone numbers on a piece of paper and slipped them into her pocket. “Use these when you decide you need help.” All my love and hope for my child were pinned on her using one of those two numbers.

Buddy arrived home not long afterwards.

“I found Tracey walking down the road towards Benoni,” he said. He
stopped and offered to take her wherever she wanted to go, but she refused.
He persuaded her that it wasn't safe and she should accept a lift to the
shopping centre where she said she was meeting a friend.

“Can't we let her come home?” he asked, trying to reason with me.

“No. And anyone who is prepared to tolerate her behaviour can leave
with her as far as I'm concerned.” Buddy's eyebrows shot up at the threat, but he held his peace.

Sapped of all energy, even of my anger, I sat in silence, praying that one
of Tracey's friends would let me know she was alright. Ten o'clock the
phone rang.

“Tracey is safe, but she's very depressed,” said her friend. “She admits
she's lost control of her life and is using drugs more and more often.”

Hardening my heart and swallowing my tears, I replied, “Tracey has the numbers to phone. Why are you phoning me?”

We chatted some more and finally I agreed that Buddy would go and fetch her. The moment she appeared in the kitchen I could see that all the bluster and hostility of earlier in the day had melted away. Her eyes were lowered, her face ashamed. I folded her in my arms.

“What do you plan to do?” I whispered into her hair.

“Please phone Elim Clinic for me.”

“No, angel, I'm not the one with the problem, you are. If you're serious about getting help, you need to phone them yourself.”

She picked up the phone and dialled the number. She would be admitted at 6:15 the following morning.

Monday arrived and I buried myself in work, turning my mind away
from the post-mortem, from what was being done to my child. I
tried hard to concentrate on anything else, not to see pictures in my
head of Tracey lying on a cold table, being cut open and dissected like a bug in a laboratory. To preserve my sanity, I had to push these
visions away and pretend my world had not been shattered. At about
2.30 in the afternoon, the pathologist phoned to give me a brief description of her independent findings, adding that she would send the full report to the funeral home in Benoni.

The original state pathologist had stated that cause of death was strangulation. Cut and dried. No question. Now Dr Kloppers told me
that although the Y-cut had been made, no organs had been removed
.
No specimens had been taken for testing. She had phoned the labs
and discovered that no rape test had been submitted to them for
analysis. This was hard to hear. Tracey's body hadn't been released to
us in time for her service because we had been told a second post-
mortem was going to be performed that same day. Yet now Dr
Kloppers was telling me that no post-mortem had been done at all.

“The other thing,” she continued, “is that I can find no conclusive
proof of strangulation. I'm not prepared to commit myself to the caus
e of death until I get results back from the labs.”

She told me that during her post-mortem, she had taken samples
and done a rape test, which she had handed to the police to save me
from having to pay for analysis at a private lab.

“I found something in the pocket of your daughter's shorts,” she added. “I didn't know what it was, so I asked a colleague and he said
he thought it might be a crack pipe.” She took a breath and then continued more quickly. “Unfortunately, her clothes had been crumpled
up wet and stored in a plastic bag, so whatever this item was, it was too rusted for me to try to lift fingerprints.”

I gulped for oxygen like a drowning diver. It felt as though I could
breathe and gasp and never get enough. In what kind of world was
it possible that a pathologist could uncover this item six weeks after Tracey's body had been found? It was yet more proof that the police
hadn't done a very good job in looking for evidence. I was just be
ginning to grasp how many blatant lies I had been fed. Both Captain Kotze and the police officer at the mortuary had clearly told me that they had been in contact with the laboratories.

“Can you get hold of the investigating officer?” Dr Kloppers's voice
came to me as through a tunnel. “See if he will bring the police photo
s
of your daughter's body to my office, as well as the rope that was tied
around her neck.”

“OK, I'll do my best, though he's not the easiest man to get hold of.”

She wanted to try and get an idea of how tightly the rope was tied
and where, and what type of knot was used. She explained that be
cause of the level of decomposition, there were a lot of tests she couldn't
do. It was also impossible to tell whether Tracey had struggled or if
there was any bruising on her body.

Once my brain had absorbed all this, I dialled Captain Kotze repeat
edly, but he wasn't answering. I phoned the police officer at the mor
tuary and asked again for news from the labs. Again I got the pat
reply.

“Ma'am, it takes many months for the results to come back.”

“You and the blasted mortuary doctor have been lying to me from
day one,” I let rip. “I've had a private post-mortem done so now you can quit your bloody lying. I know that you didn't even do a proper
post-mortem and that no samples were taken.”

“But I thought she was being cremated today!” he exclaimed, shock
easy to hear in his voice.

It was obvious that standard procedure wasn't being followed. In
fact, no procedure was being followed at all. For the first time an appalling thought slipped unbidden into my mind.

Oh God, because of where she was found – an area notorious for
prostitutes and drug dealers – the police believed Tracey was a pros
titute so her murder wasn't considered worth the time and effort of a
proper investigation! Perhaps by the time they realised someone was going to make waves, they had got themselves so twisted and knot
ted into the lies and half-truths they had told that the only way out
was to try to bluff their way through.

“You bastards,” I shrieked. “You thought she was a trashy low-life,
but you know what? She wasn't. And even if she were, it shouldn't
matter! A human life, any human life, deserves to be treated with re
spect. How dare you think you have a right to decide a death isn't
worth investigating.” I was so incensed I was spitting into the phone, the spray arcing away from me and falling uselessly on the floor.

After some more of my shouting and badgering, the mortuary of
ficer admitted that Tracey's body had been opened for the doctor, but
he hadn't conducted a post-mortem. In the doctor's opinion there was
a rope around her neck so she had been strangled. That simple. He
had signed the death certificate without ever seeing my daughter.

I was livid. I had told the police about Tracey's drug history and I
still wondered if her death might have been drug related. It wasn't
what I wanted to hear but I had to know the truth of how she died – and, of course, whether or not she had been raped.

The next day Dr Kloppers told me that Tracey's body had been tak
en back to the funeral home in Benoni, and that she had sent a copy of the autopsy report with the body.

“You can collect the certificate whenever you feel ready,” she said.

Would I ever be ready to read the harsh truth? To know exactly what
had happened to my daughter, how she had suffered? So much easier
to remember her laughing at a silly joke, the kind of laughter that
made her bend over double and put a knot in her stomach. So much
easier to remember her smiling up at me, even scattering clothes
around her room and resisting all attempts to get her to pick them up.
So much easier, so much easier . . .

But that reality had gone, the reality that used to be. Stolen from me
by person or persons unknown and replaced with a reality of much
darker hue – the reality of police investigations, mortuaries, patholog
ists and post-mortems.

Buddy and I were going away for a few days to the Eastern Cape, an escape from home that we were hoping would give us a chance to
grieve for our daughter and allow us some “alone time” to break
through the remoteness in which each of us had locked ourselves.

Every day before we left, Dr Kloppers phoned about the photo
graphs she had requested. Every day I tried to get hold of Captain
Kotze. When I finally did, he promised he would take the photos
through to Johannesburg and deliver them to Dr Kloppers personally
.
But each time I followed up, he had another excuse for why he
hadn't taken them yet. Each time I asked him how the case was progressing, he told me again what he had in the pipeline, but no actual
progress. Each time I asked if he had interviewed Tracey's house
mates, he had an excuse as to why he hadn't.

On a crisp autumn morning in the middle of April we said good
bye to Glen and my mom and drove away from a home that no longer
felt like home, all too quiet and empty. Tracey had always been the
boisterous one in the family, a firebrand who could never sit still, who
would drive us to distraction with her constant chattering and dancin
g around. The more excited she became, the louder her voice. “Shoosh,
Trace,” we would say, “keep it down.” Often she and I would hold
each
other, laughing till the tears flowed, rocking with stomach
cramps
, while her dad would shake his head at the two of us, a wry smile on his face.

How I wished we could have that all back again.