Missing Without A Trace Read Free Page A

that the grandmother had provided, as well as Tanya’s baby clothes and toys. According to Tanya, Randy’s problems with drugs then drove him to break into a pharmacy to feed his habit, and landed him in a federal penitentiary. The next time she saw her father, Tanya was entering adolescence. She had not been given a choice to see him sooner and she had desperately longed for him.
    Living with her mom was like living in a house of horrors. Nancy, lonely and miserable, turned to different men and nightly parties, where drugs and alcohol were served. Sometimes, Nancy hosted these parties at home. Other times, she went to the men’s homes and taught Tanya, at a young age, to make sure to lock the door while she was left home alone.
    There was never adequate food in the house. “My whole childhood was about starvation,” she recalls. Growing up, her diet consisted of Froot Loops, Pop-Tarts, chili and rice. When Tanya’s grandmother gave her money for doing chores, Tanya used it to buy food. If her mother cooked, which was rare, it was because Nancy’s latest boyfriend was there. “My mother gave me dirty looks if I came out when her boyfriend was there, or when she was having a party,” Tanya says. “So I spent lots of time in my room with my Barbies.”
    Nancy continued choosing ‘bad boy’ types who beat her, just as Randy had done. One man, who was her boyfriend for eight years, was repeatedly abusive. At times, Nancy and Tanya had to flee from him in the middle of the night. Tanya recalls being in the car, alone in the dark, while her mother knocked on doors, asking people if they would let her use their phone to call the police. Then, Tanya and her mother would sit in the car, waiting for the police to come and arrest the boyfriend. As he was being handcuffed, he screamed, “Tanya, don’t let them take me away!” Each time, he’d leave for a while, but then he’d come back. Tanya tried to tell her mother that these men weren’t good for her, but her mother didn’t listen.
    To soothe herself, throughout her childhood, Tanya would dream of her father. She’d tell herself, “I bet I have the greatest dad out there. He’s gonna find me one day and take me away!” The first discussion Tanya remembers about her dad threatened to smash these dreams, when she was six years old. Nancy and her boyfriend (the one who lasted eight years) were in bed. Tanya had a nightmare and came running to her mom for comfort. Nancy’s boyfriend, apparently annoyed that Tanya was disturbing them, told her that her father was in prison because he’s a very bad man. Still, to get through the real-life nightmare of her childhood, Tanya held on to her dreams of her dad, believing that he would rescue her one day.
    When she wasn’t neglecting Tanya, Nancy was pulling her hair, kicking her, throwing her against a wall, and beating her with a belt. Her mother told her not to cry, or it would make it worse. Tanya looked a lot like her father, and this triggered her mother’s feelings of rejection and anger towards him, which Nancy displaced onto Tanya. “I blocked out a lot of it,” a downcast Tanya explains.
    As a child, Tanya also dreamed that someone took away her mother, because she couldn’t understand how her mother could be so many different personalities. If Tanya had a cold, Nancy was nurturing. But, other times, Nancy, herself, was still a little girl who would not grow up. She was dependent on others, including Tanya. Yet, with her boyfriends, Nancy was all about make-up and being sexy. This was all very confusing to little Tanya.
    Elementary school was tough. Tanya recalls that she was always picked on because she was an easy target, from her clothes to her obvious insecurities. She was jabbed in the leg with a pencil in class and kicked at the bus stop. Tanya, being the victim of abuse at home, invited kids to abuse her, as if she were wearing a sign.
    Junior high was no better. Tanya continued to be picked on but,