But she did not look like anyone around her. Her skin was lighter than Pettway’s. She found no physical resemblance between herself and her supposed relatives. She was called “little Ann” by some family members, but the resemblance people described was not one she could see in herself. And as she grew older, the questions that had lived at the edges of her childhood moved closer to the center.
Later in her life, in interviews, Carlina described Pettway in terms that carried some complexity. She said Pettway was “strict, but she was cool” — capable of warmth, responsible in certain ways. She was not characterizing her childhood as uniformly terrible. But other accounts, including from members of Joy White’s family who reported what Carlina had told them, described a household that was harder than that. Fox News quoted Lisa White-Heatley saying that Carlina had told the family that Pettway “put her footprint on her face” — an account suggesting physical abuse. These are attributed accounts from Carlina’s relatives, not established facts of record.
What is documented is that Annugetta Pettway could never provide the documents a child needs. No birth certificate. No Social Security card. Carlina Renae White, living as Nejdra Nance, existed in a documentary void — present in a home, in a neighborhood, in a school, but not present in any official record as who she actually was.
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## The Documents That Weren’t There
The gap became undeniable in 2005.
Carlina was around seventeen or eighteen. She was pregnant. She needed a birth certificate to access prenatal care and insurance. She asked Pettway.