The Wanderings of Amy
Copyright 2002, 2004 by EC
http://www.ecgraphicarts.com
(Warnings: Adult sex, erotic discipline, public nudity)

Chapter 9 - Suzanne's Ghosts

Amy and Wendy were together constantly until November 10, putting in grueling 
16 hour days in their push to get the make-up term paper done on time. They 
realized how much they complimented each other doing research. Amy was 
excellent at writing, but bad at math. Wendy breezed through anything having to 
do with equations, but left the writing to Amy. They both found their topic 
extremely interesting, escaping into the era of their grandfathers. Amy learned 
much about Asia, while Wendy came to a better understanding of what happened 
to the US during the Vietnam War. Without each other, their research would have 
gone nowhere. This time the closest they came to cheating was simply to have 
Robert and Suzanne look over the paper for mistakes, the night before turning it 
in. On a last minute inspiration Amy scanned one of the photos of her grandfather 
with Wendy's and added the scan to the beginning of the report.

Two days later, Burnside called Amy and Wendy into her office. She said nothing 
at first, but then handed the paper back to them. Amy looked at Burnside's 
comments and passed the copy to Wendy. On the cover Burnside had written...

"Excellent research. Masterfully written paper. You brought to life an interesting 
topic not examined enough by economists. Theoretical analysis needs better 
incorporation of material covered in class. Outside research partly makes up for 
that. 93% A-"

Burnside looked at her two students. "You got the second highest grade in the 
class. I never give an 'A' unless I learn something from a paper turned into me. 
Now, why didn't you do this two weeks ago?"

"We didn't know each other. We didn't know about our grandfathers either." Amy 
responded.

Amy left Burnside's office with a sudden understanding about herself. The 
experience of writing the paper made Amy realize that she actually liked 
economics. If she could get over her fear of math, she felt that she might have 
found her field of study. That night she thumbed through a couple of old course 
catalogues to start thinking about what to take for the Spring semester.

----------

Once she was done with Burnside's paper, Amy had other worries. The year 
anniversary of Courtney's death was coming up. Courtney had been a demon 
haunting her over the last year. Amy decided that she needed to face it head on. 
She told Suzanne that she wanted to go to Detroit. Suzanne had doubts about the 
idea, but she understood. If Amy wanted to go to Detroit, Amy would go. 
Suzanne also knew that she would have to drive her roommate there. Amy would 
need someone with her.

Amy's personality changed during the days leading up to her personal pilgrimage. 
She became quiet and sullen. There was deep sadness in her face that Suzanne 
had not seen since the week before Spring Break. Amy was stepping back into her 
own past and was scared.

Well before sunrise on the dreaded day Amy pulled out her old street clothes and 
put them on. Suzanne was shocked when Amy came out of her room. She looked 
like a bum.

"This is what I had on a year ago. I wore these clothes almost three months 
straight without taking them off. I need you to bring a camera. Let's go."

They had a silent, grim drive to Detroit. They started out well before sunrise and 
were in Detroit by mid day. Amy spent the entire trip quietly staring out her 
window while Suzanne drove. First they passed the rustbelt cities of Gary and 
Hammond, then they continued across the bleak, frozen countryside of southern 
Michigan. There was no music from the radio, no conversation, nothing to break 
up the drive except a stop for gas. Suzanne wondered about the camera. If Amy 
wanted to take pictures of the spot where her friend died, that was just plain sick.

Once in Detroit, Suzanne found a parking garage close to the bus station. She was 
terrified of all the creeps standing around and staring at them as they made their 
way past the station. She also was worried about the fact that she was carrying a 
camera worth several hundred dollars, and that she and Amy were two young 
white women alone in a hostile city. The only thing Suzanne and her friend had in 
their favor was that it was extremely cold, keeping most of the bad types indoors. 
Amy was not dressed warmly enough, Suzanne thought. Amy seemed not to 
notice any of her roommate's concerns. With a quiet, mechanical way of walking, 
she made her way along the unpleasant streets, Suzanne struggling to keep up.

Amy suddenly turned off the sidewalk and walked between two buildings. 
Suzanne quickly looked in both directions to see who might follow them in, then 
went in after Amy. The ally opened up into a bleak courtyard with two dumpsters. 
Amy quickly walked behind the closest dumpster and stopped. She stood there, 
without moving, for what seemed forever to Suzanne.

Suzanne stood back, terrified. She was worried about what might be happening to 
her friend, as well as concerned about who might follow them into the ally. Amy's 
silence scared her the most.

Finally Amy turned around. "Come over here. Take my picture."

Suzanne walked over to Amy. The forlorn young woman, with her hands in her 
pockets, stared straight at her. Her face was discolored by the cold. Amy's eyes 
had an expression of anguish that Suzanne had not seen before. It would make 
one hell of a portrait, but it would be pure exploitation to put that on film.

"Look…I mean, I can't take a picture of you like this."

"Do it! All year long you've been trying to figure out who I am with that camera. 
This is who I am. Take the picture!"

Reluctantly Suzanne adjusted her lens and snapped three photos.

"Amy, this is who you were for a day! One day! It's not who you are now. Don't 
you understand, you have to put this behind you! You didn't kill Courtney!" 
Suzanne tried to hug Amy.

Suddenly Amy broke away from her friend. She leaned her elbows up against the 
wall next to the dumpster and buried her face into her arms. Her body shook with 
sobs. "NO!" She sank to her knees. She sobbed louder, "NO!" Amy, on her knees, 
collapsed with her side against the wall. She sobbed continuously.

Suzanne had no idea how to handle Amy in this situation. Part of her told her that 
her friend had to be given time to cry it out. Another part of Suzanne made her 
continuously glance at the entrance to the street, still wondering who would be 
coming in. She could not get out of her head the idea that she and Amy were in 
danger staying here. Amy was not showing any sign of recovering. She remained 
crumpled up against the wall, sobbing.

Finally Suzanne decided that she had to drive home the point that Amy was not 
responsible for Courtney's death. She knelt next to Amy and took her hands.

"Amy, you did not kill Courtney. You need to say it! Please, Amy! You did not 
kill Courtney!" Amy looked up at Suzanne. "Amy, say it!"

"I didn't kill her..." mumbled Amy.

Suzanne sighed with relief. "Amy, say it again!"

Amy sobbed. "I didn't kill her!...It wasn't my fault!"

Finally Amy managed to stop crying. For several minutes she knelt quietly and 
simply stared at the filthy pavement. At last she got up. She hugged Suzanne.

"I'm sorry I put you through this."

"Amy, I'm your friend. You don't have to be sorry about anything."

Amy and Suzanne walked out of the ally and back onto the street. They made 
their way back to Suzanne's car for the long drive back. Amy was just as quiet 
going back, but there was a difference. Suzanne realized that Amy had achieved 
her goal in traveling to Detroit. She had managed to purge whatever it was that 
had tormented her over the past year.

It was dark by the time they returned to Chicago. Amy asked Suzanne to drive her 
to the Fast-Mart where she had been arrested. She wanted to see it as well, on this 
day of facing her memories. To her shock, it was gone, replaced with a car wash. 
Life does go on, thought Amy, whether we want it to or not.

----------

Suzanne was relieved to find out that Wendy was coming over to the apartment 
that night to help Amy with the latest chapter in Burnside's textbook. Suzanne 
desperately wanted to spend time with Robert and talk to him about the Detroit 
trip, but she would not have wanted to leave Amy alone in the apartment after 
what she had just gone through. More importantly, Suzanne had her own issue to 
discuss with Robert, that of her own father, Robert's partner Ed.

Suzanne's final break with her father had come only two days before her trip to 
Detroit with Amy. Suzanne had not said anything to Amy about her father, 
knowing that Amy was burdened enough with her own situation. Suzanne was 
deeply hurt, but she forced herself to defer her own pain to help Amy get past the 
Detroit trip. Suzanne had made a huge sacrifice for Amy by putting off her own 
problem, one that Amy would never know about.

Once she was sure that Amy would not be alone that night, Suzanne rushed over 
to Robert's apartment. Talking about Amy was easy enough. Robert had not 
known about the Detroit trip. Had he known, he would have wanted to take Amy. 
Suzanne disagreed.

"She needed me. I'm not sure she could have opened up to you. All I can say is 
I'm glad it's over with." Suzanne was unsure how to continue. She walked over to 
Robert's window. For a long time she stared out at the city. Finally, without 
looking at him, she said, "It looks like I'll be spending Thanksgiving with you 
after all." After a long pause, she opened with a question. "Robert, what do you 
think of my father?"

He paused for a moment, because he did not have much good to say about Ed 
Foster. Robert's partner was under investigation for several ethics violations and 
was at risk of losing his ability to practice law in Illinois. Ed's problems 
threatened to taint Robert and the other two partners in the office. How to tell that 
to Suzanne? Robert realized that she might as well know now. She was quiet for a 
few minutes when he broke the news.

"I guess you'd expect me to be upset." Suzanne began. "I'm not, really. I feel bad 
about how it will affect my step-mother, that's about it."

Finally Suzanne was able to tell Robert her story. Robert did not have much good 
to say about Ed. Suzanne did not have anything good to say about him.

Suzanne's relationship with her father was somewhat distant, but fairly normal 
until she was eleven. That year, her parents divorced and her mother suddenly 
left, not giving the girl a clue as to where she was going or how to get in touch 
with her. With her mother gone, Suzanne noticed an immediate change in her 
father's behavior toward her. Suddenly she felt that her father could not stand the 
sight of her.

Two days after her mother disappeared, Ed called Suzanne into his den and gave 
her an hour lecture about her faults and bad behavior. In the same way that he 
would cross-examine a witness, he berated his terrified daughter. Suzanne spent 
hours crying afterwards. She had never seen her father like this.

The lecture was the beginning of three very unhappy years for Suzanne. Three 
days later Suzanne left some dishes in the sink and went upstairs to do her 
homework. She forgot about the dishes until about a half an hour later, when her 
father came storming into her room.

"GET INTO MY DEN, NOW!" Suzanne's father slapped her hard across the face 
as she passed him. The shock of being hit disoriented her. Ed suddenly grabbed 
her and shook her hard. "YOU DON'T OBEY ME! I'll teach you!"

Suzanne was terrified. She had never been so scared in her life. She stumbled 
down the stairs. Her father's next orders terrified her even more.

For the first time Suzanne took down her jeans and bent over her father's desk. He 
took off his belt, and for an hour berated Suzanne, punctuating his speech with 
swats of the belt. The eleven-year old was so shocked that she had trouble 
breathing.

It was only afterwards that Suzanne could pull herself together enough even to 
cry. She couldn't figure out what had happened to her father. He had never 
behaved this way before her mother left. It would not be until much later that she 
would realize that it was actually her mother that Ed wanted to punish. Ed was 
furious about having been abandoned by his wife. Suzanne would never know 
where her mother went or why she left, but it was the daughter who remained 
behind to pay for her actions. Suzanne had the misfortune of looking like her 
mother. Ed, in his rage at his wife, seemed not to be able to tell the difference.

Suzanne paused. She turned from the window to face Robert. "Now you know 
why I wanted to punish Amy when she got caught with that term paper. It wasn't 
just the plagiarism. I was replaying what my father did to me. I wanted to punish 
her like he punished me. That's the reason I felt so bad about it after we talked in 
the street. You only knew part of the story when I asked you to strap me."

The punishments went on for three years. Ed quickly re-married, to a woman who 
was not exactly loving, but who felt sorry for Suzanne and did her best to comfort 
her. The sessions disgusted the woman, but she did not know what to do about the 
situation, other than to comfort the girl afterwards.

Ed graduated from his belt to a paddle. He was smart enough to know that belt 
marks could raise the issue of abuse if seen by a teacher, so he bought a paddle 
that did not leave much in the way of bruises. Ed seemed to delight more in 
humiliating Suzanne than in actually hitting her. He always hit her over her 
panties. Later in her life Suzanne quit wearing underwear, largely because the 
sight of panties always reminded her of the hours spent in her father's den. She 
even hated seeing Amy's lingerie catalogs in her mailbox.

Time went on. Suzanne slowly came to realize that she did not deserve what was 
happening to her. She had done nothing wrong. It was her father who was bad, not 
her. She never talked to anyone about what was going on in her father's den, but 
even at her young age she had the ability to perceive the truth about people and 
situations, a trait that would later help her as a photographer. During the sessions 
in the last months before her 14th birthday, she repeated over and over in her 
mind "I don't deserve this...I don't deserve this." She forced herself to stop crying 
during the paddlings.

Then, as abruptly as the punishments began, they stopped. There never was any 
discussion about what was going on or any explanation, but she bent over her 
father’s desk for the last time just before her 14th birthday.  For years afterwards 
she silently lived in dread of another punishment, but after she turned 14 Suzanne 
never again felt her father’s paddle. Still, her problems did not end. The physical 
torment had stopped, only to be replaced by constant verbal abuse. All through 
high school Suzanne never seemed to be able to do anything right for her father. 
He cut her down no matter what she attempted to do, no matter how good she was 
at what she set out to achieve. The yearbook was a joke to him. Suzanne never 
took her friends home and went to great lengths to not let her father find out who 
they were. When she dated, it was in secret, because Suzanne knew that her father 
would do his best to humiliate her in front of any boyfriend.

During her bleak high-school years Suzanne found her escape though taking 
pictures with a vintage 35-millimeter camera. She learned how to capture 
moments in life, the power of an expression, of the unspoken word. Her school 
had a journalism class that published the school yearbook. Suzanne joined the 
class and quickly became the yearbook photographer. She could see her 
classmates in a way that no one else could. During the three years she 
photographed for the yearbook, her class received commendations for the quality 
of its yearbook pictures. Suzanne, at an early age, had found a focus in her life.

Even though Suzanne graduated in the top 5% of her class, her father tried to 
convince her teachers and counselors that she was no good as student. The 
counselors, used to dealing with students who refused to study and meet their 
parents' expectations, had to deal with the opposite in the case of Suzanne, an 
excellent student with a father who wanted her to fail. No one could understand 
Ed's attitude. Three of Suzanne's teachers, with her counselor and a vice-principle, 
knowing Suzanne's personal situation, had gone out of their way to obtain a series 
of grants and scholarships that would pay for her first year of college. Without 
their help, Suzanne would have not gone to college at all. When she graduated 
from high school her father had said "I don't see what the point of spending the 
money is, Suzanne will never amount to anything."

They had very little contact while Suzanne was in college. Ed took only a 
marginal interest in his daughter, and that only because of the prodding by her 
step-mother. He did give her some spending money, but that was only because her 
step-mother insisted. He seemed to be glad to have her out of his life. It was as a 
favor to Robert, not to Suzanne, that he mentioned his daughter when Robert had 
discussed the need to find a place to live for Amy.

Suzanne did not give up easily. She desperately wanted to prove herself to her 
father. With a book of her own, pictures published in two national magazines, 
several local prizes, and permanent contracts with several galleries, She had hopes 
that she could convince Ed that she was successful after all, perhaps in a field that 
her father did not approve of, but a success nevertheless. She had hopes that her 
father would finally accept her and dreamt of a Thanksgiving with her family.

Suzanne should have known better. Her father briefly looked through her 
portfolio and commendations, and tossed them aside with contempt.

"So you do pornography. That's what you wanted to show me? Of course you're 
successful, everyone in your business is. Don't expect me to pat you on the back, 
however. I find it pretty pathetic that's all you could do with your life."

That did it. After all these years she had enough. She picked up her portfolio.

"I don't know what your problem is! You are the most sick, disgusting person I 
have ever known! I tried to be a good daughter to you. I really tried! I don't know 
why, but I kept trying! But that's it! You won't be seeing me anymore!" Suddenly 
the last twelve years of anger came out of Suzanne. She spit in her father's face. 
He was so shocked that he did not have time to react before Suzanne charged out 
of the room.

Suzanne fled her father's house and the contamination he had inflicted on her. She 
drove off, angry at herself for all the effort that she had wasted on trying to get her 
father to accept her. Her father could rot in Hell. At first she felt exhilarated over 
have made such a dramatic break with her father. Spitting on him. She could not 
have done much better than that. But then the unfairness of her life sank in. Why 
had her father been so rotten to her all her life? Why had he gone out of his way 
to try to make her fail?

She had to talk, not to Amy, but to the one person whom she felt that she could 
truly open up to, Robert. Having to wait for three days was torture for Suzanne, 
but she had been determined to do what she could for Amy before taking care of 
herself.

Suzanne spent a long time staring out the window after she finished telling Robert 
about her father. This time it was Robert's turn to stay quiet until Suzanne was 
ready to talk again. He felt an enormous hatred towards Ed. As he sat in the dark, 
looking at the unhappy young woman standing at his window, Robert resolved to 
do what he could to help the investigation against Ed, even if it ran the risk of 
harming himself and the other two partners. He wanted Ed out of his life as fast as 
possible. He had some phone calls to make tomorrow.