Diary of an Ugly Duckling by Langhorne, Karyn (general ebook reader .txt) 📕

and tired of being called ‘fat, black and ugly,’ ”

he said in his slow, sonorous voice. “Diet and exer-

cise will eliminate the fat, Drs. Bremmar and Koch

can eliminate the ugly.” He shrugged. “That leaves

only ‘black’ to be addressed.”

“Black,” Audra repeated. Her eyes circled the

room, searching for clarification, but she found

nothing in any of the other faces, except rapt inter-

est. These people were clearly waiting for some-

thing. Something monumental. “Black,” Audra said

again, forcing out a strangled little laugh. “Don’t tell

DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

125

me you can turn me into a white woman!” She

coaxed the laugh into a chuckle of merriment. “You

can’t possibly—”

Dr. Jamison’s voice rose above hers, drowning it

out with force and clarity. “The drug is called hy-

droquinone. If you apply it daily between now and

the Big Reveal, you’ll start this process a dark-

skinned African-American woman . . . and end it as

a much, much, much lighter-skinned one.” He wig-

gled his fingers in something like a wave. “Good-

bye fat, black and ugly. Forever, if you like. There’s

only one catch,” he added a second later. “You have

to decide today. Right now.”

Chapter 10

“He’s kidding, right?” Audra swung her face

around the room, then fixed her eyes back

on Dr. Jamison. “You’re kidding, right? You can’t

actually—”

“I assure you, Ms. Marks, I can.” His voice was

calm and level, but his eyes danced as though he

found the conversation highly amusing. “Actually

it’s not all that uncommon in the entertainment

world. Surely you’ve noticed how some African-

American performers start their careers one shade

of brown and, as they become more success-

ful, seem to become a lighter shade of brown?

True, some of that may be attributed to lighting

and makeup . . . but in other cases, that shift in

skin tone is very much a direct result of our pro-

cess.”

He touched the keypad and cleared all of the

purple markings Dr. Bremmar had made on the

DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

127

close-up image of Audra’s face. “First of all, we ad-

dress the recurring acne itself with isotetrinoin—

it’s been proven to have a fairly decent success rate

in minimizing the occurrence of acne scars, even in

darker skin.” As he spoke, the picture was altered

and the clusters of bumps faded from Audra’s

cheeks, chin and forehead. “If all we were con-

cerned about was the acne, we’d address laser treat-

ments to the upper dermis—the visible layer of

skin”—Audra’s image’s skin became clearer with

the words—“but that’s not the effect we’re going

for. What we want is lighter coloring on all of your

skin—or at least on all the visible surfaces. The re-

sult is—well, obvious.”

As Audra watched, the image of herself light-

ened on the screen, from the deep, bitter chocolate

color she was used to seeing in the mirror . . . to

the color of coffee beans . . . and onward up the

color scale until the woman staring out of Audra’s

eyes and nose and lips was framed in a warm cin-

namon. She gasped. With the lighter tone and the

lack of scars and bumps, she saw her mother in her

own face.

“Audra, are you all right?” Shamiyah’s voice

reached her from far away, in a universe without fat,

black or ugly.

“Yeah,” she muttered, emotions tumbling and

swirling inside her. She turned back to the doctor.

“How . . . ?” she began.

“A drug. It’s called hydroquinone and most of-

ten it’s prescribed in a four-percent solution.” Dr.

Jamison’s eyebrows lifted. “We’d start you out on

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Karyn Langhorne

at least twice that, applied topically twice a day to

the entire body. We’d increase or decrease the

dosage as needed to get the result we need . . .” He

paused for dramatic effect. “But you’d have to

begin applications almost immediately in order to

have reached the desired skin tone by your Re-

veal.”

“That’s why you’ve got to decide right now.”

Camilla injected herself back into the discussion.

“Because if you don’t want to do it, we’ll have to

choose another candidate who fits the concept.”

“Concept? What concept?” Audra asked, remem-

bering the word from Carla’s brief education on the

making of a television show. “Is there a particular

concept you’re working with—?”

“Don’t worry about that. The most important

thing about the concept is that we have an African-

American woman,” Shamiyah interrupted, cutting

her eyes toward Camilla with a frown. “A real

woman who could give voice to some of the frustra-

tions some black women feel.” Her voice grew

earnest, persuasive. “We see this show as more than

entertainment, Audra. It’s education. There are

women out there who need to know there are solu-

tions. There are women out there who need to see

their options beyond a lifetime as fat, black and ugly.

Women who need to know that—in a world gone

crazy for beauty—there’s more for them than

second-class status.” She tossed her head, eyes wide

and eloquent. “That’s the concept—message, really.

And I’ve known since I first saw your tape, you are

the messenger.”

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129

Audra barely looked at her. She stared at her fea-

tures on the screen. The image was still a black

woman’s face—but a totally different shade of

African-American womanhood than Audra’s present

version. It was . . . weird . . . like catching a glimpse of

her double in a store window or seeing some twisted

photographic mishap. But it was one thing to com-

plain about her dark skin . . . and something else to

erase it altogether.

“Wild,” she murmured, more to herself than any-

one else. “Just . . . wild . . .”

“You want to see wild?” Dr. Bremmar spoke up,

his pleasant voice brimming with enthusiasm.

“Look at this . . .” and he began tapping wildly on

the little keyboard in front of him.

While Audra watched, the