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

So, of course now I worry about the face-to-face.

What if he doesn’t like the outside, Petra? He didn’t

before . . . he couldn’t even look at me. But what if in

person, there’s still no chemistry for him (girl, you

know I got chemistry for him—always have!)

Speaking of Ma (I know, I wasn’t. But she’s always

just beneath the surface, isn’t she?) Dr. Goddard says

the next step in my healing is to forgive her. I feel like I

already have, but she thinks Ma and I still need what

she calls a “clearing.” (She doesn’t know our Ma!) It’s

kinda hard to have a clearing with a woman who won’t

even allow you to bring up the subject . . .

I guess that’s going to take some time.

Speaking of time, mine is up. I’m going to the gym

today—for the first time since the surgery. Looking

forward to it.

Be careful out there,

Audra

“No excuses, Audra. It’s time to take this

seriously—as seriously as your surgeries or

your diet or any other part of the process—”

“I’m not making excuses. I’m just telling you that

I was just cleared for normal activities yesterday,

and this is hardly a normal activity—at least not for

me.”

Audra spoke from a position of precarious bal-

ance atop a bright red exercise ball.

“It’s perfectly safe, Audra.” Julienne had the hard,

no-sympathy voice of a drill instructor. “Now quit

your bellyaching and lay back like I told you—”

Audra felt a pair of pincer-like fingers curl over her

DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

247

shoulder and proceed to gently force her into com-

pliance.

Audra resisted, feeling an uncomfortable twinge

in her abdominals with the effort. By far, of all the

surgeries the tummy tuck and the nose job were the

worst. And probably, for the sheer gross-out

factor—what with tubes stuck inside her to drain

the excess fluid resulting from the procedure—and

for pure, unadulterated pain, the tummy tuck won

the close race between the two. Having just gotten

to the point that she could get in and out of bed

without feeling like her guts were going to start

spilling out between her fingers, Audra wasn’t about

to take any chances, bossy personal trainer or not.

“I’m telling you, Julienne, I’m not ready for—”

Julienne’s face appeared beside Audra’s own,

pink with righteous, zealous anger. “I’m telling you,

if you keep resisting, you’ll never be ready for your

Reveal. All of you Ugly Ducklings are the same: You

don’t want to take responsibility for yourselves. You

think the surgery alone will fix you. But I’m here to

tell you, the surgery only goes so far. The rest is hard

work, diet and exercise, and more hard work! You

have to get some discipline or—”

“Look,” Audra hissed back at the woman. “Don’t

accuse me of having no discipline, because I’ve got

as much of it as you! And I was in good shape when

I got here! I have to be, to keep my job, okay? But I

think I know my own body well enough to know—”

“Do you?” Julienne challenged. “Really, Audra,

do you?”

“Hell yes!” Audra practically shouted at the

woman, giving her anger its head. She felt her fingers

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Karyn Langhorne

curling into fists, her jaw locking tight. “Now cut it

out, before you make me really, really mad!”

The journal Dr. Goddard had presented to her was

now filled with page after page of meandering,

sometimes petty vituperativeness—and her encoun-

ters with the woman seemed always to find Audra

on the very edge of her seat, sitting on her hands to

keep from slapping the shrink hard enough to make

her taste yesterday. Even Shamiyah was beginning

to work her last nerve, and mirrors or no, Audra

would have to have been ignorant of her own body

not to be able to tell how loose her sweatpants had

become or how light the skin on her legs, arms and

body was, even though she’d stopped using Dr.

Jamison’s cream.

The thought of a mirror was almost scary. In an-

other six weeks or so, she’d be looking into one . . .

and it was pretty clear she probably wouldn’t recog-

nize herself, probably wouldn’t have a clue who the

woman in the mirror was. And that gave her an-

other reason to feel angry: Since while everyone in

her daily life here could see the change in gradual

bits, she, the actual subject, had no such luxury.

She’d started out a heavyset, dark-skinned black

woman and her whole identity was bound up in that

image. What would it be like to look in the mirror

and see this new person, with fair skin and a slen-

der, shapely body? Would her dark-skinned insides

see her light-skinned outside and run screaming for

the hills?

The weirdest part was, the nastier she got, the

happier everyone around her seemed to be. It was

happening again, right now, with Julienne.

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249

“I’m making you mad, huh, Audra? Good. Forget

the ball, then. You know your body, right? You know

it so well, you’ve taken care of it by stuffing it with

foods it didn’t want and didn’t need. You know it so

well that you’ve overdeveloped the muscles in your

arms and thighs, but left your stomach so weak

you’re afraid you won’t be able to sit back up if you

lay back on a rubber ball. All of that, and yet you ex-

pect me to believe you know your body?” She shook

her head. “You don’t know a thing about your body,

Audra. No, excuse me. You do know one thing

about it,” she continued in a no-nonsense tone of

voice, all the while glaring at Audra like she’d of-

fended her personally. “You know you positively

hate it. You hate it, and you hate yourself—”

“Why do you all keep saying that!” Audra

bounded up off the ball and yanked her towel off a

nearby rack fast enough to use it as a weapon. But

Julienne barely flinched. She just kept staring at Au-

dra, every rangy muscle in her thin chest and upper

arms flexed and ready.

“You can hit me if you want to,” Julienne said, her

voice calm, her face a mask of earnest sincerity. “It

won’t change anything, though. What will change

things is for you to challenge your body—challenge

yourself—beyond what you think you are capable