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

it, that’s why!” her mother shouted. “Right up

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to the very last minute, I was sure you’d back out. I

was sure you’d come running home like you always

did and I could save myself some shame—” And she

burst into tears, hard jagged sobs that had Audra

not been so determined to hear the story, it would

have been impossible to listen to.

“He was a good man . . . a good man,” her mother

cried. “Why do you have to look so much like him?

Why—”

Audra sighed, her anger draining from her with

every word her mother spoke. “I need to know how

it happened. I need to know . . .” She rubbed her

forehead. “How and where and when . . .”

But her mother just paced away from her and

sobbed, her face in her hands.

“Here, Ma—” Audra approached her gently and

led her to a spot at the edge of the curb. “Sit down . . .”

Her mother sat, but kept sobbing, her face hidden.

Audra stroked her shoulder gently, murmuring over

and over, “It’s okay, Ma. It’s okay . . .”

“I—I—was a young wife. Petra was just over a

year old. Your—her father was always gone—

always running the streets with buddies or . . .” she

hiccupped a little, “some woman or the other. I was

from the boonies . . . I didn’t know no one. I was so

lonely . . . so miserable . . . scared to death of this

big city. B—but I couldn’t go back.” She looked up at

Audra with wet, red eyes, her lips twisted with an-

guish. “There wasn’t nothing for me in North Car-

olina. Nothing at all . . .” she whispered. “I knew I

had to make it work here somehow for myself. For

my daughter . . .” She snuffled and wiped her face

with the long black smock she wore over her

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clothes. “I met Andrew at a soul food restaurant. I

was feeling low, wishing for home and I ended up

drowning my sorrows in a plate of fried chicken and

collard greens. Petra was sitting beside me, giving

me pure D hell and I just . . . started crying.” She

smiled through her tears. “I guess I’d just had it or

something . . . but he was sitting at a table nearby,

and he saw I was losin’ it. He distracted Petra while

I got myself together and then”—fresh tears formed

in her eyes—“he asked us both to the Central Park

Zoo. I almost said no. I was a married woman. True,

I was married to a man who acted like he wasn’t a

married man—James Marks wasn’t faithful to me a

single day we were together—but I knew I didn’t

have to act like him. But ’Drew was so kind . . . He

was so nice to me . . . and Petra had never been to

the zoo.” She sighed. “I said yes.”

Audra waited while she paused, smiling a little to

herself.

“I don’t want you to think I just fell into bed with

him, ’cause I didn’t. He and his brother were setting

up a Caribbean restaurant and he was working very

hard. But when he could, he would call or come

by and take me and Petra somewhere. Anywhere.

Sometimes we went to movies, or sightseeing in the

city. But most of the time I went with him to restau-

rant supply stores and to City Hall when he got the

paperwork for a restaurant license. I didn’t care. I

just . . .” She swallowed, pressing back her emotions

so that she had the breath to continue. “He talked all

the time about how important it was to ‘do your

own thing’—it was the seventies, you know. That’s

how people talked. And when I told him I liked to

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do hair, he encouraged me to get my cosmetology li-

cense. Even gave me the money to take the test.”

She paused again.

“I fell for him, mind, body and soul,” she whis-

pered. “And one thing led to another . . .” She

turned to Audra. “We had it planned. I was going to

get a divorce from James and we were going to get

married and raise Petra—and our own children—

together. I was going to open this salon”—she ges-

tured behind her—“and we were going to be happy.

And it would have happened, too, but . . .”

“He was killed,” Audra finished. “I read it in the

stuff the private investigator sent me. Hit by a car

over on Ninth Avenue. April fifth—”

“And you were born in December,” her mother

finished with a sad and heavy sigh. “I know I

should have left anyway . . . I should have divorced

James then and gone on.” She shook her head. “But

I was a different woman then. I didn’t have any

money. I had a cosmetology license but no experi-

ence using it. I wasn’t sure I could make it on my

own. And when I found out I was pregnant, I really

wasn’t sure who . . .” She let the sentence die with a

hard swallow. “It wasn’t until you were born that I

knew . . . and so did James. He’d suspected anyway.

Some of those no-good buddies of his had seen me

and Andrew together. But when you were born—”

“Because I was so much darker,” Audra finished.

“I always knew my coloring didn’t fit with the fam-

ily palette.”

“I don’t know why, but James’s suspicions made

me deny it that much more. Insist he was wrong and

you and Petra were full-blood sisters in every way.

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Stay with him even though . . .” She shrugged. “I

don’t know. Maybe I thought that’s what I deserved.

And when he finally walked out on me”—her face

swung toward Audra’s tear-streaked one in the dim

light—“I thought I’d paid my dues.”

“But he’s been gone for years, Ma. You could have

told me any time—”

“No.” Edith shook her head. “No. You were getting

older, smarter. At first we were all dealing with the

aftermath of James’s leaving, and I couldn’t add this

other burden to it. And then you were a teenager, a

teenager always on the verge of rebellion because

you