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

the final

cut—not even the whole discussion about scarring—

because when the man finished speaking, the cam-

eras quickly cut to her face and the only words that

fell out of her mouth were, “I’m in.”

Several of her mother’s customers groaned in dis-

pleasure. Audra bit back the impulse to shout out,

“There was more! They cut it!” and gripped Art’s

hand even more tightly.

“Do you realize you’d be changing your cultural

identity? That decision will impact how you will be

viewed in the African-American community.

Friends, family—”

“I don’t think I have any friends or family whose

opinion holds much influence,” the Audra on tape

replied, and the Audra in her home living room,

surrounded by friends and family, could have

crawled into a hole and died.

Then Camilla Jejune’s made-for-TV-voice took

over as the camera zoomed tight on Audra’s face.

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Karyn Langhorne

“And so, Audra Marks made the choice to leave

behind fat, black and ugly for a new image: one she

calls, ‘light, bright and beautiful.’ Our team of ex-

perts set to work on the most challenging of Ugly

Ducklings ever.”

The next scene found her in Dr. Jamison’s office,

learning about the application of skin lightening

cream and donning her hat, scarf, and long gloves

for the first time. As she left the office, Dr. Jamison

spoke to the camera, explaining the risks associated

with high doses of hydroquinone and expressing

his concerns about the self-image of those seeking a

radical skin-color change.

“I think in Audra’s case, there’s been a lot of hurt

and trauma associated with her skin tone . . . and

I’m hoping she’ll address those internal concerns as

well as the external ones.”

“He never said that to me,” Audra muttered

no longer able to keep silent as the sweeping heat

of anger burned from her heart to her lips. “He

never said any of that shit to me! Every time I asked

for your input you just looked at me!” she told

the man.

Dr. Jamison was gone, his screen time finished.

Now, she was sitting with Dr. Goddard, being

lectured on the tensions between light- and dark-

skinned blacks in America. It was ludicrous, watch-

ing herself, a black woman, being told about

blackness by a white woman, and Audra leaned for-

ward, remembering the conversation clearly, re-

membering her response, which she’d launched

from her own private Africa, down deep inside.

None of it made it into the package. None of it. To

DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

341

the world, she was just as passive, submissive and

agreeable as the “old Mammy” characters in the

movies she loved so much.

Another quick voice-over teased, “Audra gets

dropped a bombshell from home that rocks her mo-

tivation. Will she complete the Ugly Duckling pro-

gram or will she drop out?” Then the program

jumped to a commercial, leaving Audra’s angry re-

sponse to the doctor’s condescension on the cutting-

room floor.

The silence in the room was like a weight

around her neck, pulling her down into a darkness

worse than any feeling she could ever remember

having.

“They left out a lot of stuff,” Audra told her guests

in a soft voice. “There was all this stuff about keloid

scarring—about changing the tone of my skin to im-

prove the plastic surgery results . . .” she added

lamely.

Her explanations were met with a few mutter-

ings, but no one seemed to want to look at her. So

when the telephone rang, Audra yanked it up, any-

thing to escape from the awful pall that had been

cast over what was supposed to be a happy, celebra-

tory gathering.

“Hello?”

“Is this Audra Marks?” an unfamiliar female

voice asked.

“Yes?”

“The Audra Marks that went on the Ugly Duckling

show?”

“Yes,” Audra said slowly. Shamiyah had told her

she might get calls from people who’d seen the show,

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Karyn Langhorne

and had even suggested she make sure her number

was unlisted. But Audra had forgotten about that

warning until this very moment.

“I think you’re a pathetic excuse for a black woman,

you self-hating bitch.”

“Who is this?”

“A proud black woman who’s sick of people like

you,” the woman hissed furiously. “The white man

said you were ugly, and you swallowed it whole,

didn’t you? I can’t believe you went on TV with this

trash. You want to be a white woman, be one. Black

folks don’t need you no how—”

“It wasn’t like that!” Audra told the woman, but

she hung up as soon as she’d said her piece. The

phone rang again, almost instantly.

“Audra Marks, you ought to be ashamed of your-

self, my sister,” an educated male voice lectured.

“And I feel sorry for you, a beautiful black sister,

for giving up your power for some light, bright

bullshit—”

And even as this stranger filled her ears with his

lesson, the call waiting was beeping through his

message, signaling another caller eager to drop

more curses on her.

Art wrestled the phone out of her hands. “We’ll

just turn it off,” he said, even as the line in Audra’s

bedroom jangled the steady jangle of another call.

“Go—”

But the show had returned and Audra stood still,

not wanting to watch and yet arrested by the un-

folding train wreck that was her appearance on

Ugly Duckling.

“Troubles from home threaten Audra’s progress,”

DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

343

the narrator was saying and Audra saw herself sit-

ting in the mirrorless apartment that had been her

home for months, the telephone pressed to her ear.

In white letters superimposed beneath her image

were the words, on the phone, audra’s mother,

edith.

And suddenly she knew exactly what she was go-

ing to hear and see.

“No . . .” she whispered as her heart stopped beat-

ing in her chest and the room became suddenly as

cold and dark as an arctic winter. “They wouldn’t

do that . . . She promised she wouldn’t . . .”

“Andrew Neill,” Edith’s voice said over the phone

with a loud beep replacing the syllable of the last

name. “He’s your father.”

“No she didn’t!” Edith exploded, jumping out of

her chair as ready to fight as any boxing champion

at the sound of the bell. “No she didn’t!”

But on the television, the conversation continued

as it had in reality: “If he’d lived, I would have left

James Marks—I would have left Petra’s father for

him and you would have known him, Audra. Then

maybe you’d be proud to look like him instead of

ashamed—”

“I’m gonna kill that little bitch Shamiyah,” Edith

hollered. “Somebody get my