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

switchblade. I’m hop-

ping the next plane, train or automobile and”—she

looked wildly around the room as if pleading for

her guests’ understanding—“She swore on her life

they were gonna leave that out—”

“Undaunted by her mother’s entreaties, Audra re-

ports for surgery the next morning,” the relentless

narration continued, and the next images were of

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the actual surgical process, sped up like a comedy

sketch, as three long, hard days of procedures were

compressed into less than thirty seconds.

Audra could hear the phone, still ringing in the

bedroom . . . and now the cell phone in her handbag

was jangling along with it, but she couldn’t make

her feet move to silence either one of them. She was

still staring at the TV in utter disbelief.

She’d just told the world she was illegitimate—

just outed her mother as an adultress—just opened

the Pandora’s box of family secrets and dumped

them out, soiled and foul, in front of everyone.

The cold room went hot, then cold, then hot

again, and she felt herself falling.

“Sit down,” Art murmured, but between her

mother vowing to cut Shamiyah from curls to calf,

the sound of several of their guests excusing them-

selves and the noise of the TV, she barely heard him,

barely felt the sofa beneath her legs.

It wasn’t over, the humiliation. Because there she

was, swaddled in bandages from forehead to neck,

talking to Dr. Goddard, denying her anger, denying

her hurt when it was so plain—so plain. The woman

she was looking at was the personification of anger,

the pure embodiment of hurt . . . and only she was

too blind to see it. But there wasn’t even a minute

of the subsequent breakdowns and breakthroughs—

nothing that might have redeemed her in the eyes of

the viewing public.

“God help me,” Audra muttered. “Please . . .”

But if the prayer were granted, His help appeared

in a form Audra could not recognize. The show

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continued, marching through the healing process,

the gym workouts, the slow transformation of Au-

dra Marks, punctuated every so often by the narra-

tor’s comments, pointing out the obvious: Audra’s

skin seemed a little lighter, a little brighter, in every

scene . . . right down to the dramatic Reveal, where

Audra kicked and strutted and simpered and

pranced—and seemed just as self-centered and ob-

noxious as any pretty woman she’d ever disliked in

her fat, black and ugly days.

“For all Audra’s difficulties with relationships

with men in the past, it appears that there is some

possibility of a new romance on the horizon,”

Camilla Jejune narrated in a voice filled with high

drama, as Audra rushed into Art’s arms at the Re-

veal and some sappy music played. But at least in

that one brief scene, Audra seemed like a real hu-

man being, and not some kind of—of—

Character.

The realization hit her high and hard with its

truth . . . because for a good deal of the whole Ugly

Duckling experience—indeed, for a good deal of

her life—that’s exactly what she’d been doing. Play-

ing a character, a larger-than-life version of someone

she hardly knew—someone who didn’t really exist

at all.

“Wait a minute . . .” Audra stared at the screen, as

the thing that had been niggling in the back of her

mind for weeks took form and grew. “Wait a

minute!” she shouted over Edith’s continued curs-

ing. “That’s not right. That’s not how it happened.

The order is wrong.” She turned to her mother. “I’d

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already had the surgery when you told me that. Re-

member?”

“Oh they just got us all messed up on here,”

Edith declared. “All messed up! They make it

sound like you set out to turn yourself into—into—

some kind of white girl! Somebody get me

my switchblade—”

On the screen in front of them, Camilla Jejune was

explaining the rules of the voting for Top Three.

“Give me the remote,” Audra demanded and once it

was in her hand, she stopped the video tape they’d

been recording and hit rewind.

There it was again, herself, talking to her mother,

being told about her paternity . . .

“Ma! Look!” she pointed at the screen. “There’s

no bandages!”

“No . . .” her mother said slowly.

“But you didn’t tell me until after the surgery.”

“Well, I tried to call,” Edith said angrily. “We al-

ready been through all that. Shamiyah said she

couldn’t reach you, and then you was too out of it to

take any phone calls. She didn’t call me and tell me

you were ready ’til damn near a week later—”

“When there were bandages all over my face and

body. They’ve done some major editing here,” Au-

dra announced, her own anger sharpening. “They’ve

switched it all around to suit the story they wanted

to tell—”

“I don’t understand,” Penny interjected.

“Audra’s saying Shamiyah didn’t want Ms. Edith

to talk to her before the surgery,” Art explained.

“You bet she didn’t.” Audra grabbed the phone,

dialing the numbers from memory. “Because she

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knew if I talked to Ma, I’d back out! She knew I’d

call the whole thing off and she wouldn’t have a

show—” She stopped short as the ringing sound

from the phone at her ear was replaced by a familiar

voice.

“Audra! Woman of the hour!” Shamiyah sounded

breathless and excited. “My phone has been ringing

off the hook. You saw the show, right? Didn’t you

just love it?”

“No, I didn’t love it, Shamiyah!” Audra snapped.

“It’s bad enough that you made me look like some

kind of self-hating color-struck freak.” Audra let her

voice rise with the word. “But—”

Edith snatched the phone out of her hand. “You

lying little bitch! I’m gonna cut you from your ears to

where the sun don’t shine—”

Audra grabbed the phone away from her mother.

“You asked me to talk about the man I thought

was my father, that he thought I was ugly . . . and I

did. But you promised not to go any deeper than

that. You promised not to tell the whole world about

my mother’s—”

“She consented to the release of the phone call,

Audra,” Shamiyah said as though that were the

only consideration. “I have the paperwork right

here.”

“But—”

“Look, Audra, it was an important part of your

story. We couldn’t leave it out. Not when it’s so com-

pelling and—” There was a break in the line as