Diary of an Ugly Duckling Read online

  “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 light-skinned face in

  front of her shifted and changed. The double chin

  melted away, the eyebrows lifted above the smoky

  black eyes. The bone of the nose rose and straight-

  ened, while the nostrils were narrowed and re-

  shaped. Sculpted cheekbones appeared out of jowly

  cheeks.

  With a few strokes of his computer program, Dr.

  Bremmar had created a woman that Audra recog-

  nized.

  “Petra,” she breathed, staring at the image. “Ex-

  cept for the hair . . . that’s her. That’s Petra . . .”

  Dr. Bremmar turned toward her. “Who?”

  “My older sister. She’s in the Army. Stationed

  in Iraq.” Audra frowned. “You know that also sort

  of looks like . . .” Esmeralda? Audra shook the re-

  semblance from her mind. “Never mind,” she said

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  Karyn Langhorne

  quickly, pushing aside thoughts of Art Bradshaw

  and Double Indemnity, of movie-style romance and

  soul mates. Instead, she stared hard at the image

  one more time before turning back to the row of

  doctors, her heart thumping wildly in her chest.

  “You can really do this? You can really make me

  look like that?”

  “Well, there are no guarantees with this kind of

  surgery, but”—the polite doctor gave her another of

  his wide grins—“if Dr. Jamison’s treatments achieve

  the coloring and eliminate our concerns about scar-

  ring . . . I’m reasonably confident you’ll look at least

  that good. Depending on Koch’s aim that day,

  maybe better.” And he gave the other man a playful

  wink.

  Dr. Koch rolled his eyes like he was sick of the

  joke, but seconded his partner’s comments with a

  morose, “I completely agree.”

  “Wow,” Audra muttered. “Wow. It’s like . . .

  magic.”

  “Hardly,” Camilla snorted. “It’s a ton of work!”

  “I can do the work,” Audra snapped at her. “It’s

  just . . .”

  “A question of cultural identity.” Dr. Goddard

  made her first appearance in the conversation, inter-

  rupting with her clipped and intelligent-sounding

  voice.

  “Yes,” Audra said quietly.

  “There are potentially serious ramifications of

  this kind of decision. In addition to radically chang-

  ing her appearance through plastic surgery, she’ll

  be altering how she’s perceived as an African

  American.” The doctor sounded as though she were

  DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

  131

  reading from a textbook, but she had the gist of it

  right. Color resentments in the black community ran

  strong and deep, Audra knew. As a dark-skinned

  woman, she harbored more than a few of them her-

  self.

  “And unlike celebrities, when this show is over,

  Ms. Marks will be returning to a real world,

  where people who know her as she is now might

  not receive the changes in her appearance in a wel-

  coming way. This sort of change will be controver-

  sial—”

  “Controversy is a good thing. It’ll make her a

  star,” Camilla interjected.

  “But it will also impact her relationships with oth-

  ers in her life,” Dr. Goddard warned. “Her friends

  and co-workers, family and lovers . . .”

  Friends and co-workers . . .

  Audra couldn’t think of one person in this cate-

  gory whose opinion would affect her in any serious

  way. She imagined herself walking down the corri-

  dors of the prison in the face and body of the

  woman before her. There would be no more “fat,

  black and ugly,” no more wardrobe malfunctions,

  no more “dude with tits,” she realized, and couldn’t

  help but smile.

  Family . . .

  Audra stared at the image on the screen across

  from her again. Just the coloring of this virtual

  woman alone made her look like her mother and

  sister in a way she never had before. And if these

  doctors could give her even a tenth of the image’s

  beauty, there was no doubt in her mind: She’d fi-

  nally look like them. She’d finally look like she

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r />   Karyn Langhorne

  belonged, like part of the family and not like a

  swan chick left on the ducklings’ doorstep, out of

  sync and out of step with everyone around her.

  Lovers . . .

  She thought of Art Bradshaw for a moment and

  saw his broad face, amber eyes and full lips in her

  mind.

  But Art Bradshaw had only been interested in

  her for the lessons she could teach his daughter

  about getting along in an ugly world. And since

  the girl had no desire to learn, there wasn’t much

  reason to think of him as friend or co-worker any-

  more.

  “The truth is . . .” she said slowly, “I don’t think I

  have any family or friends, co-workers or lovers

  whose opinions matter to me.” She glanced around

  the room. “So really, this decision is mine and mine

  alone.” Her eyes strayed to the two images of herself

  on the screen across from her. The “before” of her-

  self Carla had just taken a couple of hours ago. The

  “after” shot was, for now, a computer simulation.

  But it could become real. It could be hers in only a

  few months’ time, if she said the word.

  But she hesitated still, staring at the images, un-

  sure if she could surrender herself so completely.

  Audra Marks, as she knew herself, meant a certain

  way of being in the world . . . a way that was so tied

  up in her physical body they could not be easily sep-

  arated. How would Audra Marks behave in the

  world if she were beautiful? What would it mean to

  be Audra Marks, light-skinned woman, instead of

  dark?

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  133

  Audra didn’t know.

  “It’s a part of my responsibility to help you inte-

  grate these changes in your physical appearance

  with the rest of your identity,” the shrink said qui-

  etly, as though reading Audra’s mind. “If you choose

  to become an Ugly Duckling, we’ll talk through

  what these changes might mean in your everyday

  life.”

  Audra nodded at the woman, then let her eyes

  stray to the black folks in the room.

  “Shamiyah?”

  “I think you should go for it, Audra,” she said

  earnestly, a pleading expression on her face. “Think

  of all the pain your looks have caused you. The in-

  sults and the humiliation . . .” she said, tapping into

  the rich mine of Audra’s greatest motivator. “Do it

  for yourself, Audra. For yourself . . . and for the

  thousands of women like you.” She paused, fixing a

  pair of determined eyes on Audra’s face. “But if

  you’re gonna do it, you have to do it all the way. The

  weight, the surgery and the color.”

  Audra let the words flow over her but said noth-

  ing. She cut her eyes toward the other person of

  color.

  “What would you do?” she asked Jamison in a low

  voice.

  The man shook his head. “It’s your decision, Ms.

  Marks,” he said in his rumbling radio voice. “No

  one else can make it for you.” His eyes rolled toward

  Shamiyah. “No matter how much they might like

  to—”

  “Great, so what’s the word?” Camilla snapped

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  Karyn Langhorne

  impatiently. “You gonna stay fat, black and ugly . . .

  or do you want to do light, bright and beautiful? Be-

  cause if you’re not gonna do it, then I’m pretty sure

  Shamiyah’s got a stack of tapes of other homely sis-

  ter girls who’d jump at the chance—”

  “I’m in,” Audra announced. “I’m in.”

  Shamiyah’s face broke into a big, happy smile

  tinted with more than a little relief, and even

  Camilla looked satisfied. Only the bespectacled psy-

  chiatrist didn’t meet her eyes; she was too busy

  scribbling in her notebook.

  “Besides, you said controversy’s good, right? Me,

  I’m down with that. I live with people saying all

  kinds of nasty things about me right now . . . so

  what’s the diff?” Her eyes found Dr. Jamison’s. “So,

  doc. When do we start?”

  “Immediately.” And the man slid another clump

  of papers at her. “You’ll need to sign those—”

  “More signing?”

  “It’s a consent to the dermatological treatments

  that will lighten your skin, as well as an explanation

  of the various side effects and precautions—”

  “Side effects? Precautions?” Audra frowned.

  “What—”

  “Nothing serious,” the doctor said easily, rum-

  bling over her objections in his calm, melodious

  voice. “You have to spread it over your entire

  body—everywhere, if you want the tone to be even.

  And you have to avoid the sun. Completely. Hat,

  gloves, sunglasses, long sleeves. Completely, un-

  less you want to look like a checkered tablecloth,”

  he said, his eyes pinioning hers. “I’ll provide you

  DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

  135

  with a prescription for the hydroquinone, which

  you will use faithfully on your entire body from

  now until I tell you otherwise.” He glanced at

  Camilla. “Even on an accelerated dosage, it will

  take several months. Can you schedule her surger-

  ies for last?”

  Camilla consulted her clipboard and nodded.

  “She’ll be last. Scheduled for surgery in late June.”

  She shook her head. “But that’s the latest we can go

  and leave time for editing and distribution for

  shows scheduled to air in October.”

  Dr. Jamison nodded. “That’s long enough to see a

  significant difference . . .”

  “I’ll give you a diet to follow,” piped in the nutri-

  tionist. “If you could lose another twenty pounds

  before we start the process here—”

  “Without sacrificing any muscle mass, of course,”

  interjected the trainer.

  “No, of course not,” the nutritionist said, sounding

  peeved. “I’ll fax it over to Dr. Jamison’s office this af-

  ternoon.”

  “Great, great.” Camilla was all bustle and energy

  again. “Thank you all. This has been very . . . in-

  formative. I’ve got to get with our marketing folks

  and give them the go-ahead on the promos for this

  color-consciousness stuff, but I believe we’ve all

  made a good choice, so—”

  “And Camilla,”—Shamiyah’s voice had a new

  edge of confidence in it, as though she’d conquered

  something—“since it looks like Audra’s in, I think

  I should take a crew and go to New York next week.

  Shoot the ‘surprise selection’ segment. You know,

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  Karyn Langhorne

  catch her off guard, at home. See her with her family

  and friends. Maybe even a couple of shots at the

  prison, if that can be arranged. That way, we’ll have

  some good shots of her in present life . . . and in her

  present look, before Dr. Jamison’s treatments taker />
  hold. It makes for a more dramatic before and

  after—”

  “All right,” Camilla agreed, but her voice had lost

  some of its nastiness, as if she, too, knew something

  had shifted in the power and energy of the room.

  Her steely eyes fixed on Audra again as she jabbed a

  finger at her in admonition. “And, you’d better act

  surprised. I’m talking Academy-Award-winning

  surprised. You got it?”

  The woman clearly didn’t know who she was

  talking to.

  Audra summoned tears of gratitude to her eyes

  and grabbed Camilla’s hand.

  “Thank you . . . thank you so very much,” she

  said in a hoarse whisper, straight out of Ann Bax-

  ter’s acceptance speech in All About Eve. “You don’t

  know what this chance means to me . . .” She mur-

  mured, and then, right when Camilla seemed about

  to buy it, she smiled. “Psych!”

  The room exploded with laughter, but Camilla

  didn’t seem amused in the slightest. “Yeah, exactly

  like that,” she muttered, slamming her notebook

  shut. She barked to the cameras to wrap for the day,

  then she turned back to Audra, her voice sicky

  sweet. “I’m Camilla Jejune, executive producer for

  Ugly Duckling.” She leaned close. “You belong to us

  now—and don’t you forget it.”

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  137

  “Sure,” Audra said glibly enough. But the truth

  was, this woman wasn’t nearly as scary as the con-

  versations waiting for her back in New York.

  Chapter 11

  May 31

  Dear Petra,

  When we heard about the bombings in Basra, we were

  scared to death. Things actually thawed out enough

  for Ma to talk to me, she was that scared. I can’t tell

  you how relieved we all were to hear that Michael is

  still safe and that you’re still in Baghdad, far from that

  tragedy. The minute we learned you all were okay,

  Miss Frosty came back out. I don’t think she’s said

  more than “pass the peas” in three days.

  I don’t know what she’s mad at. If anyone should be

  mad, it’s me. I’m not the one with some deep, dark

  secret . . .

  Okay, I guess I do have a secret.

  I know, I know, I really should tell her. But after

  talking to Shamiyah about it, we felt that it might be

  better to just let her find out when they shoot the

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  139

  “surprise” footage of me being notified that I’ve been

  selected. Since I’m not supposed to know I’m going to