“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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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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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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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
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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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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
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 take
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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“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