Bradshaw,” she said in a tone that suggested she
was trying very hard not to sound smug and failing
miserably. “I don’t want to say ‘I told you so’—”
“Then don’t,” Audra snapped, dragging the
garbage bag toward the front door.
“That’s just how men are, Audra,” her mother
continued, following her. “It’s not that they’re not
interested in the rest of the package, but they appre-
ciate the efforts we make on the outside—”
Esmeralda Prince rose like a vision in Audra’s
mind. Art Bradshaw appreciated the outside, all
right. That much was very, very clear.
Audra opened the front door, dragged the
garbage bag of junk food out into the corridor and
slammed the door on it like it was an unwelcome
guest. Edith shook her head.
“So you’re going on a diet. Again. Do you have to
make such a production out of everything? After
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
75
you lose a few pounds and do something with your
hair, there’ll be plenty of men—”
Audra whirled on her, angry words rising in her
throat as she stared into her attractive cinnamon
face.
“Will there, Ma? Is that all it takes—twenty
pounds and a hair weave?” she gestured at herself,
bra and all. “Look at me, Ma. When is the last time I
had a date, huh?”
“Back when you were in criminal justice school, I
think,” her mother frowned calling up a memory.
“Nice boy. Leon or Larry or something—”
“Lamont,” Audra said bitterly. Her mother
couldn’t keep track of the names of the people in a
conversation about today, but she could get within a
few syllables of the name of a rotten jerk she’d had
one date with years ago. “And he wasn’t so nice,
Ma. You know why he went out with me? To win a
competition with his buddies. A competition over
who could sleep with the ugliest girl.”
Edith sighed a sigh that suggested Audra should
have known better. “Well, he was really handsome,
Audra. You can’t expect a guy that handsome—”
“Why can’t I, Ma?” Audra roared her anger and
frustration and humiliation beyond containment.
“Why can’t I?
“Because that’s not the way it works, Audra. An
ugly man has as good a shot as a good-looking one,
but an ugly woman is a sin against nature,” she
preached. “I earn my living on the truth of that. Do
you think I caught your father with my personal-
ity?” She shook her head. “No—”
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Karyn Langhorne
“And that great love story worked out really
well,” Audra scoffed. “He left you when I was nine.”
“Well, there were lots of reasons for that.”
“Tell me about it,” Audra muttered, closing her
eyes against the memory of the night her father left.
Edith hesitated, her eyes fixed on Audra’s face.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked in a low
voice, that suggested to Audra that she didn’t really
want to know.
“It means I heard you, Ma!” Audra shouted. “I
heard him, I heard you—” she paced away from the
sight of her mother’s horror-stricken face. “I know
what he accused you of that last night.”
Audra’s mother’s hand flew to her mouth.
“Listen, Audra . . . you don’t understand. He was
just angry, he didn’t mean—”
“He said I wasn’t his,” Audra hollered bellowing
out the words at the top her lungs. “He said there
was no way he could have had a child as black and
ugly as me, Ma—”
“Hush! You’ll wake Kiana—”
“Are you ever going to admit it, Ma?” Audra
swung on her, her fists clenched. “Are you ever go-
ing to tell me the truth?”
“Can’t nobody tell you nothing, Audra,” Edith
snapped. “And that’s what’s wrong with you. Now,
I’m going to bed. And if you were smart, you’d go to
bed, too.” She hurried past Audra toward her bed-
room up the hall. “And put some clothes on. No-
body wants to see all your jiggly stuff,” she hissed, a
final parting, hurtful shot before closing her door
and shutting Audra out for what must have been the
thousandth time.
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
77
* * *
She flipped through every channel of the dial at least
twice, but there was nothing—no distraction in film
or otherwise. Not tonight. Sleep was impossible . . .
and she knew it. If she fell asleep, if she allowed her
mind to wander for even a second, she’d hear the
girl’s words all over again— I don’t want to be like
you—or see the expression on Art Bradshaw’s face as
he watched Esmeralda Prince sashay away from
them. Or she’d be nine years old all over again . . .
“Why?” her mother wailed, in a voice more des-
perate that Audra had ever remembered hearing,
before or since. “Why now, James?”
“Because I’m sick of the whispers and the looks,
that’s why! Because I’m tired of playing this game
with you, Edith!” And she heard him throwing suit-
cases, drawers opening and closing . . .
“James—”
“That girl ain’t mine,” her father had growled be-
hind the partially closed door of her mother’s bed-
room. “You know it, and I know it—everybody
knows it. Ain’t no way I could have a child as black
and ugly as that. Get the guy you been fucking to
raise her. I’m not doing it—”
Audra snapped herself back to the present, will-
ing her mind to focus on the television screen.
“I mean, look at these pants,” a slender woman in
one of those tops with a single thin strap over one
shoulder and full-length arm on the other was say-
ing. She stretched a pair of what seemed to Audra to
be perfectly acceptable gray sweatpants toward the
camera, while gesturing to several other pairs in the
closet behind her. “This is all she wears! Sweatpants!”
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Karyn Langhorne
and the slender woman shook her straight, blonde
locks in disgust.
“But they’re comfortable!” Another woman
stepped into the frame, clutching the sweatpants de-
fensively. And of course, she wore a pair of dark
blue sweats, matched with a faded orange T-shirt.
Her dark hair was tied back in a long, frizzy pony-
tail. She looked just fine to Audra. Just your average-
looking white girl, the sort of woman Audra might
see on the subway or pass on the street a thousand
times in a typical New York day. Unlike her tarted-
up friend, who looked like something off a televi-
sion commercial or a movie set.
“Just because I don’t dress like you doesn’t mean I
look bad,” the average-looking girl was saying, and
Audra found herself nodding her head in absolute
agreement.
“Listen, girlfriend,” a masculine voice lisped,
snatching the sweatpants so violently, Audra felt a
deep sympathy for the poor girl whose wardrobe
was being savaged. “Sweats have their time and
place,” he announced, like some kind of authority,
and to punctuate that point, the words kenny close,
master stylist appeared on the screen beneath him
as he continued. “If you’re cleaning your apartment,
you wear sweatpants. If you’re at the gym in winter,
you wear sweatpants. After that . . .” and he tossed
the sweats into a waiting garbage can that clearly
had been placed in the room just for that purpose.
The dark-haired owner of said pants gasped in
horror. Then to Audra’s surprise the fashion man
yanked the remaining pants out of the drawer and
tossed them into the trash with glee.
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79
“You can keep the ones you have on,” he finished,
slapping his hands together like he’d just finished a
particularly distasteful chore, while the brown-
haired girl fairly wept with dismay. “Don’t worry,
honey,” Kenny Close Master Stylist offered comfort-
ingly. “When we’re done with you, you’ll have for-
gotten all about sweatpants, I swear. We’re gonna
give you a hot new look and have men lining up out-
side your door!”
Then the program cut to a promotion for the next
segment, through which Audra learned that the
name of the program was Recreate Me, and that after
this program ended, a show called Style Spy prom-
ised to update the looks of unsuspecting passersby,
and that both were part of Makeover Madness
Weekend on the Beautify! Channel.
“Pretty Up with Beautify!” a pleasant female
voice suggested in a tone that mixed encouragement
with command. Audra could almost imagine the
words “or else” being added to the tag line.
Pretty Up . . . by any means necessary. That’s what
Penny Bradshaw had advised. Pretty Up . . . her
mother was always nagging. Lose weight, change your
hair—then the boys will like you . . .
“Are your looks ruining your life? Are you tired
of being the “ugly girl,” the “plain Jane?” a calm fe-
male voice asked from the television screen, star-
tling Audra’s attention back to the box. But there
were no graphics, no stylish pictures or products.
Instead, the screen was filled with the elegant image
of swans, floating calm and serene on a quiet lake. It
was mesmerizing in its stillness and beauty.
“We can help. Accepting audition tapes now for
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Karyn Langhorne
Ugly Duckling, the Beautify! Channel’s ultimate
makeover show. Call us at 888-UGLY DUCK for de-
tails, or visit our Web site at BeautifyChannel.com.
Hurry, tapes must be postmarked by Monday, April
second.”
Ugly Duckling. It was like the stupid ad was
talking to her, recounting the night’s failures. Her
looks were ruining—had ruined—her life. She was
the original ugly girl . . . ugly enough to give lessons
in it.
Pretty Up, the words echoed in her brain, pulsing
toward a moment of decision. Pretty Up . . . but not
just with a new outfit, and some over-the-counter
beauty consultant comestics. But Pretty Way Up, dra-
matically, drastically, permanently.
Because her mother and Penny Bradshaw weren’t
wrong. For all the platitudes the ugly girls of the
world were asked to live with, accept, embody, the
girl wasn’t wrong. It didn’t matter how smart you
were, how funny, how great a person—the package
was the deciding factor when it came to the opposite
sex, and even this child’s own father, who for just a
second, Audra had thought might be just a little dif-
ferent, had turned out to be a full-fledged member
of the club.
Her own father was certainly a member, too—if
that’s who the man who had raised her until she
was nine really was.
The gauzy, hazy light from another dawn filled
the bedroom. The last of Beautify! Network’s make-
overs surrendered to fresh programming focusing
on home décor, and Audra flipped the channels list-
lessly. In another couple of hours, the apartment
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
81
would come to life, and her mother would bustle out
of the door for sixteen hours at the salon, pretending
once again that nothing was wrong between them—
nothing except that Audra needed to Pretty Up!
Kiana would need care. There would be things to
clean, errands to run . . . Audra saw her life stretch
hopelessly out in front of her: predictable and safe
and entirely alone.
Ugly Duckling . . .
The commercial raced around her brain, its pitch
resonating in her mind. What would it be like to be
totally transformed, to see yourself remade, not just
in new clothes and fresh makeup—how many times
had she tried that, only to be disappointed—but re-
shaped from the bones outward? What would it be
like to look in the mirror and find, not fat, black and
ugly, but something lovely and desirable. What did
it feel like to glance in the mirror and find a reflec-
tion like a movie star’s, like Esmeralda Prince’s, like
Petra’s? Could it be as close as a telephone call? As
close as 1-888 UGLY DUCK . . .
television show, Audra thought, flipping down the
dial toward Classic Movies Channel. I couldn’t possi-
bly call . . .
Why not? another voice in her brain answered.
Nothing else has worked.
I don’t have time. The deadline is Monday—
And you’re off, the other voice in her head re-
minded her. You’re on administrative leave, indefi-
nitely, thanks to Princeton Haines, remember?
I don’t have a camera—
But at the same instant she remembered something
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Karyn Langhorne
Darlene Fuchs had said, drunk as a skunk at that re-
tirement party. Something about a place in Green-
wich Village. A place where they help actors make
audition tapes . . .
I couldn’t, Audra told the voice again. I’m no actor—
Fine then, the insistent voice challenged. Do noth-
ing. Let your perfect guy date some boring, selfish
woman just because of her outside packaging. Sure, you
could change your own package and find happiness . . .
but no. You can’t. You won’t . . .
And again she saw the look on Art Bradshaw’s
handsome face as his eyes followed Esmeralda
Prince into the ladies’ room and beyond. He’d never
looked at Audra like that . . . In fact, when she really
thought about it, he’d never looked at her much at
all if he could help it.
Not mine . . . Ain’t no way I could have a child as black
and ugly as that . . .
Maybe . . .
This is madness, Audra told herself firmly, shaking
the idea and the insistent, challenging voice egging
her onward from her mind and focusing on the TV
instead. A movie was starting as Audra resettled
herself under her comforter with a deepening sense
of depression. Bette Davis was in the movie, and
Paul Henreid . . . and as the credits faded into the
opening scene, Audra knew exactly what she was
watching.
Even the movies seemed to be sanctioning her
course.
Now, Voyager. The ultimate forties makeover film.
Bette Davis played an ugly spinster, stuck and sti-
fled by her domineering mother, who, after a nervous
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
83
breakdown, completely remakes herself and finds
love with a married man on an ocean voyage. She
returns home, stares down her mother and—
Audra watched, transfixed. It was as if Bette were
speaking to her . . . telling her what to do . . .
They probably won’t pick you anyway . . . Why not at
least find out? It couldn’t hurt to find out . . .
By the time the newly glamorous Bette Davis
challenged her strict mother’s control and vowed to
wait, forever if necessary, for the man she loved,
Audra had the phone in her hand.
It couldn’t hurt to find out . . .
“Welcome to the Ugly Duckling,” a smooth,
recorded voice said. “To be considered for a spot as
a contestant on our show—”
Audra snatched a pencil from the drawer in her
bedside table, ripped a clean sheet of paper from a
notepad beside it and began to write.
Tuesday, April 3
Petra,
I’ve done something . . . It’s probably crazy but I didn’t
know what else to do. It’s a long shot, but with all the
movies I’ve watched, I know a little about how to tell a
story.
I told them my story, Petra—at least as much of it as
I know. I didn’t leave out anything—not Ma or Dad or
the stuff I heard. I only had a day to work on it. While
Kiana was at school Monday and I usually would have
gone to work, I found this video place, made a tape and
mailed it before I lost my nerve. It came out rather
good, if I do say so myself.
I didn’t tell Ma about it—and don’t you do it. She’ll