Diary of an Ugly Duckling (17 page)
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.”
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
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.
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
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
139
“surprise” footage of me being notified that I’ve been
selected. Since I’m not supposed to know I’m going to
be on the show anyway, Shamiyah thought it would be
better if I didn’t tell anyone (except you, of course).
And all that’s fine with me: I don’t want to hear Ma’s
mouth until I have to. She’s not stupid, though. She
knows something’s up—that’s why she’s mad at me.
She’s been needling me with questions since I got
back from California . . . but all I do is smile.
Shamiyah and the camera crew will be here either
today or tomorrow, so I guess my days of silence are
about to end with a scene that would shame the
campiest dramatic moment in Hollywood. I wish you
were going to be here to see it!
It’s only been a couple of weeks, but people are
starting to tell me I look “different.” Of course, I’m still
losing weight, but they always say, “No, that’s not it,”
and just keep staring at me, like somehow continued
inspection will answer the question. Ma does it a lot. I
just stand there and smile. I don’t really see any
difference yet, if you want to know the truth. I scanned
a picture in—you can tell me what you think.
I hope your detail doesn’t have to make that supply
run you wrote about. Sounds dangerous. Really dan-
gerous. I know it’s what you’re trained to do . . . but
maybe you could call in sick that day? Just joking . . .
J
Be careful out there,
Audra
“You want to bring some cameras into it, fine
with me!” Edith shouted, signing her name
in a broad flourish across the bottom of the paper
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Karyn Langhorne
Shamiyah proffered, then slamming the pen down
on the kitchen counter. “Just don’t expect me to put
all my private business on TV just because
she
wants
to”—she gave Audra the kind of hard, gangsta stare
Audra saw all the time at the prison—“because that
is
not
the kind of woman I am!”
“No, no, of course not, Mrs. Marks,” Shamiyah
nodded as though she were in vigorous support of
Edith’s position, then gave Audra a quick wink the
second her mother turned her head. She looked ex-
actly like she had the last time Audra had seen her,
only now she wore a teal camisole in some shiny,
lingerie fabric over her demin jeans and seriously
pointy, black high heels. “We want your honest reac-
tion. That’s what makes it a reality show.”
“Oh, you’ll get my honest reaction,” Edith snorted,
glaring at Audra in disbelief. “And I honestly hope
you’re kidding about this whole idea, Audra. I hope
this is one of your weirdo jokes, right? That you
watched
Now, Voyager
again on TV, and now you’re
poor, put-upon Bette Davis, treated badly by her
family until she gets beautiful and runs off on an
ocean cruise with Charles Boyer—”
“Actually, it’s Paul Henreid,” Audra corrected, ig-
noring the wheeling, circling motions of the cam-
eraman as he angled himself into position just a foot
from her shoulder. Edith’s tone dug at her, tingling
her most sensitive spots and goading her toward re-
sponse. “I’m impressed, Ma. I didn’t know you
knew that movie—”
“Oh, stop it Audra!” Edith snapped, shaking her
head so hard, Audra knew she missed the exten-
sions she’d just taken out a few days ago. Now she
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
141
was experimenting with a look that featured heavy
bangs and razored short sides that Audra thought
made her look a little too much like a Marine. “You
can’t be serious, right? This is why you went out to
California? You aren’t actually going to—”
She stopped, staring hard into Audra’s face. “Oh
my God . . . that’s it. I knew there was something
different about you! You’ve already started it. What
did you have done to your face?”
“Laser treatments for the acne .. . though the
doc says I’ll need a few more. And . . .” She hesi-
tated, steeling herself for Edith’s next explosion, as
Shamiyah nodded vigorously, urging her toward
confession. “And a drug to lighten my skin tone.”
Edith’s mouth fell open. “Lighten your skin!” she
repeated, peering close into Audra’s face. “You’re
actually going to lighten your skin? Why? What’s
wrong with the color you are now?”
“Nothing . . .” Audra began slowly, “but . . .” Her
eyes swung toward Shamiyah, whose head was bob-
bing furiously with encouragement.
“Go for it,” she mouthed, silently stretching her
lips so that there was no mistaking what she was
trying to communicate. “Go for it!”
“Nothing . . . except that I’m darker than every-
one in my family,” Audra said quickly, pushing the
words out with more difficulty than she had antici-
pated. After all, she’d said them a thousand times
before. Only there hadn’t been cameras before. “I’m
darker than everyone in my family,” Audra repeated.
“Darker than Petra and Kiana. And you. Everyone
I . . . love,” she concluded, as unexpected emotion
sprang to her throat.
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Karyn Langhorne
Edith frowned, then tried to turn away from the
cameras, but they followed her, recording both the
sudden softness and the fearful nervousness that
flushed into her face. She mastered them an instant
later, and swung on Audra, choosing once again
not to ignore the family resemblances—or the lack
thereof. Instead, she fired back with a sharp, “Are
you nuts?” And before Audra could respond, she
had launched into, “I’ve seen these shows. They
turn women into—into—Miss America look-alikes,
whether that suits them or not.” She eyed Audra du-
biously, shaking her head. “I should have known
something was up. I should have known when you
finally started getting serious about losing that
weight. But don’t tell me you’re
this
pathetic, that
your self-esteem is so low, you’d actually do some-
thing as crazy as
this
. That you’d be willing to put
yourself through all
that
.”
Audra swallowed back her tenderness in a single
bitter gulp.
“Oh, I’m absolutely going to put myself through
it, Ma.” Audra twisted her lips into a determined
grin. “I’m going to put myself through all of it.”
“But
why
, Audra?” Edith’s voice rose in exaspera-
tion, and if Audra wasn’t mistaken, she threw up
her hands as extra emphasis just for the benefit of
the cameras. “You’ve lost some weight and I think
that’s great. But surgery and—and”—she struggled
with the words as though they were choking her—
“skin bleaching. Why would you do something like
that?”
“To be something different, Ma,” Audra replied
calmly. “To see something different—something
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
143
other than fat, black and ugly when I look in the
mirror—”
“You still gonna be the same person on the in-
side,” Edith said, as if that weren’t obvious. “And if
you don’t like yourself now, you won’t like yourself
any better, just because you see something different
when you look in the mirror.”
“I like myself just fine,” Audra declared. “It’s a
matter of making the outside match the inside.”
“Audra . . .” Edith muttered. “Audra, Audra, Au-
dra . . .” she repeated, then folded her arms about
herself and stared at her daughter with an expres-
sion Audra was certain she’d never seen on the
woman’s face before. Amazement, fear, anger and
contempt seemed to have blended into a single arch
of eyebrows and pull of lips. Audra waited, staring
back at the woman, feeling she wouldn’t have been
surprised if her mother reached out an arm to hug
her or a palm to slap her face. But in the end, she did
neither: just kept staring at her with that strange
look frozen on her face.
“There are also some amazing prizes offered to
the contestant with the biggest transformation.”
Shamiyah interjected. “A modeling contract, cash, a
part in a movie—just a walk-on part, but still.” She
grinned so wide Audra could have counted all her
teeth. “It could lead to all kinds of opportunities.”
“A modeling contract,” repeated Edith, her eyes
still fixed on Audra’s face, her lips in a tight line. The
eyes seemed to say, “don’t do this,” but the lips car-
ried a different message, one of determined distrust.
“Is that what you want?” her mother asked at last.
“You wanna be a model? A movie star?”
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Karyn Langhorne
Audra shook her head. “I just want to look like
Petra . . . and you,” she said quietly, speaking to the
woman’s eyes, trying hard to ignore the judgment
in the rest of the face. “I just want to fit in . . .”
Edith lowered her eyes, then turned away entirely.
The camera crew might have picked up her expres-
sion, but Audra got nothing, nothing but a bit of her
shoulder. Edith sighed and that shoulder lifted
nearly to her earlobe. Audra waited, feeling the
weight of the air between them. Would she finally
admit it now—now, to stop Audra from going to
California, to stop her from erasing her skin tone as
an Ugly Duckling?
Audra held her breath, feeling a confession swir-
ling between them, the explanation for the words
she’d overheard all those years ago:
She ain’t
mine . . . She ain’t mine.
She glanced at Shamiyah: the
woman was following the scene between them with
such intensity, she looked like all she needed was
some popcorn.