Diary of an Ugly Duckling (16 page)

eyes and nose and lips was framed in a warm cin-

namon. She gasped. With the lighter tone and the

lack of scars and bumps, she saw her mother in her

own face.

“Audra, are you all right?” Shamiyah’s voice

reached her from far away, in a universe without fat,

black or ugly.

“Yeah,” she muttered, emotions tumbling and

swirling inside her. She turned back to the doctor.

“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.”

DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

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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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?

DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

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