cry, Audra told herself.
“Thank you, thank you very much,” she muttered
Elvis-style, taking a couple of quick nodding bows
around the room, blinking quickly as though it were
a part of her routine and not a desperate attempt to
keep her emotions at bay. “I’m here in Vegas ’til
Tuesday . . .”
More laughter reverberated around her and Au-
dra took another quick bow, her hands firmly af-
fixed to the seat of her pants, just as four more COs
joined them in the day room to help. She glanced at
Bradshaw, hoping for support, but he simply stared
into the space between her shoulder and the walls,
as usual.
The handsome creep.
“It’s okay, fellas,” Audra said, taking charge of the
confusion on the newcomers’ faces. Clearly they’d
been expecting an outbreak of prison violence . . .
and were surprised to find themselves in the audi-
ence of a comedy show. “It’s all over but the jokin’
and the sewin’—”
“Gonna take a big needle close that up!” Someone
quipped, but before Audra could isolate the identity
of the speaker Haines’ moaned.
“Shut up! Won’t somebody shut her up? Fat bitch
broke my ribs! She broke my damn ribs then
slammed me into that table there!” He clutched at
his abdomen, bent double, Audra supposed, with
pain. “Y’all saw it! It’s police brutality! I want my
lawyer! I’m filing a claim with the warden! I want
reparations—”
12
Karyn Langhorne
“Quiet, Haines.”
Audra turned in surprise.
Bradshaw.
His voice was smooth, rich and deep like some for-
bidden chocolate treat or an expensive coffee drink.
The voice of a screen legend from Hollywood’s hey-
day, mesmerizing in its depth. She glanced over at
him and found a somber expression on his face.
“You okay?” he asked at last.
Audra hesitated. He still wasn’t exactly looking at
her, but when no one else replied, she assumed the
question was intended for her. For some reason,
Bradshaw’s concern made tears tremble just below
the surface again, but Audra shook them aside.
“Marvelous, darling,” she muttered in her best diva
dame voice, but with the inmates still muttering
“fat” and “dude with tits” and with her fingers tight
over her rear end, it was hard to keep the image
alive. “Thanks for asking. I was beginning to won-
der what it took to get your attention.” She shrugged
toward her rear end. “Now I know.”
Bradshaw blinked, his light eyes shifting at last to
her face. Audra felt a shock like electricity course
through her body as his full lips curved into the
slightest smile. “Sorry. Had a lot on my mind lately,”
he said, then leaned toward Audra, dropping his
voice to a husky whisper. “And you confused Dou-
ble Indemnity with Casablanca,” he murmured in a
tone intended for her ears only. “Try to get it straight
next time, Marks.” Then he shifted his attention to
the inmates. “Recreation’s over, gentlemen,” he an-
nounced in a smooth baritone. “Line up! Now!”
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
13
Reluctantly, the men shuffled into a haphazard
line along the wall. Bradshaw led the way back to
the cell block, leaving Audra staring after him with
her hands covering her bloomers and her mouth
open in surprise.
Chapter 2
“If that’s all you’re getting from what I told you,”
Audra said, her voice rising to a near shout in
frustration, “You are missing the point, Ma—”
“I ain’t missing nothing, Audra,” Audra’s mother,
Edith Marks snapped, her words lilting with the to-
bacco fields of North Carolina, as though she hadn’t
lived in New York City since she was eighteen. “The
point is, you ripped your pants and showed your
butt—literally—to this man—”
“Art Bradshaw—”
“This Art Bradshaw,” Audra’s mother repeated,
more loudly than before, hammering home her
point by volume alone. “What must he think of
you?”
What did Art Bradshaw think, Audra wondered,
replaying the way his eyes had locked on hers, liq-
uid and glowing with warmth. His words betrayed
that he’d been listening to her conversation with the
kid, Carter. Audra wondered how many other times
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
15
he’d watched her, as surreptitiously as she’d watched
him.
“I think . . .” Audra began slowly, determined to
say the words aloud in spite of the patter of her
heart. “I think he thinks what I think. That we’re
soul mates—”
“Soul mates! Soul mates, my eye,” Edith scoffed.
“You humiliate yourself in front of him and now,
you’re talking some mess ’bout him bein’ your soul
mate?” She rolled a pair of shrewd, bright eyes care-
fully lined with black pencil and batted her mas-
caraed lashes in Audra’s direction. “Honestly,
Audra. If you think that man’s interested in you be-
cause you can crack a joke after humiliatin’ yourself,
you musta bumped your head—”
“Will you forget about the pants for just a second,
Ma?” Audra folded her arms over her chest like a
defiant teenager and lifted her head in protest. “I
think he’s interested in me because we both know
the movies—”
“Movies!” The older woman tossed this week’s
hairdo, making the strands of a sleek black bob
dance. Audra knew for a fact most of the hair was
fake, purchased wholesale from the inventory of
her mother’s salon, Goldilocks, and sewn in on a
Monday or Tuesday morning when there weren’t
many paying customers. It looked good, too, on her
mother’s still pretty fifty-something head, but then
most styles did. It was yet another way they were dif-
ferent: opposite as night is from day. “So he likes
movies. Everybody likes movies. What’s that got to
do with the price of beans in China?” her mother
concluded, as if the question were completely logical.
16
Karyn Langhorne
Talking to her mother was always like this. So
many questions, so little listening. They were as
combative as the mother-daughter relationship in
Mildred Pierce. Joan Crawford played the long-
suffering, giving mother to Ann Blyth’s selfish,
greedy, mean-spirited daughter. Only in their case,
Audra was certain, it was the daughter who was the
suffering one.
“It’s tea, Ma,” she corrected, infusing a touch of
the movie’s drama into the moment to make it more
bearable. “The price of tea in China. And I’m telling
you, that stuff with the pants, it w
on’t matter. He
knows the old movies—the classic movies—and he
knows I know them, too. Did you hear what he said
about confusing Casablanca and Double Indemnity?”
Her chest lifted in a sigh of longing. “It’s like we
were meant for each other—”
“Oh, Audra, please,” Edith Marks muttered dis-
missively. “Stop talkin’ foolishness and get real. I
can’t think of anything much more of a turnoff than
a woman who’s let her butt get so round she rips her
pants in front of a bunch of men!”
Audra rolled her eyes. Leave it to Edith to reduce
things to their lowest, crudest denominator. “They
ripped,” she said loftily, wishing her mother would
let her forget the awful mortification that had ac-
companied that moment, but the woman seemed
determined to make it breathe again, “because I was
breaking up a fight—”
“No, Miss Queen of De-Nial,” her mother
drawled. “They ripped ’cause you need to lose some
weight!” She sniffed sanctimoniously. “I know that
sounds mean, but it’s the truth and you need to hear
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
17
it. A little weight is one thing, but you’re getting too
fat, Audra.”
“I just need to cut back a little—” Audra began.
“A little?” Edith interjected. She reached behind
her, opening one of the old kitchen’s cabinets to re-
veal its contents: a solid wall of junk foods piled on
its shelves, cookies, crackers, candies and chips
jumbled atop each other. “You just bought all this
stuff last night and it’ll be gone by the end of the
weekend—”
“I’m not the only one who eats that stuff. Kiana
likes it—”
“Kiana’s a child,” Edith reminded her, jerking her
head toward the other room where Audra’s niece
watched animated girls cartwheeling around, solv-
ing some kind of mystery through their derring-do.
Either because she was transfixed by the images, or
because she was used to Grandma and Auntie A’s
noise, she didn’t even turn toward their raised
voices. To Kiana, the sound of the two of them argu-
ing over the dinner dishes was as comforting as a
lullaby.
“She doesn’t need this stuff any more than you
do,” Edith added when Audra focused on her again.
“Okay, so I like a little something sweet from time
to time.” Audra shrugged. “I know in your world of
high fashion and glamour, that’s some kind of crime,
but to the rest of us mere mortals, it’s no big deal.”
Edith sighed. “I don’t understand you, Audra.
Seems like you don’t care about what you look like.
Not at all,” Edith continued. Audra was pretty sure
she didn’t do it on purpose, but her mother punctu-
ated the words by striking one of her little poses,
18
Karyn Langhorne
slewing out a foot and propping her hand with her
waist, emphasizing her trim figure. She nodded to-
ward a snapshot of Petra, Audra’s older sister, look-
ing like Tyra Banks doing a photo shoot for army
fatigues, taped to the refrigerator. “Even soldiering
in that awful Baghdad, your sister takes some time
to put herself together. It’s just a matter of pride—”
“I’m looking for a man who sees deeper than out-
ward appearances. Someone who’ll love me no mat-
ter what I look like,” Audra muttered, tossing a dish
towel on the counter and snatching at an open bag
of Oreos protruding from the cabinet like a choco-
late tongue.
“Men are visual, Audra.” Edith grabbed the bag
from her hands and tossed it into the garbage can.
She dipped her hands into the sink for the next of
their dinner dishes. They were a leathery brown—
almost an entire shade darker than her cinnamon-
colored face thanks to the harsh chemicals of her
three decades working as a hairstylist. Still, dark as
the hands had become, they were still three shades
lighter than the lightest part of Audra’s body. Audra
frowned, staring at those hands.
“You want to catch one, you don’t gotta be no
beauty queen, but you sure as hell better work what
you got,” her mother continued, enjoying the
sound of her own wisdom. “Why do you think
Goldilocks Salon is packed from morning to night?
Sisters in there pressing and curling and straight-
ening and weaving”— the hands came up out of
the water as Edith snapped a couple of soapy fin-
gers. “Working it, that’s what they doing. Working
it!” She shook her head, folding her full lips in
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
19
disapproval. “You keep that hair cut short as a
man—and I run a beauty salon, for God’s sake!
How do you think it makes me look in the neigh-
borhood, my own daughter wandering around
with her hair looking like this?” She reached
toward Audra’s short naps, but Audra danced
backward out of her way.
“You know I like my hair short, Ma,” she said de-
fiantly.
“I don’t know any such thing—”
“Well, you ought to know it. We’ve tried every
other style and none of them work any better,
you’ve said so yourself.”
Edith paused, blinking while she remembered the
countless hours she and Audra had spent trying to
get the thick bristles of her hair to behave. But it was
no use: unlike Petra’s locks, which lay down per-
fectly under straightening comb or relaxer—and un-
like Edith’s own—Audra’s hair seemed to have a
mind of its own.
“Well,” Edith said slowly, since there was no ar-
gument to refute this, she wagged her swingy new
hairdo again. “The short look doesn’t do a thing for
you with your face that full. I don’t understand why
you can’t Pretty Up—like they say on the Beautify!
Network—”
“Stupid makeover shows,” Audra grumbled.
“Not as stupid as your classic movie fantasyland,”
her mother shot back, a tinge of anger in her voice.
“From where I’m standing, it seems like you’re go-
ing out of your way to look fat and ugly—and both
of those things are completely within your control!”
Fat and ugly . . . fat and ugly . . . fat, black and ugly . . .
20
Karyn Langhorne
The words chimed in her ears, chanted by in-
mates and now uttered by her own mother.
Fat, black . . . black . . . black . . .
Something angry slithered and squirmed deep in
Audra’s soul, and before she could stop herself she
snapped, “What about black, Ma. Is that under my
control, too?”
Her mother turned to her in surprise, hands paus-
ing over the sink. “Black?” she shrugged. “Of course
not. We’re all black, Audra—”
/> “No, Ma. You’re not black, you’re brown. Even tan.
You and Petra and Daddy—you’re all tan.” Audra
stretched out her own arm, rolling the sleeve up to
the elbow. “See this? This is black.”
Edith blinked at her, her mouth working silently,
then she pushed Audra’s outstretched arm away
from her. An instant later, she thrust her hands back
in the soapy water, fished up another plate, and be-
gan scrubbing as if her little sponge could clean up
this turn in their conversation.
“So what?” Edith told her sponge in a careful, low
voice. “I’m brown-skinned, Petra’s light-skinned.
But there are darker people in the family—”
“Name one,” Audra demanded.
Edith’s dishwashing hands paused, the plate slip-
ping out of them to splash audibly in the bubbly wa-
ter. Her whole body grew very still, as though some
kind of spell had been cast on her, making her as
motionless as Snow White after she ate the apple.
She did not look at Audra or speak.
“I’ve seen the pictures.” Audra pressed on. “I’ve
been with you back to North Carolina. Almost all of
us have the same eyes and same shape of face . . .”
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
21
Audra hesitated, and then pushed the words out
with sudden determination. “Your people aren’t
this dark, Mama. Even Gran said she couldn’t figure
out where my coloring came from—”
When Edith finally faced her, her lips were folded
tight and there was a funny auburn flush creeping
up from the skin of her neck up to her ears.
“Really, Audra,” she said, in a voice that strug-
gled for light, bright and breezy, but ended up
sounding strangled and tight. “There’s some darker
kin on your father’s side—”
“No, Ma.” Audra interrupted, shaking her head.
“Remember that reunion we went to? All of his peo-
ple have fair skin. Next to them, you and Petra are
dark!” Audra stared hard at her mother. “No one ei-
ther side of the family is as dark as I am, Ma.” She
swallowed hard, forcing herself to continue. “Is—is
there something you want to tell me?”
Edith’s eyes slid from Audra back to the plate,
back to the sink. “Like what?” she asked the dish in
the same constricted voice.
Audra shrugged. “Like I’m adopted . . . or . . .
something else,” she murmured.
Now, Edith’s head snapped toward Audra in sur-
Diary of an Ugly Duckling Page 2
