prise. For a long moment, mother and daughter
stared at each other in a game of visual chicken,
each daring the other to blink first. Audra’s heart
pounded in her chest, banging so hard against her
ribs she wondered if her mother could see it, won-
dering if it looked like the animated heart of an old-
time cartoon character. She put a hand to her chest,
pressing, hoping to still the frantic beat.
Just tell me the truth, just tell me the truth, she
22
Karyn Langhorne
thought over and over in her mind, knowing that
Edith could read the words in her eyes. For once,
just—
When her mother finally spoke, her voice was
hard as a slap.
“What’s this supposed to be? Some big dramatic
scene out of one of your old movies? The climactic
scene where all the secrets are revealed? Well,
I’m sorry, but you weren’t adopted . . . or anything
else,” she said brusquely. “I don’t know why you’d
want to say something like that,” she grumbled.
“You and Petra got the same father . . . and he’s been
dead two years now and you know it. Didn’t leave
anybody anything but bad debts and worse memo-
ries, so you’re better off without him. Not that you
ever needed a thing from him anyway.”
“No, not a thing,” Audra agreed, an ugly sarcasm
taking over her tone. “After all, we always had you.”
From her mother’s silence, Audra suspected the
woman understood fully the implications of that
comment, that she could feel Audra’s resentments,
longstanding and desperate, flowing toward her in
the silence between them.
“You need to lose some weight. Do something
with yourself,” her mother said in a nasty, hasty
voice, giving back as good as she was getting. “Then
you’ll stop focusing on this crazy mess.” She dried
the sparkling plate herself, pulled the plug and re-
leased the water from the sink with an air of rushed
finality. “Make yourself useful and go put your sis-
ter’s child to bed,” she told Audra abruptly. “We
promised to take care of my baby’s baby until she
comes home from the war, and I ain’t lettin’ this
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
23
trash you’re talking keep you from doing your
part.” Then, with a swish of her new hairdo, she fled
the room and Audra heard her bedroom door slam,
locking Audra, and further conversation, out.
“This one.”
Six-year-old Kiana handed Audra a thin story-
book, its paper cover vividly illustrated, and then
climbed into Audra’s lap with a proprietary cer-
tainty that only a niece who’d enjoyed a young life-
time of considerable doting and spoiling could
manage. “Read it with the voices, Auntie A. Can
you do it with the voices?”
“You bet I can do it with the voices,” Audra told
her, letting the little girl snuggle tight against her
ample chest. Kiana didn’t seem to mind how tight
her sweatshirt was or how her thighs spread across
the surface of the old rocking chair. Audra breathed
deeply, letting the girl smell of bubbles from the
bath she’d just taken erase the day, snuggling her
chin into the child’s freshly braided hair. Kiana held
Mugsy, the stuffed rabbit she’d slept with since she
was a mere baby. “You read, too, though,” Audra
told her. “You’re getting to be a big girl. Pretty soon,
you’ll be reading the whole book to me.”
Kiana nodded solemnly, showing the smoky
brown eyes that were the signature characteristic of
all the women in Audra’s family—even Audra had
the eyes.
You ain’t adopted . . . or anything else.
Her mother’s words echoed in her brain, stirring
memories, questions and more questions, questions
she wondered if she would ever get answered. But
24
Karyn Langhorne
before she could get too lost in considering the mat-
ter, Kiana was prying Audra’s distracted fingers off
the book’s glossy cover. “The Ugly Duckling,” she
read, girlish and serious all at once.
The Ugly Duckling.
Great, Audra thought, a sinking feeling of dread
pulling her heart down to her toes. Of all the stories,
on all the bookshelves, in all the world . . . this book has to
jump into my hands.
But all she said was, “Very good,” squeezed the
girl tight, and started to read.
Although it had been years since she’d given the
story any serious thought, the plot hadn’t changed.
Separated from her own kind, a swan chick was
raised by Mama Duck and her cute little ducklings,
who teased and mistreated her for her ungainly
awkwardness. Finally, ostracized from the duck fam-
ily altogether, the ugly one went out into the world,
where she met with similar treatment from other an-
imals in both the wild and the barnyard until, after
a long harsh winter of solitude, she discovered that
she was never a duckling at all, but a beautiful crea-
ture of another kind.
“And, no longer an ugly duckling, the swan
lived happily ever after,” she read aloud to the little
girl on her knee, closing the book. “The end. Now,
you’d better hop into this bed before your grandma
finds out you’re still awake. It’s nearly eight-thirty.”
Audra frowned, dropping her voice to a co-
conspirator’s whisper. “You know how she gets
when she’s mad.”
“Gramzilla,” Kiana murmured in a voice of rever-
ent respect and immediately hopped out of Audra’s
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
25
arms and into her bed, her face as serious as a
spanking.
“Gramzilla is right,” Audra agreed. “When she
sends your mommy and daddy their emails tonight,
I want her to be able to give them a good report on
you.”
“Are Mommy and Daddy all right?”
Audra nodded. “Fine,” and she added a prayer of
thanksgiving in heart that it was still true. “Mommy
will probably be home soon. Before you go to first
grade in the fall, we hope. We’ll send them another
package this weekend. Now, go to sleep.”
Kiana nodded and immediately closed her eyes,
feigning sleep.
“That’s the way.” Audra laughed. She smoothed
the covers around the child, kissed her forehead and
headed for the door. “Good night.”
Kiana sighed the deep and grateful sigh of child-
hood rest. Before Audra had backed out of the room,
Kiana was no longer pretending and was already
half asleep.
The lights were already out in the rest of the three-
bedroom apartment they all shared. Clearly, her
mother had emerged from her bedroom long
enough to accomplish that mission, and, Audra as-
sume
d, double-check the locks on the door—all in
the time it took for Audra to supervise Kiana’s bath
and read The Ugly Duckling. Audra passed her
mother’s room on the way to the bathroom; the light
was on and Audra knew she was in there watching
one of those makeover shows she loved so much,
typing out her daily message to her daughter and
26
Karyn Langhorne
son-in-law at war so many thousands of miles away.
Audra hesitated for a moment, staring at the shaft of
light seeping from beneath the door, fighting down
the urge to reconcile, to beg to be forgiven.
But I’m not sorry, she reminded herself. I’m not
sorry, and I’m not wrong. Art Bradshaw might very well
be my soul mate . . . and if he is, it won’t matter how
much I weigh, or whether my hair is done. When people
connect like we did—when the connection is beyond
the superficial, looks don’t matter. It doesn’t matter if
you’re fat, or ugly or—
She pushed aside the last of it, not wanting to con-
template skin tone or her mother or the possibility
that she might have more in common with the ugly
duckling in the story than she ever could have imag-
ined.
But ultimately, it was her bladder that pulled her
away from her mother’s door. Audra hurried up the
narrow hallway of the old apartment toward the
bathroom. But when the urge was satisfied and
she was giving her hands some needed attention,
she looked up and into the mirror.
She could see the extra weight in the roundness of
her cheeks, which these days seemed on the verge of
becoming part of her neck—and her hair was a wiry,
unnatural helmet of brittle, black spikes. Her ebony
skin was pocked and marred by the after-effects of
adolescent acne—and as if to remind her that the
bad old days were far from over, two new zits
shined out on her chin and forehead. Audra’s atten-
tion bypassed her lips and eyes—there was nothing
wrong with them—to find her nose. It appeared to
be a misshapen blob off-center in her face, like a
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
27
lump of overused Play-Doh crudely abandoned by a
bored child.
“Please let him see beyond fat, black and ugly,”
she whispered toward the sky. “I’m counting on you,
Art Bradshaw.” Then she moved quietly through the
house toward her own room, where the sweeping
music and opening credits of another old black-and-
white film were coloring the darkness in shades of
gray.
Chapter 3
Friday, March 30
Dear Petra,
She was so angry. She looked at me like I’d called her
a “slut” to her face last night. I almost told her what I
overheard all those years ago . . . but I couldn’t do it. I
just couldn’t do it . . .
She hasn’t said a word to me since our kitchen
conversation last night. It’s an early day at the salon,
so she was up when I got up, but she kept sipping her
coffee and didn’t even look at me.
I’ve been up all night, watching movies, trying to
figure out how to proceed with AB (Art Bradshaw, to
you). We work the same shift, so there should be
opportunities, right? I really want to get to know him—
see if what I hope might be there, really is.
I watched Desk Set—the Hepburn-Tracy dynamic is
classic, so that could be a nice opener. Lots of good
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
29
dialogue. But I always have a hard time getting my
Katharine Hepburn imitation straight, so I might mess
it up. And anyway, I keep hearing the spirit of Mae
West in my brain. She’s earthier, sexier, more overt.
Think that would get his attention?
I wish you were here to give me your opinion before
I head off to work. As it is, I’ll just have to send you an
email tonight and let you know how it went. I really
think he might like me, Petra. And once he gets to
know me, I think he might like me a lot!
Well, I’ve got to go, dahling . The New York Depart-
ment of Corrections awaits!
Be careful out there,
Audra
“Woodburn wants to see you, Audra,” Darlene
Fuchs, the assignment officer on duty mur-
mured as Audra clocked in at Control and double-
checked her duty assignment for the day. “Here,”
and she thrust a small piece of memo paper bearing
the name Deputy Warden Stephen Woodburn into
Audra’s hands. On it, in a ballpoint scrawl, were Au-
dra’s name and the words, “See me, ASAP.”
Crap, Audra thought. This wrecks everything . . .
On the subway on the way to the prison, Audra
had decided to march into the day room, flounce
right over to the handsome Art Bradshaw and blurt
out a few lines of dialogue from Desk Set—just to see
how deep the man’s repertoire really was. After all
he said he liked movies, but was he limited to film
noir? Or was he versatile enough to do the comedies
and dramas, too? And what about the musicals? Was
30
Karyn Langhorne
he man enough to admit to Gene Kelly? To Ginger
Rogers and Fred Astaire? Or would that he draw the
line at the films where they danced around, the
women’s beautiful costumes swishing around them
like fans?
For an instant, Audra lost herself, caught up in the
image of herself as Ginger and Bradshaw as Fred,
swirling around a ballroom floor together—
“Marks, did you hear me?” Fuchs repeated, more
insistently. “The deputy warden wants to see you.
Now.”
Ginger/Audra and Fred/Bradshaw tripped and
fell flat on their faces, then hurried, embarrassed, off
the stage and out of sight. Audra shook herself back
into the moment, almost surprised to find herself at
Manhattan Men’s Correctional Facility now that the
power of her daydream had been broken.
“The deputy’s here?” she asked the woman,
round-eyed with surprise. “This early?”
“Apparently,” Fuchs replied without looking up.
Now here was a woman who could have done
Katharine Hepburn justice, Audra decided, taking
in the other woman’s rangy, thin figure and long
chestnut hair, worn in a bun as tight as her thin lips
while on duty. Audra had seen an entirely different
side of the woman at a retirement party for a col-
league of theirs a few months back. With her hair
down and her lips loosened by a couple of apple
martinis, Darlene could have given a few of the
young women on America’s Next Top Model a serious
run for their money. But there wasn’t a glimpse of
that beautiful party girl to be seen today: Darlene
was all business this morning. “All I know is, when
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
31
I got h
ere, he waltzed down and gave me these little
‘see me’ notes for you and Bradshaw—”
Heat climbed from the pit of Audra’s stomach to
her neck, warming her ears and cheeks. “Bradshaw?”
she stammered, sounding anything but cool, calm
and collected.
Darlene’s eyebrows shot over her green eyes as
though she knew Audra had spent most of the night
and right up to twenty seconds ago rehearsing ro-
mantic scenes with Bradshaw as the male lead.
“I mean,” Audra said, bringing her voice back
to its normal register and adding a little casual
what’s-the-diff to the mix, “what does the dep want
with Bradshaw?”
Darlene stared at her just a second longer, and Au-
dra got the distinct feeling that, had they been out
on the New York streets, or sitting in a cozy little
café somewhere, she would have leaned forward
and asked the most girlfriend-ly of questions, like a
character on Sex and the City or out of one of Terry
McMillan’s books. But as they were in a men’s
prison—“Testosterone Central”—the other woman
simply lifted a shoulder and said in her blandest
and most professional tone, “My guess would be
something to do with that skirmish in the day room
yesterday,” and from the look on her face, Audra
knew she’d heard as much about the color of Au-
dra’s bloomers as she had about the fight between
Haines and Garcia that had precipitated it all.
“Don’t you think?” she asked, struggling to sound
innocent.
“Yeah,” Audra mumbled, trying hard to smile,
even though the memory of the event was the last
32
Karyn Langhorne
thing she wanted to relive. In an instant, she aban-
doned willowy Kate Hepburn for a vampy imitation
of Mae West. “I guess when you rip your pants in
the line of duty, you gotta expect the tale,” and she
turned and wagged her behind at the other woman,
“will be told.”
Audra had expected Darlene to laugh . . . but in-
stead the woman gave her a smile that mingled
friendliness with pity and changed the subject.
“I’ll radio your sergeant,” she said, grabbing the
needed telecommunications device from its slot on
the table. “Tell him you and Bradshaw will be a few
minutes behind schedule—”
“You mean Bradshaw’s in there now?” Mae West
vamoosed, and Audra heard her own voice, rising
nervously into the stratosphere again.
“Well, yeah, Marks,” Darlene said, in “duh” tones.
Diary of an Ugly Duckling Page 3
