with the chatter of men: young ones clustered around
video games, older ones gathered around card ta-
bles or the pieces for chess or checkers. Indeed, the
only person close enough to have overheard any of
Audra’s little bit of drama was that new corrections
officer—that very tall, very handsome, very built
brother named Art Bradshaw—but Officer Brad-
shaw was staring determinedly at a table of inmates
in the opposite corner. There was such a blank ex-
pression on his GQ cover-boy handsome face, she
was pretty sure of one thing: Even working the same
shift, in the same room, he didn’t even know Cor-
rections Officer Audra Marks existed.
When she turned back to him, Carlton was in-
specting her in minute detail. Audra saw herself in
the kid’s eyes: He must have preferred the long,
flowing, hair-weave look, because he seemed to gri-
mace at her short ’fro. And Audra already knew her
face was too full and her nose too flat—it seemed like
she’d heard those criticisms every day since she
was a kid—curses of a heredity she could only
guess at. But the bulk of her arms, the shelf of her
breasts straining against the crisp white cotton of
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
7
her uniform and the thick roll of excess skin and fat
beneath them, her thighs straining the fabric of her
pants uncomfortably—those were her own doing.
And no, Carlton Carter wasn’t seeing Barbara Stan-
wyck . . . or any other starlet before 1944 or since,
Audra realized, with an unpleasant jolt back to real-
ity. Not for the first time this week, she wished she’d
really started that diet and exercise program she’d
been planning on starting since New Year’s . . .
Today, she vowed, starting at lunch. I’ll just have a
salad . . .
“Uh . . . Officer?” Carlton snatched at her atten-
tion, dragging it back to him and the present mo-
ment. “You done? Can I go?”
Audra sighed. “I’m trying to teach you something
here, Carter. I’m trying to teach you how to banter—”
“Banter?”
“Yeah, banter. It’s how you win a woman with
your words—”
“You mean my rap?” He shook his head, grin-
ning. “Yo, I don’t need no help with that—”
“Take that, you bitch!” someone behind her
screamed.
Audra’s fantasy faded like the trappings of Cin-
derella’s trip to the ball, leaving neither a glass
slipper—or even an ankle bracelet—to keep alive
the memory. Audra leaped to her feet, one hand on
her baton, the other on the service revolver snapped
tight into the holster on her right hip as she whirled
toward the sound. She touched a button on the
walkie-talkie at her hip, activating a speaker and mi-
crophone on her shoulder, following procedures on
reflex.
8
Karyn Langhorne
“Control, this is 0847. Incident in the day room.
Backup requested, over,” she murmured quickly
into the device as the words, “Fight! Fight!” went up
like a grade-school chant, filling the room.
Art Bradshaw was already wading through the
sea of orange toward the brawlers and Audra dived
into the commotion. “Hey!” she hollered, dropping
her voice to its hardest, most authoritative edge as
she bumped through the knot of jumpsuited men
hyped on the sounds of fists flying. “Get back! Back,
I said!”
“You heard her! Get back!” Bradshaw rumbled,
echoing Audra in a commanding chorus. “Out of
the way!”
The cluster of orange onlookers fell away at the
power of the man’s voice. Of course, it wasn’t just
his voice that parted the men like Moses at the Red
Sea: Audra noticed, not for the first time, that the
new corrections officer was very tall—at least 6 feet
5 inches in his socks, with the kind of thick muscles
that usually meant a man sweated for a living. Au-
dra glanced quickly into his face: It was smooth and
rich, chiseled sharp at the cheekbones and chin. Im-
possibly handsome. Prince Charming handsome.
Once again, he gave Audra not the slightest look or
word, ignoring her as thoroughly as if she didn’t ex-
ist, even though the two of them needed to act as a
team to resolve the conflict unfolding before them.
Two men lay tangled in each other’s arms, each
trying to beat the living hell out of the other. The top
man’s number was stenciled across the side of his
jumpsuit like a tattoo: MI 761098. Audra transcribed
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
9
it in her mind to the face of a long, lean, don’t-give-
a-good-damn brother whose mama had named him
Princeton Haines, though he was neither princely in
manner nor smart enough for the college of the same
name. Even with only the back of his cornrowed
head visible as he wrestled with the man beneath
him, Audra knew his cocoa-colored face was con-
torted into the sneer it always wore. Unlike kids like
Carlton, there was no point talking to inmates like
Haines; odds were overwhelming that not only
would Haines likely return to Manhattan Men’s for
repeat visits when he’d finished this three-to-five,
but that he’d probably one day reside at Upstate, the
maximum security prison, for the rest of his life.
If the top man was Princeton Haines, the bottom
man had to be a new inmate he’d been exchanging
bad blood with for the past two weeks, a youngster
by the name of Garcia, who was working overtime
to create a bad-ass rep. An instant later, her suspi-
cions were confirmed as the two men shifted posi-
tions and the bottom man became the top.
“Break it up!” Bradshaw shouted, grabbing at
Garcia’s back and lifting him easily off the floor.
Audra slipped her baton back into its loop at her
belt and on the impulse of her training, grabbed
Haines firmly by the armpits and tugged him up-
ward with all her might, dragging him to his sur-
prised feet.
“Dag,” one of the orange-suited men muttered
from the cluster. “You see her lift him like he was
nothing—”
“That’s one strong-ass chick, man—”
10
Karyn Langhorne
“You sure it’s a chick? Looks like a dude to me.”
“Yeah man, one fat, black ugly dude, y’know—”
“Fat, black, ugly dude with tits,” another voice
chuckled.
Fat . . . black . . . ugly. The words shook her insides
like they always had, and she was nine years old all
over again, listening where she shouldn’t have,
hearing things that cut her to heart’s core.
Fat . . . black . . . ugly . . .
She jerked toward the voice, half-expecting to see
the ghost of her father,
