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-
sumed, 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
