Yvette - Woman of Color

For River and Oak
Love, Mommy

Chapter One
Tonya with a La

Chapter Two
Color Matters

Chapter Three
La Prdida

Chapter Four
The V Word

Chapter Five
Baldy Bean

Chapter Six
Birthing a Body, Growing a Woman

There are no photos of me from the summer I was born. I was dry and scaled. Brown and bald. Seven pounds and six ounces of unattractive bliss, caused by very little amniotic fluid, the bad luck of a twenty-three-year-old carrying her fourth child in the throes of an abusive marriage. I shed like a snake for weeks. My mother would touch me, and the dry outer shell that consumed my first few months of life would flake off. My mother says my due date was July 1, 1989. Then the fourth. Eventually, they induced on the fifteenth at Downstate Hospital in Brooklyn. All of my brothers and my sister have that dusty, pale hospital photo that plagued the eighties: pink bow. Blue bow. Striped Hospital blanket. Furrowed brow and cone-shaped head. Each of them, except me. While my mother thinks I was beautiful, the lack of photographic evidence mixed with the description of me as a newborn leaves little to help me imagine such. It is no surprise that I grew up questioning how we come to define beauty.

At that point, my dad should have been off drugs. My baby photos show my father with a wide smile, often sporting a drink in his hand. My mother: her large and beautiful forehead, her head of thick jet-black hair, and her eyes always communicating something more than what the lens intended to capture. My earliest memories are of her smiling and smelling faintly of Wind Song or Chanel No. 5. My dads smile reached from ear to ear, his deep dark skin smoothing at the corners. Those first few years of my childhood, when we lived on Saint Marks Avenue in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, were full of typical tropes of the eighties: plastic-covered white sofas, merlot turtlenecks, fur-trimmed leather coats. And babies with babies.

Today, I am not too far off this path. I had my daughter, River, when I was twenty-one, and then spent the next few years trying for my son, Oak. In all, my twenties have been dedicated to raising babies; this, together with my past, has shaped a version of beauty that is in constant evolution. I dont mean beauty as the physical or visual realm we often align it with; I mean a kind of beauty that exists in relation to, and because of, the ugly. The crack my father smoked. The beer he made me grab from the fridge, using me to sneak alcohol behind my mothers back that one summer in Silver Spring, Maryland. The same summer I jumped on his back, hitting him with my fists, in defense of my mother. The vitiligo that plagued me and filled my face with white fire at seven. The lupus that I assumed grew within my blood. The physical fights. The bullying. The births. The pain. The loss. The weight gain. The weight loss. The sight of my grandmother cold and still in her apartment when I was eighteen. But, also: beauty in the floral wallpaper she meticulously layered over and over again in her Classon Avenue apartment. The second kitchen she turned into a walk-in closet, filled with metallic suits, taupe and navy espadrilles, and mens blazers. Beauty in the window boxes full of flowers she sang to and tended each day. The Sundays when my mother sat me down on the hardwood floor, braided my hair, and sang me songs that comforted me throughout it all. The act of resistance in itin choosing to see beauty through the grit each day. Beauty as resistance. Beauty as survival.

I remember being so excited about that little dress. It was a Christmas gift along with the slippers.

My mom wasstill isbig on Christmas, so it is no surprise that she took us to whatever Santa she could find. This one was a Rent-A-Center Santa, and, of course, I wore a two-piece floral sweat suit. Back then my mom bought me a lot of outfits like this, which I would wear together or mix and match. I loved them tremendously.

River and me on an Impossible Polaroid, shot by Peter in Bushwick, Brooklyn. We found that Ergobaby baby carrier at a stoop sale, and I loved the worn-in feeling of it and the way River would look up at me and we would be able to interact and have conversations. It helped balance the baby and me; I was able to wear clogs and heels and still feel like I had a bit of style while carrying her.

* * *

After River was born, I attended college for writing and literature and started my blog, LaTonya Yvette (originally Old, New, and the Wee One Too), as a place to document that beauty within style and motherhood. And I was proud that my blog occupied a predominantly white space. At first, I told our story without truly sharing my story. River was tiny and adorable and half white, and we spent many of our afternoons running around the city. Sharing our adventures felt unique, but soon, the blog became an outlet to connect with other women like myself: young, stylish mothers. Before the blog, all the other mothers I knew seemed to have planned their pregnancies. They gave up knit skirts for yoga pants and on-demand breastfeedingand they had fifteen years on me.

I was playing the blogging game until a very real and public experience called me on my bullshit. I had announced my second pregnancy and begun to document it on the blog by standing under Manhattan street signs that matched the number of weeks along I was. And then I lost the baby. While the weight of this loss was so personally layered, adding a public dimension required that I open up and truly honor the experience of grief. I wrote a short and sweet post explaining the baby my then-husband, Peter, and I lost, then another when it looked like our world had been pieced back togetherwhen in reality, it hadnt. The supportive emails and comments that poured in stunned me. They cared for me during the day and when I couldnt sleep at night. They never really stopped. They helped me pull myself back together, but also required that I slowly lift the veil on the many nuanceswhether style- or motherhood-relatedthat in and of themselves compose womanhood. Even with the transparent online shift that occurred after losing my baby, the stories I share in this book barely revealed themselves on my blog.