Frida, page 23
“What should I do, Cristi?” she kept asking me.
We both knew what she had to do, but I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.
“Talk it over with Diego,” I said. “After all, he’s the father.”
Did I really think that Diego was going to offer much advice, or was I just being cruel? It’s hard to figure out your own motives, you know. Pinedo certainly had been no help when Antonio was born. I had hoped that he would fall back in love with me after the birth because I had given him a son. A son! What every Mexican man wants! But instead of turning into the attentive, adoring father I had dreamed of for my little boy, he up and left. “What kind of woman poses nude for a reprobate like Diego Rivera while she’s pregnant?” he said. And then, again and again, the business about how did he even know the baby was his. Finally, he packed his bags and took off. Men don’t get very attached to their offspring, do they? They’re like iguanas or something. They fertilize your egg and then just forget about it. Look at my own papá. It’s true, he stuck around, but did he ever love us? I mean, aside from Frida, did he ever love one of his daughters?
Frida did try to talk to Diego about what to do about their baby, but he was too busy screwing his American assistant, Ione Robinson, to pay much attention. To tell you the truth, I don’t think Diego was ever very interested in Frida’s pregnancies. As he saw it, pregnancy was a woman’s thing, something like menstruation—nothing he should be particularly concerned about. Remember I told you about the son he had in Paris? After the little boy died, he made no bones about the fact that he had never wanted Angelina to have a child in the first place. And when Marievna’s daughter Marika was born, he wasn’t at all happy about it. As for the two children that Lupe Marín gave him, Lupita and Ruth, Frida paid more attention to them than their own father did. The truth is, Diego saw kids as a bother, and he wasn’t very kind to Frida about her pregnancies. Most men want their women to have babies. That’s the way they prove to themselves that they’re men. That doesn’t mean they take care of those babies, but at least they want them to be born. What Diego wanted was to be Frida’s baby himself, and he was afraid a real baby might get in the way. Frida used to spoil him, cook for him, take care of his clothes, coo over him, bring him lunch while he was working, watch him paint, put up with his love affairs. She did get jealous sometimes. She would scream and carry on, throw things, rip his clothes. But in the end, she put up with it. She pretended to laugh it off. “What do I care,” she would say, “as long as he comes back to his mamita.” She would call him her ranita—her little frog—her saporana—her toad-frog. She adored him, even when he made her miserable, and he was so selfish and conceited that he didn’t care if he hurt her. Or maybe he did it on purpose, just to prove he had power over her. The fact is that Diego wasn’t very interested in whether Frida had the baby or not, and so she turned to me.
The doctor didn’t perform the operation himself. He sent her to an abortionist, an old woman with gnarled hands and kind eyes who gave Frida a manzanilla spiked with something to relax her, and told me to hold her hand while she stuck a wire between her legs. Frida bled for a long time, and when it was over she sobbed into my bosom, but to tell you the truth, I think she was relieved.
Why do you ask that? I just told you she was dying to have a baby. You could tell by the way she looked for things to cuddle—little dogs, monkeys, dolls. She collected dolls. She dressed them and undressed them, she combed, bathed, and fed them, she put them to bed, she took them to the doll hospital when they were “sick,” you know, broken. But you’re right, there’s a big difference between a doll and a baby. A doll doesn’t make demands. A doll you can put down and go on vacation. A doll doesn’t become your rival for your husband’s attention.
God forgive me, I’ve never told anybody this before—you’re the one who brought it up—but in my heart, I believe that my sister never wanted a child any more than Diego did. In spite of how she carried on about her lost baby. In spite of the pictures she drew of uteruses with the babies erased from them. In spite of her tears. Frida was like Diego. She wanted to be the center of everything, and a baby reduces you to, well, a slave. When he wants to eat, you have to get up and feed him. When he pees, you have to change his diaper. He’s the star, not you. Frida couldn’t have taken that for very long. Because, let me tell you, like Diego, she wanted to be a baby herself. She wanted to be his baby, just as he wanted to be hers. They used to talk baby talk to each other. He used to call her Frisita chicuitita, mi niñita preciosa—itsy-bitsy Fwida, my pwecious wittle girl—and other stupid things like that. Not being able to have a baby turned her back into a victim, and a victim is always the center of attention. That’s what she wanted, for everyone to fuss over her and say pobrecita Fridita, poor little Frida. She loved it.
No, of course I wasn’t jealous. I was the one who had two babies, wasn’t I? I was the only one who gave them grandchildren, wasn’t I? I wasn’t jealous at all. I felt sorry for Frida, that’s all. Just like everybody else.
I think those first years with Diego were difficult for her. She was a strong-willed, self-centered girl, and now she had to play devoted wife to a man who was just as egocentric as she. She took to wearing Tehuana costumes all the time—long, colorful skirts and lacy blouses. I already told you it was the style in Mexico after the Revolution, but with Frida it got to be a fetish. She said it was to show her solidarity with the peasants, but there was more to it than that. Frida didn’t look anything like a peasant. Are you kidding? With her bright red nails, drop-dead makeup, and elaborate hairdos? Do you think peasant women have the time to braid their hair a zillion times with different-colored yarn? Frida used to spend hours in front of the mirror. She loved to look at herself! If the shade of polish wasn’t just right, she would do her nails over. If her ribbons weren’t right, she’d take down her hair and plait it again. And her skirts and her petticoats! They had to be ironed just so. She drove the maids crazy. No, it wasn’t solidarity with the Indians, or it wasn’t just that. Frida was cultivating her own look. She loved it when people turned around and stared at her outfits. How do I know? She was always talking about it. “Everyone loved my Tehuana dress at the American ambassador’s party!” “Everyone turned around and applauded when I walked into the Cabellos’ reception!”
She wasn’t fooling around with Tina Modotti and her crowd anymore. Tina had stopped talking to us, but she didn’t just cut us off. She renounced us and denounced us with cries of ¡Viva México! at some big Party bash. Well, not us, really, them. Frida and Diego. I mean, why would she denounce me? She wore a slinky dress in the colors of the Mexican flag for the occasion. Her picture was in the paper. What a fruitcake. A beautiful woman, really, but what a nut!
Well, you know that Tina had a flair for the dramatic. She’d been an actress in California, before she hooked up with Edward Weston and became a photographer. You’ve probably seen her pictures—the bedraggled, crushed roses that she said were the souls of workers destroyed by the capitalist system, the bare telephone wires that stretched out into nowhere. In her own way, she was as great an artist as Frida. At least that’s my opinion.
Come to think of it, it’s not surprising that Tina got so fired up over Diego’s expulsion, because at the time, she was living with Julio Antonio Mella, a hotshot Cuban communist. They killed him. He and Tina were just walking down the street when bam! somebody pumped a bunch of bullets into him. Tina tried to get away, but they grabbed her and accused her of being involved in the murder. They couldn’t pin anything on her, though.
Who is “they”? I don’t know. Government goons, I suppose. They, like when you say they predict rain for tomorrow. Where was I? Oh yeah, they let her go, but the case attracted a lot of attention and left a lot of people looking bad. I mean, how could anyone mistreat poor, beautiful Tina like that? Poor, beautiful Tina with her huge, tragic, dark eyes and her flapper’s bob. So, to make up for it, they offered her a job as official photographer of the National Museum of Mexico, but of course, she told them to go to hell. Very idealistic, Tina. Very naive too. Never knew when to shut her mouth, and that’s how she got herself arrested again. For being a terrorist. A terrorist! Imagine! She was in jail only a couple of weeks, but it destroyed her. They kicked her out of the country. It must have been awful for her because she loved Mexico. She went to Moscow to work for Stalin, I think. Stalin, one of Frida’s big heroes. Some people said Tina worked for Stalin’s secret police. Finally, she came back to Mexico in the early forties. She died here, supposedly of a heart attack, if you believe that.
That’s the story of our friend Tina. Our ex-friend Tina, I mean, because she turned her back on us when Diego got thrown out of the Party. It didn’t matter to Frida, though, because she didn’t need Tina Modotti any more. She and Diego were too busy hanging around rich Americans, spewing communist rhetoric while they ate caviar and Frida pretended to be an Indian.
Maybe I’m not being fair. After all, Diego had to take his commissions where they came, didn’t he? An artist depends on affluent people, and Diego used those spoiled gringos to get money to advance the cause of the workers. And by wearing peasant dresses, Frida was telling the fancy foreign ladies, “Look, I have to associate with you because I need your money, but don’t think I’m one of you. I haven’t abandoned my own people.” That’s how it was, I guess.
Diego was getting it from all sides. By this time, there weren’t many high-minded radicals left at the Prepa. The new crowd hated his murals, and a bunch of right-wing kids got together and trashed them. Diego was a survivor, and he managed to hang on by kissing the ass of Calles’s new minister of education. He grabbed some nice government commissions, and that made things worse with the communists. A comunista de salón, they called him, a salon communist, an armchair revolutionary. Even after they threw him out the Party, they kept on spitting at him. The government was cracking down on leftists. Some they murdered, some they threw into jail. Diego’s friends—Orozco and that crowd—were all hightailing it to California, and Diego looked around for a way to get out too.
It wasn’t hard to find one, because he was the star of the Mexican muralist movement, and all the American bigwigs were after him with offers. Even though he depicted people like John D. Rockefeller as twisted, blood-sucking monsters, they couldn’t wait to give him money to paint pictures on their buildings. It was funny, really. I guess they were so powerful, so rich, so smart, that they didn’t feel threatened by Diego’s murals showing auto workers waving banners with hammers and sickles. Or maybe it was their way of proving that they weren’t such bad guys, that they really did feel for the masses whose blood they sucked with miserable working conditions and pitiful salaries.
In November 1930, Frida and Diego took off for San Francisco. I remember helping Frida pack, folding her long ruffled skirts and her shawls, pretending to be thrilled for her and Diego. I didn’t know what I was going to do without her. We had never been apart—not for more than a few weeks or a month. “Oh, you’ll have such a wonderful time,” I kept saying. “You’ll meet so many fascinating people!” But I was dying. Pinedo had left me, and I had moved back into my parents’ house with my two children. Mami, her nose in the air and her rosary in her fingers, never stopped harping on my botched marriage. I felt like a dud, an ordinary girl who had attempted only ordinary things and had failed even at those. Papá looked right through me—the see-through woman, there but invisible. Was he angry with me or just not interested? Maty came to visit nearly every day, but she talked mostly to Mami, now her great ally. Adri came too, and so did some of my old friends, but in spite of the bustle of visitors, servants, and, of course, my own children, I felt lonely, indescribably lonely. I was used to having Frida by my side, to sharing her most secret thoughts. And I was worried about her because her health was delicate and, besides, Diego could get very mean. In the U.S., she would have no sister to run to.
It was the beginning of our new lives, our lives without each other. I was frightened for both of us, but especially for her. My darling sister, my twin. It was as though someone had torn out my fingernail, ripped it right from my flesh.
Part II
CHAPTER 15
Wonderlands
FRIDA HAD BEEN UP NORTH LESS THAN SIX WEEKS WHEN I RECEIVED HER first letter. Do you want to read it? Here it is. Look, she calls me Kity. It was her special name for me.
San Francisco, November 28, 1930
My darling Kity,
How you would suffer if you could see the way they treat your poor twin in this dreadful place, the City of the World. They’re such hypocrites, these San Franciscans! I feel like a performing monkey here. They’re always giving parties and luncheons for Diego, and I have to sit there and pretend I find their stupid conversations riveting. The other day we were at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Baker. He’s the president of a bank and is thinking of commissioning a painting by Diego. She was showing off her glittery new cigarette holder.
“Look how long it is, my dear!” she kept saying. “It was the longest one I could find. It has sixteen diamonds on it.”
“That’s not long,” I said. “My husband’s prick is longer than that!”
Mrs. Reginald Baker turned red as a chile and everyone else just stared as if they couldn’t believe their ears. Diego roared with laughter, but afterward he told me to be careful with these people, because we absolutely need them. He makes me mad. First he acts as though he’s thrilled with my comebacks, then he carries on about how I’m ruining everything. “Don’t you forget,” he tells me, “that we can’t go back to Mexico because the government will never forgive me for being a communist hero who fights for the people. They might even kill me, Frida. Maybe that’s what you want, so you can run off with that gringo lawyer who was flitting around you. Well, don’t count on it, bitch! He’s a faggot!”
I don’t know what’s come over him since we got here, but he’s more jealous than ever. He’s always accusing me of making eyes at some guy, and sometimes I don’t even know what guy he’s talking about. What I really think is that he doesn’t like it when I say something funny that attracts attention. He doesn’t like me to upstage him. He wants me to keep my place. Well, I’ll keep my place, all right. I’ll stay right by his side and play the adoring wife, because I have nowhere to go in this huge, horrible City of the World, although sometimes I feel like running out and jumping off one of those bridges that San Franciscans are so proud of.
Let me tell you, there are a lot of us Mexicans up here. Most are farm hands who pick oranges or onions. Everything grows here, Kity. You’d be in paradise, because there’s everything you like to eat. Of course, the avocados are not as good as our own, and the lemons are dry, not juicy and tart like the ones we get at home. Anyhow, most of the Mexicans who aren’t pickers are servants. The rich Americans treat them very badly, and the terrible thing is, deep down, they think all Mexicans are low. I’m sure they look down on us because we’re dark-skinned, even though they bow down to Diego because he’s a famous painter and a genius when it comes to fitting murals into odd-shaped spaces. He incorporates the architectural elements right into the design—but I suppose I’m getting rather technical for you, aren’t I, darling? Well, what I’m saying is, even though they’re nice to us on the surface, deep down, they disdain us.
I don’t know how they can reconcile treating their servants like shit and at the same time kiss up to Diego as though he’s Jesus Christ with a palette. After all, we’re all Mexicans, aren’t we? Do you understand what “reconcile” means, precious Kity? It means “bring together” or “make compatible.”
Diego is very busy. He is going to paint murals in the San Francisco Stock Exchange Luncheon Club and also at the California School of Fine Arts. We’re staying with Ralph Stackpole, a sculptor who has a big studio on Montgomery Street. There’s another couple here, Lucile and Arnold Blanch. He is a sculptor and she is a painter. I avoid talking to them about art, though, because I’m afraid I might forget myself and say something that makes them mad, and we might need these people someday.
Precious Kity, I am going to say good-bye now. I hope this letter was not too tedious for you. Please give my love to Mami and Papá, to Maty and Adri, and, of course, to my darling little Toño and Isolda. I miss you very much and I love you,
Frida
No, you’re absolutely wrong. I felt no satisfaction at all. Why should I have been happy that Diego was mistreating my sister?
Everyone was wining and dining Diego, taking him to parties and to picnics in the country. They even took him to a football game. Frida says American football is a ridiculous sport. Also, he gave lectures. There were a lot of Americans who believed in communism in those days because of the Depression, and when Diego talked about the role of the artist in bringing about social justice, people showed up in droves—intellectuals, artists, workers, all kinds of people. Frida went along, the silent, admiring bride, so dainty, so beautiful. She was playing her part.
She sent us postcards showing acres of orange trees, purple foothills, interminable bridges, graceful and dramatic. She sent back magnificent silks from Chinatown, which she had made into the most unusual Tehuana outfits. She sent me back these jade earrings, see? I always keep them in this box, with her letters. But was she happy? Just look at this letter.
San Francisco, February 1, 1931
My dearest Kity,
I hope this finds you all well. I am having a wonderful time, in spite of the fact that this place is very dreary. So many people are poor, not only the Mexican workers, but huge numbers of whites who stand in breadlines for hours just to get a few crumbs. In the meantime, the people on Telegraph Hill live in mansions and dine on caviar and quail’s eggs. But in spite of the horror, I find pleasure in my everyday existence.
