Frida, page 24
Diego is at work on the Stock Exchange mural, so I have plenty of time to roam the streets and explore. I love to take the cable cars up and down the hills. Some streets are so steep that you feel as though you’re walking up a wall, as though if you turn around and look down, you’ll drop like a glass ornament and shatter into a million pieces. When the trolley takes off, I hold my breath and force myself to keep my eyes open. At first, I was afraid, because I would remember my accident years ago, but now I find it exhilarating, like a roller-coaster ride. Another thing I love to do is wander around the Chinese section. The Chinese children are so lovely, all decked out in colorful outfits—some purple, some orange, some pink, some red—like candied ices. I would like to eat them up!
When I walk down the street, everyone stops and looks at me because of my beautiful Tehuana skirts. No one here has seen anything like them. Complete strangers come up and talk to me, and I answer them in English. I’m getting more and more fluent! You wouldn’t believe it if you could see how well your little sister prattles gringo. Here are my favorite words: dick, shit, pussy, ass, and my all-time favorite, fuck. Repeat them a few times every day, darling, so that we’ll be able to speak gringo together when I get back. With Diego’s friends I don’t get that much practice because everyone wants to talk with him, even though he doesn’t even speak English. I just sort of stand there and smile.
I can’t do too much walking because my right foot has been bothering me again. I don’t know what’s the matter with it. It’s like a boat that wants to float off in its own direction. It turns outward, you see, and it’s such a strain to make it go where I want it to that sometimes I just give up. But not very often! And my sweetheart, I have the most wonderful news! I met a famous doctor here, Leo Eloesser, who is sure he will be able to help me. He’s a dear person. I’m going to do a portrait of him when I begin to paint again. He has looked at my back and tells me I have severe scoliosis. That means a crooked spine, darling. He also tells me I have a missing vertebral disk, which is terrible news, but the good thing is that they are very advanced here in medicine, and if Dr. Eloesser operates, I’m sure he’ll leave me as good as new. And then I’ll race Toñito from the pulquería to the park and back again!
Also, guess who else I met! Cristi, you’ll never believe it: Edward Weston, the great photographer, the one who was Tina’s lover for so long. I’ve always been curious about him. Tina talked about him so much. She once told me he was as sensitive as a rose petal, as passionate as a windstorm. [Look, here you can see that Frida drew delicate little flower petals and puffing clouds with fiery eyes!] I didn’t know what to expect, especially since he and Diego had both screwed Tina, but it turned out to be wonderful, darling, because between them, Weston and Diego generate an exquisite tension. Weston is so handsome, with the most sensuous eyes. He and I did nothing but flirt in the most brazen way, and Diego just ate it up. Weston took a picture of Diego and me. I can’t wait for you to see it.
Last month we went to New York, the capital of the world, the lunatic asylum of the universe, because Diego’s show at the Museum of Modern Art was opening. The Americans kissed his cheeks right and left—not the cheeks of his face, of course. He showed some of his paintings of Zapata, agrarian reform, all Marxist ideology stuff, and they just lapped it up. Imagine, these fancy hags in their long, brocade dresses with rods up their asses, ooing and ahing, all pretending to be friends of the suffering peasants. They like to champion the masses, you see, because it makes them feel less guilty about their poodles with diamond tiaras and their gold-trimmed Daimlers. American guilt. You see it everywhere. In the way they adore the lustiness of Mexican art, in the way they pretend they don’t notice that Diego and I aren’t white. “Oh, my dear, just look at the robustness of those figures! So earthy! So authentic! So sincere!” “And do look at Rivera’s little wife. Isn’t she perfect, with her darling little native costumes!” I didn’t talk to any of them, I just stayed close to Diego and let him patter away in French, oblivious to the fact that no one understands a word he’s saying.
These Americans have such awful taste. You should see what Mrs. Alice Bricker was wearing, the one who invited us to her penthouse the night after the opening. A perfectly wretched draped gown with ruffles at the shoulders and a huge bow behind, pale pink. She looked like a fifty-year-old schoolgirl. And her friend, Mrs. Fitch, in her layered pajamas that turned her into a walking version of the Chrysler Building!
You can imagine how exhausted I am, precious Kity, going to one party after the other. Everyone wants to meet us. We travel constantly and I see new things every day. Imagine, the Empire State Building, a monument to modernity! Diego loves it. I’d like to get married again, way up on the top floor! Now that we’re back in San Francisco, on top of everything there are important political rallies that we simply must go to, because the people worship Diego, they absolutely worship him.
Oh, darling Kity, why am I lying to you, my own sister? It’s not going wonderfully at all. Diego is gone for days at a time, and you can guess why, can’t you? He says he’s doing research for his new mural, but the only research he’s doing is between the legs of his new model, the glamorous, athletic, white-skinned Venus, Helen Wills. She’s a famous tennis champion, and Diego is making her an allegory of California in his painting. He follows her around everywhere. Supposedly, he has to see her in action to get a sense of the fluidity of her movements. He’s seen her in action, all right. I can just imagine what goes on at their practice sessions: “Take off your blouse, darling, and serve again! That’s right, now lift your arms, turn toward me. Now take off your panties and show me your lob!” You should see the nude he’s doing of her. Up there hovering on the ceiling like a winged forest nymph, like the moon goddess Artemis. What she really reminds me of is a skinned vulture.
A man like Diego has to have his distractions, I guess, but the thing is, I’m so lonely, my little Kity. If only you and Toñito and Isoldita were here with me. Diego is always surrounded by people—assistants, students, admirers, hangers-on. Everyone fawns on him, and nobody pays any attention to your poor little twin. I mean, of course they do—Diego introduced me to his entourage, and they’re always inviting me out—but only because I’m Mrs. Rivera, not because they really care about me. I have to be nice to them, especially to people like Al Bender, the famous art collector who not only got a visa for Diego, but also bought a lot of his paintings. People like that keep us alive. But really, they’re not interested in me. I’m just an accessory. Diego’s wife. Diego’s bootstrap. To tell you the truth, I don’t like gringos at all, with their faces like half-baked rolls and their complexions like oatmeal.
My dear Kity, how will I survive here? I know you won’t write back to me, but please save up all the news you can, so that when I get back, you can tell me everything, EVERYTHING, and we can relive those important moments I missed. Give Mami and Papi a big kiss from me, also my darling niece and nephew. To you I send all my love,
Frida
It’s true I never wrote back to her. I wasn’t that good at writing letters, and besides, I was busy with my children. On the one hand, I felt sorry for Frida, but on the other I thought, well, she’s finally getting a taste of what it’s like to be the other one. Yes, I admit it. I felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that, for once, she wasn’t the center of attention. I was going through a very bad period, living with my kids at Mami’s, with practically no social life.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want Frida to suffer. And the part about her foot bothering her, I didn’t like that part at all. But let’s face it, in spite of all of her complaining, Frida was living it up—going to parties, meeting exciting people, riding cable cars, visiting Chinatown, dashing off to New York. So what if everybody’s eyes weren’t on her? She was still having a good time. But then I started thinking about something else—someone else—Helen Wills.
I had never seen her, not even in pictures, but I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Firm and athletic, with hair like moonlight reflected in a quivering sea. White, but an outdoors type. Would her skin be the color of fine sand or the color of blond wood, smooth and varnished by lotions? I imagined her practicing her backhands and overheads, wearing nothing but her visor and her tennis shoes, raising her arms to exhibit luscious breasts, twisting to show the suppleness of her torso, Diego’s eyes caressing her as she shot up against the clear, blue California sky. Radiant smile. Sparkling eyes. Gleaming teeth, all straight, the way gringos’ teeth always are. And Diego, licking his lips, swallowing in delicious anticipation, while he made sketch after sketch. What about the detachment of the artist at work?
I hated her, not for what she had done to Frida, but for what she had done to me.
What had she done to me? It was all very confusing.
Frida didn’t write for a while after that. She had started painting again, since she had a lot of time on her hands and often couldn’t go out walking because of her foot. She did do a portrait of Eloesser, one of her worst, in my opinion. He looks like some sort of cheap doll, his head too big for his body and stuck onto his shoulders awkwardly, with rubber cement. She painted Eva Fredrick, a black woman with tight, high cheeks and a rounded body. Frida liked blacks. She said they were like Indians—beautiful, intelligent, rich in culture, and completely neglected by the upper class. My favorite painting from that period is the one she did of Luther Burbank, a man who did experiments with plants. She transformed him into a plant, with a sturdy stem, wide-reaching roots, and robust green leaves. And then there was a kind of wedding scene she did of herself and Diego, with a banner over it, like in the old-fashioned paintings you see in haciendas, where she refers to him as “my beloved husband Diego.” She was getting good at that role, you see. The role of worshipful wife, I mean. “My Diego this, my Diego that …” Look at this letter:
San Francisco, August 15, 1931
Dearest, darling Kity,
I have to make this short because I’m getting ready for a big exhibition. Mine! Can you believe it? In New York! So much has happened since I last wrote. Summer here is delightful, although I haven’t been able to do as much hiking around the hills as I would have liked because my foot has been giving me terrible problems. Your poor little twin has such miserable luck with her extremities. How I wish I could be beautiful and healthy like you! Diego and I have both been working like mad, especially me, because I have to have everything ready for my show in a week. It’s all very exciting. Here in San Francisco everybody loves my paintings, everybody wants one! I can hardly keep up with the requests because we simply have to leave time for our social activities. I’ve gotten so much better at gringo parties, darling, even though I really hate them because Americans are such bores. They all have personalities like boiled white rice, speaking of which, no one here knows how to cook. All they eat is bloody red meat that makes you want to throw up just to look at it.
Last week we went to a dinner party at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Pattison, very important art patrons who have bought three of Diego’s paintings and may acquire another. She was wearing a pencil-thin silk sheath that was about three sizes too small, with a flowing organdy robe over it that she apparently thought gave her a kind of ethereal look. Actually, it reminded me of somebody’s laundry flapping in the breeze. Well, they droned on about workers’ rights and other stuff they know nothing about. I was bored to tears, just sitting there and sipping my wine, so finally I said, in a very earnest tone: “You know, there was a man who had an extremely serious problem.”
Everyone stopped talking and looked at me, expecting me to make some pronouncement on the plight of the unemployed.
“Yes,” I said, “a very serious problem.”
Every single eye was on me. The corners of Diego’s mouth were twitching. I knew he was struggling not to laugh.
“So he went into a pharmacy and he said to the lady at the counter, ‘I have this problem and I need to talk to the chemist.’
“‘I am the chemist,’ the woman said.
“‘Well, it’s very personal,’ he said. ‘I’d like to speak with a man chemist.’
“‘I’m the only chemist here,’ she said. ‘But you can tell me anything. I am a graduate chemist and completely professional. I own this business with my sister.’
“‘Well,’ said the man, ‘the problem is, I have a permanent erection.’
“‘A permanent erection. Hmm, I see,’ said the lady chemist.”
You have to imagine this, Cristi. Everybody was looking at me and giggling. They’d all been drinking for hours, and they were already more than halfway to the land of Bacchus. Diego was chuckling out loud in spite of himself.
“‘Can you give me anything for it?’ he asked.
“‘Well,’ answered the chemist, ‘let me consult with my sister.’”
Here I left a pause, Cristi, just to create a sense of expectation. Then I went on:
“After she had been gone quite a while, the lady chemist came back and said: ‘Yes, I’ve consulted with my sister, and we can give you two thirds of the business, plus thirty percent of the profits!’”
Everybody just roared, Kity. You should have seen them! After that, they all started telling dirty jokes, even the staid Mrs. Pattison, with her face like porridge. I told one after the other, and Diego sat there beaming. When we got home that night, instead of chewing me out for shocking his refined, high-paying benefactors, he threw his arms around me and said I was the best thing that had ever happened to him. I love him so much, Kity, more than life itself. You just can’t image how it thrills me to make him happy. From that experience, I learned that it’s all in the timing. You can have them eating out of your hand if you just wait until they’ve got enough alcohol in their gut before you bring on the filth. Ever since then, the parties have been more fun. And it helps, too, that Diego is done with his mural and is more relaxed, with more time to spend with me. Maybe I’ll get through this Calvary after all, dearest Kity.
I miss you all so much, you can’t even imagine. Please remember your little twin in your prayers. I love you all,
Frida
It wasn’t true, of course. She wasn’t deluged with requests for paintings. She sold hardly any in San Francisco, and her show in New York was a complete disaster. Diego told me. I never told her I knew the truth, though. Never. After all, I loved her. I had to protect her.
Things get a little blurry at this point. Frida and Diego went to Detroit at the end of 1931, I think, or maybe it was in 1932. Diego had got a huge commission from this important American businessman. Ford was his name, you know, the one who makes cars. Not Henry Ford. Edsel Ford. What a funny-sounding name. Diego once bought Frida a car, and he bought me one just like hers. Ford wanted Diego to do some murals celebrating the car manufacturing business. That was right up Diego’s alley, because he was going to be able to show men at work, men with grimy faces and flexed muscles, the whole industrial thing, the masses, the proletariat, the nobility of sweat. Viva Marx! Viva Zapata! Diego loved machines, machinery, anything modern, anything that had to do with progress. What kind of a name is Edsel?
Well, they arrived in Detroit, and first off, they went to the Wardell, a hotel where you can live full-time with maid and laundry service and everything, but you can also have a kitchen and cook your own dinner. Frida hated American food. She insisted on cooking Mexican meals because she said the gringos made everything taste like wet plaster. They moved into this very classy hotel with all their stuff, Diego’s colors, Frida’s Tehuana dresses, Diego’s oceansized boots, Frida’s medicine cabinet, Diego’s booze.
“You know what makes it such a good hotel?” Bill Regginer told them. He was a guy who raised money for the Detroit Art Institute.
“What?” said Diego.
“They don’t take Jews.” He thought that was funny. Regginer did, I mean. He thought he was letting them in on some kind of inside joke.
But Frida felt like she’d caught an ice pick in the throat. “It never stops haunting you,” she told me later. “You can never get away from it.” The curse of Guillermo Kahlo, that’s what I call it.
So you know what Diego did? He went to the manager and said: “I hear you don’t take Jews at this place.” He spoke in French. Frida had to translate for him.
“That’s right,” said the guy. “After all, this is one of the best addresses in Detroit. We have standards to maintain.”
“Well, Carmen and I will be moving out, then, because we’re both Jewish.” He had taken to calling Frida “Carmen,” because Nazism was on the rise and it wasn’t good to have a German name. The guy’s jaw must have dropped two feet under the floor. Diego was the most important artist in the world, and it was prestigious for the hotel to have him there.
“That can’t be …” stammered the manager.
“Well, it is!” Diego laughed. “We’ll go up and start packing right away, unless you change your policy!”
“The thing is, it’s not really a policy—it’s just that …” Diego had the guy in corner and was enjoying watching him squirm.
“I mean, it’s not my policy … I’ll have to check with—check with the, uh, I mean, there’s a board—”
“Go ahead and check, but unless you’ve changed your policy by the end of the day, we’ll be gone by tomorrow.”
Well, the Depression was still on, and they needed the business that a name like Diego Rivera could bring in. The upshot is that they not only changed their policy, but also lowered the price of the suite from $185 to $100 a month. Diego considered it a triumph over bigotry.
Not long after that, they went to a dinner party at Edsel Ford’s house. “Full of bitches with satin sanitary napkins and their noses pointing at the moon” is how Frida described it. They all sat around talking about who knows what. Tennis, maybe. Helen Wills had just won the U.S. Women’s Singles Championship. Or maybe Chaplin’s latest film, or Gary Cooper’s. Frida would say things like “You saw City Lights? Well, shit!” And when the society ladies turned pale, she would say, “Oh, did I say something wrong? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say when something is fantastic? I guess I meant ‘Great’! My English isn’t that good yet.” Anyhow, they were at this party at Ford’s, and he was famous for hating Jews. Later, during the war, he rooted for the Germans. All of the sudden, there was a lull in the conversation, and Frida piped up and said, “Oh, Edsel, I hear you’re Jewish! Isn’t your mother a Jew from Brooklyn?” Well, you can imagine!
