Frida, page 26
In the four or five weeks that followed, Frida played the part of the adoring daughter. She had missed the mess. She hadn’t had to deal with the havoc caused by Mami’s illness the way I had. She came in at the end of the story, but now she and Lucienne were Papá’s saviors, fixing him tea, taking him to the park, telling him stories about the wonderful parties they had been to in Detroit and New York. They were quite entertaining, really. Frida told about the time she kissed a taxi driver on the cheek for teaching her how to sing the first four lines of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which had just recently become the official hymn of the U.S. A song about a dog! “Oh say, can you see, by the dog’s ears …” Something like that. I didn’t understand it at all, and neither did she, but it was really funny when she sang it. “Well, why not have an anthem about a dog!” She laughed. “I find it very democratic! Hail to the dog’s ears!”
Beneath it all, Frida was agonizing. Her face had grown drawn and tight, as though she suffered from perpetual gas pains, and her eyes were wet and red. I could hear her crying when she was alone in her room. I didn’t doubt her sincerity. After all, it’s true that on top of Mami’s death, she had to deal with just having lost a baby. She was in distress, all right, but the point is, she wasn’t the only one.
“You know,” she said to me on the way to Mexico City, where she was to catch a train to the States, “it’s a good thing I brought Lucienne along, because you didn’t take very good care of me, Cristi.”
Every nerve in my body stood with musket poised, ready to attack.
“What do you mean, Frida? I had Inocencia prepare mole poblano especially for you.”
“I don’t need Inocencia to make me mole poblano. I make better mole than she does.”
“Look,” I said. “This has taken a lot out of me, Frida. I did my best.”
“I know, darling, I know. You’re exhausted, we all are. It doesn’t matter. With the children, you don’t really have time for me anymore.”
I let it go. I didn’t say a word. But then, she started up again.
“It’s just that—”
“It’s just that what?”
“Well, you know what I’ve been going through with Diego and my own health, Cristi. I have practically no energy at all. You could have at least—”
“You had energy enough to make a scene at the funeral,” I snapped.
“A scene, Cristi? A scene? I was expressing my profound grief.”
“We were all feeling profound grief, sister, but you were the only one to carry on like Catalina Trueba.”
“My God, you’re hurting me, Cristi.”
“You’re hurting her, Cristina,” piped in Lucienne, with her awful Swiss accent that always made her sound as though her throat was full of diseased phlegm.
Frida started to cry.
I felt terrible. Poor Frida. After all, she was sick. After all, she had just lost a baby. After all, she was tired from the trip. After all, Diego treated her like shit. I knew all that.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She reached over and held my hand. We were approaching the station.
The train for Texas pulled away slowly, a giant caterpillar of metal and glass. I waved good-bye, feeling horribly alone.
CHAPTER 17
Where the Road Divides
I REMEMBER THIS FROM SCHOOL: “A GOOD TREE CANNOT BRING FORTH evil fruit.” It’s from the Book of Matthew. I’ve thought about that idea a lot over the years, because I brought forth evil fruit. At least, that’s what you think. You and everybody else. But … No, you’re right. I brought forth evil fruit. Yes, of course I did, but how? That’s what I want to know. I was an innocent kid. I didn’t know what was going on. I wasn’t an evil tree. At least, I don’t think so. All right, I wasn’t a baby. I was twenty-six or twenty-seven. But the thing is, I didn’t have evil intentions. I didn’t even know what I was doing. Or maybe I did. Of course I did, but I didn’t have an inkling where it would lead. No idea. I had no idea that our lives would never be the same afterward, that it would ruin everything, that it would destroy Frida. Maybe that in itself is evil. I mean, the fact that I didn’t even consider there would be a price to pay. Because everything we do has consequences. Maybe I should have realized. Or maybe I’m lying.
Frida returned to the States. Everything was going wrong. The frescoes in Detroit caused a lot of fuss because they were communist. They were a celebration of the worker. A lot of Americans thought they were a kind of attack on the American way of doing things, on capitalism. Also, there were nudes, and Americans are prudes who think that bodies are disgusting. That’s what Frida told me. She said that Americans don’t even like to touch their own bodies. That’s why, when they bathe, they use washcloths. The priests and the Protestant ministers all attacked the work. They’re the worst prudes of all, and besides, Diego always represents the clergy as greedy pigs. People were threatening to destroy the murals, but a bunch of workers got together to protect them. That made Diego feel great. Again, he was the hero of the people. His name was in all the papers. He wasn’t just supporting a cause, he was the cause.
No, Frida didn’t write to me. She was mad at me. But when they got back, they talked about it all the time. He was the hero, the knight in armor, the crusader, the leading man, and she, Frida, was the leading lady. It’s not hard for me to imagine what went on, how they ate up all the attention.
They were done in Detroit, and they left for New York, where Diego was to paint murals at the RCA Building. He was such a celebrity that they sold tickets to watch him work. Can you believe it? Every day crowds gathered under his fat but thinning ass, thinning because he was on a diet, and gawked at him painting images of greedy businessmen exploiting downtrodden laborers, peasants, workers, teachers, mothers … all those people united in a Marxist paradise. This is all a little blurry because, as I just said, Frida wasn’t writing to me.
The deal is this: Diego was having the same problems in New York as in Detroit. A lot of people were indignant because he was taking the Rockefellers’ money to paint pictures showing that American capitalists were crooks and pigs. I mean, let’s face it, the Rockefellers were the princes of capitalism. And here Diego was, showing that the princes of capitalism were living off of everybody else’s sweat. People said Diego’s work was immoral and profane, not only because of the nudes but because communists don’t believe in God. That’s why Mami never liked Diego. Frida brought back newspaper articles saying that the murals were nothing more than communist propaganda—full of red flags and red shirts and red bandannas. I couldn’t read them, but she translated them into Spanish for me. Frida was very clever at languages, you know. Such a brilliant girl. So talented. “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” Mami used to say. And when she didn’t say it, she thought it. She’d forget that Frida was a lesbian and a tramp. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that if you hire a communist artist, you’re going to get a communist painting. Nelson Rockefeller might be a financial wizard, but he sounds like a bonehead to me. He’s the one who decided to use his family’s oil fortune—made, according to Diego, by abusing generations of poor slobs, hardworking bastards—in order to commission murals celebrating a New and Better Future. So, you tell me, if you hire a communist artist to depict a New and Better Future, what do you think he’s going to paint? Society ladies dressed up like the Chrysler Building with diamond-studded cigarette holders, or a workers’ heaven?
Diego just kept on painting, and Frida, well, I’m not sure what she did. She didn’t paint. Frida only painted when she had nothing else to do, but in New York, there was plenty to keep her busy. It was a big city. There were stores. She went shopping with Lucienne. There were theaters. She went to the movies with Lucienne. Diego didn’t go. Diego did nothing but work work work. Frida loved dime stores. She found all kinds of treasures in dime stores: dangling earrings with glass birds, a plastic comb painted with different-colored flowers, an ashtray with a mermaid seated on the edge, a hideous scarf—so hideous it was almost pretty—with brown and yellow stripes, a gadget to peel oranges without breaking the skin, a picture of Betty Boop, panties with the days of the week printed on them in English. She brought all that stuff back with her. She stole some of it, not because she didn’t have money, but because she thought it was fun to snitch things from dime stores. What difference did it make?, she said. After all, the owners were rich. She gave some of that junk to me. And she went to parties. She had all kinds of high-society friends—in spite of the fact she was a champion of the worker and said she hated high society. She loved being surrounded by smart, powerful people who groveled to her because she was the wife of the great Diego Rivera. She made fun of them, but she loved being with them. She loved how important they made her feel. She bought fancy materials to make stunning dresses to go to their parties. (She had given up Tehuana costumes for the moment.) And she met other artists—painters, sculptors, photographers. What did they do when they got together? What did they talk about? I don’t know. I guess they played at being superior to everybody else. And they played cadavre exquis. Do you know that game? Frida taught me. You fold a paper in sections, like this, and the first person draws the top of a body in the first section, then folds it back so the next person can’t see it. Then the next person draws the trunk of the body in the middle section, and the next person draws the bottom of the figure. At the end they unfold the paper to see what they have. Lucienne saved some of those pictures. They’re a riot, because Frida always drew something obscene—a head that looked like a giant penis with balls for jowls, breasts dripping with milk, a woman’s open legs with a man’s fingers in between. A riot. When she got back to Mexico, she and Diego and I would play.
Frida couldn’t play all the time, because things were going badly with the mural. The crowds were getting hostile, and Rockefeller put guards all over the place. Of course, Diego had to go and make things worse. He was so used to everyone fawning all over him that he probably thought he could get away with anything. Rockefeller kissed his ass even when priests and politicians said that Diego was making a mockery of his generosity. Diego probably said to himself, “Hell, I’ve got the support of the masses, I’ve got the support of the bigwigs. I can do whatever I damn please.” Anyhow, he painted a portrait of Lenin right in the middle of the mural.
That was too much, even for Don Nelson. He told Diego to change it, but Diego wouldn’t. So what do you think Rockefeller did? He fired him! Just like that! He paid him what he owed him and kicked him out. Then he had the frescoes destroyed. I’m not the brainy one, but it seems pretty clear to me that in a capitalist country, the man with the money calls the shots. The guy who hires you can also fire you. I mean, Rockefeller was something of a dimwit—it took him a long time to catch on—but when he finally did, boom! The ax fell! Diego thought he was above all that because he was the great Diego Rivera, Jesus Christ on roller skates, but you can push a person too far, and he pushed Rockefeller too far.
Maybe it wasn’t all that terrible, because it certainly got Diego in the news. There was a huge public outcry, and all the big shots in the art world came running to help poor, abused Rivera. Here he was, defending the rights of the workers to take over the world, and those miserly savages from Standard Oil were going to try to put him in his place. But he wasn’t going to take it. No. He was going to fight back. Not for himself, but for his beloved masses. He was the hero again. He was on his white horse again. He was the Cid, with his devoted Ximena by his side.
Maybe I’m not being fair. After all, imagine what it must be like to work day and night on something, and then some moron who doesn’t really understand it comes along and throws it out. Diego really believed in what he was doing, and to be treated like that by some witless American … Frida knocked herself out defending Diego. She went back to wearing Tehuana dresses and stood on corners handing out leaflets. She went to meetings. She granted interviews. She insulted Rockefeller in public, although, as soon as the fracas was over, she turned around and kissed his ass all over again. She wasn’t stupid, you know. She knew which side her bread was buttered on. The truth is, if you ask me, not that anybody ever did at the time, the truth is that Frida loved it. “The Americans are so stupid,” she told me once. “It is so easy to win them over. You just play the poor little Mexican, all delicate and vulnerable, so hurt because everyone has turned against your husband, and they eat it up. The next day an article comes out in the paper saying, ‘The lovely Mrs. Rivera, so young and fresh, so beholden to Mr. and Mrs. Rockefeller for their kindness in the past, is at a loss to explain the sudden change of heart of the great philanthropist, in whom she trusted.’ And tra-la! Everyone feels sorry for you and joins your cause.” That’s how she talked about the Americans. “They’re very moral, you know. Very decent. They always want to do the right thing, and they’re ridden with guilt about everything—their success, their wealth, their treatment of Mexico. Find the right string and it’s really easy to jerk them around.”
But after a while, she got tired of it all. Her right foot was getting worse. Sometimes she couldn’t even move it. Everybody was busy defending Diego, and she had to sit at home with her foot up, or else she’d soak in the bathtub, because the humidity was so bad she couldn’t bear it. She wanted to come home, but Diego was busy on some other project. I can’t remember which. And when he wasn’t painting, he was screwing some model, or student, or hanger-on. So he was busy and she was lonely. I think it was around then that she painted a picture called My Dress Hangs There. It shows New York, the rich part and the poor part, and right in the middle of all the skyscrapers hangs one of Frida’s Tehuana dresses. It means, she explained to me, that even though her dress was hanging in that big American city, she wasn’t there, not really. She wrote letters to her friend Isabel Campos, asking for news and making fun of the American women who tried to imitate her by wearing Tehuana outfits but looked absolutely ridiculous in them with their blond curls and big, gawky frames. Isabel showed me the letters. Not then, though. Years later. But Frida didn’t write to me. For months I had no news.
And then they were back. Diego finished whatever he was working on, and they took a boat to Havana, then to Mexico.
Yes, I was glad to see her. I missed my sister. I missed her terribly. We were like the petals on a flower. Pull one off and the flower is ruined. But … How can I explain it? Things were strained. We made up, of course. I was sorry about what I had said at Mami’s funeral and I told her so. She kissed me and said she understood that I was upset, so upset that I said things that I didn’t mean. “You just don’t understand how words can hurt, Cristi. You’re like a little girl. You say things without thinking, without considering the consequences.” And then she smiled at me as though I were a naughty baby who hadn’t understood a word she’d said.
They were both unbearable. Both she and Diego. She was pregnant again and he wasn’t one bit happy about it. He was already in a bad mood because of the awful experience he had had in the States and because he hadn’t wanted to come back to Mexico. In spite of everything, he was a star up there, and being a star in a rich country is not the same as being a star in a poor one. The Depression dragged on, but the elite partied more than ever; at least, that’s what it sounded like to me. In Mexico the government had commissioned some murals, but still, he was depressed. Besides, the diet he had been on in Detroit left him drained, listless, and bad-tempered. He was sick all the time. He had lost weight too fast, which affected his this, this that, his everything. His stomach hurt. His intestines were screwed up. His glands were a mess. Or maybe none of it was true and he just wanted to bellyache. The fact is that he complained all the time.
And then Frida made it worse by going and getting pregnant again. It was bad enough that she had made him come back to Mexico, he said, and that she did nothing but carry on about her foot, but now, on top of everything else, she had gone and gotten herself knocked up. Why did she do that when she knew he didn’t want a baby? And when she knew she couldn’t carry it to term? She just wanted attention, he said. She had already tried and failed twice before, and still, she insisted on putting herself and everyone else through the agony of another miscarriage. “It’s not fair,” he kept moaning. “What that woman is doing to me is just not fair.”
I felt sorry for him. He was such an infant, he couldn’t take care of himself. And now, Frida was all wrapped up in her womb once again. She had no time or energy left for her husband.
For weeks Diego wouldn’t work. He just couldn’t bring himself to pick up a brush. He sat around sulking, or else he flew into a rage for no reason at all. He’d throw things—paints, dishes, boots, Antonio’s wooden toys. Once he threw a birdcage against the wall with the parakeet still in it. It wasn’t his fault, though. He was miserable, and Frida irritated him with her constant groaning about her foot and her morning sickness.
Diego had a couple of big government projects he couldn’t get started on.
“Come on,” I said to him. “At least do something. Try a small painting or two just to get back into the swing of it. Even if you’re not ready to tackle the Medical School mural, at least get out your easel.” He didn’t answer. “I’ll pose for you!” I whispered, trying to sound enticing.
“I don’t know how to paint anymore,” he said. “I’ve never known how to paint. Everything I’ve ever done has been garbage.”
I just laughed.
