Frida, page 8
CHAPTER 5
Prepa
THE IMAGE IN THE MIRROR WAS DECEIVING. IT SHOWED A SLENDER BUT shapely young girl with thick, black, curly hair, evenly cut bangs, and heavy eyebrows so elongated toward the bridge of her nose that they almost touched, giving her a somber, severe look. Frida frowned, forcing her brows into one straight line above her dark eyes. She looked like the kind of girl who would study hard, satisfy her teachers, make her parents proud—the kind of girl whose exemplary conduct prompted comments like “Oh, Señora Kahlo, you must be so pleased.” Frida knew how to give that impression. She knew how to make adults say, “What a perfect little lady. If only her younger sister were more, well, more like her!”
She didn’t wear a uniform—none was required at her new school—but her plain white blouse, tailored sweater, and dark blue pleated skirt reminded you of the outfits girls wear to public school nowadays. You know, those silly navy jumpers and cardigans. On her legs she wore thick black stockings. Her shoes were those sensible boots that keep your feet dry and are easy to walk in and don’t give you blisters. The right one was stuffed with socks and rags that kept it from wobbling. On her head she wore a black straw hat with a wide brim and white ribbons that circled the crown and dangled behind. “The perfect little lady!”
Frida studied her reflection in the mirror. She pursed her lips to give herself a decisive look. She crossed her arms. She pulled herself up to her full height—a little over five feet two—and glowered at the other Frida, the one in the mirror. She took off her hat then put it on again, arranging the ribbons so that they fell exactly down the middle of her back. She took a hand mirror and checked the rear view. She wet her bangs with saliva and ran her index finger across her forehead to make sure they were perfectly even. Then she opened her underwear drawer. From among the bloomers she pulled out a tube of lipstick she kept hidden and applied a bit of color to her lips. Next, with her finger, she touched the stick lightly and daubed her cheeks. Just a smidgen. Not so Mami would notice. Just a dab. Again she studied her reflection, turning one way and then the other to see herself from different angles. No. The effect was all wrong. She wiped off the color, pulled out a new tube, and tried again with another shade. She struck a majestic pose—chin high, shoulders back, feet in fourth position—like a Degas ballerina. Frida loved to pose. She was always looking in the mirror and posing. That’s why, when she became a painter, she did so many self-portraits. She adored looking at herself in the mirror. She was fascinated with herself.
I don’t mean it as a criticism. I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not reproaching Frida. I’m just saying that …
I don’t think she saw me. I think she forgot that I was there.
I snickered. “You look like an ape-woman!”
She wheeled around as though I had shot a rubber band at her. Ping!
I brought my hands up under my armpits and scratched my sides. “Ape-woman!” I grunted. “Ape-woman! Ape-woman!”
Frida stuck out her tongue, then burst into laughter.
“What’s the matter, Frida? Don’t you think you look like an ape-woman? Well, you do.”
A comb flew out of her hand, but I ducked. She made a face, stretching her lips into a grotesque apelike smile with her fingers. “Ugh! Ugh! Waaaa!” she growled at the mirror. “Me, ape! Me, ape!”
I was sitting on the bed, my feet pulled up under me, watching my sister get ready for her first day at the Preparatoria.
“I look like a real bore!”
“No, you don’t, Frida,” I said. “You look cute.”
“Cute! I don’t want to look cute. Puppies look cute. I’d rather be an ape-woman!” Frida stuck out her bust and began to strut. “Carmen Frida Kahlo, sexpot extraordinaire of the National Preparatory School!”
I laughed. I didn’t want to put her in a bad mood on the first day of school. Then, if things didn’t go right, she’d say I jinxed her. But I didn’t think it was such a good idea for Frida to play the siren at the Prepa. I was fourteen already, and I knew that kind of stuff could be dangerous.
“You’d better watch it, Frida! They’re all boys there. If you swing your butt around too much, you’ll get yourself into trouble. And you’d better watch that mouth of yours.”
Frida struck another pose in front of the mirror. She ran her tongue over those full, sensuous lips of hers and puckered. Then she opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue like she was French-kissing an invisible lover.
“Darling,” she panted. “Darling!” She opened her mouth again and began to move her lips as though in ecstasy. “Oh!” she moaned. “Oh, darling, don’t stop!” She squinted at herself in the mirror and ran her hands over her body. “Ah! Ahhh ahhhh ohhhh ahhh!” Then she got up close to the glass and pretended to lick.
I was laughing so hard I had to cross my legs to keep from peeing. “What are you doing, Frida?”
“I’m watching my mouth, you ninny! Didn’t you just say, ‘You’d better watch that mouth of yours’? Well, I’m just following directions, like a, you know, like a well-bred thirteen-year-old.” She struck a dignified pose. “As behooves a well-bred thirteen-year-old,” she corrected herself. “I’m just showing how obedient I am.”
Frida bowed her head, pretending to be submissive. She was good at pretending to be a sweet, docile little thing. That’s how she got her own way. Or else she’d play the feisty rebel. Whatever worked with the person in question. Depending.
She took a running leap and landed cross-legged on the bed. She began to bounce in a sitting position. “Frida is a good girl!” she chanted in a kindergarten singsong. “Frida is a good girl!”
“You’re not thirteen, you liar. You’re fifteen.”
“I’m thirteen! You want to make an old lady out of me, you little bitch!”
“Come on, Frida! I know how old you are. I’m your sister, for God’s sake! I’m fourteen, and you’re eleven months older than I am.”
“Not for God’s sake, for Papá’s sake. He’s the one who gave Mami a good screw, and then you popped out. Or did you think you were a child of the Immaculate Conception, like the Baby Jesus? Anyway, what difference does it make if I take off two years? I lost two years of school when I was sick with polio.”
“You only lost one year!”
“Well, who cares? I’ll still be one of the youngest at the Preparatoria. Or, if not one of the youngest, one of the only girls.”
“That’s right, Frida. You’ll be very special.” That’s what she wanted to hear, that she’d be exceptional, extraordinary. The last enchilada in the pot. The last drop of water in the desert. She was a phenomenon of sorts, but she had to keep hearing it.
“Damn right, I’ll be very special. They’d better watch their staid old asses!”
Actually, I knew Frida was nervous. I was nervous, too, even though I wasn’t the one who was going. I could feel little bees buzzing around in my stomach. Not wide-winged butterflies, just frenzied little bees. The National Preparatory was a huge school, and she would be one of only a handful of girls. Not only that, she’d have to take the streetcar into the city every day by herself. She was used to trekking around Coyoacán with me or Conchita or Papá, but this was different. Now she would be in unknown territory and on her own. Just thinking about it made me jittery.
The National Preparatory School—the Preparatoria—was not only the best secondary school in Mexico, but a symbol of a sort of—how can I put it?—a sort of sock-it-to-’em spirit that everybody had after the Revolution. You have to understand how important the Prepa was, what it represented, in order to see what it meant that Frida, our own Frida, my sister Frida, had been accepted as a student.
The Prepa had been a Jesuit colegio, a kind of prep school for rich boys who studied Latin, French, theology, that stuff. When Juárez became president, he took a machete to the European tradition, and the Prepa became a high-powered secondary school with courses like a university’s. The idea was to prepare the best kids, la crema de la crema as they say, to run the country. Only things got messed up when Díaz came into power, because the científicos took over and made the Prepa into a European-style lyceum. After the Revolution, José Vasconcelos, the minister of education, turned the Prepa into the finest high school in the country. It became a magnet, attracting the best teachers and the most promising young people in Mexico. The students were all glassy-eyed with their own importance. It was up to them to create a brand-new nation! And Frida was going to become part of that select group. Tra-la! The next Isabel la Católica! The next Marie Curie! We all knew that Frida was headed for greatness. Nobody doubted it. Especially not Frida.
Papá had the Prepa in mind for Frida from the beginning. She was smart, smart enough to be a doctor. She was always picking up rocks and leaves and things. Not me. Rocks are dirty. I’d rather gather flowers. Anyhow, Papá was a kind of amateur artist. Sometimes, during our walks, he’d sketch or paint in watercolor, and Frida would poke around the riverbank. She’d snatch up plants or animals to bring home to dissect. Papá had bought her a microscope, and she was always looking at little pieces of fly wing or dandelion fuzz. Did she really find that stuff so fascinating, I wonder, or did she just like the way Papá fawned over her when she brought him the little slides she had prepared? “A mind such as Frida’s,” he would say, “ought not to be wasted.” Only he said “vasted.”
Mami wasn’t convinced. She thought that ever since Frida got polio, Papá was raising her like a boy. And now he wanted to send her to a boys’ school to study a man’s profession. The Prepa had just opened its doors to girls, but hardly any attended. Decent girls from nice families didn’t need the kind of education the Preparatoria offered, as far as Mami was concerned. I guess she thought that Frida was already a handful—high-strung, overactive, and big-mouthed—and in the company of a bunch of boys (even if they were from the best families), she would only become more of a roughneck than ever.
Papá rarely put his foot down, but this time he did. His own university career had been cut short, and he had no son to fulfill his thwarted ambitions. His economic situation was worse than ever and money was unbelievably tight, but sending Frida to work was out of the question. She would go to the Preparatoria and then to the university, and she would become a doctor.
Mami never expected her to pass the entrance exams, but she did, and Papá felt vindicated. He rocked back on his heels and started to crow. “I told you so! Frida is as schmart as any boy!”
“RRRRight, Herr Kahlo,” Frida teased. “I ahm schmart, und I vill show tsem all!”
The Preparatoria was a grand-looking structure located near the Zócalo—the main square—called the Plaza de la Constitución. You’ve seen it, haven’t you? The cathedral, National Palace, and government buildings are all nearby. The Cathedral of the Virgin was the grand old lady of the neighborhood. She sat solidly on one side of the Zócalo like a fat, elderly matron, tattered but gaudy, waiting for countless grandchildren to pay their respects. The avenues fan out from the Zócalo to the far sections of the city, and smaller streets crisscross to form a kind of crude gridiron. Then, like now, little stores were tucked into every available space—food stores, dress shops, restaurants, bookstores, furniture stores, cleaners, tortillerías, pharmacies, sweet-smelling perfumerías, and mechanics’ workshops stinking of grease.
Frida loved the freedom going to the Prepa allowed her. In those days a young girl almost never went out unaccompanied, but Frida wandered around like a boy. She made the trip alone on buses and streetcars, sitting next to peasants in serapes and matrons going shopping. The streetcar was a fairly democratic mode of transportation. Sometimes I would go downtown with her, but I didn’t care for the commotion. Throngs of people filled the plaza and streets at almost all hours. Men wearing suits and carrying briefcases brushed past rustics in baggy white pants and ponchos. Organ grinders cranked out tunes. Street vendors sold toys, decorative papier-mâché parrots, chewing gum, postcards, ices, succulent chunks of spicy meat called carnitas, and statues of the Virgin. Sometimes a peasant riding a horse darted in front of an automobile. My stomach stampeded every time we had to cross the street. But Frida was fascinated by the bustle of the city. She loved to hang around the newsboys who roamed the plaza. She picked up their jargon and even mimicked their swagger. From them she learned a bunch of colorful swear words, like her mouth wasn’t dirty enough already.
Frida was one of only thirty-five girls in a school of about two thousand students. On the first day of classes, she wrote her name on the roster in the perfect penmanship she had learned in elementary school from Miss Caballero: Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón. In those days she still spelled her name the German way.
“I was doing my best to make a good impression,” she told me. “But the minute I met the girls’ prefect, I knew I was going to wind up pissing on her petunias. An old biddy with a rod up her ass. Her name is Dolores Angeles Castillo. She took us up to the top-floor arcade overlooking the largest patio and started giving us orders, probably so we’d get the idea from the start that she was the chief mobster, kind of the madrina of the pack. I mean, she looked like she’d have you mowed down if you didn’t jump when she opened her mouth. She wouldn’t do it herself. She’d just nod her head at one of her goons, and he’d pull out his weapons and bam bam bam! You’re dead!”
“This is where you are supposed to be when you are not in class,” Miss Castillo told the girls. “During recess and during your free periods.”
“I hated her!” Frida said. “I looked around for someone with a conspirator’s face, someone who might be willing to help me take her on.”
But her classmates must have been too intimidated to make eye contact. One was a bossy-looking girl with a long, ratlike nose, who reminded Frida of Estela. She was tall, sinewy, and dark, and she stood up straight, clutching her book bag in front of her, obviously impressed by her own height. Another, a prissy little thing with a flouncy blouse and a full skirt, reminded Frida of Inés. She was fair-skinned, with jet-black hair tied back in a knot and a cool, condescending look.
It must have been like tumbling into a ravine, scraping against juts of memory that cut. It had been a long time since her schoolmates had teased her about her withered leg and about not being “really Mexican,” but now the chants were grating in her head—¡Frida, Frida! ¡Frida, Frida!
“I shot that ratlike girl a look that said Don’t mess with me!” Frida said. “But she was too busy licking ass to notice.”
“You are to be up here at all times, except when you are in your classrooms,” concluded Miss Castillo. “Is that understood?” It was not a question.
“Yes, ma’am,” said the rodent-girl and the one who was dressed for First Communion.
“Suck-up,” Frida whispered under her breath. Ha! That’s my Frida! Putting her best foot forward.
“Excuse me, Señorita Kahlo,” said Miss Castillo. “Did you say something, my dear?”
“No, nothing,” she mumbled dutifully.
“But I had already decided not to hang around with those mealy-brained, brown-nosed nitwits,” she told me. They were too cursi—showy, affected, snobby, and vulgar. She would find her own friends, perhaps among the boys. Or she would go it alone.
The Preparatoria was a beehive. On one bench, boys reviewed French verbs—je parle, tu parles—on another, boys struggled with the intricacies of the Quiché language. In an arcaded patio, twenty or thirty students reached to the sky, then touched their toes as a drill master yelled Arriba … dos … tres … cuatro! Abajo … dos … tres … cuatro! Everywhere, impassioned student orators trumpeted causes, accosting passersby like vendors hawking their wares. Buy my brand of political reform! Abandon Western civilization and embrace your own heritage! No! Embrace Western civilization but tell the gringos to stay the hell out of Mexico! No! Try a little revolutionary reform! No! The Revolution was a flop! The Revolution was a triumph! The Revolution never happened! Free love for sale! No! Let’s get back to Catholic morality! ¡Viva la Raza Cósmica! The Raza Cósmica was the brainchild of Vasconcelos, who was pushing the idea that in Latin America all the races of the world would mingle to form the “fifth” or “cosmic” race, which would bring peace and prosperity. The progressives were convinced that Vasconcelos was a genius. The conservatives were convinced he was full of shit.
The Preparatoria was full of the sons of illustrious men, adolescents who knew that someday they, too, would be famous. Every day Frida came home with some fabulous story about people you read about in the newspapers. She knew Salvador Azuela, whose father had written the most important novel of the Mexican Revolution. She hung around with Salvador Novo and Carlos Pellicer, who would become celebrated poets, and with Xavier Villaurrutia, who would revolutionize Mexican theater. Even then, they were dizzy with their own importance.
“Carlitos wrote this silva just for me!” Frida told me. “Tomorrow we’re going to do a reading of Sal’s new one-act!” On and on. She never asked me how I had spent my day. She was so smug, so self-absorbed. They all were. They were always in a kind of … a kind of … orgasmic delirium. It was as if every time they had a new idea, a firecracker was supposed to burst in the sky, ignited by the heat of their brilliance. They were always arguing with one another, trying to show the others up. They faced off with their teachers too. They were busy, so busy, reinventing the country. They experimented with new literary forms and new political ideas. They called protests. They set off bombs. They defaced walls. They played pranks. You have to realize that Mexico was in the throes of rebirth, and the students were caught up in their own roles in the transformation. They were drunk with pride.
It wasn’t long before Frida had found her niche. At first she would come home and tell me everything that had gone on that day. But then she started staying late for meetings or going to cafés with her friends. She didn’t have time for me anymore. She didn’t have time for any of us.
