IT’S ALWAYS SEEMED TO ME THAT THE REASON FRIDA WAS SO DAMNED patriotic, so more-Mexican-than-thou, was because of those experiences we had in school. To Frida the Mexican sky was the purest, most exquisite in the universe—even though the air above Mexico City is usually the color of filthy socks or shit-tinged urine. But you couldn’t say that to her. No. Otherwise, she’d accuse you of having sold out to the Yankees. She’d accuse you of being a capitalist pawn or of sucking the cock of the European intellectual elite. She had a mouth as foul as a drunkard’s piss. But I don’t need to tell you that. You know that already. She’d mow you down just for saying that the sky gleamed less brightly in Mexico than in, say, California. She was like that, you see. Fanatical about everything. For Frida the Mexican sky was blazing liquid amber, a turquoise jewel, a mantle of crushed sapphires. Not just a mass of grimy air. Not just what it was. To Frida, nothing was ever what it really was. She lived in her own imaginary world. Of course, he found that charming, but to tell you the truth, she could overdo it. She could get on your nerves. But maybe it wasn’t her fault, because when you’re endlessly being teased, endlessly being called a Jew and a foreigner, it’s easy to turn into a zealot. On the other hand, she provoked people. Sometimes she was so blunt and confrontational that she brought out the worst in everyone around her.
Or maybe not. After all, who am I to try to explain things? You figure out what was going on in her head, for God’s sake. You’re the doctor!
All I’m saying is, well, I think you know what I’m talking about because you’re a foreigner yourself. You know what it’s like to feel like an outsider, although you can’t begin to compare what we went through with the situation that exists now. Anyway, you’re a respected person, a psychiatrist. We were just impressionable little girls, and for us, always being called aliens, Hebrews, immigrants—all that took its toll. On Frida, especially, because she was the aggressive one, the one who was always in the middle of the fray. That’s something else that he loved about her, her feistiness, although sometimes I think she played that role just to keep his attention. I mean, she was feisty all right, feisty by nature, but later on, that feistiness got to be part of her act. And he was an actor too. The revolutionary. Muralist for the masses. It was all part of his persona.
For her, showing she was as Mexican as anybody and more Mexican than most became an obsession. You know, Frida was born in 1907, on July 6, to be exact, but she always said she was born in 1910, the year the Mexican Revolution started. She wanted to be a true daughter of the new Mexico, down to the date of her birth.
Sometimes she would close her eyes and proclaim, all exalted, “I’m as Mexican as the eagle that spreads its wings of snow and ash and sails through the air, grazing the stratosphere with its powerful beak!”
“And dropping shit all over my murals!” he would answer. And we’d laugh and laugh.
Those long Indian dresses she wore, people said they were to hide her crippled leg or to disguise her limp, but that was only part of it. She wanted to make a point of her mexicanidad—her solidarity with the common people of Mexico—even though we had as much Indian blood flowing in our veins as the ocean has honey. No, that’s not really true. Mami’s father was an Indian from Morelos. The point is, Frida wanted to be identified with the revolutionary cause, especially since he was so important in the movement. And the other thing is, she liked to stand out in a crowd.
What do you mean I’m digressing again?
Ah, yes, I was telling you the other day about how Frida always protected me. Always. Even when we were little. I was telling you about the day we ran away from school.
When we realized how late it was, we took off toward home, praying that Mami hadn’t heard what had happened and gone totally berserk. Unfortunately, Miss Caballero had sent an attendant home with the news that we had escaped. Attendant—that’s the name we used so we didn’t have to call them servants, so we could pretend we were democratic and respected everybody, so we could convince ourselves we didn’t consider them just Indians who jumped and hopped at our bidding. This “attendant’s” name was Arturo. Miss Caballero always said he had the face of a calf that just had its throat slit.
On the road, Arturo ran into Conchita, who was on her way to pick us up.
When Mami heard we had escaped from that hell they called a kindergarten, instead of thinking things through and just waiting for us to come back, she sent Manuel, the houseboy, all the way to Papá’s studio in Mexico City to give him the news.
I can just imagine Manuel, so ancient and gnarled, bursting into Papá’s darkroom and announcing, “The children are missing!”
I can imagine Papá, with that half-crazed look of his, staring at Manuel and trying to force the information into his brain. I can conjure up the scene as if I had been there. Papá is looking at Manuel with dazed eyes, trying to assimilate what he’s saying.
“Señor! The little girls are missing! They left school, and no one knows where they are. Miss Caballero sent a messenger to the house. The señora is frantic!”
Papá is mute.
“Your daughters, Señor!”
“My daughters?” Guillermo Kahlo begins to process the message. Diamonds of sweat form on his brow.
You have to understand that in those times, a missing child could be a dead child. We grew up during the dictatorship of Victoriano Huerta, who came to power in 1913. Huerta’s men were known to snatch little ones off the playground in order to coerce or punish their families. Zapata sympathizers, like our parents, were ready targets. The Huertista big shots made a show of their respectability—after all, they had wrenched power from the rebels and returned order to society, hadn’t they?—but they had goons to do their dirty work, and these men knew no mercy. They would just as soon slice the throat of a cherubic three-year-old as that of a goat. Children were easy pawns in the power game.
I’m sure that when Papá finally assimilated Manuel’s message, he dropped whatever pictures he was developing and ran out the door, probably leaving chemicals all over the counter and forgetting to put on his hat.
What kind of a father was he? What does that have to do with the story? What I’m trying to explain to you is how good Frida was to me, so you’ll quit implying that I—that I did what I did because I resented her … or hated her. I know that’s what you’re getting at.
What difference does it make about Papá?
All right, I’ll tell you about Papá. Let me think a minute. He was a strange man. As a father, he was detached, forbidding even. But deep in his heart, he loved us, especially Frida. For him, Frida was everything, maybe because she was like him, brilliant, driven, crazy. For him, Frida was the last hard-boiled egg at the picnic, the last aspirin in the medicine cabinet, the last pitcher of punch in the icebox. Frida the imp. Frida the troublemaker. Frida was the one who went with him on his walks. They would examine flowers or collect stones together, organizing them by size and color. Sometimes I’d tag along too, but I always felt out of place, like a chicken in the wrong coop. Papá hoped that Frida would be a scientist someday, or maybe a doctor. He would sit her on his knee and stare into space looking unhinged and otherworldly, like a saint witnessing the Resurrection.
As for me, he thought I’d become what I became: nothing.
So, I’m sure the thought of Frida in danger zapped him like a bolt of lightning, leaving his poor brain completely scrambled.
In the meantime, Frida and I were cautiously approaching the house, which looked, from a distance, like a gigantic cake smothered with blue icing. The beams and window frames were cinnamon sticks and chocolate candies. It was a sprawling house in the old Spanish colonial style with narrow shuttered windows that opened to the street. Inside, interconnecting rooms enclosed a large patio, where terra-cotta pots held geraniums and flowering cacti. A few years before Frida was born, Papá had the house built and painted it a deep royal. From as far back as I can remember, everyone called it the Casa Azul.
My sister had put up a brave front on the way home, but I could see now that she was really frightened.
“Maybe we could sneak in and go to our room,” she whispered to me, “and pretend we were there all the time.”
“You think it would work?”
“Maybe.” She tried to sound convincing, but we both knew that Mami had probably torn up the house looking for us. In my mind, I could see trinkets crashing against walls, while Mami cursed the Apostles, Miss Caballero, and especially the lunk of a husband that had given her such wayward children.
“Let’s try to find Conchita first,” suggested Frida.
We slipped around the side of the house and into the kitchen. Conchita wasn’t there, but Inocencia, the cook, was down on her knees praying to the Virgin of Guadalupe at the small altar by the pantry: “Poor children … villains … assassins … Virgen Madre … bring them home …”
“This looks bad,” whispered Frida.
I started to whimper softly. Frida brought her index finger to her lips, signaling me to be quiet. “Chst! Shut up, you baby!” she hissed.
The cook continued to pray, tears rolling down her heavy brown cheeks.
Frida snuck up behind her, then touched her gently on the shoulder. “Inocencia!” she said softly.
Startled, the cook recoiled, then opened her eyes wide. “Fridita!”
Frida giggled, and I smiled hesitantly. Inocencia, still on her knees, hugged us and began to wail: “¡Oh, gracias a Dios! Thank God! Oh, Holy Virgin, thank you!” She dragged her ungainly body to a standing position, then poured us some juice and put tortillas on a plate.
“Where have you been?” she pretended to scold. “Your poor mami is crazy with worry. You have to go right now and tell her you’re safe.”
I was wolfing down tortillas, but Frida just stood there, biting her lip.
“Why don’t you just tell her we’ve been here with you all the time,” she proposed after a while.
“Ah, no. Doña Matilde would have my hide. Anyhow, she’d never believe it. They’ve searched the entire house, and your mami sent two of the boys to look for you in the streets. They even sent Manuel to town to get your papá.”
“They sent for Papá? Oh, no!” wailed Frida. “We should go throw ourselves in the river and let the boys find us. That way we could say we were drowning and thank God they saved us just in time. Mami would be so happy to have us back, she’d forget to scream.”
“Never mind,” chided Inocencia with pretend gruffness. “You’d better just go tell your mami you’re home safe and face the music.”
“Come on, Inocencia,” said Frida, “help us out.” She cuddled up to the cook and kissed her on the cheek. Frida was good at sweet-talking people into doing what she wanted.
“Let’s go, Cristi,” she said, nudging me. “We’re going back to the river.”
But I was too engrossed in clumsily spreading avocado over a warm tortilla.
“Come on, dummy! Will you stop eating? No wonder you’re such a tub!”
I snatched a piece of avocado peel and threw it at her. “Leave me alone! It’s your fault we’re in trouble. I’m going to Mami.”
That really raised her hackles. I certainly wasn’t Mami’s favorite—she preferred the older girls, Matilde and Adriana—but she tolerated me better than she did Frida. If she had to choose one of us to believe, she’d opt for me over my cheeky sister.
“So we’re in trouble,” snapped Frida. “So what? Lick your wounds and stop sniveling.”
I was already tearing toward the door.
“Stop, stupid! Think a minute. We can get ourselves out of this. We’ll just say we were kidnapped by one of those government guys they’re always talking about, the ones that snatch you up and carry you off in big black cars. Let’s see. They were tough … and mean. And they had guns as long as a bull’s prick. Only we managed to escape through the window. Boy, after a scare like that, Mami would be thrilled to have us back. Unless, of course, you ruin everything.”
I started to howl. “Mami! Here we are, Mami!”
Mami was giving instructions to one of the servants in a different part of the house, and she wasn’t sure whether she had heard me cry or whether her imagination was playing tricks on her. Years later she told me that she had been hearing children’s voices all that morning—ever since Miss Caballero’s messenger had come. She had heard giggling in the wardrobe, only to throw it open and find it empty. She had heard moaning in the kitchen, only to have Inocencia search cupboards, bins, and hampers to no avail. The whimpers and whispers were driving her to hysteria.
“¡Señora!” Inocencia burst into the laundry room. “The little ones are back! Fridita is in the kitchen, and Cristinita is on the patio!”
“They’re back? Are they safe?”
“Yes, Señora. They’re safe, praised be God.”
Mami dissolved into a kind of religious paroxysm, ranting and screaming. “Oh, Blessed Virgin, thank you! Thank you!” I could hear her carrying on from my spot in the patio, next to the door. When she had impressed the Virgin sufficiently with her gratitude, she darted outside and eyed me, hunched near the house, sobbing like Mary Magdalene. She grabbed me by the arm and, with one resounding thwack, sent me sprawling. I must have let out a scream, because the servants came running. But Mami refused to let them get near me. Instead, she commanded imperiously: “Go find Frida. She’s in the kitchen.”
However, Frida was not in the kitchen. Nor the bedrooms. Nor the sala, nor the laundry. Frida was nowhere to be found. Mami was trembling, not with fear now but with rage. She was so livid that only the very tip of her nose, which resembled a barely ripe strawberry, showed any color at all. Finally, old Inocencia, who had waddled out the gate into the street, spotted Frida about half a block away.
“There she is, Señora!” she called. Conchita took off after Frida and brought her home kicking.
“What is the meaning of this? Where have you been?” Mami grabbed Frida by both shoulders and shook her until she teetered. “We’ve been wild looking for you! Where have you been?” Her frenzied shrieks reverberated through the patio. Her face was tight, twisted, unglued. I thought of those concave or convex fun-house mirrors that distort your features and make you look like Pinocchio or a pear-faced fiend. I thought of Mami with a huge, hourglass-shaped head, tiny shoulders, and a bloated waist. I bit my lip to keep from laughing. I don’t even want to imagine what might have happened to me if I had cracked a smile at that moment. Maybe I wouldn’t be here telling you this story!
Mami was quiet now, but she was as tense as a string on a finely tuned guitar. She raised her hand to slap my sister, but Frida shifted her weight, slipping out of range. It was terrifying, but at the same time hysterically funny. Mami, so staid, so self-righteous, swatting the air as though she were after an elusive fly, like one of those American cartoon characters that became popular much later: the cat that keeps trying to smack the bird, zip! zip! zap! like this. She lost her balance, great big solid, stolid Mami, and nearly went down on the floor. But the instant she regained her bearings, she raised her hand again, and this time she knocked Frida squarely on the ear.
I knew it smarted. Even though I wasn’t the one to get cuffed, I felt as though I had been knocked in the skull with a bat. My head, neck, and shoulders were throbbing. But Frida didn’t cry. She just looked Mami defiantly in the eye.
“You little brats!” howled Mami.
Frida crossed her arms. “It wasn’t Cristi’s fault,” she said, feigning calmness. “It was mine.”
You see, this is what I was telling you. Frida always did her best to protect me. She stood right up to Mami and told her that she was the one who had been bad.
“Lucifer himself has built a nest in your soul, you wicked little thing!” That’s what Mami said to her. Can you imagine a woman talking like that to a six-year-old, doctor? It’s no wonder Frida turned out the way she did.
No, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean that Frida turned out badly or that she wasn’t as sweet as a mango deep down inside. She was sweet. Well, not exactly sweet, but good. That’s precisely what I’m trying to tell you. She always took credit for everything.
“It was my fault!” she repeated. “I got into a fight at school. I don’t want to go back there, Mami. I hate Miss Caballero!”
Did Frida really hate Miss Caballero? I’m not too sure about that.
“What fight?” demanded Mami. “What were you fighting about this time?”
“Nothing,” said Frida, sticking out her chin.
I started to explain: “They called us—”
Frida shot me a look that said shut up. “Nothing,” she repeated. She was not going to tell Mami that they had called us foreigners and Jews in school again. She was not going to give her something more to throw in Papá’s face.
Mami was suddenly calm. “You’ll send me to an early grave,” she said simply. “Everything I put up with for you two, and you can’t do enough to make me miserable! Blessed Mother, what did I do to deserve such children?” But she wasn’t yelling. Her heart was no longer in it.
Papá had entered the patio and stood, morose and silent, looking at his wife and daughters. Without greeting him, without even turning to face him, Mami acknowledged his presence.
“Your father came back from work because he thought you were in danger,” she said. “He made the trip all the way back from town. He closed his studio. And he’s been sick again. He had a seizure early this morning. But even so, he came home. And you, you were just playing pranks!” But she still wasn’t yelling.
I felt guiltier now. Papá rarely came home for the afternoon meal. Instead, Manuel made the long trek to the city every day with a lunch basket. I knew that for Papá to travel all the way back to Coyoacán, he had to be frantic.
“Go on,” Mami said to him as she left the patio, “tell them how bad they’ve been. Tell them how you’re going to punish them.”
Papá stood staring at us with those uncommunicative, demented eyes.
Frida ran to him. He bent down awkwardly, and she threw her little arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. “Come on, Cristi,” she said.
I followed my sister’s example and kissed him, but then I ran off toward our bedroom. I guess I thought it would be better to leave them alone, to let Frida reinvent the story in her own way. Naturally, she would be the star. But she would play the other roles as well. For the part of Estela, she would make her voice abrasive, like nails scraping across a slate. For Miss Caballero, she would puff out her cheeks and make her fingers fat with rags. How would she portray me? Would I be in the story at all? In the end, she would vanquish her enemies brilliantly. Frida was a master of histrionics. The heroine! The savior!
I crawled into my bed and went to sleep.
The next morning Frida said to me, “You know, Princess Frida Zoraída came to see me last night.”
I was only five. I believed in Princess Frida Zoraída. “You think someday she might come visit me?” I asked.
“Of course not,” she said. “I’m the one she’s friends with.”
Frida was sitting on a little upholstered chair, a miniature of the ones in the parlor, looking out the window that faced Allende Street. She seemed forlorn. Neither of us had had supper the night before because Mami was so mad, she didn’t let Inocencia feed us. I had the impression that Frida wanted to cry, but she would never cry in front of me.
“All of a sudden,” she said, “I heard her voice.”
“Her voice?” I whispered. “What did she say?” Frida had all the luck, I thought, because a real princess—Princess Frida Zoraída—came to visit her whenever she needed a friend.
She had had to strain her ears, she said, but finally, as if from the center of the Earth, Princess Frida Zoraída beckoned to her: “Frida! Frida!”
“I got up and went to the window,” Frida told me. Princess Frida Zoraída’s sweet, high, bell-like voice tinkled melodiously, like an oriental glass mobile in the breeze. “Come, Frida! Come and play!” called the princess. Her voice wasn’t human. It was otherworldly.
“Is it you, Princess Frida Zoraída?” whispered Frida.
There was no response.
“Is it you, Princess Frida Zoraída?” she asked again.
The answer came in the form of a song, faint and ghostly.
“I was so excited!” Frida said. “I breathed on the windowpane, and when the glass got all steamed up, I drew a door in the mist. And then I felt myself fly out that door and cross the plain around Coyoacán. At last I got to the Pinzón Diary. There was a huge sign that read Lechería Pinzón, and I circled it again and again. Finally, I zoomed in through the O of Pinzón.”
She flew and flew until she got to the center of the earth, where Princess Frida Zoraída was waiting for her.
The princess was a little girl identical to Frida. She had the same dimpled chin and mischievous eyes, the same chubby cheeks, the same frilly white bow. But instead of a pinafore, she wore a long red-orange robe adorned with round, peso-sized mirrors, sequins and beads, and a purple braided rope trim. Purple felt boots with upturned points covered her plump little feet.
“Come!” she said, with a voice like shattering glass. “Come dance with me.”
She took Frida by the hands and kissed her on the cheek. Then she began to dance, floating weightlessly, bobbing this way and that. As she held Frida’s fingers, her purple-booted feet wafted in the air.
“Dance!” she urged. “Dance!” Frida turned and hopped, and Zoraída followed her movements as gracefully as a balloon. Her dainty feet never touched the ground.
“That’s wonderful!” said Princess Frida Zoraída, laughing. “You’re so graceful! You’re so beautiful! I love your pretty pinafore!” Frida smiled and kissed her.
“I felt so warm all over,” she told me. “I felt better right away. I forgot all about Mami and those little brats at school.”
“I love your gown,” Frida said to Princess Zoraída. And then she added, “I had a bad day at school today.” She always told Princess Frida Zoraída all her problems.
“What happened?” asked the princess, stroking her cheek softly with her fingers. “Tell me everything.”
“The children were teasing me. Especially Estela and María del Carmen.”
“They’re nasty girls.”
“Do you know what they called me?”
“What did they call you?”
“A foreigner and Jew! Am I a foreigner and a Jew, Princess Frida Zoraída?”
“No! Of course not! What a ridiculous idea.”
“They say that because Papá was born in Germany, we’re not really Mexicans.”
“How stupid! You should get even with those girls.”
“That’s what I thought. So, you know what I did?”
“Tell me!”
“I insulted them! I called them terrible names.”
“That’s wonderful, Fridita! You did the right thing. You did just what I would have done.”
“And then, when Miss Caballero started to scold me, I ran away and hid in the park!”
Princess Frida Zoraída burst into laughter that sounded to Frida like a million sparrows chirping and a million wind chimes tinkling. She and Princess Frida Zoraída held each other and laughed and danced around and around.
“It was wonderful, Cristi,” Frida said. She walked over to the window and stared out.
“Is she still there?” I whispered hopefully. I got up and stood next to her, searching Allende Street for signs of the princess. But only the oaks, standing tall against the colorless sky, broke the monotony of the cobblestone sidewalk.
Did Frida make it all up just to make me jealous, or did she really believe what she was telling me? I don’t know. It’s possible that in her little girl’s mind, Princess Frida Zoraída really existed. Frida had such a vivid imagination that I don’t think she was ever able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, even after she grew up. Anyhow, what’s real? Does any of us know? Sometimes I’m not actually sure what happened between Frida and me. Sometimes I don’t actually know if I did what you say I did.