THEY SAY I’M A RECLUSE. THEY SAY I DON’T LIKE PEOPLE. AFTER ALL I’VE been through, can you blame me? Ever since Frida left … I mean, ever since she died … I’ve felt so alone. I don’t even see much of my own children. They’re not interested in me. Nobody is interested in me. Now that Frida isn’t here anymore, it’s as though I never existed. I was someone only as long as I was standing there by her side. I was the other sister, the other Kahlo sister, the dumb one, the one who never did anything. But at least I was a living, breathing person.
I don’t know why I’m telling you this. After all, I don’t really know you. Why are you still bombarding me with questions? You’re beginning to annoy me.
You want to hear about Frida’s marriage, don’t you? Isn’t that what you said? Don’t forget that I was married too, although things weren’t going so well. In fact, things went badly right from the beginning. I thought I was doing everything right. As soon as Isolda was born, I got pregnant again. That’s what girls were supposed to do, wasn’t it? Give their parents grandchildren? None of my sisters had managed to do it, so I thought I’d be the queen of the Kahlo hive, because I was the only Kahlo girl who could produce babies. I thought that, for once, I’d be the favorite. But I guess Frida’s health problems had left Mami exhausted, because she didn’t really seem to have much energy left for me.
Diego and Frida went to live at 104 Reforma. It was a French-style house, the kind they built when Díaz was in power and everyone still believed that everything European was better. It was an elegant house on an elegant street, because Diego was a national treasure. After all, just because he and Frida identified with the masses didn’t mean they had to live like them. Diego was always interested in archaeology, and he had hundreds of little pre-Columbian figurines, including one of a man sitting astride a snake that’s really a gigantic penis. Ha! Diego loved that kind of thing. Anyhow, he explained to me that, in the Maya-Quiché culture, the snake was a fertility symbol. See, that’s what I mean. He explained things to me. He didn’t treat me as though I was too dumb to understand. He was the only one who made me feel that I mattered, that I was beautiful, that I was actually there.
They had a house full of people. Naturally, there was a servant, because even though they were communists, they still had to be waited on. What I mean is, everybody had servants, even after the Revolution. Even though the radicals talked about people all being the same and nobody having to kowtow to anybody else, Indians still flocked to the cities, and women took jobs as domestics for a couple of cents a day. Now, three decades later, it’s still the same. The thing is, having a servant didn’t make you antirevolutionary. Just because somebody picked up your shit and cleaned out your bedpan didn’t mean that she wasn’t as good as you. It’s just that she had her job, and you had—well, I don’t know. It’s sort of complicated.
They had a servant named Margarita, and the painter Siqueiros, his wife, and a bunch of other communists moved in with them. I can’t remember who. It was such a long time ago, and don’t forget, I was busy with my baby. What I do remember is that there were people everywhere, because in addition to the friends who lived with Diego and Frida, other communists were always stopping in. They slept on the floor in the dining room or in the parlor. They crowded together on the sofas, under the tables. At first Frida loved it. It was like a big game, like a camping trip. “We’re all brothers and sisters,” she told me. “We work together and help each other. I cook, Andrea supervises the housework, Edit does the grocery shopping …” Andrea and Edit were two of her communist friends. “And if I don’t feel well, I don’t have to worry about it, because one of the other girls takes over.” But afterward, the newness wore off and the whole thing got tedious. “I wish they’d get the hell out of here so I could fuck my husband in peace!” she told me. They could have come over to my house. I wasn’t fucking my husband at all, and I could have used some company.
Why wasn’t I fucking my husband? Because as soon as I got pregnant, Pinedo started telling me I looked like a milk cow, and before I knew it, he was carousing all night and screwing the neighbors’ daughters.
After a while, the communists did clear out, because Diego was in big trouble with the Party. He was secretary general of the Mexican branch, but some people thought he was in cahoots with the new government, which was strongly anticommunist. The country had moved to the right, you see. The international Depression was making money tight, and the government wasn’t anxious to spend pesos on starving Indians and workers. Besides, a lot of people thought the goals of the Revolution had been accomplished and it was time to give up the struggle. But they were wrong. Anyone could see that the masses were still miserable and the rich were still calling the shots. The poor idolized Diego because his paintings celebrated the common people and showed their suffering. But for the communist bigwigs, pictures of peasants weren’t enough. They wanted total commitment, and the way they saw it, Diego was playing footsies with both sides.
Diego adored being a Marxist superstar. He loved being the hero of the crowds, but he wasn’t—what do you call it?—an ideologist, an ideologue. He wasn’t above accepting a commission from the anticommunist government. He used to laugh about it. “What do I care if they want to pay me for making fun of them in my paintings?” he’d say. “I don’t see what’s wrong with taking money from pigs to fight for God’s forgotten children.” But the thing is, Diego wasn’t really a very good Party member. He didn’t go along with everything the communists wanted, and he had a lot of friends who weren’t communists at all. Besides, going to meetings, waiting for other people to speak, taking votes, that wasn’t his style. He wanted to do things his own way. He expected to show up at those Marxist powwows at his own convenience, crack jokes, chug down a few drinks, and have everybody eating out of his hand. The hard-nosed Stalinists didn’t like that. They were serious boys and that wasn’t their way at all. They wanted Diego to follow the rules, and when he refused, they decided to throw him out.
Wait a minute. I’m confusing things again. I’m giving you the wrong impression. It’s so hard to get things right. I don’t mean to say that Diego wasn’t a Marxist at heart. He was a good communist. He believed in equality and all the things you’re supposed to believe in. He believed in the beauty and strength of the people. He really believed that he was doing good, bringing the Party message to the masses through his murals. I mean, he was trying to help achieve the goals of the Revolution with his brush. He was sincere about it. The point is, he was more of a pragmatist. He wasn’t above kissing the culo of a few conservatives, a few rich bastards, for the opportunity to educate his beloved peasants, if you know what I mean. The Calles government was pretty reactionary, but they kept feeding him assignments. They gave him a commission to paint a mural at the National Palace, and he accepted it, which made the communists think he was two-faced. They were—you know, purists, and they saw Diego as a traitor and an opportunist.
He knew they were going to throw him out, so you know what he did? He went to a Party meeting with a big pistol in his hand. He covered it with a bandanna and put it on a table, then, in an elaborate speech, he accused himself of collaborating with the bourgeois government and officially expelled himself from the Party. He paused, looked around, and waited to see who was spluttering with rage and who was peeing in disbelief and who was as paralyzed as a polecat that just got bit in the balls by a rattlesnake, and when he was convinced that they were all sufficiently shocked, he picked up the gun and smashed it on the edge of table. Pieces went flying around the room. The comrades all caught their breath, and Diego roared with glee. It wasn’t a real gun at all, only a clay model!
“I really had the last laugh!” he boasted to Frida and me. Isolda and I were on one of our rare visits to the city. “You should have seen the looks on their faces! Ha! They think they can expel Diego Rivera? No one can expel Diego Rivera but Diego Rivera!” He kept looking at me out of the corner of his eye to see what kind of impression he was making. I laughed as though my guts would pop. It had been a long time since I had let go like that, and I liked the effect my laughter was having on him. It was as though we were dancing together without touching, as though we were doing a wild, suggestive dance after which we would collapse, exhausted, into each other’s arms—only without touching. It’s hard to explain, but sharing that moment with Diego, sharing that laughter with Diego, inflamed me. I felt flushed, dizzy.
Frida didn’t notice.
“I quit too!” she announced, making a fist. “Solidarity!”
“Solidarity!” trumpeted Diego. But he was still looking at me out of the corner of his eye.
Actually, Diego was just putting up a front. He felt lost without the Party. After he dropped out, some of his best friends abandoned him. Tina would have nothing to do with any of us. Diego had just taken over as the new director of the Academy of San Carlos, but everywhere, people were turning against him, and before we knew it, they fired him. He started working longer hours than ever, I guess in order to blot out the pain. He worked on the murals at the National Palace, the Ministry of Public Education, and the ones that, well—the ones that started us on the road to trouble—the murals at the Ministry of Health.
We were sitting in a little café in Coyoacán, I can’t remember which one. Actually, I can’t even remember if Frida and Diego were married yet. I think they were just married. Frida was doodling, drawing obscene pictures that made Diego roar with delight. They were both obsessed with genitals. She was smoking one cigarette after the other, and so was I. The smoke made me nauseous because I was pregnant, but even so, I kept on lighting up those cheap cigarettes, those bitter, black Mexican cigarettes that make you feel as though your lungs will burst. Now I only smoke blond cigarettes, American cigarettes. Every once in a while, Diego tried to caress my leg under the table, running his fingers up my thigh, under my dress. I’d turn away and cross my knees so that he couldn’t get his hand on my crotch. I was used to his antics, and so was Frida, but you could never tell how she’d react. Sometimes she’d just laugh it off when he flirted with other women, but other times she’d fly into a rage. I didn’t want her mad at me, so I just smoked and giggled as if nothing was happening.
Diego was working on the murals at the Ministry of Health at the time—six huge nudes, allegories of Purity, Knowledge, Strength, Moderation, Life … what else?—Moderation—no, I said that … oh, of course, Health. We were fooling around, the three of us, when all of a sudden Frida blurted out: “Hey Diego, why don’t you use Cristi for your wall? She’s pregnant now, and her tits are really big!”
“Frida!” was all I could say. I mean, what was I supposed to say? I just sat there, gasping.
The thing is, it was true. I was feeling very voluptuous. As I told you before, my husband wasn’t looking at me very much those days, but when I’d walk down the street, other men would eye me and go Pssst! pssst! ¡Llévame a Edén, mi amor, llévame al Paraíso! Take me to Eden, my love, take me to Paradise! I had that full, round, soft body that men associate with submissiveness. That’s what drove them crazy—the idea that they could do whatever they wanted with me. Not that I was so pretty, or that my hips were so ample or my skin was so tight. It was that I was like a big plush doll they could squeeze or lie on, like a pillow. I was pliable.
Diego chortled. “Cristi!” he said. “Why, I never thought of that! That’s a fine idea!”
Like hell he never thought of that. He’d been looking me up and down since the first time we’d met, only back then, he wanted Frida, so he couldn’t very well come after me too. Even when they were courting, Frida knew Diego fooled around with other women, but her own sister? She wouldn’t have stood for it. A little groping under the table was one thing, but anything more than that … And now, here she was saying I should pose for him. Was she toying with me? Trying to shock me? I think she just liked playing with fire, pushing people to their limits. She knew that Diego usually wound up in bed with his models. She was always trying to catch him, then she’d fly into a rage when she did. But now she was pretending that posing nude had nothing to do with sex, that this was going to be a strictly professional arrangement. I mean, she knew that Diego liked my body. He was always flirting, teasing, making comments. So why was she trying to put us both in this risky situation? It was a game she was playing. She was going to choose all the models for the Ministry of Health, she said. Was she going to put the crotches of all her best friends within reach of her oversexed husband just to see what would happen?
“Tell me about the mural,” I said, to make time. I didn’t want to answer right away. I didn’t want to say what a great idea, or something like that, then change my mind later.
“It’s a series of allegories,” he said.
I must have looked at him as though he had belched in Chinese, because he added, “Figures that represent ideas.” The way Diego explained things, he didn’t make you feel stupid. He didn’t say it as if he were defining a word I was too ignorant to know. He just said it, you know, naturally. “Figures that represent ideas.”
And then he went on: “Six nude figures, with decorations showing a hand holding bundles of wheat—ripe wheat, ripe, like you.” He patted my belly. “Ripe and voluptuous, just like you. You’d be perfect.”
The word nude stuck in my mind. I knew the painting was of nudes, but the way he said it made me feel as though he was looking right through my blouse. Frida loved to be nude, to paint herself in the nude. But I had less experience in that department, and I still had Mami’s old-fashioned ideas. For Diego, there was nothing moral or immoral about nudity. People had bodies. They could either cover them with clothes or not. He loved beautiful objects, including the beautiful bodies of women, and he filled his paintings with them. He painted a lot of nudes, and he had a lot of women because he also loved sex. But he didn’t paint nudes because they were sexy, but because they were gorgeous and interesting forms. Also, a body could represent something to him—an ample, shapely one like mine could be fertility, or a scrawny one could be misery.
I wasn’t so sure what I wanted to do. The way Diego had been looking at me, I knew once I took my clothes off for him—I mean, I knew at the end of the session it wouldn’t just be “Thanks for your help and adiós.” I knew that … something might happen.
“I think you’d make a very good model,” Diego said, suddenly serious. His hand wasn’t on my leg anymore. I guess I was supposed to pretend I understood just because I would have to undress didn’t mean he was going to seduce me. I was confused. Here he was suddenly being solemn, distant even, when I knew that what he wanted was to break into me like a plow into fresh, moist ground.
Frida was egging me on. “Go ahead, say yes,” she said. “You’re pretty enough. You’re much prettier than I am.” What I think is that Frida was excited by the idea of having me take off my clothes for Diego. She almost always went to watch him paint, and all I could think was that the two of them would be standing there, fully clothed, while I would be posing stark naked. Sort of like a gang rape, only with just eyes. Their eyes on my body, on my nipples, on my thighs. It would be even more uncomfortable because, well, this is awful to say because she was my sister, but don’t forget that Frida liked girls, too. I could feel my face redden. They say that pregnant women don’t become aroused, but it’s not true. The thought of those four eyes kneading my flesh made me dizzy, feverish. That night, I waited for Pinedo to come home with my heart in my throat. For the first time in months, I really wanted him. He came in drunk, as usual, smelling of whores, but I didn’t care. I attacked him so passionately I thought he would give up his hookers forever. At least, I thought he’d remember making love to me when he woke up. But then I knew I was wrong. Afterward, he fell off me like a concrete block and plunged into a void. Down, down through the bed, through the floor, through the earth like a lifeless mass, down to the core of the planet, so far away from me … so far that I knew I couldn’t reach him, no matter how hard I tried. Once in a while I heard his voice, a million miles away, drifting toward the surface from an abyss. He was muttering things, things related to arguments he had had, to debts, to women. Things that had nothing to do with us.
“Absolutely,” Frida was saying. “She would make an excellent model. She’s so fecund-looking! Like a beautiful tree laden with luscious fruit. Come on, Cristi. Say you’ll do it!”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’d have to think about it. What would my husband say?”
But we all knew he wouldn’t say anything, or if he did, it didn’t matter. Lots of men find their pregnant wives disgusting, but still, they can’t stand to think of them in another man’s arms. But Pinedo … It’s not that he wasn’t possessive. It’s more that he gave up on our marriage almost from the very beginning. He surrendered to the inevitable, to what he thought was inevitable. He thought that Diego and Frida and their whole crowd were degenerate. He detested Diego. If a housepainter went out drinking and whoring, that was okay. That was normal. But a painter of pictures, an artist, a man who stood around looking at naked women all day, that wasn’t healthy, that was perverted. He associated Diego, and Frida too, with depravity. And because Frida and I were so close, he began to think that I was just like her, that it was just a matter of time before I started doing the things she did. “Whore!” he would scream. “You, your sister, Tina, Lupe, you’re all the same! She-cats on the prowl!” When I got pregnant with Isolda, he started to run around. He couldn’t stand to look at my swollen belly. It made him sick, he said. “Who do you suppose made me puff up like this?” I asked him. “Do you think I got pregnant all bxy myself? This baby is yours!” After Isolda was born, for a while he got a kick out of playing the proud papá. You know, the macho guy whose wife pops one out nine months after the wedding. But when I got pregnant a second time, he just snapped. He became unbearable. He’d ram me against the wall and snarl, “This one isn’t mine! Whose baby are you carrying?” You can’t imagine how those words stung. He behaved as though he couldn’t stand to look at me. I knew he wouldn’t say a word if he found out I was posing for Diego, because, well, he was expecting it. He was expecting me to fall, just like, you know, just like Eve. In fact, he thought I already had.
Which allegory do you think I posed for? I was Knowledge! I think Diego chose me for that one as a joke. Me, Cristina, the stupid sister! I was sitting very demurely, looking down, my knees together, holding a little flower in my hand. Frida said a flower is symbolic of female sex because it opens up like the female sex organ, but maybe her head was full of cornmeal. Off to the side, a serpent is slithering up a tree. According to Frida, the serpent convinced Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, and then Eve knew she was naked and found out about sex. But in spite of all these sex organs, it’s not a very sexy picture. Knowledge isn’t very enticing. I just sort of sit there, looking down at the flower.
I also posed for Life, the allegory on the ceiling. It looks like I’m flying, or rather, hovering in the air, because Life encompasses all of nature, everything represented by all the other allegories. Actually, I was lying down on my back when Diego painted me. Flat on my back.
Posing nude for Diego wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I stopped being embarrassed after a little while. In the beginning, he was very professional, very matter-of-fact. He surprised me, really, because I thought he’d be flirting with me the whole time, but that came later. I suppose Frida’s presence kept him in line—that, and the fact that I was pregnant, and very, very nervous. For a long time, he hardly looked at me, except to guide his brush. I never felt he was ogling me. To tell you the truth, I liked posing for Diego. I was the most prominent of the allegories—Knowledge and Life. You have to remember that this was all happening when Pinedo was treating me like scum. He was always belittling me. Sometimes, when he was drunk, he would get really mean, and other times he would just sit and sulk. I was beginning to think he wouldn’t stay with me even until the baby was born. I felt helpless, desperate, but posing made me realize that I wasn’t completely worthless. If the great Diego Rivera appreciated me, I must be good for something. After a while, Pinedo began to fade out of my life. Whether he was there or not, whether he was drunk or not … it just didn’t matter. Diego was the one who filled my mind. After the Ministry of Health, Diego asked me to pose for him all the time. After Antonio was born and I got my figure back, I got to be his favorite model. It was something I could do for him that nobody else could, because Frida—it’s strange—but Frida didn’t like Diego to paint her nude. She did nude self-portraits, but she hardly ever posed for her husband. Maybe it was because she was lame and her back was twisted. I already told you she was a master of camouflage, and in her own paintings she could camouflage her imperfections. But she couldn’t be sure how Diego would recreate her, so she wouldn’t pose for him. Or maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe she just got a thrill out of watching him paint other women, out of tempting fate. She was almost always on the scaffold with him, and in a strange way, her presence was sort of comforting. Feelings were starting to grow inside me, disturbing feelings. But I kept telling myself, I’m not doing anything wrong. How can I be doing anything wrong? Diego’s wife—my own sister!—is standing right here beside me.
When you’re sitting for an artist, you don’t feel embarrassed, because the work he’s doing creates a kind of barrier. I mean, you’re there for a purpose. You’re helping him do his job. It’s not as though you’re just standing there for his pleasure. And his clothes create a barrier too. That’s what I kept telling myself.
Frida was busy setting up her new home. She went shopping with—you’ll never guess who—Lupe Marín! Lupe helped her buy pots and tablecloths and material for curtains. In other words, she did what Mami should have done. Mami still couldn’t stand Diego, and it was a long trip from Coyoacán to Mexico City, so she wound up leaving Frida pretty much on her own. I guess Mami was disappointed in all of her daughters, although, God knows, I tried.
Lupe even taught Frida how to make an extraordinary mole poblano, Diego’s favorite dish. They wound up becoming good friends. It’s funny, Frida always made friends with Diego’s sweethearts. Maybe it was a way of holding on to him. She made her rivals into allies so they wouldn’t betray her, so they’d leave her husband alone once and for all. But it didn’t work, did it? After all, who can you trust if not your own sister?
Frida didn’t use her new curtains for very long, because she and Diego moved to Cuernavaca. Maybe you knew the American ambassador, his name was Dwight Morrow. He liked Diego’s work and commissioned him to paint a mural in the Cortés Palace. Diego was always ranting about you Americans, about how you exploited Mexico, taking natural resources out of the country and treating us all like morons who didn’t know a bull’s ass from a whiskey bottle. Still, when Americans offered him dough, he took it. That’s one of the reasons the communists got after him. About the time my Antonio was born, Frida and Diego moved to Morrow’s house in Cuernavaca so Diego could work on the Cortés mural. The ambassador was going to be on vacation, so it worked out perfectly. The residence was a very luxurious affair, from what Frida told me. I didn’t visit them because I was too busy with my baby. But I’m not surprised they accepted Morrow’s invitation; Diego was fond of his comfort.
After she got married, Frida stopped painting for a while. She spent her time watching her husband work, choosing his models. But Frida was sort of bored in Cuernavaca. There was nothing much for her to do but wait on Diego and attend social events, so she started painting a bit to pass the time. And then it happened, the event we were all waiting for, the great, spectacular event that was going to represent a milestone in the history of the world, the phenomenon that Frida had dreamed of since she was a teenager.
Frida was pregnant! She was going to have Diego’s baby, just as she had predicted years before.
What kind of a comment is that? Of course I was happy. We were all thrilled. After all, what more could Mami want but a few more grandchildren? And Papá didn’t care much for babies, but I’m sure he would have been gaga if the babies had been Frida’s. And no, it’s not what you think. I was dying to be an aunt. Dying! None of my other sisters had made me an aunt and now Frida was going to. At last, we were going to be a typical Mexican family, with grandchildren and grandmothers and great-grandmothers, aunts, cousins, everything!
Naturally, Frida’s pregnancy was exceptional, because everything about Frida was exceptional. When I got pregnant, the family was happy, but no one made too much of a fuss. After all, Cristina was a real woman, with breasts like gourds ready to spill their juices and thighs like wings, ready to spread. Everyone expected me to produce a healthy baby, and I did. And, of course, they rejoiced. And when Antonio was born, they rejoiced even more, because he was the first and only male heir. Mami had had a baby boy before Frida was born, but he died of pneumonia, so Antonio was special, and I felt special because I had given him life.
But with Frida, it was different. When she announced that she was expecting, they were all delirious—we were all delirious—because we all wanted the baby so much and we knew she was crazy to be a mother. We all went to church and lit candles to the Virgin—Mami, Maty, Adri, and I, and even our half sisters from Papá’s first marriage, María Luisa and Margarita, who was very devout and later became a nun.
When Frida found out she was expecting, she moved back to Coyoacán and into her old room, so that Mami could take care of her—bring her broth, straighten her bedclothes, change her flowers, just like in the good old days. She required special attention. Even I had to wait on her, although I had just had a baby myself.
But then something awful happened. The doctor told Frida that her baby was all twisted in the wrong position, head up, feet down. It was possible that it would grow the wrong way, that it would get stuck and she wouldn’t be able to deliver it. Of course, he said, she could wait and see if it flipped itself around, but even if it did, there might be complications. Frida’s uterus had been badly mangled in the bus accident, and who knew if there was even room for a baby to develop fully? We were all devastated. Frida cried and cried. So did I. Really.
“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.