I WAS MY SISTER’S SLAVE. THE MOST GROVELING PEON COULDN’T HAVE served his master as devotedly as I served mine. I was her charwoman, her drudge, her secretary, her chauffeur, her nursemaid. I was her everything. Let me tell you what happened after Frida left Paris, then you’ll understand.
Imagine you’re alone and very frail, in a strange place, a place you hate, where you don’t speak the language and the people are slimy. You force yourself out of your room. After all, you’re a star, and your audience is waiting, but you’re so feeble that it’s only by an act of will that you pull on your clothes and stuff a flower into your hair. They’ve planned a party for you. You’ve got to go. It’s the opening of your exhibition, Méxique. You collapse into the car and let yourself be driven to the gallery. Everyone is there, all the glitterati—the intellectuals, the society ladies, the movie stars, the politicians—all the huge cacas who can make or break a career. Artists and would-be artists oil their way around, ogling the fat cats who look like they might be willing to bankroll a show. They smile, their well-lubricated jaws tightening into a mechanical grin. You retreat into a corner. You’re in pain, and your French is poor. You can say salaud, conasse, ta gueule, your favorite swear words. But you can’t carry on a conversation, so you don’t try. You lose yourself in your thoughts. Soon you’ll be leaving this nasty city. You’ll skip London and head right for New York.
New York is where he is. You’re not so young anymore, you’re a woman of thirty-two, and who knows if you’ll live to be forty. Seize the moment! Run to your lover! Such an exquisite man, all fire and incandescence. Just close your eyes and conjure up his angular jaw, his wide forehead, his cologne, his tangy breath. You think of him, and your body turns into hot wax. Imagine him whispering in Hungarian: Let’s fuck, darling. Let’s fuck. To you it sounds like an exotic poem or an ancient chant. Even in your illness, or perhaps especially in your illness, the memory of his fingers on your thigh sparks a bonfire.
You haven’t seen him for three months, your Bohemian sweetheart, your beautiful gypsy. But you’ve been holding him, caressing him tenderly, in your mind.
And now, finally, you’re flying to him, borne across the Atlantic … and no matter that your back feels like a mangled spire, no matter that tiny fiends cling to your hip with claws as sharp as hunger, your spirit is free and dashes back to him.
Then you are there, in his apartment, brimming with love and passion. Everything is as you remember it. The Lalique ashtray is on the coffee table. The mint-colored curtains are slightly faded from the sun. The photograph he took of the two of you is on the wall. His Olympic Saber medal is in the display cabinet. Pictures of friends line the hallway—Martha Graham, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eugene O’Neill, T. S. Eliot. Copies of Dance Magazine and Vanity Fair—with his articles—are piled on the floor. Everything is exactly as it was, except this: He doesn’t want you anymore.
He doesn’t want you anymore.
You’re an invalid with a twisted back, a stunted leg, and an ugly disposition. The pain makes you irascible. You find fault. You pick fights. You’re fragile. You can’t make love like an acrobat. Nick wants a young, healthy woman. A nimble, nubile filly. One who can experiment and play games. He’s marrying someone else. Good-bye, Frida.
She didn’t see it coming. It caught her by surprise. He was engaged, and he wanted her out of the picture. All she could do was pack her bags and come home.
In April 1939, Frida returned to Mexico.
“I couldn’t stay in New York any longer,” she told me. “I missed you all too much.”
She was lying. She didn’t miss all of us. She missed Diego. I mean, if she missed anyone at all, it was Diego. But now she was going to have to face a new disappointment. Diego wasn’t at all happy to have her back. He had gone back to Lupe Marín, and soon he would be involved with Paulette Goddard.
Yes, the Paulette Goddard. The movie star. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Frida was sobbing softly, patting her eyes with an embroidered hankie that had been Mami’s. We were in the kitchen of the Casa Azul, seated at the same table where we had eaten tortillas with guacamole as kids. She was being melodramatic and annoying, but I let her get away with it. She needed me. And I owed Frida. I had done something terrible. I wanted to make things right again between us.
Why didn’t you write to me the whole time you were gone? I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t.
“Even when I was with Nick,” she was saying, “I was thinking of Diego. I mean, I loved Nick, I admit it, but Diego was always on my mind. I never stopped caring for him, Cristi.”
I knew it was true, because I still loved Diego too. No matter what I was doing—preparing Papi’s medicines, mending a skirt for Isolda, playing cards—Diego was there, in my mind. If I woke up at night, I’d be thinking about him. If I was typing a letter, I’d be thinking about him. Even when I was shaking my ass on the dance floor of some dimly lit dive—something that didn’t happen too often those days—Diego would fade in and out of the shadows.
Once in a while I’d run into him at Lola Bravo’s house, or Maty would ask me to take him some clippings Frida had sent her from the New York press. Or sometimes he’d need me to do some work for him, secretarial work, or driving. We’d sit and chat a while, and he’d tell me about news he had received from his Fridita. He’d recount her latest exploits—not those involving other men, of course—or else he’d tell me about the arrangements he was making to get her stuff seen by some influential New York critic.
“Simon Weintraub will do a piece on her. He won’t say no to me! He owes me money!”
You see, even though they couldn’t live together, even though they fought all the time, even though he treated her like shit, he still loved her. There was this deep affection between them, and nothing could destroy it. Diego didn’t care anything about me anymore. He was kind to me. He bought me gifts—a silver candle holder, a papier-mâché piñata for the children, a silk scarf, a silver comb. Once he brought Isolda a movie poster showing Tito Guízar in Allá en el Rancho Grande. But things weren’t the same. The shadow of Frida had fallen between us. Our betrayal of Frida. It was like some hideous ogre, always there. At least for me, maybe not for him. I don’t think it bothered him as much as it did me. For him, sex was just fun and games. It was natural for him to sleep with whatever woman he happened to find in his path. Some people can’t pass a dog without petting it, and some people can’t pass a flower without sniffing it. Diego was like that with women. So that’s why I think he didn’t feel as guilty, as miserable. Maybe he had just lost interest in me. There were so many other flowers to pick along the path. But what I do know for sure is that he still cared for Frida.
And yet, when Frida came home, Diego wasn’t waiting for her with open arms and a warm bed. No, Diego was living with Lupe Marín.
There was no doubt where Frida would stay when she returned. She was too weak to be alone. She looked like a heap of pulled-up tree roots, and she could hardly walk. Even though she hadn’t written to me, we both know that there was no one to nurse her but her loving twin. Maty could have taken her in, but she was having problems at home. Anyhow, Frida wanted to be with me, or maybe she wanted to be with her darling niece and nephew. She needed a nursemaid, and I was already taking care of Papá, so what difference did it make if I had one more chamber pot to empty? I had gotten to be an expert at mixing medicines and counting out pills. I could give shots as well as a professional nurse, and I was as quick as lightning when it came to sticking a thermometer up an ass. I took her to the Casa Azul and put her in her old room, with her collection of dolls, her papier-mâché skeleton, and her canopied bed.
Diego came by the day after she arrived. Not alone, but with Lupe and Irene Bohus, his new assistant. And Paulette Goddard.
Lupe and he were holding hands like kids.
“Look, darling, we brought you this,” Lupe said. She pulled a brightly colored wooden necklace out of an envelope. It was made of painted beads and little carved parrots, pink ones with green wings, blue ones with yellow wings, red and purple ones. Frida grabbed at it greedily and slipped it around her neck, pretending to be delighted. But out of the corner of her eye, she was watching how Diego played with Lupe’s fingers, how he pressed her hand against his haunch, pretending he didn’t want Frida to see, yet clearly wanting her to see.
Irene stood by demurely. At the time, I didn’t realize that Diego was cheating on Lupe with Irene.
Paulette Goddard sat on the arm of a chair and smiled her radiant smile without saying a word. She didn’t speak much Spanish. Maybe she felt out of place. On the screen she was a cut-up, but in person, she was as quiet as a sleeping kitten, at least until she got to know you. Yes, I’m talking about the Paulette Goddard, the blond Hollywood goddess, star of a bunch of comedies. I saw them all. Let’s see, Modern Times, Ghost Breakers, Second Chorus—that was a musical—and then, a few years later, Diary of a Chambermaid, An Ideal Husband—what else?—The Torch … You like her films too? Which one’s your favorite? I loved An Ideal Husband, it was so funny. Believe it or not, Paulette visited me at my house. We got to be friends. Stood right there in my kitchen, serving herself coconut cookies and coffee. So you see, I’ve known quite a few movie stars. I may never have been a famous artist like Frida, but I had important friends. Before long, Diego would be cheating on both Lupe and Irene with Paulette!
It was cruel the way Diego showed up that day with his gaggle of women. He kissed Frida on the lips and fussed over her a while, but he hardly asked about the shows. He already knew they had been flops, so maybe, in that sense, he was kind. He didn’t want to make her admit that she had had to back up most of her paintings and ship them home again. He didn’t want to bring up the fact that instead of making money, she had lost it. It was cruel of him to show her that he was now with Lupe. But that’s how he was.
Frida caught on right away. She saw that he was with Lupe, and she probably even suspected that Irene was in the picture too. It was around that time that she painted a portrait of herself with a necklace of thorns, a kind of fallen crown, like Jesus. Holy Frida, suffering on her cross.
That’s not fair of me. She really was suffering. Suffering horribly. First she lost Nick, then Diego. And that’s why I decided I really had to take care of her. She was such a wreck, and both of us were so lonely. We needed each other. I needed her as much as she needed me.
I never resented waiting on Frida. Maybe I did, just a little, because, after all, it’s normal to feel put upon, but I realized how much she needed me. At that time in my life I was fragile too. My health was poor, I still hadn’t completely recovered from that gallbladder operation, and I still had two young children to take care of. Isolda was about ten, and at that age, girls get rebellious. We were always arguing about something, Isolda and I. If I told her to wear the blue dress, she wanted the yellow one. If I told her to stay with Grandpa, she wanted to play in the park. And whenever she got mad at me, she went running to Frida, who let her do whatever she wanted.
Tía Frida Tía Frida Tía Frida … all day, Tía Frida. Aunt Frida is funny and smart! Aunt Frida paints like a dream. Aunt Frida is beautiful and modern. Aunt Frida smokes American cigarettes. Aunt Frida knows important people. Aunt Frida cooks better than you do. Aunt Frida lets me wear her makeup. Aunt Frida gave me this ring. Aunt Frida really loves me. Poor Aunt Frida, her back is killing her. Her leg is killing her. Her hip is killing her, her kidneys are killing her, her foot is killing her her head is killing her her eyes are killing her herankleiskillingherherpelvisiskillingherherfinger-iskillingher. I couldn’t stand hearing it anymore. Not from Frida, and not from my own daughter!
Although I have to admit, if I was in purgatory, Frida was in hell.
Let me tell you about Irene Bohus.
She was not a spectacular woman. She was one of the girls Diego slept with because she was there. She was Hungarian, large-boned, with shoulder-length hair pulled back tight around her face and fastened in back, with billows of brown curls lying softly on her neck, like Andrea Palma in the movie Distinto amanecer. Only Irene wasn’t as pretty as Andrea. She had come to Mexico to study muralism and was staying at the studio.
The day that Diego showed up with Lupe and Irene and Paulette, Frida’s back began to hurt, so she went into her room to lie down. After a little while, we followed her in there. It wasn’t unusual for Frida to receive people lying in bed. Toward the end, she did it all the time, especially after the amputation. After she lost her leg, it was awfully hard for her to get up, but I’ll tell you about that another time.
Lupe, Diego, and I were standing on one side of the bed, which was pushed up against the wall, and Irene was sitting at Frida’s feet, looking at her adoringly. Frida captivated people. Even though Irene was sleeping with Diego, she loved Frida and wanted Frida to love her too. The great Frida Kahlo! She was like a movie star to a girl in her early twenties.
Lupe looked devastating, in a burgundy off-the-shoulder blouse and loose white trousers. Her chocolate-colored eyes were luminous. Her chin was slightly raised, giving her an arrogant air. She looked as though she were posing nude for a worshipful schoolboy. Frida, not to be outdone, had put on her frilliest Tehuana dress and adorned her hair with red and white roses. On every finger she wore a glittery ring. Mostly they were junk, false emeralds, false rubies, false diamonds, false sapphires, and the like, but the overall effect was one of opulence. Frida used two gold incisors, but that day she had popped diamond-encrusted gold caps over the originals, giving her the appearance of some sort of Aztec potentate. She had taken off her heavy orthopedic shoes, but aside from that, she was fully clothed and decked out in all her finery, lying on top of the covers and talking about Paris.
“They think they’re such marvelous cooks, but they eat mostly snails and ants in greasy sauces. Really, mi amor,” she said to Lupe, “you can’t find decent tortillas anywhere.”
“You see? I should have gone with you! I would have made you a delicious mole poblano.”
“Don’t be silly, darling. I had a kidney infection. Besides, you were too busy fucking my husband.” Frida laughed and took a drag on her cigarette.
Lupe chuckled, but she had been caught off guard.
Diego and Irene exchanged a quick glance. I would have missed it if Frida hadn’t made a crack. “You know, darling, the fountain that fills too many flasks runs dry.”
I didn’t get it.
Diego burst out laughing and laughed with gusto for a long time. “The pitcher that pays too many visits to the fountain winds up breaking.”
“Don’t worry about me, darling. I haven’t broken yet, and I plan to take a tour of fountains of the world.” She flashed a broad, menacing, diamond-studded smile. She reminded me of an exotic and ferocious animal. An imperial jaguar.
Diego’s expression changed. He looked at her with a face like sour milk. He didn’t like to be reminded that Frida slept around as much as he did.
Irene began to fidget.
“Precious girl,” Frida murmured. “Why don’t you come over tomorrow without all these boring people, and I’ll teach you how to make enchiladas tapatías? You shouldn’t go back to your country without acquiring some real art.” Actually, Irene didn’t go back when we all anticipated because the war broke out.
That’s when I figured out that Diego was sleeping with Irene. Because that’s when I saw that Frida was up to her old tricks. Remember, I told you? She always made friends with Diego’s girlfriends. That way, they were less of a threat to her. Sometimes she could even pry them away from him. She was so nice to them that they began to feel guilty and stopped fooling around with Diego.
But what Frida and Irene and Lupe hadn’t counted on was that Paulette had moved into the sumptuous San Angel Inn. And guess where it was: right across the street from Diego’s studio!
Instead of Irene coming over for a cooking lesson the next day, Frida planned an elaborate lunch for her and Diego and had me take it over to the studio. Frida didn’t actually make it, Graciela did. Oh, Graciela was a servant, a kitchen maid. Inocencia had died years ago. I drove it over there.
I put the basket into the car. It was a warm day, but overcast. The air smelled of rotting vegetables. There were fewer pedestrians than usual in the street, and things didn’t seem to be in their customary places. I mean, the laundry was on the corner, with its sign, Lavandería Olmedo, and next to it the mechanics’ shop, with greasy tools scattered all over the floor. The mechanics were taking apart an engine in front of the same sleazy pinup that had been hanging on the wall for years. I recognized the newspaper vendor by the fountain and the lottery ticket vendor leaning against the side of the building. And yet I felt disoriented, as though I were in a different city at a different time, or as though I were going in the wrong direction. Everything was the same, but nothing looked familiar. I felt I should turn around, go back to Coyoacán, and start out all over again. When I got to the intersection, I didn’t know whether to go left or right, even though I had made that trip hundreds of times before.
When I got to Diego’s studio, I parked the car too far from the walk. I just couldn’t get it right, so I left it as it was and tucked the lunch basket securely under my arm. I kept feeling that I was going to drop it, and then everyone would be furious with me—Diego, Frida, maybe even Irene.
A servant opened the door—an old Indian woman I hadn’t seen before. Where was Petronila, the maid I knew? This woman was a tattered rag. She didn’t look like she was expecting me, although she let me in anyway. Diego must have forgotten to tell her I was bringing over the midday meal, I thought.
There they were, the master and his assistant, so lost in their work they didn’t even hear me come in. They were both painting the same model. Stretched out nude on a sort of divan in a pose identical to the one in which he had painted me as the goddess, the blond Chimalma. The sacred mother of the most revered Aztec god, only blond, long-legged, white and rich as cream, and exquisitely buxom. In other words, perfect.
“Hello, Diego,” I said.
Diego turned to face me, but as he did, he exchanged knowing glances with the other two women. He looked as sheepish as a man who has just farted at his own wedding.
What was going on there? What did those glances mean? On the surface, it was a routine scene: artist and disciple painting a nude. But volcanoes erupt and fish devour one another beneath the smooth surface of the ocean.
Paulette eased herself off the divan but didn’t seem in a hurry to throw on a wrap. She moved like a dancer, buttocks tucked under, abdomen tight, arms undulating in fluid movements, tiny, controlled steps. Diego watched her, hungry but not ravenous. It was clear that he had enjoyed that body already, that he had satisfied his most immediate cravings. He had taken the edge off his appetite. Later he would want more, but for now he wasn’t starving.
On the other hand, Irene’s eyes were gluttonous. She surveyed Paulette’s body as a child might survey a display of meringues. Were they both in love with Paulette? Did Diego watch as the women went at it? Or was Irene the spectator? Or perhaps it was a sort of unconventional triangle. Obviously, Diego and Paulette were lovers, and Diego and Irene were lovers, but what else? And how did Lupe fit into the picture?
Driving home, I was even more disoriented than before. I took a wrong turn somewhere near San Angel and wound up circling around the same neighborhood for hours. How could that have happened? Normally, I could have driven from there to Coyoacán with my head in a sack. But that day everything was out of kilter.
I kept asking myself: Should I tell Frida about Paulette? Now that she’s decided to win over Irene, should I tell her that what she needs to do is begin working on Paulette? How can Frida keep up with Diego? He seduces them faster than she can lure them under her protective wing. I decided not to tell her anything.
I had more immediate problems to deal with. How was I going to explain why I was an hour and a half late getting home? And that I had gotten lost going from one familiar place to another on a road I knew as well as my own bedroom? And that I had forgotten to prepare the afternoon’s medication?
As it turned out, I didn’t have to explain anything to anybody. Papá was still gaga from the sedative I had given him in the morning, and Graciela had fed him his midday meal and put him to bed. He was, she said, in for a nice long siesta.
Frida was too drunk to know what time it was. She had been boozing all morning. As Graciela chopped onions for Diego and Irene’s comida, Frida sipped from her flask. Her head got heavier and heavier until she tumbled into bed. She had been taking more painkillers than usual, for her back, her leg, her foot, and now she had a fungus infection on a finger. Dr. Ovando, a specialist, gave her some pills and told her to cut down on the painting because it was bad for her to hold a brush all day. That’s why Frida wasn’t chopping onions herself. Instead of painting, she lay around drinking and popping pills until she got mean, then hysterical; then she was dead to the world.
I thought the Paulette Goddard affair would just slip by. What difference did it make whether Frida knew about it or not? It was just another one of Diego’s escapades. And Frida was in such bad shape physically and emotionally.
But then the rumors started. Diego loved to flaunt his women, and he had shown up at the opening night of the movie Sólo para ti with Paulette on his arm, all lovey-dovey and goo-goo-eyed. There were tons of reporters. Diego’s picture came out in all the papers and his name was in all the headlines: FAMOUS MURALIST AND AMERICAN STAR TURN HEADS … RIVERA AND GODDARD TOGETHER AT OPENING … BLOND, BEAUTIFUL, AND IN LOVE WITH DIEGO RIVERA! … THE HOLLYWOOD-D.F. AXIS!
Under other circumstances, Frida would have been able to handle it, but after the breakup with Nick and the disappointment of her shows in New York and Paris, this was just too much.
No sooner did the news hit the papers than Lupe was at the door.
“I don’t mind if he sleeps with you!” she exploded. “After all, you’re his wife. But that American slut! He’s thumbing his nose at both of us.”
Frida started to cry. Not melodramatically, not hysterically, just softly, dabbing her eyes with Mami’s old embroidered handkerchief. It was clear that she was really hurting. There was nothing phony about it. She wasn’t just putting on a show. I know you’re going to say that the whole thing was Frida’s fault because, after all, she had betrayed Diego with Nick. But running off to New York and falling in love with Nick, that happened because Frida felt so desperate and abandoned.
And when it was all over with Nick, she came home to her husband, isn’t that true? Sick and broken, she came home to Diego. But instead of offering her his affection and his moral support, Diego was behaving like a shit. Yes, he came over and brought presents, but he never gave himself. And this affair with Paulette was just too much for Frida. Paulette was too beautiful, too sexy, too blond. I think Frida felt that she just couldn’t compete. She couldn’t be the contortionist lover for Diego any more than she could be for Nick, and it killed her to think she wasn’t able to meet her husband’s physical needs. It was destroying her. And now that Diego was broadcasting his relationship with Paulette, Frida just felt beaten down. Irene was a different story. Irene wasn’t important, she was just a studio assistant. But Paulette, who could compete with Paulette Goddard?
Frida began divorce proceedings on September 19, 1939, and by early the next year, the divorce was final.
She cut off all her hair. She always did that whenever she had a serious rift with Diego. It was her way of expressing pain, and you might even say it was a way of punishing him, because Diego loved her hair.
So, you see, Frida was all alone, all alone except for her loving twin. Who could take care of her better than I could? Who loved her as much as I did? I had to be there for her. Cristina, her sister, her sidekick, her slave.