HIS NAME WAS RAMÓN MERCADER. HE MADE ME FEEL LIQUID, LIMPID, light. Like a jellyfish floating in warm water, free, bobbing, yielding to the whim of gentle currents. When he smiled at me, I remembered something I hadn’t thought about in years. A tiny beach we once visited somewhere near Cozumel when I was a child, sitting in the sun, heady from the briny vapors. But now I wasn’t a child. I was a jellyfish, formless, crystalline, compliant, trusting my fate to the powers that be. Kindly gods, gracious gods.
No other man has ever made me feel like that. It was the way he talked to me, and more than that, the way he listened to me. As though he actually cared about what I had to say. He asked questions. He wanted to know what I thought, what I knew. He was one of Frida’s friends, of course. A Spanish communist. She had met him in Paris, and now that he was in Mexico, he came over every once in a while, not nearly as often as I would have liked.
We weren’t lovers. I wished we were. I thought that he was the prince I had been waiting for, the Spanish conquistador who would carry me, the beautiful Aztec maiden, off into the sunset. Together we would form a new race, the mestizo race. But Ramón didn’t seem to have time for love. He was too tied up in his politics. And yet, when we talked, it was as though we were making love. He gave himself to me the way none of my other lovers ever had.
He was a man who grappled with things. We talked about the Party, of course. That was his passion. Trotsky, Diego, the future of Stalinism. Whether the Soviets would survive the Nazi offensive, whether or not the Americans would get involved. He never talked down to me, and he never spouted clichés the way Diego and Frida did. With Ramón, you had the feeling that everything he said came from the gut, from the soul. He had pondered the issues and come to his own conclusions. Every word he dredged up from the fathomless ocean of his soul.
Pretty poetic, huh? How did you like that? “The fathomless ocean of his soul.” That’s the way Ramón talked, with words like that, I heard him use that expression once. “Ah, Cristinita, these are truths I have dredged up from the fathomless ocean of my soul.” He seduced you with words. He was a Spaniard, and he had that beautiful Peninsular accent. Grathiash for gracias. Cothesh for coces. Ha! He made me giggle, with his Castilian pronunciation. It was so titillating. To tell you the truth, sometimes I didn’t even know what he was talking about, but it didn’t matter. Just to hear him talk made me feel like I was dying.
Frida was never alone. She needed to have people around her, adoring her, praising her. After the divorce, she sent out invitations by the truckload. The house became a grand hotel, with celebrities crowding through the door for an audience with the empress. Fascinating people. Stars as glamorous as Frida herself. Well, almost as glamorous. After her hair grew back out, she would receive them in her frilly costumes, a ring on every finger, a crown of hibiscus on her head. Brave Frida. The wronged woman. The suffering victim. Limping, masking her pain. Now, not only her health made her the object of admiration—“What courage, to face guests in such a state of affliction!”—but also her new status—“What courage, to go it alone without Diego!” She was a phenomenon in Mexico. The divorced woman. Not just a woman who lived without a man, plenty of us had done that. But a working woman, a true comrade, a woman who looked out for herself and made her contribution to society.
She played the comrade bit to the hilt. Chin up, eyes front, a smile on her lips, and a quip on her tongue. Sometimes, during her parties, she sat in the kitchen with the servants, cracking jokes. “See, compañeros? I make no distinctions!” “Where’s Frida?” someone would ask. “Husking corn!” “Peeling potatoes!” “Stirring the pudding!” Whatever the answer, the brigade responded with appreciative oohs and ahs.
I have to admit I loved the parties. I loved to be in the middle of the whirl, even if I was only there because I was Frida Kahlo’s sister. Sometimes I’d forget. What I mean is, sometimes I’d stop thinking about it and enjoy myself. After all, everyone was nice enough to me. And I was someone. I was part of the group. I belonged there. Yes, I did. But why did I keep feeling as though I had to prove it?
The one person I didn’t have to prove it to was Ramón Mercader.
“Your sister,” he once said to me. “She’s quite the little political dilettante, isn’t she?”
I didn’t understand, but I was embarrassed to say so.
Ramón realized I didn’t know the word, but instead of making some nasty crack the way Frida might have done—“My God, Cristina, don’t you even know what dilettante means!”—he just went on.
“Actually, Cristinita,” he said softly, “I prefer people like you … people who don’t make a spectacle of their politics.”
I caught on. “Frida isn’t making a spectacle. She really believes in communism.”
He ran his fingers over my cheek and smiled. I wanted to kiss his hand. He was talking about living one’s creed, about expressing one’s beliefs through one’s day-to-day existence, about the monumental contributions of ordinary people. I didn’t care about those things. I just wanted him to touch me. His words were like a warm, perfumed bath.
And then one day, Ramón Mercader disappeared. I looked for him at every social gathering, at every communist powwow, but he seemed to have vanished. I felt as though I were drying up on the sand. No one could tell me anything. I couldn’t find his address. He didn’t have a phone. Political assassinations were not uncommon in Mexico, and I checked the newspapers, half hoping, half dreading I would find his name. I braced myself for the expected headline: SPANISH COMMUNIST FOUND SHOT. But if Ramón had died, it hadn’t made the papers. Frida didn’t seem even to notice. She had plenty of friends. One Spanish communist, more or less, was hardly worth making a fuss about. It’s true that in spite of her parties and her gaiety, Frida was in bad shape, but that had nothing to do with Ramón. That had to do with the divorce. Not being married to Diego was more than my sister could abide. I knew what I had to do. I had to forget that I was in love. I had to push Ramón out of my mind and attend to my sister. I sniffed back my tears. I bit my lip. Good old Cristi.
I went to see Paulette Goddard. In spite of what they say, in spite of what you think, I loved my sister, and I couldn’t stand to see the way Diego’s affairs were consuming her, causing her health to decay, corroding her stamina as a fungus rots living flesh. It was horrible.
In spite of the divorce, Frida still doted on Diego. She fretted over him constantly. All day long, she’d say things like I wonder if Diego’s watching his diet, I wonder if Diego got those new shirts from New York, I wonder if Irene gives him enough pussy. I’m sorry, but that’s the way Frida talked. I wonder if he really loves Paulette, and what about Modesta? Modesta was one of his models, an Indian. She was an incredibly sensuous woman. He painted her in the nude, braiding her hair.
Diego and Frida still saw each other. In fact, she did his books. I know it’s unbelievable, but it’s true. Diego had no head for accounting, so Frida handled all his business—who paid, who owed money, how much came in, how much went out. She went on doing it for him just as though they were still together. And when she wasn’t by his side, she was dizzy with anxiety. What was Diego doing now? What was he eating, painting, thinking? She was obsessed with him.
On the outside, she was as spirited and sassy as ever, but not on the inside. That’s why I went to see Paulette. I was going to tell her what she was doing to Frida. Not that I expected her to care, but I was going to tell her anyway. Paulette was one of those women who was always involved with somebody famous. She had lived with Charlie Chaplin, and eventually she married him. I just loved Charlie Chaplin. He was so fabulous, so adorable, especially in Modern Times. That was my favorite movie of his. Well, I thought, since she’s had guys like that, why does she need Diego? Why doesn’t she just leave him alone? She had everything—money, looks, fame. She even tried out for Gone With the Wind. She wanted to be Scarlett. She didn’t get it.
I understand it wasn’t all her fault, that Diego was the one who was running after her. But my sister was beginning to look like a rag, all droopy and washed out, and I had to do something. When Frida went out on the street, she behaved like a movie star, a regular movie star, just like Rita Hayworth. She would wave at her admirers, ¡Hola, cuate! ¡Hola, mi amor!, flirting and winking, licking her lips as though eyeing a luscious mango whenever she’d see a cute boy, or girl, but then she’d get back home and hit the bottle, and before you knew it, she’d collapse like a pile of puke and wine-soaked laundry. Oh, she’d glue herself together for parties and for her public appearances, but once she was alone, she’d just crumple. The only time she was okay was when she was painting. Fortunately, she painted a lot that year. Self-portraits, of course. Frida with her monkey, a red ribbon running around her neck like bloody gashes. Frida in a man’s suit, all alone in the middle of nowhere, with her hair cropped short. She has a scissors in her hand and scattered around her are clippings of hair, swatches of hair, on her knees, on her hands, all over the chair, on the ground, as far as you can see. That picture frightened me when I saw it. It was an image of self-destruction. Scraps of Frida strewn everywhere, limp, dead, shreds of Frida flung around like garbage.
I went to see Paulette. For reasons I didn’t understand at the time, the road was closed off in front of the San Angel Hotel, so I parked on a side street. The receptionist announced me.
“Señorita Kahlo,” he said. And then, as if the name had struck a chord: “Are you related to Frida Kahlo, the wife of Diego Rivera?”
“She’s my sister.”
“The Frida Kahlo?”
“Yes.”
“She’s your sister?”
“Look, I’m in a hurry.”
But there was no reason to rush, because Paulette took her time answering the door.
“¡Un momento!” she called from inside. Not once, but several times. “¡Un momento! ¡Un momento!”
She’s got somebody in there, I thought. Some guy. While Diego’s cheating on Irene and Frida with her, she’s cheating on Diego with some up-and-coming movie producer. But when she finally let me in, I didn’t see signs that anyone else had been there. No ashtrays brimming with butts. No wineglasses stuffed hastily behind sofa pillows. No telltale odors.
I thought Paulette might not recognize me, even though I had been announced. At parties she had never paid much attention to me. What if she thought I was some movie buff who had found out her address and come to hound her? But she smiled and showed me in. I thought it was strange that she didn’t have at least one maid attending her. After all, a famous movie star like Paulette Goddard.
She was diaphanous, celestial. I half expected to catch her hovering a few centimeters above the floor. She was wearing a powder-blue sweater. Her eyes were wide and moist, and her lips—the color of begonias—were painted on perfectly. Her fragrance made me think of jasmine and honey, of ambrosia. It must have been French.
She kissed me on the cheek, but I didn’t love her the way I had loved Lola. She didn’t make me feel as though I was her friend. I was just an extra person who sometimes tagged along. She lacked Lola’s Mexican warmth. She seemed to be an angel floating up there somewhere—distant, untouchable. I know I said before we were friends but we weren’t really.
She went to the window and looked out. That seemed strange as well. After all, I had just gotten there. I mean, if someone had just come to visit you in your hotel suite, would you walk away from her and go look out the window? It occurred to me that she was spying on Diego, trying to see what he and Irene were up to. And yet, like Frida, Paulette had never shown jealousy toward Diego’s assistant. Irene was just a minor annoyance—like a mosquito or a fly.
Paulette bit her lip, but she didn’t mess up her lipstick. Me, whenever I bite my lip, I always leave my makeup a disaster.
She said something in English that I didn’t understand. I just smiled. How was I going to explain why I had come? I wondered.
“¡Un momento!” She flitted around the suite like she was looking for something. She seemed nervous. She kept glancing out the window. I walked over to the window myself, but there was no one in the street. At least, I didn’t see anyone.
“Look,” I said in Spanish—the only language I speak. “I’m not making a social visit. I came to talk to you about something very important.”
She nodded as if she understood. “¡Un momento!” she said again.
She picked up the phone and spat what sounded like an order into the receiver. Again she spoke in English. A few minutes later, a waiter knocked on the door with a serving table laden with coffee and sweets. It was a strange time to be serving dessert, I thought. In about an hour Graciela would be putting our merienda on the table at home. Paulette took hold of the table and wheeled it into the room herself, signaling the uniformed servant to leave. “Some Yankee custom,” I said to myself.
She smiled at me.
“Look,” I began again. “I’m not paying a social visit. I need to talk to you about my sister. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Sí, sí,” she said. “Comprendo perfectamente.” But she was obviously preoccupied with something else.
I was annoyed. She thinks she’s too important to talk to me, I thought. She thinks I’m one of her admirers, one of those drooling fans who break windows to get close to her at premiers. I opened my mouth to explain about Frida, how miserable she was, how hurt she was, but Paulette motioned for me to be quiet.
I waited in silence, my eyes glued on Paulette, my anger swelling.
All of a sudden, a look of terror crossed her face. She moved toward the window, then back to the phone.
“¿Qué pasa?”
She whispered into the receiver. I heard “Diego,” “danger,” “Trotsky,” “police,” “murder.”
I moved toward the window and looked out. The street had been transformed. Suddenly, my fingertips felt icy. What had happened? Police were everywhere, scores of them, and they were cordoning off Diego’s studio. They were preparing to take the house! Some of them had their guns drawn. Who did they think Diego was? Pancho Villa? It’s true that he walked around with a pistol and shot off his mouth as though he were Lenin’s grandmother, but Diego never killed anyone. Oh sure, he bragged that he had fought in the Russian Revolution and downed dozens of Czarists, but that was all bullshit. “I was hiding in a cellar when I spied the sable cloak of Count Alexander Kaminoff, so I cocked my gun and bam!” but it was nothing but bravado, what do you call it?—braggadocio. So what was this all about?
“¿Qué pasa?” I said again.
“Trotsky.”
At first I didn’t get the connection. I mean, I knew that someone had tried to mow down Leon and Natalia, but I didn’t see what that had to do with what was going on outside Diego’s studio. Paulette was trying to explain, gesturing crazily. “Diego,” “danger,” “Trotsky,” “police,” “murder.” For an actress, I thought, she’s not very good at getting across a message. The same five words kept surfacing and resurfacing in different combinations. Finally, I began to piece it together.
I don’t know much about politics, but I do know that Leon had a lot of political enemies. That’s why he came to Mexico in the first place; they had expelled him from the U.S.S.R. He didn’t get along with Stalin. Leon thought Stalin wanted to have the final word on everything, but that he didn’t really understand issues like industrialization. Stalin didn’t like it when Leon pointed out his mistakes, so he had him thrown out of the country. Only now, Leon was living abroad and spreading his anti-Stalinist ideas around. Back home, Leon’s enemies accused him of a huge anti-Soviet plot, and they sent out their agents to get him. Diego was mad at Trotsky for other reasons. He still blamed him for going after Frida, so when the anti-Trotskyites in Mexico began talking about getting rid of Leon, Diego started shooting his mouth off. “I’ll blow that son of a bitch’s brains out! That bastard is a traitor to the cause!” At the time, Diego was trying to pass himself off as a Stalinist.
I wasn’t that interested in politics, and besides, Ramón Mercader said that when it came right down to it, Diego didn’t know what he was talking about. Diego was a political opportunist, he said. He went along with whoever was winning. And it’s true that when the winds began to blow against Stalin, Diego became a Trotskyite all over again. I’ve said this before: He was a great artist, but when he started talking politics, he reminded me of a great big inflated balloon farting hot air. And when it came to Leon, I knew the bone he had to pick with him was personal, not political. Or, at least, not entirely political.
But it was a big mistake for Diego to go around threatening to feed Leon to the vultures, because when someone actually did try to mow down Trotsky, and Natalia too, Diego immediately became suspect. What better suspect for an attempted murder than a man who has announced for months that he is going to commit that murder? That’s why the police had come to arrest him, and that’s why Paulette called the studio. To warn Diego.
But the real culprit wasn’t Diego at all. It was the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros, the man with whom José Orozco Clemente had helped Diego launch the muralist movement. For David, politics was always more important than painting. He painted to spread the message but for him was never an end in itself. He was more a fighter than an artist, and when he opened fire on Leon and Natalia, I’m sure he didn’t care whether he made it through the ordeal alive or not. In fact, dying for Stalin would have been a triumph for David. A martyrdom, like Saint Martin’s. As it turned out, David didn’t die trying to murder Trotsky. The police caught him, but he was pals with President Cárdenas, and before the year was up, he was out of jail and on his way to Chile to paint murals. But wait, what I want to tell you is what happened with Paulette.
I went to stand next to her by the window. She was trembling. She was frightened. She was no longer the precious angel, aloof and inaccessible, floating up there far away in the heavens. She was a real woman who cared about Diego. I put my arm around her waist and we stood there together, joined at the hip like Siamese twins, waiting for something to happen.
Finally, a car pulled out from behind Diego’s studio, only Diego wasn’t in it. Irene was at the wheel.
A uniformed officer forced her to stop and get out of the car. He appeared to be asking questions. Irene looked composed, even indifferent. The policeman walked around to the back of the car and pulled open the trunk. He poked at some canvases, then slammed the hatch. He opened the rear door and repeated the operation. Finally, he signaled Irene to move on. She drove slowly past the band of policemen and out of sight.
Seconds later, the law stormed the building. There was a volley of gunfire. Smoke poured out the windows.
I let out a scream that could have split stone. “¡Virgen santísima! ¡Diego! ¡Diegooo!” No one could have survived that barrage.
Paulette burst out laughing.
I turned to look at her, confused.
“Diego es … está bien,” she said. She was laughing so hard she was gulping air. She looked like the Paulette I had seen on the screen, the comedian, the clown. “Está en el coche.”
I didn’t get it.
“En el coche … el automóvil … con Irene.” She walked the index and middle finger of her right hand over the palm of the left, as if to represent someone escaping.
What did she mean, Diego was in the car with Irene? No one was in the car. I had seen the officer search it myself.
“Under the canvases!” she hiccuped, trying to catch her breath. She made her hand into an animal that scrambled under a pile of napkins. “Hiding! Hiding! ¡Ocultándose!”
I couldn’t believe it. They had pulled it off! Thanks to Paulette’s warning, Irene had saved Diego’s hide.
Where had they gone? I wanted to know. But Paulette wouldn’t tell me. She ran into the bedroom and threw a few things into an overnight bag. Then she hustled me out of the suite.
A few days later, she turned up in Coyoacán. Diego was fine, she said. He and Irene were in hiding, but she took them food every day. Not just tortillas and frijoles, but delicacies—caviar, pâté, boeuf bourguignonne, champagne and pastries. And she had supplied Diego with fresh clothes. Not to worry. Diego was in paradise. Two women to wait on him and all the éclairs he could eat. Paulette giggled. Diego had friends in high places, and they were going to arrange for him to sneak out of the country. He had been commissioned to paint a mural at San Francisco Junior College, Paulette said, and both she and Irene were going with him.
Frida was thrilled and devastated at the same time. Diego was safe. That was something to celebrate. But not only was he leaving Mexico, he was going to California with Paulette and that pesky Irene Bohus.
Not long afterward, pictures of the three of them landing in San Francisco appeared in the Mexican newspapers. “Beautiful Paulette,” Diego gushed to the press. “She saved my life. She is my guardian angel, my goddess. It was worth going through hell just to be able to take refuge under her exquisite wing.”
What sort of hell had he gone through? the papers wanted to know. What had caused his sudden departure? But Diego wasn’t telling. “Diego Rivera refuses to elucidate the circumstances leading to his escape from Mexico,” trumpeted El Pregonero. How much more enticing his adventure was made by all the mystery, don’t you see? Diego, the hero, the mystery man.
Two years later, Paulette divorced Charlie Chaplin, and before the ink was dry on her papers, she had taken up with Burgess Meredith. Didn’t I tell you that some women always manage to hook up with the right guy?
After Diego left, Frida’s health took a turn for the worse. Just breathing became a chore. The doctors thought her twisted spine was crushing her lungs, and they put a gadget on her to straighten out her back. “If the disease doesn’t kill me, these bastard doctors will!” she fumed. “This damned thing hurts like hell!” There was talk of another operation. With what money? I wondered. And with what energy will I attend to her? Papá’s condition was also deteriorating. He needed me as much as Frida did. And Isolda and Toño needed me more than ever, especially Toño. He was such a little dynamo. It wore me out just to watch him.
The summer was just getting under way. The days were long and comfortable, but Frida was in a perpetual snit. She had written to Diego, a long, weepy letter filled with baby talk and detailed descriptions of the torture devices the doctors had invented just for her, illustrated with lurid sketches of contraptions with fangs and claws that tore apart human flesh. He had answered her, but instead of oozing compassion, his letter was a chirpy account of how well his mural was going. He was painting in public for the Golden Gate International Exposition’s “Art in Action” program, and he was surrounded by young admirers, “bright young people,” “adorable gringas,” “delightful aficionados,” “promising students.” Irene had moved out of his studio, but there were plenty of other young girls roaming around. And, of course, there was Paulette. The theme of his work was going to be Pan-Americanism, he said, and it was going to feature portraits of himself and his guardian angel gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes. She, fair and arctic as a snow queen, he, dark and passionate as the horny old man he was, symbolizing the love between the Americas. At the time, Diego had given up trying to figure out whether he was pro or anti-Stalin and was promoting the idea of inter-American solidarity. An easy cause. A crowd pleaser. After all, everybody loves a lover. Only, Frida didn’t want to hear about Paulette. She wanted Diego to tell her how much he missed her.
“Sounds like a beautiful idea. Friendship between peoples and all that,” I said to Frida. I was trying to cheer her up, make her see the bright side.
“Sounds like shit to me. Give me a drink, will you, kid?”
I didn’t want to. I had just given her some Demerol, and I was afraid she’d have a bad reaction. The evening before, she’d had a very bad reaction. She’d passed out on the floor, and Graciela and I practically broke our backs trying to get her into bed. She had lost weight, it’s true, but it was still a job. The torture device clamped to her neck complicated things.
“You’ve already had a couple, Frida. Plus one of those little vials of God knows what.”
“Come on, Cristi Kity Cristi Kity. Come on, be nice.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on, you bitch. Or else give me a shot of morphine.”
There was a sharp knock on the door. Graciela came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron.
“Your admirers think they can just pop by all night long,” I hissed. I was exhausted, and I wasn’t in the mood to be charming to Frida’s guests.
But Frida wasn’t interested in who was at the door. “Shoot some morphine into me, you bitch! I can’t stand this pain! Come on, Kity Kity Kity. Don’t you love me? Give some morphine to your little sister. Come on, Kity, candy for the baby, candy for the baby.”
She was already beginning to doze off. Her words were slurred, liquid.
“Open up!” thundered a man’s voice from the other side of the front door.
Then the banging started. Deafening thuds that sounded as though they were made with the butt of a gun. Graciela was trembling.
“Open up!”
“Open the door before they break it down!” I yelled to Graciela. But she just stood there, paralyzed.
Isolda stuck her head out of the kitchen, where she had been rolling dough with Graciela. More than the pounding, her apprehension made me tremble.
“¿Qué pasa, Mamá?” She had the pleading look of a drowning kitten.
Frida unglued her eyelids, two long, narrow slits. Her face was screwed up like a fist. She opened her mouth to say something, but her tongue was too heavy, her words a blur.
I didn’t know what to do. I’m not usually the one who makes the decisions.
Graciela came out of her daze. She unlatched the door. A pack of men shoved her aside and stormed into the house. Policemen. Six or seven of them, with clubs and guns. Gabriela let out a shriek that smarted like a gash on the head. A squat cop with a broad, scarred nose elbowed her in the stomach, and she clamped her lips together to keep from whimpering.
“Frida!” I pleaded. “Frida!”
Frida’s eyes were wide open. She had pulled herself to her feet and was facing down the uniformed thug who had hit Graciela. The commotion had slapped her awake.
“What’s this all about?” she howled. Her words were a little slurred, but considering the state she had been in moments before, her composure was amazing.
“You’re under arrest!”
A huge, meaty man with tawny skin yanked her toward him and slapped a pair of handcuffs on her. She winced.
“What’s this all about?” This time her voice trembled ever so slightly.
I stood there crying. The stocky man who had hit Graciela grabbed my wrists and twisted them.
“Leave her alone and tell me what’s going on!” commanded Frida.
“¡Puta comunista!” snarled another policeman, this one a wiry guy with curly hair. “Communist whore! You’re under arrest for murder!”
“Murder!” Frida burst out laughing. “Who do you think we murdered, you moron? Us! Three women who spend our time making enchiladas and chiles rellenos. Take a good look, kid. Do you see murderers?”
The cop whacked her across the lip. Blood spurted over her chin, then rolled onto her neck brace.
“You mean they had to send seven of you goons to arrest three women, one of whom is an invalid? You cocksucking cowards!” This time the cop raised his fist and took aim. The jab caught her right below the eye and knocked her onto the floor. Frida convulsed wildly for a moment then lay quiet. But she was only stunned. As soon as the cop turned his attention to me, she began to wriggle, struggling to sit up.
“Leave her alone!” she stammered. “Leave my sister alone!”
A surge of love swelled my breast. Feeble as she was, she was struggling to protect me—a mother fox, wounded yet snarling at the hunter who menaced her cub. And yet, at the same time, I felt a pang of resentment. Why did she always have to put on a show? Why did she always have to play the heroine?
The policeman made a move to kick her in the mouth. “Frida, for God’s sake, shut up!” I screamed.
“Good thinking,” the man grunted.
“Shut those brats up!” snarled the tawny-skinned policeman. The terrified squeals of Isolda and Antonio were making him edgy. I remembered the stories I had heard about Nazi soldiers murdering children simply because their crying got on their nerves.
“It’s okay, darlings!” I called, trying to pull myself together. “Everything’s going to be all right. Just be quiet now. Try to be very quiet.” But then, in spite of my efforts to sound calm, I was overcome by a spasm of tears.
The wiry cop clutched my arm and rammed me against the wall with one hand while he opened the door with the other. Then he propelled me outside and toward the patrol wagon. I could still hear Isolda and Antonio shrieking hysterically. Within seconds, Frida and Graciela fell on top of me, shoved into the car by a hand I couldn’t see. A pudgy man with a thick neck got behind the wheel and started the motor. I noticed a mole on his neck—ugly and irregular, like a spider with outstretched legs.
“My children!” I cried. “I can’t leave them alone!”
“Take me and leave her here!” begged Frida. “There’s no one to take care of the kids! She’s their mother! Leave her here!”
But we were already pulling out into the street.
“At least leave Graciela here!” pleaded Frida. “She can’t possibly know anything about this. Let her stay home to feed the children!”
Again, a spasm of conflicting emotions. She was an angel, I thought—at least, that’s what I knew I should think. That’s what any reasonable person would expect me to think. After all, she was sacrificing herself. “Take me! Spare her!” And she was doing it for my children. And yet there was something of the martyred saint in her manner that irritated me.
I was sobbing, sobbing, shaking so violently I thought I would shatter. I felt as though a storm had come up within me, and everything was flying around every which way. Frida’s pills, Diego’s paintings, Graciela’s rolling pin, Isolda’s doll. All swooshing around inside me.
“I need to pray,” I whispered, when I finally caught my breath.
And even though Frida was a communist, she said, “Go ahead and pray. I’ll pray with you.”
Dios te salve María, llena eres de gracia …
I admit it. During those terrible years I prayed all the time. I know it went against communist teachings, but somehow I needed to do it. It made me feel not so alone. It calmed me. Now I’m an old lady, abandoned by everyone, even by God. Now I don’t pray anymore. What’s the point? God wouldn’t listen. Why should he?
When we got to the station, we were led into a dark room. They left us there a long time, who knows how long. I kept thinking about the kids alone in the house. Graciela hadn’t left anything ready for supper. What would they eat?
Three police officers came in and turned on the light. They took Frida and Graciela into another room then returned. A man in a black suit joined them. I was drenched in sweat. I needed to pee. The man reminded me of my maternal grandmother. He also reminded me of my kindergarten teacher, Señorita Caballero. Mean and authoritarian. I knew he wouldn’t let me use the bathroom.
Leon Trotsky had been murdered, he said. What did I know about it?
I started to shiver. Leon, dead? I knew there had been an attempt on his life, but that was three months before. And he had escaped unharmed. He and Natalia had rolled behind the bed and evaded the salvo of bullets that came through the window. I thought that with David’s arrest the matter was closed.
“Where were you last night?”
“Who were you with?”
“Who saw you?”
Someone had ambushed Leon Trotsky, the man said, and stabbed him in the skull with an ice pick. Driven it into his head, deep into his brain. Someone had buried an ice pick in the soft flesh of his temple, deep, deep in his gray matter. That beautiful, brilliant brain, that brain that spouted theories and ideologies. That night it spouted blood like a geyser, a spray of blood all over his face, his collar, his beard, his funny tortoiseshell glasses. Leon, who had run through the street yelling, “Fire! Fire!” Leon, who had loved me, who had loved Frida. Leon who had betrayed Diego. Leon Trotsky, the man who had sat next to me in the car. Leon Trotsky had an ice pick lodged in the very core of his brain.
I felt weak, nauseous. I felt rivers of vomit churning, churning. I wanted to retch, I wanted to pee. I felt like I had an ice pick in my own skull, in my throat, in my gut.
“We have reason to believe you were in on the plot.”
“Why?” I whispered.
“Because you were a friend of the murderer. We know you have connections.”
“Who was the murderer?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“Someone who often had dinner at your house.”
“Lots of people have dinner at my house.”
“Ramón Mercader.”
I didn’t respond.
“Ramón Mercader.”
I felt a warm stream trickle down my leg. I sensed a pool forming at my feet. My shoes were wet. The smell of urine permeated the room. Everything seemed to be going dark, as though someone was turning off the light slowly.
I don’t remember anything after that, except I kept crying for my children. “Who will feed my children! Who will take care of my children!” They kept us there more than twelve hours. Then they let us go.
Frida was unbearable. She wailed. She moaned. It was as though she was the only one who had lost a friend. As though she was the only one betrayed by Ramón Mercader.
“This is Diego’s fault!” she screamed.
“How is it Diego’s fault?”
“Because if Diego hadn’t brought Leon to Mexico, this wouldn’t have happened!”
She called Diego on the phone. “Idiot! Moron!” she screamed into the receiver. Then she collapsed onto her bed, weeping.
In the days that followed, Frida plunged into a profound depression. Her health was deteriorating faster than ever. The doctors thought she had tuberculosis, aggravated by her spinal injury. They insisted on an operation. But Dr. Eloesser, her old friend from California, wrote to her that it didn’t sound like tuberculosis. Why didn’t she come to San Francisco? He was sure she could get better medical treatment there than in Mexico. Anyhow, Diego missed her, and he was worried sick about her. “Come! The change will do you good,” he urged.
I hoped she would go. I was too worn out to take care of her. Leon’s death had left me drained, and Papá was in a terrible state. It was enough to be a full-time nurse for one, I thought. I just couldn’t attend to Papá and Frida, too.
Before the end of the summer, Frida left Mexico. She couldn’t go on any longer without Diego, she told me. She needed him back. She knew he wouldn’t change, that she would always have to share him with other women, but she was willing to pay the price.
Diego and Frida were remarried on December 8, 1940, in a small, simple ceremony in California. I didn’t go. I wasn’t invited, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t care. I was growing bored with the antics of Frida and Diego. They were like two spoiled children, and I was worn out.