MONDAY, JULY 12, 1954. 11:07 P.M.: THE NIGHT IS AS BLACK AS A SHROUD, but outside, children are scampering. Perhaps they’re bringing home pulque for the old man or tortillas from Auntie’s house. There’s no moon, although there should be. Señora Mayet, the nurse, has just given Frida some carrot juice. Frida gags. She hates it, but she has to ingest something. Mayet moves quietly, her expert hands propping up Frida’s head and pressing the cup gently against her lips. In the street, a shriek of laughter slashes through the darkness, then silence—viscous and sticky, like tar. “Come on, Friducha,” coaxes Diego. “Drink it all up.” No one else speaks. Señora Mayet insists on the juice, tipping the cup so that the liquid trickles into Frida’s mouth. I get up and massage my sister’s shoulders. Outside the window, the shuffle of footsteps that soon disappears. Someone is going about his business. Close your eyes, Frida. Close your eyes. Soon it will be time. She closes her eyes and sleeps.
Last week she went to a communist demonstration, even though Dr. Farill told her not to on account of the bronchitis. “My lungs are rocks, Cristi, sharp rocks that cut into my chest.” “Then use your head, Frida. Don’t go!” But she pulled herself into her wheelchair anyway. “It won’t be long, Pelona.” She grimaced into the mirror, then jabbed a wilting red rose into her hair. It fell to the floor, a heap of loose, melancholy petals. A few strays fluttered away, forming isolated drops of blood on the floor. I looked away. “I can’t do my hair, Cristi.” “Well, I won’t do it for you. You don’t have to go out, you know.” She pouted. “It doesn’t make any difference whether you do it or not. It’s going to rain anyway. It’s already raining.” She tied a kerchief over her dingy hair, giving her face the look of a mass of cobwebs framed in white cotton. It was a pathetic afternoon, cold and wet. I felt as though I were a clump of sand wrapped in a soaking sheet. But Frida had to go. It was a major event, a must performance. Frida had to be seen clenching her raised fist and shouting ¡Americanos! ¡Asesinos! We were protesting the CIA, how the CIA pushed Jacobo Arbenz out of power. Arbenz, the Guatemalan president, champion of the people. He refused to kowtow to capitalist interests. That’s what Frida said, although it seemed to me that she and Diego kowtowed plenty to capitalist interests when they took money from the big shots in Chicago and New York. Anyhow, there was Frida shouting slogans. “Down with the gringos! Yankees out of Guatemala! Murderers! Butchers!” She looked like a little sparrow, so fragile and popeyed, so weary, so wan. Her voice barely carried past the tip of her kerchief, but it was the image that counted. She had so little time left to create her legend. People fell all over her. “What a show of solidarity!” “Valiant Frida, just like Joan of Arc!” “Just like Benito Juárez!” “Just like La Güera Rodríguez!” The reporters were lapping it up. I could imagine the headlines: FRIDA KAHLO DEFIES ILLNESS TO SHOW SUPPORT FOR THE MASSES.
Who? La Güera Rodríguez? She was a heroine of the Independence from Spain. You’ve never heard of her? In Mexico, every schoolchild knows her. Anyhow, we went to the protest, but I wanted to stay home. What I mean is, I wanted Frida to stay home. Why? Because I loved her, of course. Because she was dying. If you keep interrupting me, I’ll never get through this story, and I want to get through it, doctor, because I want you to go away and leave me alone.
When it was all over, she collapsed on her bed and begged for Demerol. I pretended not to hear. She was sobbing hysterically. “Demerol! Demerol!” That seemed to be the only word she could articulate. I went into the bathroom and washed my face. I was exhausted myself. When I came out, Frida was lying on top of her bed, grasping her cane, thrashing the air. “Demerol!” I didn’t have the energy to argue, but Mayet intervened. “No,” she said firmly. “I gave her medication at the demonstration. No more painkillers. No injections. No pills.” “Yes, Señora Mayet,” I said. As soon as Mayet left Frida’s bedroom, I gave Frida a shot of Demerol.
11:29 P.M. Isolda tiptoes in. She is a young woman now, slim and feathery. “Does Tía Fridita want some broth?” “No, darling, she dropped off about a half hour ago.” “I’m going to read a while.” “Yes, go and read. Tomorrow she’ll be better.” A drunk stumbles down the street crooning “Amapola.” A dog barks once, only once. Somewhere in the direction of La Rosita, two men are laughing. The nurse has returned and is dozing in a corner, her breathing like dust flurries over the desert. Diego straightens Frida’s sheet and kisses her on the forehead. “You should get some sleep.” “No, Diego. You sleep. I’ll watch over her.” I push aside the curtain and gaze at the night sky. A greenish moon gleams faintly behind the clouds. A pair of lovers caress outside the window. I sense rather than see them. I suspect they will create new life tonight.
Tuesday, July 13, 1954. Midnight. Tuesday the thirteenth is a bad luck day, doctor, like Friday the thirteenth in your country. Frida wheezes like rusty bellows, but she is sleeping. Diego’s head sinks into his chins, spongy pillows resting on a babyish chest. I have returned to the window and once again pulled aside the curtain. I’m not going to sleep. No, not tonight. I’m waiting for the right moment. An old man hobbles by. He doesn’t lift his eyes to look into mine. He’s lost in his own thoughts, unaware that inside our house, the very house he is crossing in front of, someone is dying. I leave the window and sit at the foot of the bed. “Diego!” He nods and grunts softly, like a piglet. “Diego, she’s sleeping. It’s okay for you to go now.” He opens his lids as though there were salt under them. “What?” His breath is rancid. “Go back to the studio, if you want. She’s sleeping.” He’s trying to focus, trying to make out Frida’s silhouette. Her hand lying slack on the sheet, her chest rising and falling spasmodically. “You can go back, Diego. I’ll stay with her.” “You think she’ll sleep all night?” “She’ll be peaceful … yes.” He pulls his legs under him and thrusts his bulk into an upright position. “You don’t mind?” “Mayet and Isolda are here with me. Manuel’s in the other room.” You remember Manuel, don’t you, doctor? Papá’s old servant. He came back to stay with us sometime before Papá died. Diego stoops and kisses Frida on the forehead. “Adiós, mi amor.” He looks doubtful. He doesn’t want to go. He lingers by the bed, caressing her fingers. At last he gathers up his jacket and his hat. “It may rain before you get back to the studio.” He shrugs. In the doorway he presses my hand to his cheek as if my flesh against his can somehow keep him from crying. He looks haggard. His lips are trembling. A tear forms in the corner of his eye, then swells and bursts into a rivulet that flows via pappy furrows to his chin. His pain pierces my heart.
But I harness my feelings. I remember things. What right has he to slobber in remorse now, when seven years before he had been carrying on with María Félix?
Río Escondido came out in 1947. Oh, it was a glorious movie. The communists loved it. María Félix became the darling of Mexico after she played Rosaura Salazar, the spirited schoolteacher who takes on the big, powerful bad guys and wins. Soon people who saw the film began to take María for Rosaura. They thought she was a saint. They bought images of her and even prayed to them.
María Félix was a stunning, curvaceous woman, a woman with a lot of everything. She went to parties in strapless evening gowns that showed it all off. She lounged by swimming pools in tiny bathing suits, her long, smooth legs dangling off the chaise longue. She wore her hair loose, disheveled, chocolate and licorice—an irresistible invitation to run your fingers through it. The crowds loved her because she was the Virgin Mary and Eve all wrapped up into one. God and the devil. In the portrait Diego did of her, she looks as though she could be thinking or she could be praying. Her eyes are slightly downcast. And yet she’s so alluring, her hair falling over her bare shoulders. The light catches it right on the crown. She looks like a Magdalena.
And everywhere María went, there was Diego, attached to her like some sort of an appendage. And the newspaper photographers snapping away. Always. At the parties, at the openings, at the press conferences. María laughed and blew kisses and talked about patriotism. And Diego talked about divorcing Frida.
And Frida? She cracked jokes. He’d been saying for a while that he was going to leave her, so she had had time get together her script.
Once a reporter asked, “What’s this about Diego and María Félix?” “Ah,” said Frida, “so he likes screwing her. What’s the big deal? I wouldn’t mind screwing her myself!” You see, she was showing them all that she couldn’t be hurt by Diego’s womanizing, not because she didn’t love him, but because she shared his passions. They were still a team, only instead of he and she, they were two macho guys on the prowl. Look at her self-portraits, doctor. They get more and more manly. “What’s the idea? You look like a guy in this picture,” a young newspaperman said to her. “Really? You think so? Well, you know how Diego and I met?” she quipped. “We were dating the same girl!” Another time, we were at a reception at the American embassy, and she pulled aside a silver-haired society lady who was impressed as hell to be meeting the great Kahlo. “Listen,” Frida whispered in her ear. “I’m going to tell you a secret. Diego isn’t the father of Lupe Marín’s daughter, Lupita.” The woman looked delighted to be let in on a naughty secret. “You know who the real father is?” Frida said with a wink. “It’s me!”
“Listen,” Frida told a crowd at Eddie Kaufman’s hotel. Eddie was visiting Mexico and had invited us all to a huge reception at the Moctezuma. “Listen,” Frida said. “Did you all know that Eddie, Diego, and I were all on the Titanic when it started to go down? Kaufman, a real gentleman and hero, shouted, ‘Save the women and children! Get all the women and children to the lifeboats!’ But Diego rushed off in the direction of the lifeboats himself, screaming ‘Screw the women and children!’ As for me, I stopped and pondered his words a minute and asked, ‘You think there’s time?’” Gasps. Whoopies. Catcalls. Gales of laughter.
My heart was breaking. My sister was performing like a marionette, the kind of dancing skeleton that amateur puppeteers dangle and jerk on the Day of the Dead. Jerk jerk step-to-the-right, jerk jerk step-to-the-left. Wherever we went, she allowed the crowds to pull her strings. She had lost weight, and her face had become sharp and bony. She was so drunk or drugged most of the time that she couldn’t even put on her makeup straight. She’d paint on a macabre ghoul’s mouth. I wanted to take her in my arms and say Stop, Frida, stop! I couldn’t stand to see her become their toy, their amusement. I wanted to kiss her, to take her home, to put her to bed. My poor, darling sister. I wanted to say Make them leave you alone, Frida. Let me take you home to die in peace! But she had to play the role. Even then, she had to be the star.
The night she told the Titanic joke at Eddie Kaufman’s party, Diego and I took her back to Coyoacán afterward. On the way home she was hysterical, weeping and laughing almost at the same time. Her face was screwed up in pain, like the face of a rag doll that someone had washed and wrung out. Diego left for San Angel right away. Her nurse—Señora Mayet wasn’t working for us yet—her nurse had prepared her medication, and just as she was bending over to give it to her, Frida reached out and grabbed her crotch. The woman just snorted. “Come on, Miss Frida, take your medicine.” “Yeah, give me those pills, and give me some pussy too, you little bitch!” The nurse just laughed and slapped her fingers as though she were a naughty child. Frida took her cane and tried to work it up between the woman’s legs. “Come on, darling,” she cooed. “Lift up your skirt for Frida.” We could never keep nurses very long, because Frida always went after them. They all ran away after a week or two. All of them except that one, because she shared Frida’s inclinations. I’m sure that in addition to Demerol and barbiturates she gave her a hand job once in a while. But eventually, even she couldn’t take Frida’s temper tantrums anymore, and she left too. I can’t even remember all the nurses we had, doctor. Women who came and went. Came because Diego offered a good salary and because it was an honor to empty the bedpans of the great Frida and left because the canings and the crotch grabbing just got to be too much. Then it was up to me to smooth Frida’s brow and hold her hand. “Give me a shot, little Kity!” she would beg. “No, Frida. It’s not time yet.” “Come on, Kity. Give me some Demerol. Give me some codeine, some opium, some atropine. Anything!” She couldn’t take straight morphine, only Demerol, because it’s a synthetic. “Please, Kity. Come on, Cristi Kity. If you loved me, you’d do it!” “I can’t, Frida. Try to go to sleep.” “I can’t sleep without drugs. Come on, Kity, give me a jab.” I couldn’t bear to look at her body. But she would maneuver herself onto her stomach and hike up her nightgown, and what could I do? “Find a spot!” “There is no spot!” “Find one!” She’d be trembling and screaming, and I’d be afraid she was going to have some kind of an attack, so what could I do? I’d find a tiny patch of clear skin and inject her, and in a while, she’d calm down.
2:51 A.M. Her eyes are open, wide open. I’ve pulled the curtain back a bit because it frightens me to sit alone in a pitch-black room. Her pupils catch the moonlight and flash like knives.
“Where’s Maty?”
“Maty left hours ago, Frida. Go back to sleep.” But she can’t sleep because her leg hurts, the leg she doesn’t have, the leg they cut off. A piercing pain, she says. A dagger in the calf. “Demerol!” But it’s not time yet, and I can’t break the rules because Mayet is in the doorway. She’s come to check on her.
“Why aren’t you sleeping, Miss Frida?”
“You know why I’m not sleeping, you cunt! I’m in pain, terrible pain! Give me Demerol!”
Señora Mayet turns on a lamp and takes Frida’s temperature. “Why don’t you go to bed, Miss Cristina? I’ll stay with her the rest of the night.”
“That’s all right. I’ll stay with her.”
She doesn’t trust me. She suspects I break the rules. She suspects I disobey her when she’s not looking. I try to allay her misgivings.
“I’m not sleepy, Señora Mayet. I’ll just sit here a while longer. You go on to bed.”
“Yes, Señora Mayet. You go to bed. My sister will take care of me.” Frida’s voice is more robust than you’d expect. The nurse vacillates, but only for a moment.
“Don’t give her any medication, Miss Cristi.”
“No, Señora Mayet.”
“Just a compress on her forehead, if she needs it. But no more drugs.”
Frida doesn’t say a word.
“Promise you’ll call if you need me.”
“Of course, Señora Mayet.”
The nurse turns out the light. We hear her footsteps in the patio. We hear the toilet flush. Silence. Two, four, five, ten minutes. “Cristi, I can’t take any more.” Her voice, barely audible, is pleading, desperate. “I know, darling.” I fill the syringe and inject her. Her hand brushes mine, and she tries to squeeze my fingers in gratitude. In a moment, her eyes close and she is quiet.
Five years ago, Frida spent nine months in the Hospital Inglés. That’s when they started talking about amputation. Her circulation was bad. Two of her toes had turned black, and the doctors said gangrene had set in. Gangrene. That means your body starts to disintegrate slowly, so slowly you don’t even notice it, until one day you wake up and part of you is dead. They had to cut off two of her toes.
Maty and I went to see her every day. Adri went every other day. Diego took a room in the hospital and stayed there with her. By then, his romance with María was over. But even while it was going on, and this is one thing I want to make absolutely clear, he loved her. He always loved her, just as I did. We hurt one another, but we loved one another.
They operated on her back. I can’t remember all the details. They decided Frida needed a bone graph, but it turned out to be disastrous. They put a horrible corset on her after the operation to keep her from moving, but it kept her wound from draining properly, and before long an abscess formed on her back. The whole thing was infected. It stank so badly you could vomit. Maty said Frida smelled like a dead dog. I thought she smelled like a pig’s fart. It’s a horrible thing to say, but I’d gag every time I went into her hospital room. Imagine how she felt, poor Frida, so finicky about her clothes, her hair, her jewelry. Imagine how she felt when the stench from her sores starting driving people away. “Do it, Cristi,” she pleaded. “An overdose of Demerol.” But instead, I begged the doctor—his name was Juan Farill—to save her, to give her something stronger for the pain, and I prayed. I admit it, I prayed. Because even though Frida said the Catholic Church was full of shit, that Catholicism was evil, I just didn’t know what else to do, so I prayed.
I never pray anymore, although sometimes I want to.
They made a new plaster corset with a hole in the back so the filth could ooze out. But her body was a cesspool. The wounds didn’t heal. She still stank like a rotting carcass, and yet … I couldn’t … I knew she wanted to die, but she was my sister, after all, and I loved her.
They set up an easel in her room and fastened it to the bed so she could paint lying down. People came in to watch her. Diego brought in a Huichol Indian in an elaborate costume to pose for her. A handsome young man with perfect features and long hair, copper skin, even white teeth. What a vision he was, with his wide-brimmed, bangle-edged hat, his embroidered shawl, his short red cape, his exquisitely worked cloth belt. He wore a slew of bracelets and an ornate, woven shoulder-strapped bag. Frida was in heaven—her with a ring on every finger, her painted corsets, her dangling earrings, and him with his trinkets and baubles. Between the two of them, they were a frenzy of color and design. For a while, he was her favorite toy.
But she had other toys. She had a collection of skulls, which she trimmed with flowers and ribbon and labeled with our names. Mine was a smiling sugar skull with colored jellies. Hers had a hammer and sickle and pink bows and flounces. Cristina dead. Frida dead. Life and death. The gay and the macabre.
She liked to have people in. I was there all the time, of course, and so was Maty. Diego too. But this wasn’t just a family affair. The doctors and nurses would congregate around her, and guests flooded the room. María Félix—who, of course, had become Frida’s good friend—Lupe Marín, Isolda and Antonio, Fanny and the other Fridos, old buddies from the Prepa. Adelina Zendejas was one of the pals from the old days who came all the time. Politicians and poets, actors and neighborhood children. Even La Reyna dropped by once or twice. Diego got ahold of a projector and showed Laurel and Hardy movies. Sometimes he would dance and Adelina would play the tambourine. I brought food, baskets and baskets of it. Frida would laugh and tell dirty jokes. “Why did the widow wear a black tampon? Because that’s where she missed him most!” She oozed joy and hope, as long as she had an audience. But when there was no one around, it was Polish my nails! Do my hair! Bring me my mirror! Find my ring! She had a silver ring with a turquoise quetzal bird on it, and she got it into her head that if she lost it, another part of her body would rot and fall off, another toe, perhaps, or a finger, or an earlobe. If I said, Your nails, Frida? I think you need to rest now, she’d get nasty. Don’t tell me what I need to do, Fatso. My friends will be here soon, and they can’t see me like this! She was horrified by the prospect of abandonment. She had to be surrounded by people. She had to be in the limelight. Her health depended on it, so I’d polish her nails, comb her hair, decorate her braids with silk bows and flowers. And then she looked beautiful. I have to admit it. She looked beautiful, in spite of the disease that was consuming her body, eating her alive. Beautiful, like the ornate plaster skulls that filled her room. Once the crowd materialized, it was an ongoing party, pure alegría, except for one thing: Frida was dying, and everybody knew it. Yet they allowed themselves to be comforted by her fake high spirits. After they all went home, she would squeeze my hand and plead, “Do it, Kity, my darling Kity. Put me out of my misery.”
And still, when they finally sent her home from the Hospital Inglés, she was glad to be alive. In spite of her wheelchair, in spite of the plaster corset that crushed and bruised her flesh. She threw herself into everything. She partied constantly, a smile on her face and a cigarette dangling from her fingers. She surrounded herself with stars. Josephine Baker. Concha Michel. María Félix. Not Lola. Frida and Lola had had a falling-out. Frida had sent her a painting out of the blue, a painting Lola hadn’t asked for, along with a bill. That’s what Frida sometimes did when she needed dough. She sent her friends unsolicited paintings and then billed them. Only Lola refused to play that game. Lola refused to write a check. Instead, she returned the gift. She was through with Diego, and she didn’t need either one of them anymore. The end, but so what? Who needed Dolores del Río? We had poets like Carlos Pellicer, painters like Dr. Atl, photographers like Lola Alvarez Bravo. And movie stars galore. Because Frida needed stars. She needed to be the star of stars.
Frida had to do everything in a big way. How do you say it? With pizzazz. She partied with pizzazz, she suffered with pizzazz, she even mourned with pizzazz. When Stalin died, she went into spasms of suffering. You should have seen her wail and weep for the reporters and photographers. I don’t want to imply that her commitment wasn’t sincere. It was completely sincere. She had always wanted to meet Stalin, and she had missed the chance. She felt that something precious had slipped through her fingers, that the world was somehow drifting away from her. But even if she never got to meet him in life, at least she could be with him through art. She painted a double portrait. Frida and Stalin. It was a portrait within a portrait. One side showed an easel with Stalin’s picture, very large, very dominant, and the other side showed Frida seated and dressed in a red Tehuana costume. He’s large, she’s small. He’s a piece of art, she’s a live woman. He’s her creation, but she’s his creation too, because without him, she wouldn’t be the devout communist, the enlightened thinker, that she is. He’s turned away from her, and she looks out at the viewer as if sitting for a photograph. Frida and Stalin, together and not together.
Art was what kept her going. Creating beauty out of pain helped her make sense of things. It gave her suffering a purpose. She would decorate her plaster casts, those instruments of torture, turn them into things of beauty. She painted hammers and sickles on them, stars and flowers, birds and babies. She painted a fetus on one of them, so when she wore it, she felt as though she were carrying a baby.
3:47 A.M. How much longer until dawn? Every muscle in my body tingles. My mind is bubbling like a pot of mole. I’m pure electricity. Tonight I’ll atone for my sins. My darling Frida, you’ll soar like an eagle, like an águila! Someone’s in the street. I push the curtain aside. It’s Marco Antonio, the baker. I can barely see him, but I recognize his stocky body, his straggly, shoulder-length hair, his limp. As a boy he caught a bullet in the ankle. Now he stands on his disfigured foot all day, baking crusty rolls and egg bread. For the Día de los Muertos he makes Dead Man’s Bread, and for Epiphany he makes rosca de Reyes with cinnamon, anise, and raisins. Like all of us, he learned young to lick his wounds and keep on living. His sombrero is pulled down almost over his eyes to protect him from the damp air. How can he see where he’s going? I can’t make out his feet in the darkness, but I can hear his sandals scraping against the moist ground. Soon Ana Teresa, the tortilla maker, will come hustling along. Her step will be light, like that of a chicken in a hurry. Before long the shadows will fade, and morning will creep over the rooftops. It’s already tomorrow.
April 1953. Last year. It seems like centuries ago. Frida was lying in bed, just as she is right now, except that the sun had been up for hours. Her eyes closed, her face pasty.
Yes, it’s the first week in April 1953. Her jaw has lost the taut smoothness it once had. She’s forty-six years old, not twenty, but the servants still treat her like a spoiled child. The paintings are gone. They were packed up and sent days ago. Her hand hangs limply over the side of the bed. She holds a cigarette, but she isn’t smoking. Soon it will be time to dress her, but not yet. Dr. Farill limps in and sits down by the bed. Frida loves him because he’s lame like she is. He uses crutches. He’s bald, with heavy eyebrows, a round face, and a sense of humor. “Hi, beautiful,” he says to Frida. “Hi cutie,” she answers without opening her eyes. How can she be sure it’s him? Frida knows everything. “Did my tubby sister give you something to eat?” “Not yet, but she will. Cristi always takes good care of me.” “Not too good, I hope,” Frida’s voice is tinged with sarcasm. Just tinged, not dripping.
The room smells of chili, lilacs, alcohol, and urine. I leave when Farill starts to examine Frida, although she hasn’t asked me to. She doesn’t care if I watch him thump and manipulate her bruised body.
The phone rings. It’s Maty. She’s at the gallery. She says reporters are already there, hugging the entrance. Like bees, she says. Like bees swarming around a hive.
Dr. Farill says that Frida is running a fever. It would be better if she didn’t go. “The wound hasn’t healed,” he says. “It’s infected.” The bone transplant, was a failure, and Frida’s spine is a mess. She cries all night from the pain.
“She can’t go,” says Farill. “She can’t walk. She can’t even stand up.”
“Go fuck yourself,” says Frida. “I’m going.”
Diego is standing in the doorway. “Go fuck yourself,” he says. “She’s going.”
She has been looking forward to this forever—her exhibition at Lola Alvarez Bravo’s Galería de Arte Contemporáneo. The only individual show she has ever had in Mexico, and only the second of her entire life. “Listen, doc,” she says to Farill. Her voice is softer now, more playful. “I can’t die today. Keep la pelona out of here, at least until after the vernissage.” But Farill shakes his head. The pain has been excruciating, and he would have to administer a dangerous dose of drugs. Even then, standing for hours would be unthinkable. Even sitting for a few minutes might be impossible. “No, Frida,” he says. “I can’t permit it.” He is standing about a foot from Frida’s canopied bed, one hand on the post.
“Get out of here, you fucking bastard!” She throws her lighted cigarette at his face, but she has no force in her arms. The cigarette hits his jacket and falls. Diego signals the doctor to follow him into the corridor. “Come on, Juan,” he says. “There must be a way.” “No!” screams Frida. “You’re not going to decide this without me! You’re not going to treat me as though I’m already dead! Keep your asses right here, and we’ll work this out together!”
Another call. It’s Maty again. The phones are ringing off the hook at the gallery, she says. Everyone wants to know if Frida will be there. The pictures have all been hung. The staff is putting up labels. Deliverymen are bringing in fresh flowers and champagne. Lola Alvarez Bravo has planned the whole thing, and with her usual artistic flair, she’s made it into a gala, a Hollywood event. “But people want to know if Frida’s well enough to come,” says Maty. “Without Frida, well, everyone wants to see Frida.”
Weeks ago Frida sent out invitations, the kind of little booklet poets make to hand out to their friends. Poor poets who have no money to pay a printer. Booklets fastened with ribbon or string, with handwritten verses on colored paper. Frida made a bunch of them, hundreds. “This is my party! My party!” She’s screaming at Juan Farill, her beloved doctor, screaming like a hawk diving in for the kill. But he’s not budging. He’s used to it. We all are. All of us except Diego. He can’t take Frida’s hysterics, which is why he comes by less now. These days he’s spending his time in his studio with Emma Hurtado, his art dealer. Beautiful Emma, with her rich chocolate-brown hair. Who knew he would eventually wind up marrying her? “Get that fucker out of here,” shrieks Frida. “I don’t need any prick of a doctor to tell me what I can do and what I can’t do!” Actually, she loves for Juan Farill to tell her what she can and can’t do. It’s just that today, today she just can’t give in.
The episode has left her exhausted. She’s quiet now. Farill and Diego have gone, but Diego promised to return within the hour. I’m fixing Frida’s hair, combing out her dreary locks and pulling them back and up into a braid, which I pin to her head and decorate with ribbons and roses. I insert the wires of long, dangling earrings into her ears. She’s wearing a colorful blouse, with brightly embroidered geometric designs.
Adri bustles around the house. Every once in a while she glances into the street. The phone rings every few minutes, and now it is ringing again. “It’s Maty!” she calls. “Maty says that hundreds of people are there already. She can hardly control the reporters. They want to know if Frida’s coming.” “Tell her to hold them off!” I tell Adri. “Tell her to say she just doesn’t know yet.” Frida smiles. “Bring me a mirror,” she commands. I hand her a mirror, but she’s so weak she can hardly hold it. Adri comes in with some ox-tail broth. “Eat this, then sleep a while,” she says. But Frida can’t sleep. She can’t relax. Adri spoons broth into her mouth, and I massage her hands. “What’s taking Diego so long?” Frida asks every few minutes. “He’s getting everything ready. It’s complicated,” I answer. Actually, Diego made tentative arrangements days ago.
“They’re here!” Isolda calls from the other room. Diego and two male nurses come in and ease Frida onto a stretcher. “Gently … gently …” “Where’s Juan?” Frida wants to know. “He’ll be traveling with you in the ambulance when it gets here.” The hospital personnel place the stretcher in another room. Several hefty men materialize and lift up Frida’s canopied bed as though it’s a toy. Without dismantling the canopy or the posts, they carry it outside to a truck, then drive off. “Splash some cologne on my neck,” begs Frida. “You’re already as perfumed as a hothouse flower.” Adri laughs. “Just a bit more,” Frida insists. “I smell like death.” Adri and I exchange glances. It’s true. She smells of death.
Now the male nurses return. They lift the stretcher and carry it outside, then place it in the back of the ambulance parked in front of the house. The motorcade is waiting to roll. It will be a Hollywood production—lights! camera! action!—a hospital ambulance with screeching sirens and a full motorcycle escort. Frida smiles. “Lola would be jealous!” she whispers.
The ambulance pulls out. The cycles rev up. Frida Kahlo, accompanied by her adoring husband, Diego Rivera, her sisters Adriana and Cristina, zoom through the streets of Mexico City to Lola Alvarez Bravo’s famous gallery in the fashionable Zona Rosa. The place is packed. Reporters are elbowing one another in the struggle toward the entrance. Photographers are fumbling with their lenses. But when the nurses unload Frida from the ambulance, the newspapermen drop their equipment in astonishment. The great Kahlo has done it again! She has made jaws drop and eyes pop! She’s arrived at her vernissage on a stretcher! Diego grins. Farill hobbles along, tight-lipped. Frida greets her guests in the horizontal, beaming through teeth clenched in pain. A martyr’s smile, yes. But Frida is genuinely happy. This is, perhaps, the happiest moment of her life. The nurses hoist her into the gallery and place her on her bed, which has been set up in the middle of the room, canopy and all. Her adoring fans form a receiving line, filing by, kissing her fingertips, gushing praise. Some are speechless, paralyzed by her majestic presence. Lying there, surrounded by admirers, celebrities, reporters, and photographers, Frida is the sovereign, the grand Aztec empress. And I am overcome by a deep sense of joy, an inner satisfaction. No one is looking at me, no one is talking to me. No photographers are taking my picture, and no reporters are asking me my opinions. But at least I have helped give this to Frida.
4:05 A.M. The first shimmers of light grope the horizon like an insecure lover. Somewhere a bird chirps gaily, celebrating the dawn. Today will be different. It’s not going to rain. Three or four workers stride down the street with purpose. Some carry tools. I suppose they have to be at work by 6:00. Perhaps they have to go all the way to the city. Tired men who lift and pull all day long for a peso or two, not enough to feed their families. Frida’s right. It’s not fair. I feel sorry for them. They don’t see me. They don’t even know that I exist, or that Frida exists. They don’t know about Frida. They know only about their aching backs, their leaky ceilings, their children’s empty bellies. They are absorbed in their own thoughts. I wonder if they would like to die. I hear voices in the street, men’s voices, but I can’t make out words. What are they talking about, these workers whom we love so passionately but can’t understand? What is it like to be them? “Cristi!” She’s awake. Her tongue is heavy, sticky. “Cristi!” “Yes, darling. Try to sleep.” “The pain …” “I know, darling, I know.” “Don’t let her come back.” But it’s too late. Mayet is already standing in the doorway. “She’s awake, Señora Mayet.” The nurse turns on the dim lamp on the dresser and takes a vial of Demerol out of a locked case. “Give me double this time, Mayet. It hurts too much.” She chews her words. Mayet pretends not to understand. She fills the syringe and injects. “Can’t you increase the dose, Señora Mayet? She’s suffering.” The nurse looks right through me. She turns out the light and leaves the room.
Last year they cut off her leg, not long after the magnificent exhibition in Lola Alvarez Bravo’s gallery. Poor leg. It was so crippled and shriveled, it reminded me of Diego’s limp penis. Dr. Farill was the one who told her they had to do it. “Not just a toe this time, Frida, but the whole leg, up to the knee.” Adelina Zendejas was with us. Adelina, Frida’s old friend. Frida let out a scream so shrill, so deafening that traffic stopped, planes dropped out of the sky, church bells shattered, and wildcats in the desert fell dead. “No!!” Walls trembled all over Coyoacán, and in the pulquería on the corner, all the paintings fell to the ground. “No!!!” Gongorina, the escuincle dog, miscarried her litter, and in the church in the plaza, a plaster statue of Our Lady turned away from the congregation and wept real tears. “No!!!” But there was nothing to be done. Diego sat on the bed and smoothed her hair. “Friducha,” he whispered. “Mi Friducha.” Adelina bit her lip. “It’ll be okay, Frida,” I kept saying. “You’ve come through so much already.”
She closed her eyes and was quiet a long time. Then, suddenly, she opened them. “What’s this crying?” she snapped. “What’s this sniveling? Haven’t I always been Peg-leg Frida?” She started to chant that old song from our schoolyard days. Frida Kahlo, pata de palo, un pie bueno, el otro malo.
I cried. I cried more than she did. Frida painted. She painted Fridas with wounded feet, but also melons and bananas and mameys bursting with life. But since I couldn’t paint, all I could do was cry. Frida comforted me. Yes, doctor, she comforted me. “What do I need that miserable paw for anyway?” she said. “It doesn’t work anymore! It doesn’t take me where I want to go! Let them chop it off!” But it was an act. Underneath it all, she was screaming, screaming in silence, screaming at the miserable fate that prevented her from doing what she really wanted to do: soar, dance, paint, love. “Don’t worry, Cristi,” she told me. “As long as I’m here, I’ll love life, and when it’s time for me to leave, I’ll go joyfully.” I looked into her eyes. “Just promise me one thing, Cristi. If la pelona drags it out, help her along. Give her a little push so that I don’t suffer … needlessly.” I didn’t answer. “Promise,” she whispered, drawing circles on my palm with the tips of her fingers. “Promise …” I stared at my trembling wrists and said nothing.
“She’s going to die,” Diego said to me.
“Yes,” I said. “She can’t take anymore. This time she really is going to die.” When it was time for the operation, I went to the hospital with her, as I had so many times before.
The doctor had an artificial limb made for her. “I won’t wear it,” she said. “It hurts, and it’s ugly.” “Wear it, mi amor!” coaxed Diego. “I’ll take you out dancing!” “Go dance with Emma Hurtado, you fucking son of a bitch!” By now, Diego was living openly with Emma.
But instead of taking his new girlfriend dancing, he had a pair of boots made for his wife—dainty red boots with bells on them, boots she could wear with her fake foot. When visitors came, she lifted her skirts above the ankle and showed them off. “They’re dancing boots,” she told everyone. “Diego is going to take me to the clubs!” And she would laugh and wink. “I’m going to wiggle my ass and flirt with all the young boys. I’ll make him good and jealous! And while I’m at it, I’ll flirt with the young girls too.”
But Frida didn’t dance. In fact, she could hardly stand. Instead, she sat in her wheelchair and painted, on good days, although her work was growing sloppy. She no longer had control. On bad days she sat and drank brandy out of a bottle and smoked cigarettes that made her breath fetid. It got so that the only one who could stand to be around her was me, and even I sometimes had to spend a night in my apartment in the city.
One morning I was sleeping in my room in the Casa Azul when Manuel woke me up, banging on my door and howling like a wounded wolf, “Something’s wrong with Miss Frida! I can’t wake her up!”
She was lying in a lagoon of vomit and shit. Her tongue was hanging out of her mouth like a small, independent animal. Her bedclothes were crumpled and piled on the floor as though she had thought they were attacking her and thrown them off in desperation. The stench was unbearable. Empty pill bottles were strewn all around. She had stashed them under her pillow and emptied them in an orgy of self-destruction during the night. I called Farill at home. “Frida’s committed suicide!” “Where was the nurse?” “How do I know where the hell she was? Get over here right away!”
But she wasn’t dead. They rushed her to the hospital. They pumped her stomach. They saved her. That’s when we got Mayet, because Diego decided that she needed a full-time, live-in nurse—not like the others who came and went. Someone had to be with her all the time. All the time. But even after we got Mayet, that someone was me. Her sister. Because, to tell you the truth, no one else could stand to be around her day and night, not even for money.
I’ve told you this before: only one thing interested Frida. No, not communism or the plight of the workers. Not art, not muralism as an instrument of education, not creativity or where to buy the best oil colors. And no, not sex, not even sex. The only thing that really fas_cinated Frida was Frida. People said I was stupid. They said I never really understood what was going on. But I’m smart enough to know this: Frida Kahlo had a lifelong romance with herself, and nobody, not Diego, not me—nobody could ever replace Frida in Frida’s heart. During those days and months after they amputated her leg, Frida was heartbroken. Part of herself was missing. She felt ugly, broken, shattered, flawed. And what she wanted most was to tell you about it. She was enthralled with her own suffering. She was mourning for her lost limb, and she wanted you to mourn with her. But who would listen? Everyone was tired. She wore everyone out. Who would listen to her analyze every twinge and spasm? Who but her doctors? After all, they got paid for listening, didn’t they? And so she surrounded herself with doctors, the only people who shared her fascination with her decaying body. She called Dr. Eloesser long-distance all the time. She had dreamed of being a doctor, and now, at last, she could devote all attention to medicine.
And then, finally, there came a doctor who really wanted to hear her talk, a new kind of doctor, an innovative plaything, a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist! One of your colleagues. And so Frida became a new kind of star: the first woman in Mexico ever to be psychoanalyzed.
And now I’m being psychoanalyzed too, right? That’s why they sent you here, isn’t it? To dig into my mind, to find out why I did what I did. Right, doctor? But this doesn’t really count, does it, doctor? I mean, to be the eighth or the tenth or the fifteenth person to be psychoanalyzed in Mexico, that’s not important. What matters is to be the first. But me, I didn’t set any record. I’m just another patient.
Have you really been listening to me all this time, doctor? If you have, you know why I did it. I did it because I loved her. And I still love her.
4:30 A.M. It’s now, in the stillness that precedes dawn, that God works his magic. Strangely, as I retreat into myself, into the secret castle of my own soul, I become intensely alert. My senses—fine-tuned, wide awake—take in everything, the soundless scampering of an insect, the buzz of a mosquito helicoptering over live flesh, the silhouette of the bedpost, an eerie sculpture formed by the twisted leaves of a wilting bouquet, the stink of emptied but still foul bedpans, blood coursing through my veins, Frida’s ratchety breathing, my own cadenced inhaling. Frida moans and mumbles unintelligibly. She’s still alive. I sit on her bed. I sense movement under the lids of her closed eyes. Dawn struggles to be born. A feeble sliver of light hugs the sides of the drawn curtain. Frida mumbles: “pain” … “misery” … “unbearable” … “dance” … dance?
Dear God, grant us peace.
“Cristi …” “I know, darling.” “Cristi, you’ll never guess who I just saw.” “Try to rest, darling.” “I saw Princess Frida Zoraída!” “Don’t try to talk, darling.” “Princess Frida Zoraída, Cristi! I haven’t seen her for years!” Frida’s forehead is on fire. I reach for a compress and place it above her eyebrows. “She had the same sweet, high, belllike voice as before, Cristi. ‘Is that you, Princess Frida Zoraída?’ I asked her. And she sang to me, the same way she used to: ‘I’m hiding in your mind! / Now open the door! / Don’t ask me how / I’ll tell you no more!’
“So I tiptoed to the window and breathed on the pane, and when the glass got all steamed up, I drew a door in the mist. And then I flew out that door and across the plain. When I got to the Pinzón Dairy, I zoomed right through the O of Pinzón.” “Were you wearing your gingham pinafore, darling?” “I was wearing a nightgown, Cristi. This same nightgown, high bodice, white lace, this same one. And my red boots with the bells.” “And what did Princess Zoraída have on, Frida?” “She was an old woman, Cristi, just like I am. But she had on the same frilly white bow she used to wear when we were little girls, and a long red-orange robe adorned with round, peso-sized mirrors, sequins, and beads, and a purple-braided rope trim, just like before, Cristi, just like before. Only instead of those felt boots with upturned points that she used to have, she wore red boots with bells, just like mine. ‘Dance,’ she said. I didn’t want to. ‘I can’t,’ I told her. But she insisted, and I started to hobble around, first this way, then that way. She danced with me, following my movements as gracefully as a balloon.” Princess Frida Zoraída told her how graceful she was and how much she loved her lacy nightgown, and Frida cried with joy. “I want to go back to her, Cristi. I want to stay with her forever. She’ll take care of me, darling, and then you won’t have to.” “I don’t mind taking care of you, Frida.” “It’s too much of a burden for you, darling. I’m wearing you out.” “No, Frida, no. I don’t mind at all!” “I love you, Cristi, but now it’s time for me to go to be with Princess Frida Zoraída. Help me find her. Please help me find her. I’m in so much pain …”
I get up and pull aside the curtain. At last the dawn has elbowed aside the darkness, and I can see Frida’s eyes, those beautiful brown eyes whose brows form a bird in flight. “I can’t stand the pain, Cristi. There’s a bottle under my pillow.” I reach under her pillow and find a small brown bottle of laudanum and a medicine dropper. I twist the cap off the top and fill the dropper. Frida smiles, and we kiss one last time. Then calmly, lovingly, I place the nib under her tongue and squeeze, releasing the medicine drop by drop.