LOVE FROM FRIDA

 

(first published in Spiked, 2004)

 

My darling Christina,

            How hard it is to write to you, my second favourite person in the world, with feelings of disgust in my heart because of what you did with my first favourite person (Diego, of course!).

            I won’t think about it. Instead I’ll tell you about my new painting – I’ll draw you a horrible little sketch of it at the top of this sheet of paper (I’m sorry it’s not proper notepaper, but the only paper I have in the house is in my sketch pad).

The picture, then, is a lovely woodland scene. The subject of the picture is a creature with the tender, bony body of a deer with my long neck and head (I have antlers!). The poor creature is being shot at with arrows. Poor thing, I cry for him.

(Him? It’s half me and yet I think of it as “him”. Why is that? Perhaps because I find it easier to pity a male than a female.)

            You will like my painting. It’s not as good as the one I painted of you – how your face haunts me! Your exquisite features, that superior expression. I wish I was more like you. Even your name is prettier than mine. It suggests delicacy. Like something that could break.

            Darling, do you love Diego? Because if you do, I could understand it. How could I not, if my two favourite people should love each other? I think it would be natural. But you always said you didn’t like him because he’s fat and you laughed when I said he had a face exactly like the potato we found when we were children – do you remember, how grotesque it was? And we put eyes on it and I cut out a mouth? And it went rotten and stank? I do believe I remember everything about our childhood, Christina.

            I know I should love you best, above Diego. We used to be everything to each other, didn’t we? Why do men have to come along and spoil things? They are the spoilers of Eden, not us.

(Christina, would you give him a child? You see, I don’t know if I could stand it. And yet I do love you, Christina, so I should love any child you had, and if it was Diego’s why shouldn’t I love it even more?)

            Shall I cut my hair short again? Do you think I looked better, or too masculine? I won’t remove my moustache or pluck my eyebrows. I think I look beautiful as I am. Diego doesn’t like seeing my self portraits on the wall – he says my eyes haunt him, the sad expression in them. I’ve looked, but I think I look defiant, not sad. And anyway, it is my house, after all. Perhaps if I’d agreed to live with him…but we were never like a normal married couple, were we? You know I really don’t like blonds. I don’t know why I suddenly thought of that - wasn’t your lover blond? What happened to him? He looked nice – much more handsome than Diego.

            Every time I cut my hair I keep it, braided with red ribbons, in a box. I only cut it when I’m sad, because it makes me feel terrible and yet I don’t bleed, I do myself no lasting damage.

            Love makes women stupid, don’t you find? Now don’t be angry, but it is the truth that Diego will not love you more because you’re a painter. I am a painter with a talent equal to his, but he betrays me with girls who can neither read nor write and who couldn’t tell a Renoir from a Raphael. Don’t do it for him, Christina. It’s not that I would be jealous of your talent (for of course you would have talent! You’re the sister of the great Frida, how could you not?).

            I wish only that I had learnt about you and Diego at another time. I have lost so many babies, I should be used to it, I suppose. But, oh! It was so hard to hear about it – about things – about you – while I was still oozing blood. If I could give Diego a child it would help. What a ridiculous creature I am, to put up with him and to put myself through so much for him. Every time I get pregnant again I lie in bed with my legs together, praying the baby will stay and not escape in a mess and mangle of bloody clots. Of course I want a child for myself, not just for Diego. You know how much I love children, but I don’t like them around me too much because they remind me that they are not mine. It is hard to be an aunt when I want so much to be a mother.

People see Diego and me together and call us “Beauty and the Beast”, and they think they’re being original. But it is I who am the beast, my female organs so deformed and my pelvis so broken that I cannot carry a child. Perhaps I am half male, like the deer in my picture? That is why I can’t be a mother and why I am not enough for Diego. I was very young when I met him, of course. A man will forgive a great deal in a young girl that he would not put up with in a woman. I don’t think he minds about the child as much as I do, but there are so many other things I can’t give him. I am sick so often, I can’t be a proper lover to him, and he is a demanding and sexual man.

He gets sick of me and accuses me of making too much of my injuries.

            I even bore myself, sometimes. I spend too much time alone, scrutinising my face and my thoughts – my emotions too, of course. I am so much to myself that I have lost the ability to see or understand others. What does Diego want? Tell me if you know. But what do you want, Christina? Have we ever been happy, either of us? I, at least, should be happy, should I not? People buy my paintings. Oh why doesn’t that make me pleased? Whilst I am physically painting I am in a state of perfect happiness, but the minute I put my brush down I lose all feelings of bliss – not gradually, but immediately. It is so sad, Christina, to have this talent – don’t envy it.

            I love you so much, Christina, you’re my sister, my blood, but I hate you too and that is why I punched the canvas and tore your face with my jewellery. Whenever I meet you I kiss your face and hug you, but that canvas is proof of what’s really inside me.

            It is feminine thing, jealousy – is it not?

            If you have a child with Diego I will die. I could not bear it. But I know you so well, my Christina. I noticed the way you rested your hands on your belly. You said you were bloated with food but you can’t fool me, sister. You shall not have this child, my dear love, if I have anything to do with it.

            Your face is in strips in my house. The red mouth, the black eyes, all ripped because I’m the jealous woman who’s taken her hands like claws to her wicked little sister.

            I have had dreams about you. Sexual dreams, you and I entwined. But Diego is always watching and he is grinning. Because he is so big he seems to fill the room. He sits in the corner, on a plain wooden chair, squat like a bullfrog.

He doesn’t ask that I be faithful to him but there is something malevolent about him, about the way he is so promiscuous but says it’s me he loves. To my woman’s mind it seems to make no sense. He knows I take lovers only to make him jealous – not like you, you are like him, conquistador.

            If this hadn’t happened I would have believed you and I had a perfect love. I would have believed in God. Diego’s other little affairs are unimportant, I don’t care if he sleeps with every woman in Mexico – in the world – as long as he leaves you alone.

            How could you, Christina? I tell myself, I tell everyone, I tell you that I don’t mind, that you’re my beloved sister and I would forgive you anything. I pretend that I tolerate Diego’s little affairs and that I even like it best when he turns to you because you’re family, you have my blood in you, so it’s almost as though he’s in bed with me. But you are not me, are you? We experience things not as twins but as separate beings, separate women. I knew the moment your affair began, I could see it in your eyes. Triumph. An absence of shame.

            Why, Christina?

            I will not post this letter, so you will never know how much I can hate you. I shall see you soon, my darling sister. I will invite you to my house, I shall cook us a spicy meal for you. The red tiles on my floor are very uneven. I shall forget to have them fixed. I shall trip, and you shall be in front of me and you will feel my hand in the small of your back. Those shoes you wear, with the thin high heels, like arrows…But they will undo you, they will catch between the tiles, the red tiles that I polish myself when I’m able to.

            So far all the spilt blood has been mine.

            I’ll cradle you in my arms and tell you not to cry, the pain won’t last long, you are young, there will be others…You will feel my fingers grasping the tops of your arms and you’ll be surprised, and disconcerted, and wonder why I’m digging my fingers in just a little too hard, and you’ll know then, but neither of us will say anything and we’ll wait in silence until the doctor comes and escorts you to my bed; and you’ll remember that Diego has slept in that bed with me and you’ll glance at the painting on the easel at the foot of the bed, my face, the tears falling down my cheeks, the braid of hair in my hand, Diego on my mind…

 

            Your loving sister,

            Frida xxx