Frida Read online

  “This looks bad,” whispered Frida.

  I started to whimper softly. Frida brought her index finger to her lips, signaling me to be quiet. “Chst! Shut up, you baby!” she hissed.

  The cook continued to pray, tears rolling down her heavy brown cheeks.

  Frida snuck up behind her, then touched her gently on the shoulder. “Inocencia!” she said softly.

  Startled, the cook recoiled, then opened her eyes wide. “Fridita!”

  Frida giggled, and I smiled hesitantly. Inocencia, still on her knees, hugged us and began to wail: “¡Oh, gracias a Dios! Thank God! Oh, Holy Virgin, thank you!” She dragged her ungainly body to a standing position, then poured us some juice and put tortillas on a plate.

  “Where have you been?” she pretended to scold. “Your poor mami is crazy with worry. You have to go right now and tell her you’re safe.”

  I was wolfing down tortillas, but Frida just stood there, biting her lip.

  “Why don’t you just tell her we’ve been here with you all the time,” she proposed after a while.

  “Ah, no. Doña Matilde would have my hide. Anyhow, she’d never believe it. They’ve searched the entire house, and your mami sent two of the boys to look for you in the streets. They even sent Manuel to town to get your papá.”

  “They sent for Papá? Oh, no!” wailed Frida. “We should go throw ourselves in the river and let the boys find us. That way we could say we were drowning and thank God they saved us just in time. Mami would be so happy to have us back, she’d forget to scream.”

  “Never mind,” chided Inocencia with pretend gruffness. “You’d better just go tell your mami you’re home safe and face the music.”

  “Come on, Inocencia,” said Frida, “help us out.” She cuddled up to the cook and kissed her on the cheek. Frida was good at sweet-talking people into doing what she wanted.

  “Let’s go, Cristi,” she said, nudging me. “We’re going back to the river.”

  But I was too engrossed in clumsily spreading avocado over a warm tortilla.

  “Come on, dummy! Will you stop eating? No wonder you’re such a tub!”

  I snatched a piece of avocado peel and threw it at her. “Leave me alone! It’s your fault we’re in trouble. I’m going to Mami.”

  That really raised her hackles. I certainly wasn’t Mami’s favorite—she preferred the older girls, Matilde and Adriana—but she tolerated me better than she did Frida. If she had to choose one of us to believe, she’d opt for me over my cheeky sister.

  “So we’re in trouble,” snapped Frida. “So what? Lick your wounds and stop sniveling.”

  I was already tearing toward the door.

  “Stop, stupid! Think a minute. We can get ourselves out of this. We’ll just say we were kidnapped by one of those government guys they’re always talking about, the ones that snatch you up and carry you off in big black cars. Let’s see. They were tough … and mean. And they had guns as long as a bull’s prick. Only we managed to escape through the window. Boy, after a scare like that, Mami would be thrilled to have us back. Unless, of course, you ruin everything.”

  I started to howl. “Mami! Here we are, Mami!”

  Mami was giving instructions to one of the servants in a different part of the house, and she wasn’t sure whether she had heard me cry or whether her imagination was playing tricks on her. Years later she told me that she had been hearing children’s voices all that morning—ever since Miss Caballero’s messenger had come. She had heard giggling in the wardrobe, only to throw it open and find it empty. She had heard moaning in the kitchen, only to have Inocencia search cupboards, bins, and hampers to no avail. The whimpers and whispers were driving her to hysteria.

  “¡Señora!” Inocencia burst into the laundry room. “The little ones are back! Fridita is in the kitchen, and Cristinita is on the patio!”

  “They’re back? Are they safe?”

  “Yes, Señora. They’re safe, praised be God.”

  Mami dissolved into a kind of religious paroxysm, ranting and screaming. “Oh, Blessed Virgin, thank you! Thank you!” I could hear her carrying on from my spot in the patio, next to the door. When she had impressed the Virgin sufficiently with her gratitude, she darted outside and eyed me, hunched near the house, sobbing like Mary Magdalene. She grabbed me by the arm and, with one resounding thwack, sent me sprawling. I must have let out a scream, because the servants came running. But Mami refused to let them get near me. Instead, she commanded imperiously: “Go find Frida. She’s in the kitchen.”

  However, Frida was not in the kitchen. Nor the bedrooms. Nor the sala, nor the laundry. Frida was nowhere to be found. Mami was trembling, not with fear now but with rage. She was so livid that only the very tip of her nose, which resembled a barely ripe strawberry, showed any color at all. Finally, old Inocencia, who had waddled out the gate into the street, spotted Frida about half a block away.

  “There she is, Señora!” she called. Conchita took off after Frida and brought her home kicking.

  “What is the meaning of this? Where have you been?” Mami grabbed Frida by both shoulders and shook her until she teetered. “We’ve been wild looking for you! Where have you been?” Her frenzied shrieks reverberated through the patio. Her face was tight, twisted, unglued. I thought of those concave or convex fun-house mirrors that distort your features and make you look like Pinocchio or a pear-faced fiend. I thought of Mami with a huge, hourglass-shaped head, tiny shoulders, and a bloated waist. I bit my lip to keep from laughing. I don’t even want to imagine what might have happened to me if I had cracked a smile at that moment. Maybe I wouldn’t be here telling you this story!

  Mami was quiet now, but she was as tense as a string on a finely tuned guitar. She raised her hand to slap my sister, but Frida shifted her weight, slipping out of range. It was terrifying, but at the same time hysterically funny. Mami, so staid, so self-righteous, swatting the air as though she were after an elusive fly, like one of those American cartoon characters that became popular much later: the cat that keeps trying to smack the bird, zip! zip! zap! like this. She lost her balance, great big solid, stolid Mami, and nearly went down on the floor. But the instant she regained her bearings, she raised her hand again, and this time she knocked Frida squarely on the ear.

  I knew it smarted. Even though I wasn’t the one to get cuffed, I felt as though I had been knocked in the skull with a bat. My head, neck, and shoulders were throbbing. But Frida didn’t cry. She just looked Mami defiantly in the eye.

  “You little brats!” howled Mami.

  Frida crossed her arms. “It wasn’t Cristi’s fault,” she said, feigning calmness. “It was mine.”

  You see, this is what I was telling you. Frida always did her best to protect me. She stood right up to Mami and told her that she was the one who had been bad.

  “Lucifer himself has built a nest in your soul, you wicked little thing!” That’s what Mami said to her. Can you imagine a woman talking like that to a six-year-old, doctor? It’s no wonder Frida turned out the way she did.

  No, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean that Frida turned out badly or that she wasn’t as sweet as a mango deep down inside. She was sweet. Well, not exactly sweet, but good. That’s precisely what I’m trying to tell you. She always took credit for everything.

  “It was my fault!” she repeated. “I got into a fight at school. I don’t want to go back there, Mami. I hate Miss Caballero!”

  Did Frida really hate Miss Caballero? I’m not too sure about that.

  “What fight?” demanded Mami. “What were you fighting about this time?”

  “Nothing,” said Frida, sticking out her chin.

  I started to explain: “They called us—”

  Frida shot me a look that said shut up. “Nothing,” she repeated. She was not going to tell Mami that they had called us foreigners and Jews in school again. She was not going to give her something more to throw in Papá’s face.

  Mami was suddenly calm. “You’ll send me t
o an early grave,” she said simply. “Everything I put up with for you two, and you can’t do enough to make me miserable! Blessed Mother, what did I do to deserve such children?” But she wasn’t yelling. Her heart was no longer in it.

  Papá had entered the patio and stood, morose and silent, looking at his wife and daughters. Without greeting him, without even turning to face him, Mami acknowledged his presence.

  “Your father came back from work because he thought you were in danger,” she said. “He made the trip all the way back from town. He closed his studio. And he’s been sick again. He had a seizure early this morning. But even so, he came home. And you, you were just playing pranks!” But she still wasn’t yelling.

  I felt guiltier now. Papá rarely came home for the afternoon meal. Instead, Manuel made the long trek to the city every day with a lunch basket. I knew that for Papá to travel all the way back to Coyoacán, he had to be frantic.

  “Go on,” Mami said to him as she left the patio, “tell them how bad they’ve been. Tell them how you’re going to punish them.”

  Papá stood staring at us with those uncommunicative, demented eyes.

  Frida ran to him. He bent down awkwardly, and she threw her little arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. “Come on, Cristi,” she said.

  I followed my sister’s example and kissed him, but then I ran off toward our bedroom. I guess I thought it would be better to leave them alone, to let Frida reinvent the story in her own way. Naturally, she would be the star. But she would play the other roles as well. For the part of Estela, she would make her voice abrasive, like nails scraping across a slate. For Miss Caballero, she would puff out her cheeks and make her fingers fat with rags. How would she portray me? Would I be in the story at all? In the end, she would vanquish her enemies brilliantly. Frida was a master of histrionics. The heroine! The savior!

  I crawled into my bed and went to sleep.

  The next morning Frida said to me, “You know, Princess Frida Zoraída came to see me last night.”

  I was only five. I believed in Princess Frida Zoraída. “You think someday she might come visit me?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” she said. “I’m the one she’s friends with.”

  Frida was sitting on a little upholstered chair, a miniature of the ones in the parlor, looking out the window that faced Allende Street. She seemed forlorn. Neither of us had had supper the night before because Mami was so mad, she didn’t let Inocencia feed us. I had the impression that Frida wanted to cry, but she would never cry in front of me.

  “All of a sudden,” she said, “I heard her voice.”

  “Her voice?” I whispered. “What did she say?” Frida had all the luck, I thought, because a real princess—Princess Frida Zoraída—came to visit her whenever she needed a friend.

  She had had to strain her ears, she said, but finally, as if from the center of the Earth, Princess Frida Zoraída beckoned to her: “Frida! Frida!”

  “I got up and went to the window,” Frida told me. Princess Frida Zoraída’s sweet, high, bell-like voice tinkled melodiously, like an oriental glass mobile in the breeze. “Come, Frida! Come and play!” called the princess. Her voice wasn’t human. It was otherworldly.

  “Is it you, Princess Frida Zoraída?” whispered Frida.

  There was no response.

  “Is it you, Princess Frida Zoraída?” she asked again.

  The answer came in the form of a song, faint and ghostly.

  I’m hiding in your mind!

  Now open the door!

  Don’t ask me how.

  I’ll tell you no more!

  “I was so excited!” Frida said. “I breathed on the windowpane, and when the glass got all steamed up, I drew a door in the mist. And then I felt myself fly out that door and cross the plain around Coyoacán. At last I got to the Pinzón Diary. There was a huge sign that read Lechería Pinzón, and I circled it again and again. Finally, I zoomed in through the O of Pinzón.”

  She flew and flew until she got to the center of the earth, where Princess Frida Zoraída was waiting for her.

  The princess was a little girl identical to Frida. She had the same dimpled chin and mischievous eyes, the same chubby cheeks, the same frilly white bow. But instead of a pinafore, she wore a long red-orange robe adorned with round, peso-sized mirrors, sequins and beads, and a purple braided rope trim. Purple felt boots with upturned points covered her plump little feet.

  “Come!” she said, with a voice like shattering glass. “Come dance with me.”

  She took Frida by the hands and kissed her on the cheek. Then she began to dance, floating weightlessly, bobbing this way and that. As she held Frida’s fingers, her purple-booted feet wafted in the air.

  “Dance!” she urged. “Dance!” Frida turned and hopped, and Zoraída followed her movements as gracefully as a balloon. Her dainty feet never touched the ground.

  “That’s wonderful!” said Princess Frida Zoraída, laughing. “You’re so graceful! You’re so beautiful! I love your pretty pinafore!” Frida smiled and kissed her.

  “I felt so warm all over,” she told me. “I felt better right away. I forgot all about Mami and those little brats at school.”

  “I love your gown,” Frida said to Princess Zoraída. And then she added, “I had a bad day at school today.” She always told Princess Frida Zoraída all her problems.

  “What happened?” asked the princess, stroking her cheek softly with her fingers. “Tell me everything.”

  “The children were teasing me. Especially Estela and María del Carmen.”

  “They’re nasty girls.”

  “Do you know what they called me?”

  “What did they call you?”

  “A foreigner and Jew! Am I a foreigner and a Jew, Princess Frida Zoraída?”

  “No! Of course not! What a ridiculous idea.”

  “They say that because Papá was born in Germany, we’re not really Mexicans.”

  “How stupid! You should get even with those girls.”

  “That’s what I thought. So, you know what I did?”

  “Tell me!”

  “I insulted them! I called them terrible names.”

  “That’s wonderful, Fridita! You did the right thing. You did just what I would have done.”

  “And then, when Miss Caballero started to scold me, I ran away and hid in the park!”

  Princess Frida Zoraída burst into laughter that sounded to Frida like a million sparrows chirping and a million wind chimes tinkling. She and Princess Frida Zoraída held each other and laughed and danced around and around.

  “It was wonderful, Cristi,” Frida said. She walked over to the window and stared out.

  “Is she still there?” I whispered hopefully. I got up and stood next to her, searching Allende Street for signs of the princess. But only the oaks, standing tall against the colorless sky, broke the monotony of the cobblestone sidewalk.

  Did Frida make it all up just to make me jealous, or did she really believe what she was telling me? I don’t know. It’s possible that in her little girl’s mind, Princess Frida Zoraída really existed. Frida had such a vivid imagination that I don’t think she was ever able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, even after she grew up. Anyhow, what’s real? Does any of us know? Sometimes I’m not actually sure what happened between Frida and me. Sometimes I don’t actually know if I did what you say I did.

  CHAPTER 3

  Peg-leg Frida

  FRIDA WAS ALWAYS A WONDERFUL ACTRESS, AND SHE LOVED TO PERFORM. That’s why, the night she woke up screaming, I thought she was just putting on a show.

  The shrieks of a child in pain. A shard of glass in the gut. A sliver of ice in the gullet that cuts off your breathing and paralyzes you, leaving you helpless to call out in the darkness. How can any mother bear it? When my Antonio and Isolda were little, sometimes they would cry out like that, and I would panic because the nightmare of Frida’s screams would scud back to me in jagged fragments. But on the ni
ght I’m describing to you, I was still a long way from being a mother. I was just a little girl, and my first thought was that Frida had had a bad dream or a gas bubble and had inconsiderately let out a yelp in order to rouse the household. It wouldn’t have been the first time. In fact, it had gotten to be a habit of hers, screaming in the night to bring everyone running. Mami in her ruffled nightcap and Inocencia in her frayed shawl would stumble into the room bleary-eyed and, like zombies, submit to Frida’s every command so that the poor little victim, the poor, suffering little darling, could get back to sleep.

  “Inocencia, a cup of yerbabuena!” The maid would waddle into the kitchen to brew the soothing tea.

  “Mami, the new doll!” Mami would pull it out of my arms and rest it on my sister’s chest.

  Usually, Frida and I slept in the same room, but all that week she had had a cold, and so Mami put me in bed with Adriana and Matilde.

  My big sisters must not have heard anything, because neither of them budged. I listened for Mami’s footsteps in the patio, but no one else seemed to be stirring. Maybe I dreamed it, I thought. I snuggled next to Adriana and tried to fall back to sleep.

  I was just dozing off when another cry shattered the stillness. This time I bolted out of bed toward the room I usually shared with Frida. My first thought was to tell her to shut up, to stop making a racket. But then I saw that Mami and Papi were already there. Mami was trembling. Papá, still groggy, was staggering toward Frida’s bed.

  I think a low-grade anxiety had been gnawing at Papá for days. Frida had been ill with a fever, a headache, a sore throat. It was just a cold, he kept saying. Papá had six daughters—the four of us and two others by his first wife. Of course, Mami had seen to it that our half sisters were packed off to a convent as soon as she married him. She wanted them out of the way so there would be no reminders of that other woman. Later on, we all became friends, but that’s another story. Even though Papá had always remained on the periphery of our upbringing, he knew that fevers and sore throats were common in small children. But then the nausea and vomiting started. And then the diarrhea.