Frida

by Hayden Herrera

  Meanwhile, as they had been in New York, the Riveras were wooed by the wealthy supporters of culture and entertained by the “right” people, but with less happy results. People found Frida and her Mexican costumes bizarre, and she retaliated against the narrow snobbism of Grosse Pointe matrons by being outrageous, deliberately shocking the haute bourgeoisie. Invited to tea at the home of Henry Ford’s sister, she talked enthusiastically about communism; in a Catholic household, she made sarcastic comments about the Church. Coming home from one or another lunch or tea organized by various committees of society women, she would shrug her shoulders and, trying to make up for a dull day with a lively recounting of it, would tell how she had used four-letter words and expressions such as “Shit on you!” while pretending not to know their meaning. “What I did to those old biddies!” she would say, laughing with evident satisfaction. Once, when Frida and Diego returned after spending an evening at the home of Henry Ford, whom Frida knew to be an avowed anti-Semite, Diego burst into the apartment chortling heartily. Pointing to Frida, he cried, “What a girl! Do you know what she said when there was a quiet moment at the dining room table? She turned to Henry Ford, and she said, ’Mr. Ford, are you Jewish?’”

  “This city seems to me like a shabby old village,” Frida wrote to Dr. Eloesser on May 26. “I don’t like it at all, but I am happy because Diego is working very happily here, and he has found a lot of material for his frescoes that he will do in the museum. He is enchanted with the factories, the machines, etc., like a child with a new toy. The industrial part of Detroit is really most interesting, the rest is, as in all of the United States, ugly and stupid.” Everything about Detroit seemed inferior to Mexico. In Mexico, Frida said, there was more sparkle and a greater contrast between light and shade. There, even the poorest huts were tended with a certain love of beauty and order, while the dilapidated houses in Detroit were dirty and neglected.

  Then there was the matter of food. Frida had no use for the bland American cuisine, though she finally developed a taste for three native concoctions: malted milk, applesauce, and American cheese. She ate quantities of hard candies or sticky sweets like taffy and nougat that reminded her of cajeta, the caramelized goat’s milk from Mexico. Even after she discovered several small grocery stores that catered to the Mexican population of Detroit, and managed to cook Mexican meals, the electric stove she was forced to use seemed to her perversely intractable.

  If Frida had some compunctions about being welcomed into the houses of the elite and enjoying lavish parties in the midst of the Depression, Rivera, who never worried about embracing contradictions, did not. When Frida chastised him once for being a Communist but dressing like a capitalist in a tuxedo, he felt no chagrin. “A Communist must dress like the best,” he said. And he was proud of the attention his wife received, recalling her success at a folk dancing party given by Henry Ford with as much delight as he remembered her caustic remarks: “Frida, looking lovely in her Mexican costume, soon became the center of attraction. Ford danced with her several times.”

  In Diego’s version of the denouement of this evening (with the details rearranged to make himself appear in the best light), Henry Ford escorted him and Frida outside, where a new Lincoln, complete with chauffeur at the wheel, was waiting. “Ford told Frida that the chauffeur had already been paid and that both he and the car were at Frida’s disposal for the time she remained in Detroit. I was embarrassed for us both and thanked Ford but declared that neither Frida nor I could possibly accept such a lavish gift. This car, I said, was too rich for our blood. Ford took my refusal with gracious understanding. Then, without our knowledge, he got his son Edsel to design a special small Ford car, which he presented to Frida a short time later.”

  In the last year of her life, Frida told the story differently: “When we went to Detroit, Henry Ford met me and he gave a party for his workers; and even though I was lame, they fixed me up with an apparatus, and I danced a heel and toe with Ford, and the next day he asked me if he could ask Diego for permission to give me a Ford. Diego said yes, and it was in that Ford that we returned to Mexico, and that Ford was a salvation for Diego because he exchanged it for a station wagon and it was very useful; later he exchanged this car for another one called The Frog’ and an Opel.”

  Actually, the car was a trade: hating to be obliged to anyone, Rivera insisted on paying for it with a portrait of Edsel Ford. In the end, he thought he’d been “taken,” for what Sánchez Flores brought home to his boss was not the latest model Lincoln, which Rivera had expected to receive, but a simple four-door sedan worth much less than the portrait. “I’ll never drive that damn thing!” Rivera said.

  Frida’s dislike of Detroit and Detroit society may have had much to do with her physical condition: when she wrote to Dr. Eloesser on May 26, she was two months pregnant. Though her “consultation” with him is characteristically matter-of-fact, its oblique beginning and restless exploration of alternatives reveal her anxiety—and her hope:

  Of myself, I have much to tell you although it is not very pleasant as we say. In the first place my health is not at all good. I would like to talk to you about everything except this, since I understand that you must already be bored with hearing everyone’s complaints, bored with sick people but I would like to think that my case will be a little different because we are friends, and Diego like me loves you very much. This you know well.

  I will begin by telling you that I went to see Dr. Pratt because you recommended him to the Hastings. The first time I had to go because my foot continues to be sick and this is as a result of the toe that is naturally in worse condition than when you saw me since two years have already gone by. I am not worried very much about this matter because I know perfectly well that there isn’t any remedy for it and it does no good to cry. In the Ford Hospital, which is where Dr. Pratt is, I don’t remember which doctor diagnosed that it was a “trophic ulcer.” What is that? When I knew that I had such a thing in my foot, I was dumfounded. The most important question now, and this is what I would like to consult with you about before consulting with anyone else, is that I am two months pregnant; for this reason I saw Dr. Pratt again, he told me that he knew my general condition, because he had talked with you about me in New Orleans, and that I did not need to explain to him again the question of the accident, heredity, etc., etc. Given the state of my health, I thought that it would be better to abort, I told him so, and he gave me a dose of “quinine” and a very strong purge of castor oil. The day after I took this I had a very light hemorrhage almost nothing. During five or six days I have had a bit of blood, but very little. In any case I thought I had aborted and I went to see Dr. Pratt again. He examined me and he told me that no, that he is completely sure that I did not abort and that his opinion is that it would be much better if instead of making me abort with an operation I should keep the baby and that in spite of the bad condition of my organism, bearing in mind the little fracture of the pelvis, spine, etc., etc. I could have a child with a Caesarean operation without great difficulties. He says that if we stay in Detroit for the next seven months of the pregnancy, he will take good care of me. I want you to tell me your opinion in complete confidence since I do not know what to do in this case. Naturally I am willing to do what you think is best for my health, and Diego says the same. Do you think that it would be more dangerous to abort than to have a child? Two years ago I had an abortion with an operation in Mexico, when I was more or less in the same condition as now, with a three months pregnancy. Now I am only two months pregnant and I think it would be easier, but I do not know why Dr. Pratt thinks that it would be better for me to have the child. You better than anyone know what condition I am in. In the first place with this heredity in my blood I do not think that the child could come out very healthy. [Frida probably refers to her father’s epilepsy.] In the second place I am not strong and the pregnancy will weaken me more. What’s more, at this moment the situation for me is rather difficult since I do not know exactly ho
w long Diego will need to finish the fresco and if, as I calculate, he finishes in September, the child would be born in December and I would have to go to Mexico three months before it was born. If Diego finishes later it would be best if I waited for the child to be born here, and anyway, afterward there would be terrible difficulties in traveling with a newborn child. Here I have no one in my family who could take care of me during and after the pregnancy, since poor little Diego, no matter how much he wants to take care of me, he cannot, since he has in addition the problem of work and thousands of things. So that I would not count on him for anything. The only thing I could do in this case would be to go to Mexico in August or September and have the child there. I do not think that Diego would be very interested in having a child since what preoccupies him most is his work and he is absolutely right. Children would take fourth place. From my point of view, I do not know whether it would be good or not to have a child, since Diego is continually traveling and for no reason would I want to leave him alone and stay behind in Mexico, there would only be difficulties and problems for both of us, don’t you think? But if like Dr. Pratt you really think that it is much better for my health not to abort and to have the baby, all these difficulties can be somehow overlooked. What I want to know is your opinion more than anyone else’s since in the first place you know my situation and I would thank you from my heart if you would tell me clearly what you think would be best. In case the operation to abort were the best thing, I beg you to write to Dr. Pratt, since probably he is not very aware of all the circumstances and since it is against the law to abort, perhaps he is afraid or something and later it will already be impossible to have the operation.

  If on the contrary, you think that I could get better by having the child in that case I want you to tell me if it would be preferable for me to go to Mexico in August and to have it there with my mother and my sisters or to wait until it is born here. I do not want to bother you anymore, you do not know, Doctorcito, how much it pains me to bother you with these things, but I talk to you as to the best of my friends rather than just as a doctor, and your opinion will help me more than you can imagine. For I do not count on anyone here. Diego as always is very good to me but I do not want to distract him with such things now that he is burdened with all the work and more than anything else he needs tranquillity and calm. I do not have enough confidence in Jean Wight and Cristina Hastings to consult with them about things like this which have an enormous importance and which because of one false move can take me to the grave! [Here Frida has drawn a skull and crossbones.] For this reason now that I am at the right time I want to know what you think and to do what would be best for my health which I think is the only thing that interests Diego since I know that he loves me, and I will do everything I can on my part to give him pleasure in everything. I do not eat at all well, I have no appetite, and with much effort I drink two glasses of cream a day and a little meat and vegetables. But now with the bothersome pregnancy, I want to vomit all the time and I am fed up. I get tired from everything since my spine hurts and I am also rather bothered by the thing of the foot since I cannot exercise and as a result my digestion is not functioning! Nevertheless I have the will to do many things and I never feel “disappointed by life” as in Russian novels. I understand perfectly my situation and I am more or less happy, in the first place because I have Diego and my mother and father whom I love so much. I think that that is enough and I don’t ask miracles of life or anything close to it. Of my friends you are the one I love most and for this reason I dare to bother you with such foolishness. Forgive me and when you answer this letter tell me how you have been and receive from Diego and from me our affection and a hug from

  Frieda

  If you think I should have the operation immediately I would be grateful if you sent me a telegram telling me in a veiled form so as not to compromise yourself in any way. A thousand thanks and my best regards. F.

  By the time Dr. Eloesser had responded to this letter, enclosing a note for Dr. Pratt, Frida had decided against the abortion, hoping against hope that Dr. Pratt was right. Neither Diego’s concern for her health nor the fact that he did not want another child could make her change her mind once it was made up. Nor could Rivera make Frida obey the doctor’s orders and stay quietly in the apartment. She was lonely, sick, bored. He was fired with enthusiasm for his work and had no intention of staying home to look after his wife. So when Lucienne Bloch came to Detroit in June, he insisted that the young artist move in. “Frida has nothing to do,” he told Lucienne. “She has no friends. She’s very lonely.” He hoped that Lucienne would encourage Frida to paint, but Frida had other ideas. She was, Lucienne recalls, learning to drive instead.

  Lucienne slept in the living room on a Murphy bed that she would push out of sight in the morning before her hosts awoke so that they would not feel crowded. While Diego was away, Frida sketched or painted desultorily in the living room, and Lucienne worked at the dining room table, designing small figurines for a Dutch glassworks.

  As the end of June approached and the summer heat made the small apartment stifling, Frida began to spot, her uterus “hurt,” and she suffered prolonged attacks of nausea. Nothing, however, could shake her optimism. Lucienne recalls: “She was just hoping to be pregnant, so I said, ’Have you seen the doctor?’ and she said, ’Yes, I have a doctor, but he tells me I can’t do this, I can’t do that, and that’s a lot of bunk.’ She did not visit him the way she should have.”

  Frida lost her child on July 4, 1932.

  Lucienne’s diary for the next day tells the story: “Sunday evening. Frieda was so blue and menstruating so. She went to bed and the doctor came and told her, as usual, that it was nothing, that she must be quiet. In the night I heard the worst cries of despair, but thinking that Diego would call me if I could help, I only dozed and had nightmares. At five, Diego rushed into the room all disheveled and pale and asked me to call the doctor. He came at six with an ambulance and got her, in the agonies of birth . . . out of the pool of blood she had made and . . . the huge clots of blood she kept losing. She looked so tiny, twelve years old. Her tresses were wet with tears.”

  Frida was rushed in the ambulance to the Henry Ford Hospital. Lucienne and Diego followed in a taxi. As orderlies wheeled Frida through a cement corridor in the hospital’s basement, she looked up between painful contractions and saw a maze of different-colored pipes near the ceiling. “Look, Diego! Qué precioso! How beautiful!” she cried.

  Rivera was distraught while he waited for news of Frida’s condition. “Diego was tired all day,” Lucienne’s diary records. “Hastings tried to cheer him up by going with all of us to the fourth of July parade. In my mind, there was all the time the big chunks of blood and Frida’s screaming. Diego thought the same. He thinks that a woman, to stand such pain, is far superior to a man who never could stand the pain of childbirth.”

  Frida’s thirteen days in the hospital were grim. A man lay dying in the next room. She felt like escaping but she was too sick to move, and the heat enervated her even more. She kept bleeding and weeping. Seized by fits of despair at the thought that she might never have children, at not really knowing what was wrong with her, why her fetus had not taken form but had “disintegrated” in her womb, she would cry, “I wish I were dead! I don’t know why I have to go on living like this.” Rivera was appalled at her suffering and was full of premonitions of disaster. When they extracted liquid from her spine, he became convinced that she had meningitis.

  But five days after her miscarriage, she took up a pencil and drew a bust-length Self-Portrait. In it she wears a kimono and a hair net, and her face is swollen from tears. And even in the midst of misery she could find laughter. When Lucienne brought her a parody of a condolence telegram that she had composed and signed “Mrs. Henry Ford,” Frida laughed so hard, Lucienne recalls, that what was left of the decomposed fetus was delivered, and she bled profusely.

  Frida wanted to draw her lost child, wanted to see him
exactly as he should have looked at the moment when he was miscarried. The second day in the hospital, she begged a doctor to let her have medical books with illustrations on the subject, but the doctor refused; the hospital did not allow patients to have books on medicine because the images in them might be upsetting. Frida was furious. Diego interceded, telling the doctor, “You are not dealing with an average person. Frida will do something with it. She will do an artwork.” Finally Diego himself provided Frida with a medical book, and she made a careful pencil study of a male fetus. Two other pencil drawings that probably come from this same moment, and that are more surrealistic and fanciful than anything she had done before, show Frida asleep in bed surrounded by strange images that represent her dreams, or perhaps the fleeting visions seen under anesthesia, and are attached to her head by long, looping lines. Apparently done using the Surrealist technique of “automatism,” the images seem to have sprung into being through free association—a hand with roots, a foot that is like a tuber, city buildings, Diego’s face. In one of the drawings, Frida lies naked on top of the bedcovers. Her long hair flows over the edge of the bed and metamorphoses into a network of roots that creep along the floor.

  On July 17, Lucienne and Diego brought Frida home from the hospital. On July 25, Rivera began painting at the Detroit Institute of Arts. On July 29, twenty-five days after her miscarriage and twelve days after she was released from the hospital, Frida wrote again to Dr. Eloesser.

  Doctorcito querido:

  I have wanted to write you for a longer time than you can imagine, but so many things happened to me that until today I have not been able to sit down calmly, take the pen and write you these lines:

  In the first place I want to thank you for your kind note and telegram. At that time I was enthusiastic about having the child after having thought of all the difficulties that it would cause me, but surely it was rather a biological thing since I felt the need to give myself over to the child. When your letter arrived I was still more encouraged since you thought it possible for me to have the child and I did not deliver the letter that you sent me to Dr. Pratt, being almost sure that I could withstand the pregnancy, go to Mexico in good time and have the child there. Almost two months had gone by and I had not felt any discomfort, I was almost in a continuous rest taking care of myself as well as I could. But about two weeks before July 4th I began to notice that almost every day a kind of sanguaza [contaminated blood] came out of me, I became alarmed, saw Dr. Pratt and he told me all this was natural and that he thought that I could easily have the child with a Caesarean operation. I continued like that until the fourth of July when without knowing why I miscarried in a wink of the eye. . . . The fetus did not take form since it came out all disintegrated in spite of my being already three and one half months pregnant. Dr. Pratt did not tell me what the cause of this was or anything, and he only assured me that another time I could have another baby. Until now I do not know why I miscarried and for what reason the fetus did not take form, so that who knows what the devil is going on inside me, for it is very strange, don’t you think? I had such hope to have a little Dieguito who would cry a lot, but now that it has happened there is nothing to do but put up with it. . . . In the end there are thousands of things that always remain in complete mystery. In any case I have a cat’s luck since I do not die so easily and that’s always something! . . .