The Incantation of Frida K. by Kate Braverman

Author:Kate Braverman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2010-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

Cristina, a pale novitiate with a lace-covered silver tray. A pink bud in a vase. Cristina, face grave, drawn tightly like Mother. Stiff. She has bones that will fracture. Brittle bones. She will fall, break her hip, her skull. She will die alone in a 2 A.M. hallway.

“Is it still the same day?” I ask.

“It is the next day. Your fever was one hundred and five. You coughed up a basin of blood. Please stop smoking,” Cristina says, makes two fists of her hands, and looks thrashed.

“What do you want?” I open my eyes. No sun. Is it night? It’s a vestibule of pewter. Is it Henry Ford’s house for Christmas dinner?

Coughing. It starts in the erasure where I once had toes. A spasm inside my thigh. But I don’t have toes.They’ve fallen off.They were just glued-on stumps.

I light a cigarette. “Is it my birthday?”

“Not yet, Frida. Or always.” Cristina is angry. “Every day is your birthday,” She spits, bitter. O bitter bitter buttercup.

She pours herself a brandy, paces. “You know everyone,” she continues. “The Rockefellers. The Fords. André Breton. Marcel Duchamp. Picasso. All the stars. Dolores del Rio. Joan Crawford does your toenails and licks the paint off. Noguchi cut off half a finger for you. Edward Weston takes your photographs. And Leon Trotsky.You are international.”

“To know everyone is to know no one,” I realize. So that is the emptiness, sad, so sad.

“You’re starting to sound like Diego.” Cristina, pale with rage.

I laugh. I do not bother to hide my mouth. I have four teeth left. Four logs of burned firewood. I won’t survive the winter. Nurse has been to see me. I close my eyes, rock and drift, rock and drift.

“What do you want?” I ask Cristina.

There is a pause. In this juncture are the tanagers, the hummingbirds above peonies, the nights of thunder when the house sways. We are children again, holding hands in the garden near hibiscus and iris. We embrace our dolls, kiss them, feed each other berries. That was before Diego gave us both syphilis.

“Do you know what is next?” Cristina asks. Ashen face, poor dear, so expectant.

“Yes,” I reveal. “Yes, I do know.”

“Tell me,” Cristina begs, reaches out, takes my cigarette. “Christ, Frida.You burn holes in Mother’s blankets.You’ll burn the house down. Tell me. What’s next?”

“No.” Who is she? Did I meet her on a street, on a trolley car? Did I meet her at a party at Nelson’s weekend house? Or perhaps a brothel? I don’t like the voice, vacillating between agitated and cloying. Leave me alone.

“But you’ll tell me soon,” Cristina says. “While you still can.” This was the daughter Mother called graceful.

“Go to hell, Cristina.”

“You first,” she manages.

I laugh. She laughs. We embrace. Rock and sway. Cristina leaves a glass vial on the tray. Rock and drift. Rock and sway.

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