Frida la Baikarina

It’s funny how the world works – or, better yet, doesn’t. Had Alejandro not bumped into Frida, had their shoulders not collided, then maybe, just maybe, that handrail mightn’t have impaled her like rotisserie chicken, or in her words, like a matador’s blade through a bull. On a rainy day, September 17^th—coincidentally, the narrator’s birthday—Frida and Alejandro boarded the bus that would change everything.

“I could be a flea,” she said, “or headlice.”

“Just to be with me?”

“Claro, and you’d carry me around in your clothing, or on your scalp.”

Frida was eighteen and in love, repulsively so – it was the kind of love that reduced us to nothing, the kind of love that reduced us to alley cats, bichos raros in a jam jar, and apparently fleas.

But there was a wide-eyed depth and frankness to her that ignited something in Alejandro, like a child saying the unfiltered truth, undisguised by formalities and quips. She was yet to make it digestible for others, yet to coat in sugar the bitter pill that was her love.

And there was a naïveté to it—don’t you know how the world works? he thought. You don’t say things like that—but to Frida, it was like saying the sky was blue. I love you, I want to be with you, I sometimes envy the lint in your coat pocket or the stones wedged in the soles of your shoes. She was very matter of fact about it, too. Why beat around the bush?

Or maybe there was a shallowness to it, thought Alejandro. Was the depth beyond those wide eyes merely a reflection of himself, his own depth reflected back to him in puddles? And why was everything she said so embellished (mi Alex, she called him), why was everything uttered with a sigh, why was her handwriting—she’d sent him countless letters—so archaically curved? as though she’d lasso him in while he was dizzy and disoriented with her poetry.

Rain streaked across the bus window, and swelled with yellow light. The wet sweep of tyres across asphalt, through puddles, interjected their conversation like a neglected child. Nothing existed, really, nothing except the other.

“Or maybe,” she said, “we’re just two cockroaches in a shoebox.”

“Why?”

“Look around you.”

The passengers were still, quiet, grey that September day, like ghosts or silhouettes, as the pitter patter of rain tapped against the bus windows. The dark coats and umbrellas outside expanded on the glass, in the raindrops, like blotches of ink.

Frida didn’t know the reality of the world, decided Alejandro, she couldn’t have; if she did, she wouldn’t romanticise it thus, smile thus, look at him all lovey-dovey and expectant. Childish; she was childish. And yet she reignited something in him.

“Why not dragonflies, por ejemplo?” he asked.

“We could be dragonflies.”

Frida made to slip her hand into his, but the bus stammered; it stammered like broken speech, A-A-A-Alejandro.

The collision was quiet, slow, ethereal; the bus swelled with the headlights of a streetcar, and stretched, elastic like a rubber band, until snap! The bus burst – its seats, its windows, its passengers.

Alejandro didn’t feel it happen, not really; he saw only the aftermath. He and Frida were jostled about, their shoulders had collided, and in the blink of an eye, reality disappeared like a magician in a puff of smoke.

Frida on the floor. Frida on the floor, bleeding.

Frida on the floor. Frida on the floor, dying?

It’s funny how the world works – or, better yet, doesn’t. It was more like a nightmare or what today’s reader would call a glitch. It was a glitch to see Frida in a pool of blood, it was a glitch to see her spasm, impaled by a handrail.

And it was funny, it was absurdly funny in that it was unfathomable; surely, Alejandro was dreaming. Surely, he could blink away her nudity, the blood, the gold powder? And where had this latter come from? It was comical, a play, until Frida’s sharp cries pierced his odd paralysis like pins in a doll; Alejandro was reanimated, ripping off his coat, compressing an open wound.

“La bailarina!” shrieked passengers.

And sirens; there were sirens.

It’s funny how the world works – or, better yet, doesn’t. On a rainy day, September 17^th, Frida and Alejandro boarded the bus that would change everything.

On September 17^th, Alejandro would stare into Frida’s crippled nudity, disgusted, and guiltily so.

On September 17^th, he would retch as her blood soaked through his coat.

On September 17^th, his endearment would mutate into revulsion, and his revulsion into resentment – who knew a butterfly could evolve backwards, metamorphose into a grub?

Frida was broken, she was bloody, she was less than. Ugly; she was ugly. Never again would Alejandro see her body as anything more than a tragedy – and no, not the pretty kind, not el Callejón del Beso.

The least he could do was admit her to hospital and plead they save her life. After which, he’d leave all her letters unanswered. Repulsive, they were repulsive: love like a chloroform cloth, poetry like voodoo pins, tearstains strategic. A trap, it felt like a trap, and Alejandro see-sawed between heroism and victimhood. He felt guilty, after all, which meant he had a conscience. Why did Frida have to be so broken? Why must she thus burden him and make him out to be the villain? It wasn’t his fault he was disgusted, wasn’t his fault he had to get away.

It’s funny how the world works – or, better yet, doesn’t. Only with time would Alejandro realise there was a strength to Frida’s naïveté, like a child scraping her knees, smacking loose her teeth, and climbing back onto her bicycle. Only with time would he realise it wasn’t mere youth, but resilience. Only with time would her sunny voice return to him, as he rested his head on his pillow and closed his eyes: we’re just two cockroaches in a shoebox.

Only she wasn’t anymore; she was Frida Kahlo.

And Alejandro? Well, let’s just say the shoebox wasn’t empty.