Casa Azul

C
asa Azul
is full of lies. All novels are full of lies. The irony is that it takes lies to tell the Truth. That is, the Truth with a capital
T
, not the truth about whether you ate the last chocolate chip cookie or not. Stories allow us to discover something essential about ourselves and about the human condition. The reason stories work so well is because they are not limited by the facts of real life. The problem with real life is that it does not always add up. So much seems random and pointless, in a word, accidental. Stories bend and change facts in order to reveal the Truth, which real life can never really successfully do.

Casa Azul
combines some of the facts about Frida Kahlo’s life with some outright lies to uncover the essence of her motivation to create. Kahlo herself was an aficionado of lying. After she became a communist, she changed the date of her birth from 1907 to 1910 to reflect her solidarity with the start of the Mexican Revolution. As an artist, she created a world on canvas that stepped beyond simply representing what she saw with her eyes. “I paint my own reality,” she once said. “The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head, without any other consideration.” As a result, her paintings included images of things that could never exist in the real world.

In her painting
Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
, she tried to reveal to the viewer the kind of tension between suffering and beauty that she lived with every day. The painting depicts her as regal and accepting, while the monkey and cat on her shoulders are caught somewhere between menace and peace. The painting is ambiguous because Kahlo felt that life never presented clear choices. The painting is strange, and very unreal. No one would wear a thorn necklace with a dead hummingbird hanging from it as a pendant. There are flowers with wings like butterflies hovering over her head. The tropical leaves in the background seem pressed against glass, eliminating depth and perspective. The world depicted in this painting is wholly constructed. It could never exist outside the painting.

This kind of art was called surrealism.
Sur
is a prefix that means “beyond” or “over,” so
surrealism
means “beyond realism.” Kahlo’s paintings used surrealism to articulate her emotional reality, which did not always align with the facts of her life.

This novel attempts to do the same not only with Kahlo’s life, but also with the lives of Maria and Victor Ortiz. Set in 1940, the year the famous artist Diego Rivera divorced Kahlo,
Casa Azul
brings the reader into a fantasy world that is based in reality but that also steps beyond the rules of normal everyday life. This is the story of two children who encounter Frida Kahlo under extraordinary circumstances. Like Kahlo’s paintings, the story you are about to read is truly unbelievable because it is meant to tell you something you can believe.

A Journey

“No
, Father,” answered Maria Ortiz. Her eyes were cast downward at the ground because she was embarrassed about disobeying her priest. She played nervously with the beautiful turquoise brooch pinned to her blouse. The silver in the brooch caught the morning light and reflected in her eyes.

“Please, there are good families here who will take you in—you and your brother,” pressed Father Michelangelo. His pale face tensed under the wisp of a beard that covered his jaw. He placed his hand on Victor’s shoulder and glanced down the dirt track lined with adobe buildings on each side. Beyond, fields of corn and grain spread out along a creek that flowed through the town.

Maria glared at Father Michelangelo, then guiltily locked her eyes again on the ground and shook her head firmly. Her hair tumbled over her face, so the priest could not see it. She touched the brooch again as if it were some kind of talisman from which she could draw courage. She did not like going against the priest’s wishes, but she was the head of her family now. It was her decision to make. “Father … I’m old enough to marry and have children. I can take
care of my brother.”

“I want to go with Maria,” Victor said as he gripped his older sister’s hand.

The three stood silently under the hot Mexican sun. The air around them radiated with heat, creating mirages of shimmering puddles in the distance. At Maria’s feet was a small, battered cardboard suitcase held together with a knotted piece of twine. It contained all of Maria and Victor’s belongings—a change of clothes, a photograph of their mother, and food for the trip.

“Victor is just a boy,” pleaded Father Michelangelo. “At least leave him with me. I could take care of him until you find your mother.”

“It’s not your decision,” answered Maria firmly. She was fourteen years old now, and had long been caring for her brother, who was six years younger.

She looked at the priest defiantly and saw the ropes of sweat streaming down his face and plastering his short-cropped hair to his head. Anyone who wore heavy black wool robes in this heat did not have the sense to take care of children. She felt cool in comparison, dressed in her best traditional Tehuana costume with the elaborate blue ribbons her grandmother had sewn on it. Earlier that morning she had pressed its stiff, colorful cotton fabric with an iron heated on the wood stove.

Victor pulled on his sister’s hand. “When will the bus come?” She sighed. Victor had started acting even younger than he was.

“Soon,
poquito
.” Maria glanced down the dirt track for any sign of the bus. “When we get to Mexico City, I’ll buy you a toy.”

“Really? Promise?” Barely up to her shoulders, the boy wore the
worn canvas pants, coarse shirt, and straw sombrero of a peasant, and like his sister, on his feet were handmade sandals.

“
Sí
, I promise.” Maria squeezed her brother’s hand tightly to reassure him that she would never leave him. “Now, go play.”

Time passed slowly while Maria stared impatiently down the dry, dusty road at a stand of banyan trees. She was so tired of this boring village. She desperately wanted to see the city—where everything was happening. There was nothing left for her or her brother here. She watched the leaves rustle gently in a slight breeze.

“You don’t have to wait with us,” she told the priest, trying to hint that she’d like to be left alone.

“I can’t leave you now,” he protested, indignant at the suggestion.

Maria gritted her teeth. Father Michelangelo meant well, even if he didn’t understand. She wished she could leave him and wait for the bus in the shade of those trees. But that would be disrespectful to the priest, who was the most important person in her village.

Instead, she stayed in the harsh sunlight in front of the small adobe church, La Asunción de Maria. Like the village, this was the only church she had ever known. The village of Xtogon was nothing more than a dozen one-room adobe houses, one of which served as the
bodega
. The church was the largest structure in town, and during the rainy season, it served as the school as well. The small cemetery beside the church held one new grave covered with freshly turned earth. A small, plain white cross stood at its head. Maria took pains not to look that way as she and her brother waited, and at the same time she stood between Victor and the cemetery so that he would not look either.

“Your grandmother would not have approved,” Father Michelangelo
said with finality.

“My grandmother is dead,” replied Maria, as a deep sadness bloomed on her face. She fought to hold back the tears, but one escaped. She quickly wiped it away with a dusty hand, leaving a streak across her cheek. “And all I have left of her is this brooch.” She fingered the jewelry once again.

“Don’t lose it,” replied the priest automatically.

I’m not a child
, she thought bitterly.
Why can’t he understand this?

In the tense silence, she watched Victor as he chased a small lizard crawling up the wall of the church. His quick hand snatched at the scrambling creature, but he only captured the lizard’s tail, which broke away easily. In a matter of days the lizard would grow a new one. Maria saw Victor pocket the tail and knew he would play with it on the long bus ride.

Just then dozens of bright green parrots exploded from the banyan trees down the road. Like a green blanket tossed across the sky, the parrots circled above and settled in a new tree farther from the road. Their caws drowned out the wheeze and rumble of an ancient bus, that suddenly came into sight. All three watched the battered vehicle sway toward them along the deeply rutted track. The driver honked twice to announce its arrival, and the bus lurched into the village. Grinding its brakes, it slowed to a stop in front of the church. The driver cranked open the door and looked at the three people. The windows on this bus had long ago been removed. Passengers hung out the openings along the side and stared at them. They were mostly peasants traveling from one village to the next in
search of work or, if they had the fare, heading to Mexico City to start a new life.

“Wait,” said Father Michelangelo. He hurried across the street. His robes dragged along the ground, sending up plumes of dust. He slipped into an adobe shack with smoke coming lazily out of its chimney. Maria and Victor stood there for a moment. They looked inside the bus and saw that it was full. Standing room only. The driver pointed to the luggage rack above. Maria and Victor could see the faces of passengers between the suitcases and cages holding chickens.

“It’s much cooler up here,” called down a man in a black suit and a torn straw hat.

“Really?” Maria nodded and dug into her purse for the money to pay the fares. She turned her back to the bus so no one could see exactly how much money she had. Once the driver had given her two tickets in exchange, a hand reached down from above. Maria grabbed it and allowed herself to be lifted onto the bus’s roof. She thanked the man in the black suit. The driver stepped from the bus and hoisted Victor so he could be pulled up as well.