Frida Kahlo in My Heart (and on My Porch)

Foreword: This story is part of a collection, tentatively called “Ghost Whisperer: Stories from a Nordic Witch Stranded in the South.” They were mainly written during my first year in the Appalachian Mountains, having moved from Sweden, living at the end of a road, with no green card to allow me to work and my husband, Michael, working at the Monroe Institute. Being a stranger in a strange land those days, ghosts started to talk to me, and so did the spirit of Frida Kahlo. I hope you enjoy it.

I lit candles on the porch, reflecting themselves in the crystal globes hanging in the window, and I was speaking to my Patroness of Protection and Creativity: the spirit of Frida Kahlo.

           

At this point in my life, I listened more to the Earth fairies and the song of the wind than to anything human. It seemed a step in the right direction then, to speak to an unmistakably and very spirited, human voice, even though it belonged to a ghost.

           

In exile from my birth country, out of the inevitable necessity of love, in the land between: in-between nation and nation, lawfully married and not exactly lawfully married, employable but not allowed to work, human and alien; all in the hands of slow-working, bureaucratic U.S. immigration officers.

I was more than this in-between state of nature and civilization, having chosen solitude in spite of the world-renowned southern hospitality.

"We all need people," purred Frida, leaning back on the pillows propped on the second-hand, wooden chair.

           

Virginia, shamelessly claimed by its inhabitants to be the greatest place on earth, ran thick with blood. Maybe that was why the vines grew so fiercely and bugs found their way through every crack in the thin walls. Wars, deportations, accusations, hangings, Native Americans, black slaves, poor people, the wrong-sayers, the truth-sayers - it was a place difficult to take to heart, had it not been for its lavishly, in-your-face beauty, with lifeforce leaking out of the very pours of fast growing plants and the plentiful animal kingdom.

           

"I don't know Miss Kahlo,” I said, already knowing that the woman was right. "People make so much noise and have needs that never seem to end."

           

Frida laughed and opened her colorful skirts, revealing her broken body, sorrowfully patched together with spikes and leather bands.

           

"They will crave more of you than that, little sister," said Frida and shrugged her shoulders. "But that is how art is created."

           

Frida’s gesture made me feel invalid. As if my suffering, a cold on a sunny day, was fake. Insufficient as the basis for creation.

           

"All separation is sufficient," smiled Frida, unexpectedly kind, "If your soul is broken in two in your childhood, when you come of age, to mend it is your creation for life. Just as knowing that all lands run thick with blood - my Mexico, Virginia, even your cold North."

           

This made me feel a bit better, somewhat worthy, but Frida would not give me time for self-celebrating respite. Her delicate face came closer, earrings clanging like windchimes,

"But now," Frida whispered, "you must go further."

First published in the August edition of The Echo World.

Photograph "Frida Kahlo on mural in Tijuana" by Sofia Karin Axelsson.