I know what it is like to be tied up and fed, with a bowl of rice on the floor, like an animal. Sometimes Suzanne weeps a little and Jean-Michel says, “Shut up, Venus. Sometimes he pulls her out, has sex with her, and then puts her back under the table and continues to paint. A few times a day he crawls under the table with Suzanne and gives her a kiss on the forehead. He finds a word or phrase and paints it on his board or canvas. He picks up books, cereal boxes, the newspaper or whatever is around. From here she watches Jean- Michel paint, sleep and do drugs. Suzanne finds a place to live under a small table, like a small cat that finds a hiding place. Soon Suzanne stops cleaning and Jean-Michel stays at home all day. Jean-Michel sticks black paper over all the windows so that they won’t know if it is day or night. He says, “Hey, Venus, come and kiss me.” He says, “Venus, go get us some coke.” He writes “Venus” into his paintings and says Suzanne is only with him for his money. He does another line of coke and paints Big Shoes, a portrait of Suzanne in big shoes. He says she can only buy groceries and detergents. He tells her she can’t wear lipstick anymore. Suzanne walks clunk- clunk-clunk, her feet wading in the shoes, around the loft.
He tells her she can only wear one pair of very large men’s shoes.
He tells Suzanne she can only wear one dress. He paints her speaking her chicken-chatter, “PTFME E a a a R M R M O AAAAAAAA.” My mother said she was a kind of Venus or virgin.”Īt first Jean-Michel thinks this is funny and puts some of her words in his paintings. I kept looking at my own stomach and wondering what was in there. I heard about her when I was five and I thought she must have been very beautiful like a larva, but very scared. And they would give the woman food- turnips, oranges, bread-and watch it all go down into her. They could see her heart beating in there and her lungs and blood. They took her to see a woman with transparent skin. She never speaks and only answers questions or speaks in a panicky monologue: If a sweater fades in the wash she cries. She makes the bed three times and irons the sheets. She places the soap at an angle on the sink and always places the towels in the same order 1-2-3. She irons the clothes, folds his clothes, places them in the same order on the shelf-the red sweater is folded this way and placed above the red shirt.
Clement is former president of PEN Mexico and is the author of three novels and several books of poetry. This excerpt is from Jennifer Clement's Widow Basquiat, the story of the short-lived, obsessive love affair between Suzanne Mallouk and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
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