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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