by Chris Perez
“Don’t. Just stay here with me,” I said. “We’ll handle everything tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” Selena agreed, and we both fell asleep at last.
In the morning, I woke up to the sound of Selena shuffling things around in the bedroom. I opened one eye and watched her getting her clothes together. I didn’t know where she was going, but I was too sleepy to wonder about it. I didn’t even think about the motel or Yolanda.
Selena showered and dressed, then opened the door of our bedroom to leave. As she did, my dad opened the door to the guest bedroom at the same time. Selena had completely forgotten that he was in the house. She screamed at the sight of him—a really loud, scared kind of scream.
I jumped out of bed. “What? What’s going on?” I shouted.
Selena turned around and started laughing that great big laugh of hers. “It’s nothing. Go back to bed, Chris. I’m sorry. I forgot your dad was here. He really scared me!”
At the same time, I could see my dad in the hallway, apologizing. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said to Selena, but truthfully, he also looked pretty startled.
My dad and Selena talked for a few minutes in the hallway. I turned over and went back to sleep. I didn’t even think to ask Selena why she was up so early. She often woke up before I did, got dressed, and chilled around the house, made phone calls, or went off to have breakfast with her dad. The only unusual thing about that morning was that I had been awakened by Selena screaming.
Selena, it turned out, was on her way to the Days Inn. She had talked to Yolanda again that morning, and she was determined to take Yolanda to the hospital and have her examined after the so-called rape. That was Selena’s style: she was going to see this thing through and prove that Yolanda was lying.
Selena called me a little later that morning to tell me that she had taken Yolanda to Doctors Regional Hospital. Now they were returning to the Days Inn. “I couldn’t find my keys,” Selena confessed, “so I took your truck and your cell phone.”
Yolanda was in the truck with her, so Selena lowered her voice as she told me that the doctors had found no evidence of rape.
There was nothing else Yolanda had now that could keep Selena there. They were on their way back to the motel and Selena would come home, I thought. Maybe we would finally be rid of that woman and her craziness.
I went with my dad in his car to pick up the groceries we needed for dinner and to run a few other errands. The sky was cloudy and gray, and the day had a gloomy feel to it.
Something made me decide to call off the other errands after we’d bought the groceries. “You know what?” I said to my dad. “Let’s just go back to the house. I can go back out again later.”
We left the seafood place where we’d bought the shark and drove home. When I saw that the answering machine light was blinking, I pushed PLAY and listened to a cryptic message from one of our DJ friends in the valley.
“Hey, Chris,” he said. “Is everything okay? Call me back.”
Why hadn’t he called my cell phone? I wondered. Then I remembered that Selena had my phone in the truck with her. Nobody could reach me.
There was another message as well, this one from someone who had heard a rumor that Selena had been hurt or in an accident. I just rolled my eyes. Selena and I often got these kinds of crazy calls, because the media in Corpus was always looking for another story they could do about her.
I was in the bedroom and my dad was in the living room watching TV when the phone rang. I let the answering machine pick up the call. I never answered the phone right away.
This time, however, I heard Selena’s aunt Dolores speaking and picked up the phone receiver immediately. “What’s up?” I said.
Dolores sounded calm and fairly collected, but her voice was a little higher-pitched than usual, tight sounding. “Selena’s been involved in an accident, Chris,” she said, her voice starting to shake a little. “She’s at Memorial Hospital. You need to get over there as soon as you can.”
Immediately, I thought of how fast Selena liked to drive. It must have been a car accident, I thought. “What happened?” I asked, my heart starting to pound.
“Selena was shot twice,” Aunt Dolores said. “You need to come to the hospital right away.”
I hung up the phone, ran into the living room, and told my dad about the call. I was upset but still not panicked. People get shot and survive their wounds all of the time, I told myself.
By now, we were in the car. Aloud, I said to my dad, “Damn it, man, why did she have to go to that motel by herself this morning? Now look what’s happened.”
My dad had been going the speed limit. He began driving faster and faster the closer we got to Memorial Hospital. By the time he pulled into the hospital parking lot, he was driving so fast that the tires screeched as he went around that last corner.
In my mind, of course, Selena was still alive. I was going to go into that hospital and see her and hold her in my arms. The thought never entered my mind that my wife might not make it—much less that Selena might pass away before I could see her again.
Robert, one of our sound guys on the road, was already there; I saw him standing outside the main door smoking a cigarette, but he didn’t say anything to me. My dad and I walked into the emergency room, and right away a bunch of doctors and nurses surrounded me. Somebody put a hand on my shoulder and said, “This way, son.”
I was led into a waiting room. Everyone was already there: Abraham, Marcella, Suzette, and many other family members. Only A.B. was missing; he had already slipped away to grieve on his own.
When I saw them, I kind of gave everybody a smile, even though my stomach started twisting into knots at the sight of their expressions.
“What’s going on?” I said. “Where’s Selena?”
Abraham looked at me with dull eyes and said, “Selena passed away, Chris. She’s dead. She was shot and she’s dead.”
For a moment, I stood there feeling stunned, absolutely numb from shock. How was it possible that I wasn’t ever going to see my wife alive again? Never to kiss her or feel her arms around me?
Then I started sobbing, knowing that Selena was gone, but not really grasping it. It takes a while to believe that somebody is gone. You understand it, but you don’t really believe it.
Abraham was crying, too, now. We didn’t know all of the details of the shooting—those came out much later. Then everybody else started weeping with us, and I suddenly had to get out of that room, escape that wall of grief.
Selena’s uncle Isaac, Abraham’s younger brother, was sitting in the crowded waiting room, too. He must have seen how I was, for he opened the door and walked with me out into the hospital hallway. Two doctors were standing there. One of them said to me, “We’re sorry for your loss. We did everything we could.”
I couldn’t speak. Then the doctors said, “We need you to come and identify the body.”
“What?” I said, disbelieving, still, that any of this was happening. “What do you mean? What do I have to do?”
Isaac said, “What are you talking about? Selena’s dead. Why does he have to look at her body?”
“Somebody needs to come and identify her,” one of the doctors said gently. “It’s standard procedure.”
“I can’t do that,” I gasped. I felt like I might pass out from grief; I could scarcely breathe. All I could think about was how Selena had looked when she turned and laughed this morning in the bedroom and told me to go back to sleep. Selena was gone. How could she be gone?
“I’m sorry, but you have to come with us and identify her,” the doctor was repeating.
I had been barely holding myself together. Now I went completely out of control, yelling at the doctors. “I can’t do that right now, all right?” I shouted. “I told you that already. I just can’t!”
Isaac stepped between me and the doctors and said, “What about me? Can I do it for him?”
“Are you a family member?” the doctor said.
The doctors led him away, leaving me standing alone in the hallway, weeping.
My dad drove me home from the hospital. I don’t know what time we left, or in what order anything happened. I was there, but not there. It was like a nightmare. I walked around the rooms and saw Selena’s clothes on the bed and our paperwork still on the kitchen table from the night before. I walked into the bathroom, and there was Selena’s robe, still draped over the shower rod from this morning. It occurred to me then that of course Selena hadn’t known it would be her last day on this earth, either. I started to cry.
My family gathered at the house. Certain details were starting to emerge about the shooting and were slowly filtering into my numbed consciousness. I knew that Selena had gone to the Days Inn to meet Yolanda that morning, had taken her to the hospital and called me when they were on their way back to Yolanda’s room. There had apparently been some kind of confrontation in the motel room—probably about the missing financial records—just before noon.
When Selena told Yolanda that she couldn’t trust her anymore, Yolanda had drawn the gun from her purse. As Selena turned to leave the room, Yolanda had fired once into my wife’s back, severing an artery to the heart.
Selena had managed to run across the parking lot toward the lobby, leaving a trail of blood and calling for help. She had collapsed on the lobby floor, soaked in blood, and begged the clerks to lock the door. She identified Yolanda as the shooter to one of the clerks, who then dialed an ambulance. The paramedics tried to stop Selena’s internal bleeding and performed CPR; Selena was still alive when they arrived at Memorial Hospital. She had apparently taken off the ring that Yolanda had given her, because when one of the paramedics tried to find a vein for the IV, Selena’s hand opened and the ring fell out.
In the hospital’s trauma room, doctors and surgeons had tried blood transfusions after opening up her chest and discovering massive internal bleeding. Selena died at just after one o’clock in the afternoon. It was two days before our third wedding anniversary.
After shooting Selena, Yolanda had run to her truck and tried to flee the hotel parking lot, but the police had seen her trying to escape. Now, as our family gathered in the living room of our house, Yolanda was parked in her truck with the same pistol aimed at her right temple. She was threatening to kill herself.
I couldn’t stay in the living room, watching the standoff as the police tried to negotiate and stop her from pulling the trigger. I didn’t think that Yolanda would shoot herself. But I didn’t really care what she did. It was as if I had been swallowed by a black cloud and couldn’t see beyond my own grief.
I went into our bedroom to lie down. After a little while, I got up again and collected the clothes that Selena had been wearing the night before; she had left them on the floor beside the bed. My family was still watching the standoff with Yolanda on TV; in total, she would stay in that pickup truck outside the Days Inn for over nine hours before finally letting the police take her into custody.
Back in the bedroom, I sat on Selena’s side of the bed and held her clothes. I could smell her perfume on them, and suddenly what I wanted more than anything else was to save that smell forever.
I returned to the kitchen and put Selena’s clothes in a plastic bag so that I could seal in the smell. I had to walk by the living room; everyone looked up at me from the television where they were watching the standoff between the police and Yolanda.
“I don’t know why you all are watching that,” I told them. “She’s not going to kill herself.”
Yolanda kept saying that she was sorry for shooting Selena, but I didn’t believe it. I was sure that she only wished that she had the nerve to pull that trigger, but she knew that she didn’t, the same way that I knew it. This was all an act to show that she was feeling remorse. She wasn’t: Yolanda was just sorry that she was caught.
I went back into our bedroom with Selena’s clothes and held that bag in my arms, rocking a little on the edge of the bed.
For the longest time, I kept that bag of Selena’s clothes. I would poke a hole in it now and then and squeeze the bag so that I could smell her perfume. Then I’d seal up the hole again as quickly as I could. I knew that I only had a certain number of times that I could do that before there would be nothing left of Selena.
FOURTEEN
RESURRECTION
Courtesy of Everett Collection
Radio station KEDA-AM broke the news of Selena’s death first. From there, the news traveled fast.
Mourners began arriving from all over. They drove, walked, and rode bicycles past our house on Bloomington Street, many stopping to create a shrine to Selena in front of our chain-link fence with balloons, colored ribbons, stuffed animals, drawings, photographs, scribbled notes, flowers, and flags from all over. At one point the line of cars wrapped around five blocks. Selena had been loved by everyone, from young children who loved to dance to “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” to elderly Tejano fans. Now they were pouring out their love and grief.
The boutiques in Corpus Christi and San Antonio were transformed into shrines as well, and anguished fans held candlelight vigils around the country. Most of the cars in Corpus Christi drove with their headlights on. Fans also left notes and messages on the door of Room 158 of the Days Inn, where Selena was killed.
Selena’s albums and cassettes rapidly disappeared from stores as Texas radio stations played her music nonstop. Grieving fans phoned the radio stations to read poetry for Selena on air, and other Tejano artists shared their memories of her with the media. Mourners gathered in other cities around the world as well; in Los Angeles alone, four thousand people gathered at the Sports Arena Memorial to honor Selena.
The mourners continued to stand outside our house for months after Selena’s death, sometimes even at night. They were in the street all of the time. It didn’t matter. I didn’t want to go out anyway.
The night before Selena’s funeral, we held a viewing for family and close friends at the funeral home. I hadn’t yet seen Selena’s body. I sat in the front row maybe ten feet away from the casket, unable to look anywhere but at a spot on the floor maybe a foot in front of my feet. I sat there with her family, just staring at that spot, feeling Selena close but not able to look at her, much less approach the casket. I was paralyzed by grief.
“Come on, Chris,” everyone urged me. “You need to say good-bye.”
“Man, I don’t want to do that,” I told them. “I can’t see her like this.”
Everything felt surreal, and the whole business at the funeral home, which was packed with people, with many more lined up outside all night to get inside, felt like a spectacle to me. I hadn’t had any time alone with Selena.
I was clutching the ring I had bought for Selena to celebrate our second wedding anniversary, the ring I’d hidden in her pillowcase in Jamaica. I had it on one of my fingers and I kept twiddling it around in my hand.
Selena’s family, meanwhile, did a wonderful job of talking to people who came to pay their respects. When the viewing hours were over, her uncle Isaac came over to me and said, “Chris, you haven’t gone up to see her. Why not?”
I was crying. “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t go up there and see her.”
“Come on,” he said gently, and then Isaac literally picked me up off the chair by hooking an arm around my shoulders.
I didn’t resist. As we walked to the casket, though, my legs started shaking so badly that I nearly collapsed. I hadn’t eaten anything in two days and my clothes were already falling off my body.
“You know what,” Isaac said. “Stop right here for a minute. I’m going to get everybody out of the room. It’s going to be just you and her, son.”
I halted next to him. I couldn’t have gone anywhere without his support anyway. Just as he’d promised, Isaac announced, “Everybody out, please. We need privacy here.”
He led me up to the casket once the room was cleared and left me there. Once
everybody else was gone, I felt, okay, the show was over.
“It’s just you and me now,” I whispered to my wife.
I stood there crying and looking at her for a minute. Then I gave Selena a kiss on the forehead and stroked her hand. She looked so comfortable and peaceful lying there in the coffin that I just wanted to get in there with her and lie down beside her, put my arm around her, close the top, and say, “Let’s go.”
After a few minutes, though, I got the ring out of my pocket and put it on Selena’s wedding ring finger. Then I got down on my knees right there and said a prayer, the tears still streaming down my face, and said my last good-bye.
The next day, we held Selena’s funeral at Seaside Memorial Park in Corpus Christi. My friend Rudy drove me there in his car. I don’t remember much of that day, other than the thick gray clouds gathered overhead and being aware of wearing my wedding ring. I was in too much of a daze to notice much beyond my small circle of pain. I had already said good-bye the night before at the funeral home, so at the actual cemetery there was really nothing left inside me. I was just a shell.
I heard later that more than sixty thousand people attended, and celebrities like Celia Cruz, Madonna, Julio Iglesias, and Gloria Estefan sent their condolences. Her fans lined up along Shoreline Boulevard for almost a mile to view Selena’s casket on the way to the service at Bayfront Auditorium. We had surrounded Selena’s closed casket with five thousand white roses, her favorite flower. We also asked those attending the funeral service to place white roses on the coffin. By the time Selena was buried, a two-foot pile of roses was piled on top of the coffin.
Selena’s death had such a widespread impact that news about it ran on the front page of The New York Times for two days running.
On April 12, 1995, two weeks after Selena’s death, then-Governor George W. Bush declared her birthday “Selena Day” in Texas. Selena was also entered into Billboard’s International Latin Music Hall of Fame.
