by Jenni Rivera
Wherever I went, music was always blasting and I was always singing along. But I had not set foot on a stage to sing since I was eleven years old and had forgotten the words at the singing competition. One night when we were at El Rancho Grande, a nightclub in Carson, a friend said, “I dare you to go up there and sing.” Then another friend said, “Naw, she’s not down.” That’s all I needed to hear, and they knew it. I walked onstage and told the norteño group that was playing that I wanted to sing “Nieves de Enero.” Chalino Sánchez had passed away during that year, and the track was popular at the time. I stood in front of the crowd, and as soon as the first words came out of my mouth, I was overwhelmed by so many emotions. I was reminded how much I loved the feeling of being onstage. I was reminded that I had a voice. When I was finished, the entire club started to clap and cheer. I felt as if I could fly.
It had been twelve years since the day in 1980 when I’d told my father I would never touch a microphone again, but he had been right, that one day I would end up onstage again without his pushing or persuading me. All it took was a dare. After that night I decided to record a complete album for my father as a birthday gift. I knew how much it would mean to him, and I had fun doing it. I went into a studio and sang under the name Jenni “La Güera Rivera” Rivera. The title of the album was Somos Rivera. I never thought anyone would hear it besides my dad, but he fell in love with it and asked me if he could promote it under his record label, Cintas Acuario.
“Do whatever you want with it,” I told him. “It’s yours. But if you are going to promote it, use the name Jenni and spell it with an i.”
I never thought anything would come of it, but that album was what launched my recording career. It’s not as if I were an overnight success, but I got some good feedback and it made me think that maybe my father was right. Maybe I did have a future in this? But as soon as I asked the question, I was knocked back down again.
In 1994, I got a small gig in Encinitas near San Diego to open for another singer, who was one of my father’s artists. I had to pay for gas, food, and a wardrobe out of my own pocket, and I was making only $300. As I was walking to the bathroom, I heard a friend of my dad’s talking to the manager who had hired me. We were outside and I was walking on grass, so they didn’t hear me approaching. Dad’s friend said, “Who did you invite to open?”
“I got this new girl, Jenni Rivera,” the manager told him.
“Why did you invite her? She can’t sing. She’s ugly. She has a bad attitude.”
I was hurt and I was pissed. My father produced this man’s daughter’s music, and now here he was talking crap about me to other people in the industry. I went onstage not long after that and sang my heart out, trying to prove to myself, more than anyone else, that I belonged on a stage. But I wasn’t so sure. All I wanted was to get home to my kids. As soon as I was done, I went to the manager to ask him for my $300.
“Oh, I’ll pay you,” he said, “after you have sex with me.”
I was horrified and heated, but could do little. I told that asshole right off and I walked out of there without getting paid. When I got home, I told my dad, “I am never singing again. This industry is too ugly. I’m not putting myself through this crap. I can make more money in real estate anyway.”
“I understand, mija,” he responded. “But please do me one more favor. Record one more album. I already have a lot of the songs, I have the lyrics. Just one more.”
I could never say no to my father. I recorded that second album, and it got the attention of some people at Balboa Records, and I signed on to do a third album with them, which I titled La Maestra.
When Trino found out, he started to come around the house and the real estate office trying to persuade me to give our relationship another chance. But I didn’t budge. No way was I going down that road again. I was done for good. When I said my final no to Trino, he responded with words I will never forget: “You don’t want to get back together with me although we have three kids? You think you are going to make it in that stupid singing career? Listen to me, you’re never going to make it as an artist. You sound too much like Graciela Beltrán, anyway. You’ll always be compared to her and will never be taken seriously. You need to stop with your dumbass dreams.” He said it with such passion, and a part of me wanted to tell him that he was the dumbass, but a part of me worried that he might be right.
Although I enjoyed making Trino think otherwise, I wasn’t seriously pursuing a career in music because half the time I wasn’t even getting paid. When I had my first gig outside of California, one of my brothers came with me. It was in Washington, DC, and we flew in a day early to see the city.
The night of my gig I was supposed to be paid a few thousand dollars, but at the end of the night the manager who had hired me refused to pay. He said his business partner never gave him the money. My brother was ready to beat his ass, but I told him that instead we should have the manager drive us to the business partner’s house and ask for the money. So we did just that, but the partner didn’t have it either. So we made the manager take a bat to his partner’s car. Then we drove the manager to the park across the street from the White House and made him strip down naked. My brother took his car keys and chucked them deep into the park. We left him there, naked, searching for his car keys in the light of the White House. Just so he knew you don’t fuck with the Riveras.
Breaking away from the heavy chains that attached me to Trino was one of the smartest moves I ever made. It was also one of the hardest. I truly loved him, but I loved my children more and I could not go back to him again.
About a year after Trino and I separated, the real estate market took a negative turn once more. Meanwhile, the album I had recorded for Balboa Records was going nowhere fast because they refused to promote it. I was in deep shit and struggling to keep up the house payments while supporting the kids on my own, since Trino refused to help financially. I was forced to put my pride on the shelf and go on welfare, which was demoralizing.
One month I couldn’t pay the water bill, so I told the kids they could only use the restroom at school. But one day Chiquis forgot. She pooped in the house and couldn’t flush it. I saw her dart out of the bathroom and down the hallway. I knew something was up. I walked toward the bathroom, where I found Jacqie eating her sister’s poop. She was covered in it. The hairbrush was covered in it. It was smeared across the bathroom tiles. I screamed in horror. I had no way of cleaning her up, and she just kept saying, “I’m sorry, Mommy. I’m sorry.” I couldn’t help but laugh. I threw away her clothes, the brush, and the bathroom towels, and then washed Jacqie with the neighbor’s hose.
Although times were difficult for me economically, emotionally I was much more stable. I was free from Trino’s control, from his constant judgment and put-downs, his narrow-mindedness, and his volatile temper. Then the universe threw me a bone and the real estate market picked back up, even stronger than before. I went from being on welfare to making as much as $24,000 a month. For the first time in a long time I felt as if I could breathe again.
On February 25, 1995, I went out with a friend to El Farallon. Marisela, Chalino Sánchez’s widow, had become a close friend after his death. We became each other’s confidantes and shoulders to cry on when we needed support. Just as I had been there for her after Chalino’s death, she wanted to be there for me during my hardships. My brother Juan, who was sixteen years old at the time, had been arrested and convicted for the attempted sale and transportation of narcotics. Marisela knew my brother was my angel baby. He was my “roll dog.” I’d sneak him into the clubs and bars and anywhere I went to have fun. He was my homey, my Angel Face, and my protector. When Trino came around to my house on Fifty-Fifth Street to try to beat me up, I would call Juan. He would run the three blocks from my parents’ house to my house with a baseball bat in his hand. He’d defend me and scare Trino away. He would tie a naked man to a tree to defend my honor.
I was devastated that I wouldn’t see Juan for
six months while he did time at Camp Mendenhall at Lake Hughes. I broke down when I heard the news from my sobbing mother. Marisela wanted to make sure that I didn’t stay locked up in the house crying, so that night she took me out to see El Puma de Sinaloa, my favorite local artist, who would be performing at El Farallon.
I still wasn’t giving my music my full attention because the money was so unstable and the industry was so unreliable. From the time I was a child, I have been a businesswoman before all else. I was making a great living in real estate. I had purchased a home in Compton on Aprilia Avenue, where I lived with my three children, and I didn’t have to worry about whether I was going to be able to pay the water bill anymore. I wasn’t about to give all that up and fall at the mercy of a shady, often cruel industry. Not until that shady, often cruel industry offered to promote me and pay up. So even though Marisela and many others believed in me and tried to get me to focus on my singing, I just couldn’t do it. It was still a secondary concern.
However, a corrido I wrote called “La Chacalosa” had earned me a special underground following with a certain group in LA. The lyrics told the story of a drug-trafficking female who was “making it big in the business.” At the time the Los Angeles area had many popular drug dealers. My corrido appealed to them, and many of these mafiosos knew who I was and respected me. They would see Marisela and me around the clubs and make sure we were taken care of. That night one dealer insisted that I sing “La Chacalosa” for him. He had the power to stop the DJ and order the live norteño group to play whatever he wanted to hear. He came to our table and said, “Go up there and sing my corrido, girl. I’ll pay you whatever you want.” Of course, I wasn’t going to charge the man a dime.
“Go for it,” Marisela told me with an approving look.
I went onstage with El Vampiro y Sus Fantasmas and they began to play “La Chacalosa.” Halfway through the song, a tall dark handsome man came onstage with a friend and asked the photographer of the club to take a Polaroid picture of all three of us while I was performing. Because I was used to the attention from fans, I didn’t make much of it.
Marisela and I left the club with the rest of the VIP clients at two thirty in the morning. We walked out to the parking lot, where only a few cars were left. As we walked toward my Toyota Camry, we noticed two men walking in our direction. When they got closer, I realized one of them was the handsome guy who had taken a picture with me and one of his friends.
“Hi, Jenni.” The man introduced himself as Juan.
We talked for a bit, and then they asked us to a late dinner at Las Playas, a twenty-four-hour restaurant in Bell. Marisela was cautious and immediately responded that we couldn’t.
“Vamonos, güera,” she whispered to me. “We don’t know them. It’s getting late anyway.”
“Thanks, but we can’t,” I told Juan. “It was nice meeting you.”
He wouldn’t take his eyes off me. “Then give me your autograph and your phone number.”
I gave him both.
8
* * *
Grant Me the Serenity
Why should I keep loving you,
When I know that you’re not true?
—from “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights”
Juan and I began to date no more than a week after we first met. I was crazy about him from the start. He was so handsome, sweet, and attentive. By August, just five months later, we moved in together. Or rather, he moved into my house in Compton. Looking back, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. It could have, and should have, happened differently. I could have asked him to leave when he spent more than three nights at my house, but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t hear the roaring of the motor as my new roller-coaster ride headed toward destruction. I was in love. And love makes you stupid.
The relationship between Juan and me was not as difficult and dramatic as my relationship with Trino. It was, however, equally addictive. That we didn’t have as many arguments and disagreements made it easier to have fun, and from the beginning we spent a lot of time together. Our regular outings were to the movies (I hadn’t been to a movie since I got pregnant with my first daughter) and to various nightclubs. We both loved to dance and enjoyed going to El Mercadito in Los Angeles to listen to the live mariachi bands and take part in Corona-beer-drinking contests. We had something else in common, something important: a love for baseball. Unlike Trino, Juan played sports and was a catcher on his baseball team. The kids and I were regulars at his weekend games. Because we shared so many equal interests, and because I didn’t act like a normal girl, he said it was easy for him to fall in love with me. “You don’t bore me,” he’d say. “It’s like kicking it with another one of the guys.” I felt just the same about him.
I think it’s normal (or at least I hope it is) to be more naive and vulnerable when you are younger. It’s easy to fall in love with someone for the person’s looks without considering whether the person has other important qualities. That’s what happened to me with Juan. I didn’t care that he wasn’t as ambitious as I was, or that he had no interest in growing spiritually or morally. I didn’t care that, at twenty-three years old, he had fathered three children with three different women, and that he didn’t support any of them financially and would only, occasionally, visit one of them. I didn’t question how at the beginning of our relationship he asked me to charge a set of Dayton rims for the Grand Marquis he drove. I never questioned how he didn’t offer to repay me for them. In fact, as I sank deeper into debt and struggled to sell real estate, I included those rims and the credit card in my Chapter 11 bankruptcy file. Call me dumb. Call me crazy. Call me whatever you want. I know. I was a blind ding-dong, enjoying “true love” to the fullest. I couldn’t see a thing.
Despite his many defects, Juan did have valuable virtues. He was respectful to my family and kids. He wanted to maintain a good relationship with my loved ones. He wasn’t possessive or jealous like my ex-husband and wouldn’t question or interrogate me every time I left the house. He would push me to do better. He thought I was intelligent and had my back if I wanted to continue my education. He gave me enough space to go out in the field to find real estate clients. He believed in my talent, and although I still didn’t take my singing career seriously, he knew that if I tried, I would one day make it. “My girl will be the best in her genre,” he’d tell me and his family. Also unlike in the case of Trino, I had a beautiful relationship with Juan’s family. He knew I loved him and I knew he loved me too. With all this in mind, I wanted to stay with him forever. I was certain that this relationship was going to work.
However, it wasn’t always so fine and dandy. Sure, it was great at the beginning, but things took a turn for the worse when I least expected it. During January 1996, with the funds I had saved after a few closed sales, I was able to put a down payment on an FHA loan for a house on Keene Avenue in Compton. Because I had filed for bankruptcy in 1995, I couldn’t purchase it under my name; therefore both the loan and the title were under Juan’s name. I paid for the house, but he was the legal owner. I trusted my man. What a dumbass.
Our fights were never as violent and physical as my fights with Trino, but we did have our mini-matches. There would be some pushing and shoving here and there. If I recall correctly, it was February 16, 1996, a weekend night. The kids were visiting with Trino and his new girlfriend, Dora, as they did every weekend. Juan and I had an argument about something so minor I can’t even remember what it was. To cool off, I went shopping at the Target in Carson for a couple of hours. When I came home, he was gone.
Our bedroom smelled of his cologne and I noticed the iron was out. That night we were supposed to go to his friend’s wedding together. I couldn’t believe he had left without me. I sat home and waited. Midnight came around. Then 1:00 a.m. Then 2:00 a.m. He still wasn’t back. I was furious and plotted a way to get back at him. Finally, at 2:30 in the morning, his car pulled into the driveway. I was hiding by the side of the house. As soon as I heard th
e motor turn off, I jumped out and screamed, “Surprise!” With all my strength I threw a brick straight toward the front windshield of his Grand Marquis. As soon as I saw it crack into pieces, I ran at top speed back into the house. I could hear him swearing up a storm as I ran from the front yard, through the living room, and toward our bedroom. I didn’t make it to my destination. My race to safety came to a stop on the floor in the hallway. We pushed, pulled, and shoved each other. I tore his trademark chain off his neck. That was like cutting off one of his balls! In the end, he pushed me a little too hard, and because I refused to ever again take any physical abuse from anyone, I called the Compton police.
When the cops arrived, I was sitting in the living room. By then Juan was a lot calmer and could reason better than I could. The police officers asked him to leave to make sure another confrontation would be avoided.
“I can’t,” Juan told him. “I’ve been drinking.”
“Then you leave me with no other option,” the officer said. “We will have to arrest you.”
“If you arrest me, you have to arrest her too,” Juan told him as he showed off the scratch marks I had left on his chest.
The officer turned to me. “Did you do that, ma’am?”
“I sure as hell did,” I answered, putting my wrists together so he could snap the handcuffs on me.
Juan looked at me. “Jenni, stop. We can still drop the charges. Be smart.”
