My Broken Pieces : Mending the Wounds from Sexual Abuse Through Faith, Family and Love (9781101990087)

by Rivera, Rosie

  At that point, all I wanted was to die. Yes, I loved my family; yes, I wanted a career, but if I had been faced with the prospect of leaving this Earth right then and there, I would have taken it in a minute. In addition to the scars left behind by the abuse, I carried around with me the pain of having had that abortion and all I wanted was to punish myself for what I had done. I tried everything I could in order to get someone to kill me without having to kill myself: I’d wear really skimpy clothes, go to seedy clubs all by myself, drive drunk, and talk to any guy that would talk to me, just in case he wanted to do something to me and then get rid of me, hoping no one would ever find out. I’d make sure to change my name and hide my cell phone so no one could reach me. I’d put myself in extremely dangerous situations; I slept with so many men that I’m ashamed to say I can’t even remember their names. I didn’t care who they were or what they did to me; the only thing driving me was an intense desire to disappear.

  Every Friday it was the same thing: I’d go out, party hard, come back home to sleep, and head back out to another club on Saturday and Sunday. For the most part, I did this when I was staying at Chay’s house and although she never judged me or made me feel bad for what I was doing, I know she definitely worried.

  “Sister, you need to be more careful,” she’d say to me. “Don’t take anyone’s drink. Don’t sleep around! You need to take care of yourself. I know you do these things because of the sexual abuse and that’s why I don’t judge you, but you have to be careful or else one day you’re not going to be okay . . . And I need you to be okay, Sister.”

  That’s how it always went between us. Since I had spent so many years fearing for her life, I would say to her, “Sister, I need you to live,” and she would say to me, “Sister, I need you to be okay.”

  “I know why you do this, I know why you drink, I know why you are promiscuous, Sister,” she’d continue. “I understand, and I’m waiting for you to get through it. You’ll get through it, Sister. I know it.”

  We’d have these long conversations and she would always be so good to me, so understanding, so loving. She never made me feel as if there was something wrong with me as a person. She let me know my actions were wrong, but she still loved me and was understanding, giving me her full support. “You have so much potential,” she’d say to me. “You can really be somebody! Sister, you should be in front of the camera as a reporter or doing the weather. You should have your own show one day!”

  “You’re nuts!” I’d say. “Can’t you see that I’m a mess?”

  “You’re a mess right now, Sister, but you’re the greatest person I know,” she’d answer. Then she would flash me one of her beautiful Chay smiles and there was so much conviction in her words that sometimes I almost believed her. I certainly wanted to believe her. During those challenging years, Chay gave me so much attention and love. She was my only source of comfort when everything was dark. I don’t know that I would have survived through it all without her.

  By the end of our conversations, I always felt stronger and determined to make a real change in my life. I had great parents, a great family that had worked its butt off as immigrants to get us to where we were. I had every single opportunity to be a good person: a good citizen, a successful career, whatever I set my mind to, I knew I could accomplish. Then how could I waste my life away like that? I have to be a better Rosie for Chay, I’d say to myself. This is the last time I do this. This is the last weekend I go out like this. It’s the last time.

  But then I’d have trouble falling asleep so I thought, I’m just going to have one drink—just one drink to help me sleep better. But inevitably one drink would become two, and three, and four, and before long, I was back to square one: the weekend came around and all I wanted to do was let loose and leave all the pain behind.

  • • •

  All those years, Chay never lost faith in me, and neither did my mother. She never stopped believing in me, never gave up on getting me to come back to church and embrace God. I’d come home at four o’clock in the morning, super drunk and wearing the shortest skirt ever. God knows where I had been. I’d stumble through the door, and there was my mom, patiently waiting for me on the sofa with curlers in her hair and wearing her little batita with no bra on. As soon as I saw her, I would get so upset, so angry when she’d ask me where I’d been.

  “Why don’t you go to sleep?” I’d yell at her. “What do you care what I’m doing?”

  I thought I was so tough. I had been through a lot, from being made fun of for being dirty at the swap meet, to being fat and broke, to being sexually abused, to having had an abortion and doing all sorts of drugs. I felt that there was nothing my mom could say to make things better. I am so much stronger than you, lady, I thought. Don’t worry about me. Getting home at four in the morning is nothing! Can’t you see nothing is going to happen to me, lady? Little did she know I was actually trying to kill myself but no matter how hard I tried, nothing ever happened. I never used condoms; I drank from anyone’s drink; several times I had tried to overdose on drugs and pills but nothing ever happened to me. I was never in a car accident, never got an STD, nothing. Getting home at four in the morning was nothing.

  “Just leave me alone and go to sleep! Déjeme en paz!” I’d scream at her as I walked down the hallway to my room. She’d follow me, saying, “No, Hija, las señoritas decentes no llegan a estas horas. Decent girls don’t come home at this hour.”

  “I’m not a decent woman, Mamá!” I’d yell back at her. “Don’t you understand? I don’t care! This is my life and I’m never going to be a decent woman so why don’t you just leave me alone?”

  I’d go into my room and she’d walk in right behind me.

  “No, Rosie, I refuse to believe—”

  “Ay, Ma, ya cállese! Shut up!”

  “No! I’m not going to shut up! I’m not going to leave you alone! I’ll never get tired of telling you that you’re going to be a good woman! God loves you and you need to change. You will change!”

  “I don’t want to change!” I’d scream back at her. “And I don’t want to go to your stupid church!” I was so angry. I genuinely didn’t know why she cared and why she couldn’t just let me be.

  I’d lie down on my bed, pretending to be asleep, and my mother, all tiny and chubby, so adorable in her batita and her rollers, would put her hands on me. She’d rub my legs with anointing oil as she began calling out to God what she saw with her spiritual eyes and heard with her spiritual ears—and I listened to every word.

  “Rosie,” she’d say, speaking softly and tenderly, “you are a great woman of God. You will sing and speak for Him. My Lord will win this battle. I declare that you will be healed and liberated from all these demons that torture you.”

  As far-fetched as her words seemed to me, I couldn’t help but admire her faith. To this day, it’s one of the things I admire most about my mother. She was going against everything she saw, everything she heard and everything she knew. I was the exact opposite of everything she was saying yet she never lost faith in what God can accomplish. She knew it would take a miracle for me to become the woman she wanted me to be.

  I looked up at my mom as she turned to leave my room and I felt sorry for her and unworthy. It all seemed ridiculous, pathetic to such a point that I wasn’t even angry anymore. Mi pobre Mami, I thought. She doesn’t deserve to have me as a child. She deserves so much better.

  • • •

  My dad, in the meantime, never said a word to me. Since the day he found out about the sexual abuse, he didn’t know what to do with me. He didn’t know what to say. As a father, he felt he was supposed to be my protector and I think he probably felt as if he’d failed, as if he had lost all credibility with himself.

  But to me it was all the same. In my eyes he was just another person I had managed to alienate from my life, and I was actually glad he left me alone.

 
That said, deep down in my heart I knew my father enough to know he was disappointed in me—both of them were. And it wasn’t just the fact that I had strayed away from God. It had more to do with my lack of values and self-respect. What mattered to them most in life was having values—your respect for yourself and your respect for your family. Yes, I was getting good grades and was on my way to becoming a hotshot attorney, but none of that mattered if I didn’t have the right values. The reality was that I didn’t love myself and I didn’t respect my family, and no matter how much I tried to hide behind my supposed accomplishments, I knew it was all just a facade.

  My parents weren’t the only ones who knew about my risky behavior. My extended family and other people in the community never said anything to my face but they’d tell my mother.

  “Rosie, people tell me that you are a lost cause, eres una causa perdida,” she’d say to me. “They tell me that you are uncontrollable and you’ll never amount to anything. They say you’ll probably end up a single mom, broke, and addicted to drugs. That’s what they tell me, Rosie. That’s what they say.”

  She’d tell me this not because she wanted to hurt me, but because she was trying every single way to get me to react. She tried the nice way, the screaming way, the you-can’t-do-this-in-my-home way. She tried taking me to therapy, to church, anything and everything that could help. And she never gave up.

  “Hija, you know God loves you,” she’d say to me.

  “Whatever with God, Mom,” I’d mumble back. “He doesn’t care about me.”

  “No, Hija, you don’t understand. God loves you just as you are.”

  “He can’t possibly love me,” I’d answer. “Not after having an abortion.”

  “But, Hija, He will forgive you.”

  “Mom, I’m not sorry about it.”

  It was a blatant lie, of course, but at that point I’d say just about anything to get her off my case. Yet my mother would never give up. Never. She invited me to go to church with her every weekend even though I’d gripe and complain. “They’re all hypocrites. Look what church leaders and other people do. I’m better off out in the clubs.”

  “You’re wrong if you think you can survive this difficult life on your own, Rosie. There’s a war going on between good and evil, and—”

  “Look, Mom,” I’d interrupt her. “You don’t understand who I am. The church will refuse me as soon as I show up drunk or smelling of alcohol. What if I smoked a cigarette outside?”

  “Daughter,” she’d respond, “you haven’t understood a word I’ve been saying. I don’t care how you show up for church or what people think. It’s not the church that receives you, but the Lord. The doors are open for everyone—from the prostitute on the street to the town drunk.”

  “Whatever,” I answered, and let her ramble on.

  Then she said something I’ve never forgotten: “Jesus has His arms wide open—the way He was on the cross.”

  seven

  toxic love

  Just when I thought there was absolutely no hope left for me in the world, a handsome young man came along. I’ll call him Chief.

  I was twenty, in my junior year at college and we met at El Rodeo, a nightclub in Pico Rivera, the same place where Chay talked to the love of her life, Ferny, for the first time. I was off to the side watching Chay run the stage as if she had been born on it, when I heard a guy say my name.

  I turned around and saw a handsome twenty-something motioning for me to dance. I never liked dancing when my sister was onstage so I made a sign with my index and thumb saying “in a little bit,” as I winked and smiled back at him. From where I was standing I could tell he was tall—taller than Luis, at least, and that was a plus—dark and handsome. I liked what I saw.

  As soon as the Diva finished her set, I walked over to him and asked him, straight out, how he knew my name.

  “Everyone here knows who you are, Rosie: Lupillo and Jenni’s little sister,” he said with a grin on his face.

  I was surprised because at the time I didn’t even realize people knew I existed. I didn’t like knowing that people watched me or knew anything about my life through the media since eighty percent of the time they’re lying and the other twenty percent are conveniently “bending” the truth. I felt uncomfortable that he was a fan but he was too cute to let go so I let it pass. I didn’t end up dancing with him that night, but we did chat for a little while, and then we exchanged phone numbers.

  Chief and I went on a few dates and right away we clicked. It was an immediate connection. After the first few weeks of dating, we told each other that we were in love. (He said it first, actually. I was much too scared of rejection to ever say it first.) He was so attentive, romantic, manly, and intelligent that I was convinced that I had found the love of my life. And to top it all off, he loved baseball, just like the other guys in my family! What wasn’t there to love? No one had ever made me feel that way before and I knew for sure that we were meant to be together. I wanted our relationship to last so one day I told him what was in my heart.

  “I’m not here to play,” I said. “I want something serious.”

  “I’m not either,” he replied. “I love you.”

  For years, I had been stumbling from one disappointing relationship to another, so to finally hear someone tell me that he loved me felt like balm for my soul.

  Chief made me feel loved and slowly but surely, I started to calm down. I practically stopped drinking and doing drugs because Chief thought it wasn’t ladylike, and because I wanted to become his lady, I started to change. It was an extremely positive turn for me at the time, but even so, my family wasn’t entirely on board with Chief. They liked the changes they were seeing in me but Lupe and Mom, for example, had a bad feeling. They thought that Chief would eventually hurt me and they kept telling me to be careful. Lupe, whose opinion on guys I valued above anyone else’s, told me I should leave him. Normally that would have been enough to make me drop the relationship in a heartbeat, but this time I was so in love that I didn’t listen to him. Seeing how important Chief was to me, Lupe eventually gave us his blessing and promised to support me as long as Chief respected his home.

  As our relationship evolved, we started to talk about the future. We knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together but we were in no rush. We were both very serious about our careers—I was going to finish college and then apply to law school—and he was working up the management ladder at a large retail store. I felt lucky to be with a man who respected and supported my aspirations and I was going to make sure I respected his.

  Having sex before marriage was the norm for both of us, but we didn’t use protection; we decided the “pull out” method would work just as well. For the first time since Luis, I was having sex with someone I actually loved, and everything about our relationship felt right. I was happy. After so many years of trauma, I was finally feeling good about myself—I had a good man by my side who made me feel like a million bucks.

  Things were running along smoothly until about nine months into our relationship, we had our first argument. I wanted to go to a concert with a couple of my girlfriends but when I told him about my plans, he simply said, “No.”

  Granted, in the Mexican-American community, a concert means a music performance at a big nightclub where there is drinking and dancing, but I had been going to concerts all my life (my family was in the music business!) and I wasn’t going to stop just because my boyfriend said so. I’d spent so many years disobeying every rule my parents gave me—why was I going to start obeying his?

  A huge fight ensued and I ended up breaking up with him and going to the concert. He asked me to get back together with him a couple of weeks later but I played hard to get even though deep down we both knew I’d come back.

  For a few weeks, he’d call and text me all the time. “Hey, baby. I miss you. Why don’t you come over and be with me again?”<
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  At the beginning I didn’t respond, but soon enough his sweet messages broke me down and we ended up seeing each other again. We didn’t go back to being in a committed relationship but we did get together from time to time to have sex.

  In my family, there are three important holidays that I would never miss for anything in the world: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and July Fourth. We celebrate the Fourth of July not just because it’s Independence Day, but because Chay and I have birthdays around that date and we always celebrated our birthdays together. I was born on July third, and Chay came into the world on July second—so we always threw a big bash on the fourth. This time we were having it at our brother Lupe’s house.

  As always, it was a great party. There’s nothing I love more than spending time with my family and that July Fourth was no exception. I was turning twenty-one and Chay was turning thirty-three so we went all out. My whole family was there and some of their famous friends, but no one was acting rich or famous—we were just having a blast, eating carne asada and downing Coronas. Lupe’s house is a gorgeous three-story home in Playa del Rey, and that night we were able to see the romantic fireworks over Marina del Rey.

  At the last minute, I decided to invite Chief to come along, because he knew my family and he was, I guess, the closest thing I had to a boyfriend. We were drinking and dancing and having a great time. Chief and I stepped out to the front of the house to get some air when suddenly I noticed I had a voice mail on my phone. It was from a guy I knew casually; he was probably just calling to say happy birthday or something. I put the phone up to my ear to listen to the message but before I was able to do so, Chief grabbed the phone from my hand to listen to the voice message.