At one point, we looked out the window and noticed that the group of fans congregated on the front lawn had swelled to a crowd of about four or five hundred people. It was beautiful and completely overwhelming. To see so many people we didn’t even know standing there, crying and praying for our sister as if she were a member of their families, gave me a feeling I will never be able to describe. So I said to Abel and our friends from church, “Let’s go out there and help them through this time of pain.” I don’t know how I summoned the strength to say that because at this moment of grief, I thought I was going to lose my mind. “Let’s go outside,” I repeated. In the front yard, with the large crowd gathered, we sang and worshipped, and, with a broken heart, I told them, “I don’t know if my sister is on Earth or in Heaven, but whatever happens in life, there is always hope.” Then I added, “This one thing I do know: I will see my sister again.”
I told them that we were going through a really difficult time, but God was holding us up—and whatever pain they faced, there is a higher power waiting to give them strength. “Thank you for loving us,” I continued. “Keep praying. No matter what happens, we’re going to be okay. God loves us and He loves YOU.”
• • •
The next day, December tenth, we began to make plans to bring our sister back from Mexico. Whether she was dead or alive, we had to bring her back. Lupe was on his way back from another town in Mexico where he had been performing, and we were just waiting for him to get home to Long Beach so we could all set out together. The thought of Chay being all alone on that mountain was unbearable. Chiquis and Mom would stay home with the kids while Gus, Pete, Lupe, Juan, and I flew out to Nuevo León to bring her back.
We were in the middle of making all the arrangements when I got a call from Chay’s attorneys asking me to meet with them as soon as possible.
“We need you to come in,” they said on the phone. “There are some things we need to tell you that are absolutely necessary.”
That’s when I remembered Chay had asked me to be her trustee. Did that call mean that the day had come?
Abel and my sister-in-law Mona drove me to the attorney’s office and I’ll never forget that on the way there, a Christian song by Jesus Culture came on the radio and it said, Giver of each breath, walk with me. Healer of my soul, walk with me. I knew exactly where I was going—I was going to see her trust attorneys, whose names I knew by heart but I had never met. Chay had always kept her businesses in the hands of her businesspeople so I could just be her sister. But the fact that these two worlds were colliding meant something terrible had happened. So I sang that song and I asked God, “Just walk with me, I’ll go wherever You want, wherever it is this journey is going to take us, but please, just don’t leave me alone, walk with me. Whatever You have prepared, just walk with me.” I was trying not to pray because I still didn’t want to talk to Him, but that was what I was singing to Him.
When we got to the attorneys’ offices in Santa Fe Springs, they sat me down and said:
“We know your sister’s plane has gone missing.”
“Yes, it’s missing,” I responded.
“Do you know that she left you as trustee?”
“Yes, I know,” I answered very calmly. “She informed me.”
“Okay, well, it is our duty to tell you what her will says,” they responded.
“With all due respect, her death has not been confirmed yet,” I said. “I don’t want to know what’s in her will because I want to respect her privacy. I don’t want to know a thing about her will until it’s absolutely one hundred percent confirmed that she’s gone. If you need to tell me something now, please, let it be the very bare necessities. I don’t want to know anything else.”
So they told me. They said I was her trustee, and that absolutely, under no circumstance, was she to be cremated. That was what they needed me to know. But then there was another note. I was going to have to make a lot of decisions so she had a final message for me: “You’ve got to be strong, Sister. Be very, very strong. It’s not time to quit.” She said she trusted me and that I knew why she had chosen me and that I wasn’t to let anyone influence my decisions, not even our parents or our brothers.
“Okay,” I said, choking back the tears, hoping I would never need to follow her instructions.
The ride back home felt like an eternity. Chay’s words resonated deeply in my mind: “Be very, very strong. It’s not time to quit.”
By the time I got back home, my brothers were arguing. They were clearly not agreeing on something. I had been gone for just a couple of hours, but somehow the plan had changed. We were no longer going to Mexico all together. Only Lupe was going to go and they had flipped a coin to decide who was going with him, and it turned out that person was Gus. I hadn’t even been included in the raffle because I was a girl.
“What are you talking about?” I exclaimed. “Of course I’m going! She’s my sister too!”
“Rosa, you’re a girl and you’re pregnant,” said Lupe.
“But I want to go! She deserves for me to go!” I screamed back.
“No, Bubba, I think you should stay with Mom and the kids,” said Juan.
And because it was Juan—the sibling I am closest to next to Chay—I accepted.
But Chiquis was definitely not okay with the arrangement. She wanted Juan to go and she was adamant about it.
“You have to go, Tío Juan, because I know you will bring my mama back. You will search for her and you’ll bring her back,” she said.
I couldn’t blame her. Juan had remained by her side during those difficult months leading up to the accident, and he was the tío she trusted most. Plus, everyone knows that the most loyal, bighearted person in our family is Juan. Loyalty runs strong in him and if there’s someone you can count on to never let you down, it’s Juan.
“The kids and I took a vote,” Chiquis said. “And we want Tío Juan to go too. Tío, bring my mama home.”
Right before they headed out to the airport, I called a quick family meeting in my mother’s bedroom and told them, in the calmest, most humble way possible, what the attorneys had told me that morning:
“Chay me dejó de albacea, she left me as her trustee.”
They all nodded without saying a word.
“But I want you guys to know that if she was kidnapped, I think we should sell everything to get her back. I don’t care what it takes—we’ll sell it all.”
Everyone agreed without hesitation. It was a beautiful moment because despite all our differences, there were no doubts in anyone’s mind that we would all pull together to get Chay back. Our father had taught us well. Family always comes first.
“So just remember, when you’re over there,” I repeated, “do whatever it takes to bring her back, Brothers. Just bring her back.”
• • •
Juan and Gus spent hours and hours on that mountain searching for Chay. They threw themselves, heart and soul, into finding our sister. God only knows what they saw on that mountain but they stood strong and kept their promise.
Back home, minutes felt like hours while we poured over Internet pictures and waited for any scrap of news we could get.
Chay’s son Johnny was looking at maps of the area, and he said to me:
“Look, Tía, there is a river three miles from where the plane fell, and knowing my mama, she’s going to go toward water because she’s smart, so tell Tío Juan to go look by the river.”
We all held hope that she was still alive somewhere, that she was safe, but in our hearts, we all feared the worst.
On December twelfth, my brothers started to identify body parts. The rest of us were still at home so we knew nothing of this, but I received a call from Gus.
“Hey Rose, does Janney have a scar on her back?” he asked.
That was the moment I knew she was gone. When I saw the foot, I still h
eld hope that she was being held for ransom. But when my brother, who would never know if she did, asked me about a big long scar . . . I knew.
“Brother, you’re looking at her stomach,” I said.
We both stayed silent for a moment.
“All right, thank you, Sister,” he said.
“Thank you, Brother,” I said and we hung up.
The kids were sitting next to me and they saw new tears rolling down my face.
“Was it about Mama?” Chiquis asked.
“Yes” I said, pausing for a moment, remembering I had promised I would tell them when I knew. “Your Tío Gus just asked me about a scar.”
“Yeah, that’s my mama’s scar,” said Chiquis, her gaze turned inward.
I didn’t have to confirm anything. They knew.
• • •
A few hours later, I got another call from Juan. Apparently Lupe and Gus were having an argument because Lupe had just told Gus that he had made a special urn—a red urn that he designed himself—in order for Chay to be cremated. He was asking Gus to sign some papers in order to arrange for the cremation.
Gus was horrified. He was searching for his sister because he wanted to bring her home to Long Beach, yet Lupe was making an urn. He was heartbroken and with tensions running so high, a fight erupted. Juan, who had been watching the two argue, told them they should call me and ask whether I knew anything.
“Rosie, did Chay say anything about being cremated?” he asked me on the phone.
“Yes, Brother,” I answered. “She said she absolutely cannot be cremated.”
While that put an end to the discussion at hand, it was too late. Something was broken. The incident carved a breach between my two brothers, one that would eventually break out into war. Gus was so hurt that Lupe had already had an urn made for Jenni. In his mind, Gus was still thinking he could find her while Lupe was already making plans for her cremation. Obviously, everyone has their own way of dealing with pain in situations like these and it’s impossible to judge—while Gus still wanted to find Chay and bring her home, Lupe was thinking more practically. Lupe wanted to honor her, and preparing for her cremation, taking care of what needed to be done, was his way of doing so.
Meanwhile for me, the moment her death was confirmed, the situation couldn’t have become more surreal. I was officially her trustee and as such I was receiving all these phone calls asking for me to make decisions. Since I’m the youngest and probably the most introverted of my siblings, I usually just sit back and watch them do their thing. I’m never, ever the center of attention. They were all calling to ask me for permission to do things—they needed my signature for DNA tests, powers of attorney, authorization forms. It felt so strange. These were the men I had admired all my life. I respected them so much and the fact that they were now calling me to ask for permission to do things felt very strange. It was a new paradigm and that was the moment I knew my life had changed.
• • •
On December thirteenth, my brothers and Chay finally came home.
Lupe called to let me know that they were going to fly into Long Beach Airport and he asked that only Pete and I come to meet them.
We weren’t given an exact time of arrival, so Pete and I were waiting at the airport for hours. Long Beach Airport is pretty small and I had been there once before with my sister when she had gotten a private jet to go on one of her big tours. As I waited for the plane to arrive, I remembered being at that airport with her and how, when we got to the plane, we weren’t impressed with the comfortable seats or the five-star service. What really impressed us was that they gave out freshly baked cookies! Can you believe it, dude? They’re freshly baked!
I could almost hear her voice telling me: “Now, now, Samalia. Let’s just eat half a cookie because you know it all goes straight to your thighs!”
She was always telling me how everything goes straight to the thighs! God, I thought. Was I really never going to hear that voice again?
When the jet finally arrived, they pulled up to where we were waiting and Lupe came out first.
“Rosa, do you want to come inside the plane?” he asked.
“Yes, I want to see my sister,” I said, tears rolling down my face.
“You can’t see her, Rosa,” he said calmly as he saw me in tears.
“But I want to see her!” I sobbed.
“You can’t in this state,” Lupe said. “So if I let you on the plane, you need to be really calm. You can’t try to open the box. Promise?”
“Okay, Brother. I promise.”
Pete went in first, so the four boys were there with her. I can’t imagine what Pete and Gus were feeling that day because ever since they were little boys, they had been in charge of protecting Chay.
When my turn came, I got on the plane and there I found my very strong, voluptuous, five-foot-two-thinking-she’s-five-foot-nine, beautiful sister . . . in a box. A small box with a burgundy silk cloth.
“This is her?” I asked.
“Yes, Rosie. I promise it’s her,” Gus said. “I made sure it’s her.”
I sat there for a while, just trying to process the fact that that box was my sister, that she was really in there. Never again would I see her face, her hair, never again would I feel her warm embrace. A deep sadness washed over me, but it wasn’t like the sadness I had been feeling over the past several days. This sadness was raw and violent, and it was burning me up inside. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make it stop and all I could think was that I needed just one more hug. I said to God, “Please give me just one more hug. Just one more.” I wanted to feel my sister’s arms around me. I wanted her to feel me hug her and tell her everything was going to be okay. So I hugged the box as tight as I could and I don’t know if she was hugging me because I needed her, or if I was hugging her because over the previous months she had been hurting so much. I wanted her to know she was going to be okay, she was with God now and nothing could hurt her anymore. I was going to be strong and take care of her babies and one day we would all meet again in Heaven.
• • •
The hardest part of that day was having to tell our mother. No one had called her yet; all she knew was that my brothers were coming home. When we got to the house she was just sitting on the couch with the kids; they were all huddled together. As soon as we walked through the door, she looked up at Juan, no one else but Juan. Juan looked back at Mom and just gave her a tiny little nod.
And then everyone knew.
They all broke into tears. Since I had already felt it, I thought, Okay, when they find out, I have to take care of everyone else. I tried to touch Jenicka’s knee but she didn’t want to be touched, which was of course totally understandable. Johnny was very upset. My mom was screaming, Dad was very quiet, and Chiquis and the kids held one another and wept. . . . Seeing everyone else’s pain, I couldn’t cry; I couldn’t even move. All I wanted was to make things better for the kids, the way Chay had always made things better for me. Over the course of the next few days, I did everything I could to take care of everyone else. There was so much to do, so many decisions to make, and I was simply going through the motions, doing everything I could to keep myself occupied and not think about the fact that I was never going to hug, kiss, or receive a text message from my sister ever again.
I tried my best to stay calm for my baby. The innocent child Chay had named Fo-Real . . . because like the Riveras, he’d be the real deal. I broke down only once during December (several more would follow in my closet in 2013), the day my friend Gladyz, who had hung out with Chay and me so many nights and was there in all Rivera moments of joy and sadness, came to take care of me. When I saw her, it hit me that I would never hear Chay call me Samalia again and I let out the loudest scream I could. I fell to my knees in the kitchen and Gladyz went down to the floor to hug me and pick me back up as I sobbed uncontrollably in her a
rms.
My sister was gone.
sixteen
a life-changing celebration
In the six days that followed her return to Long Beach, the entire family came together to plan Chay’s funeral, or “Celestial Graduation,” as we decided to call it. Chay was always a straight-A student and while life didn’t afford her the honor of graduating from a top university, something she always dreamed of, we were going to make sure she graduated from life on this Earth—with honors. Jenni Rivera was an extraordinary human being in every aspect of her life, and we wanted to make sure that was how the world remembered her.
While Chay left us with clear instructions on what to do in the event of her passing, nothing was clearer than “Cuando Muere una Dama” (“When a Lady Dies”), a song she wrote and recorded back in 2003. The beautiful lyrics told us everything we needed to know:
Quiero una ultima parranda,
I want a final party
por allá en mi funeral.
For my funeral.
Todos los que me quisieron,
All those who loved me
la tendrán que celebrar,
Will have to celebrate.
recordando mi sonrisa
Remembering my smile,
y mi forma de llorar.
And the way I cried.
Fui una guerrillera fuerte
I was a strong soldier,
que por sus hijos luchó,
Who fought for her children.
recuerden muy bien que en vida
Don’t forget that while she was alive
su madre no se rajó,
My Broken Pieces : Mending the Wounds from Sexual Abuse Through Faith, Family and Love (9781101990087) Page 21
