Forgiveness

by Chiquis Rivera

  As was always the case in my mother’s life, as soon as the plane was about to take off, another baby showed up. But this time, our Johnny arrived with the proverbial loaf of bread under his arm. Finally!

  The year 2001 had just kicked off and my tío Lupe was topping the charts with songs like “Despreciado” and “Gabino Barrera.”

  Wherever we went, people would shout, “Hey, it’s Lupillo’s nieces!” But eventually things started to change, and people started to call us “Jenni’s daughters.”

  Tío Lupe’s success was really what motivated my mother this time around. She decided not to put her career on hold during her pregnancy. After she gave birth, she handed me that baby with a perfectly straight face and said to me, clear as day:

  “Mija, I really need you. Now more than ever.”

  And with that, from day one, Johnny became my baby.

  From Tucson to Bakersfield, from El Paso to Raleigh, my mother would call us at the house before she went onstage. It was her good-luck move. She couldn’t perform without that phone call.

  “How’s my king?” she’d ask, a hint of sadness in her voice.

  “Don’t worry, Momma. Johnny’s asleep in my arms. He’s fine. Now go out and show them what you’re made of. Knock ’em dead out there!”

  “I love you, mija,” she’d say. When we hung up the phone, I’d imagine the crowd applauding as Jenni Rivera walked confidently out onstage, her head held high, before bending at the waist, her long blond hair flowing forward in a dramatic bow.

  For the next year, my mother worked hard, made sacrifices and performed at every town, ranch or club to which she was invited. Jenni Rivera never turned down a gig. All she saw was bread for her children. Or rather, steak! Because our menu was about to change.

  One evening, when we were all lounging around the house, my mother burst in with enthusiasm: “What are you doing on the couch? Turn off the TV. Come on! Up! Get in the car! Let’s go, let’s go!” In the blink of an eye, she dragged us, grumbling, out of the house. “I want to show you something.”

  Without offering any more details along the way, she drove us to Corona, about forty miles from Compton, which had been our home for the past year, and forty miles from our beloved Long Beach.

  “Look, this is your new home,” she said as she parked the van at the base of a hill. At the top of it sat a two-story building surrounded by a huge field.

  The looks on our faces when we walked in through the double doors!

  “It’s a freaking mansion!” I couldn’t contain my shock. “Does this mean we’re rich now? Oh, shit . . . !”

  My mother started laughing and, with a mischievous wink, she said, “It means we’re blessed. Very blessed.”

  In practical terms, it meant we had gone from eating tortillas with salt to a 7,000-square foot house in just a couple of years.

  As the golden age Mexican film actress María Félix once said, “Money is important in life. It does not give you happiness, we all know, but it sure calms the nerves.” That’s God’s honest truth. Our lives improved remarkably. Now my mother could provide her younger children with the things that I never had: bigger rooms, better doctors, better schools and better food in the fridge.

  And there, in our new home in Corona, with me in my new role as mother, I celebrated my eighteenth birthday and my high school graduation.

  People always assume eighteen is the age when you decide what you’re going to do with your life. And even though I was happy helping out my mother, I still had dreams of my own. Secretly, like any other girl, ever since I was little, I’d close my eyes and picture myself either singing or acting. I wasn’t sure which. At the time, it was just innocent fantasizing while searching for Mikey’s other shoe under the couch or washing Jenicka’s hair with No More Tangles baby shampoo.

  “I’ve made my decision,” I said to my mother one night after she came home, exhausted from yet another flight. “Mom, I’m joining the Air Force. I’m gonna shave my head, and the four years I’m serving will give me time to think about what I want to be in life.”

  My mother was incredulous. “I don’t understand . . .”

  “Yes, Momma. The Air Force will pay for college.”

  “I am the Air Force, mija. I break my back each and every day so that you can have what you want. You don’t need anybody to pay for anything. You’ve got it all right here. I’m the one who needs you here, with the kids, Chiquis. I can’t do it without you. I’ll give you a job, I’ll pay you cash!”

  And without another word, I became—in addition to a mother to my siblings—my mother’s personal secretary, wardrobe stylist, counselor, accountant, shopper and even the cheerleader of the new Diva de la Banda. And I have to admit that I liked it. Feeling so needed by my mother and my siblings was the best form of compensation. I couldn’t imagine a better way to be paid for spending 14 to 20 hours a day without a break.

  With all the hard work and the new house in Corona came la vida loca. Especially after the inevitable split between Juan and Jenni. The father of two of my siblings and my own great partner in crime just packed up his bags one day and moved into a small apartment not far away. My mother just couldn’t take it any longer. This time, it had nothing to do with jealousy or infidelity. Instead, it was their constant arguments back and forth about work: “You did this,” “I did that,” “You don’t do anything,” “I left my other gig to do this with you.” They just couldn’t stand the pressure, and my mother exploded one day when she came home to find Juan relaxing comfortably on the couch, watching a baseball game with moisturizing cream all over his face. She, on the other hand, was exhausted, having just returned from the road, and she asked for a separation right then and there. The former mejores amigos could no longer stand one another. Thanks to their mutual stubbornness, they put an end to their eight-year relationship.

  Juan begged me to help him out and talk some sense into my mother. He didn’t want to lose her, and he didn’t want a divorce. But I told him that it would be for the best if we all went our own ways. I loved Juan, but I just couldn’t stand another shouting match in that splendid kitchen, surrounded by white marble and expensive appliances. The fact is that when couples argue, it’s just as ugly in a Compton kitchen as it is in a beautiful mansion. And, at that point, separating was the only solution.

  Of course, on that day when he came to pick up the last of his things, I got super sad. My siblings were losing their father, though not entirely, because he would still visit them often. And I was losing a close friend—someone who respected me and understood me, even during the most awful moments of my life.

  Shortly after Juan left, things started to change in Corona. It all started with the clothes.

  “Chiquis, I need you to buy me something more modern, more daring, mija,” my mother asked me once before I made my regular weekly trip to Macy’s.

  I was in charge of filling her closet with dresses for her performances, and for buying the jewelry she’d wear onstage before taking it off and throwing it into the crowd for her fans. There were dozens of necklaces and bracelets flying through the air every month!

  Seeing her starting to dress sexier didn’t really bother me. In fact, I was flattered when my friends would say to me, Wow, your mom looks hot!

  What concerned me was the attitude that came with the clothes. It seemed as if she was trying to regain her lost adolescence, trying to compete with God knows who about who looks younger. Her miniskirts, her secret little phone conversations and her constant partying with her friends were all driving me crazy!

  But gradually I got used to the new Jenni. For the first time, we were starting to see each other as friends, not just as mother and daughter. She had stopped being so strict with me, and was now treating me more as an adult. For my part, I’d stopped criticizing her for her craziness, and had learned to accept the fact that Momma wasn’t one to come home and put on a dress by Ann Taylor or capri khakis from the GAP.

  The newly single J
enni had officially let her hair down. It was her first time being on her own, strong, with money in the bank and no man to order her around, since she was fifteen. Nothing was gonna stop her now!

  One boring Thursday evening between shows following the release of her latest album, Mi Vida Loca, the new Jenni surprised me:

  “Come on,” she said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To get a piercing. Didn’t you say you always wanted one?”

  “Yes, Momma, but not today! And with you?”

  “With me, or never” was her devilish offer.

  Thirty minutes later, we were both sitting in chairs at the first tattoo parlor we could find open at that hour of the night.

  We both opted for a belly-button piercing. Mine healed perfectly, but my mother’s got infected because she didn’t take good enough care of it, and I forced her to remove it. The daughter scolding the mother. Those were crazy times, no doubt!

  And it was during this new vida loca, each of us found love. Her first.

  In the beginning, my mother hid the news from us, but since you can only keep these things under wraps for so long, she eventually invited him over for a barbecue so she could introduce him to us. And oh my God! I almost died. He was bald, he looked like a cholo—a gangster—and was barely older than me! If my math is right, I was eighteen when I met him, and he was no more than twenty-two, which made him eleven years younger than my mother.

  But the funny thing is that I really dug him from the moment I met him. Ferny’s like that. He’s a good guy. Very funny. And he defended us and calmed my mother when she would yell at us.

  With his cholo style and his young age, Ferny gradually earned everyone’s affection. Jacqie and Mikey absolutely worshipped him, since Ferny could always make them laugh. And soon enough, I learned that this bald guy really knew how to get the best out of my mother’s career. He came up with creative and rebellious new ideas, and talked to her about street fashions.

  “You gotta bring out your inner thug,” he’d say to Momma. “Act like the chick from Long Beach that you are.”

  And wow, did my mother ever start channeling her inner thug and her inner Long Beach! Ferny helped give her an edge, and Vida Loca was hitting the top of the radio charts. My mother would later confess to me that he impressed her in other ways too.

  “This is the man who made me a real woman. I’m thirty-four, and this is the first time I really enjoyed sleeping with someone,” she blurted out one night at a friend’s party, after getting a few drinks in her.

  “Oh no, Momma! I don’t wanna hear about that!” I was laughing and dying from embarrassment at the same time.

  My mother was going through a period of change in her life, and the fact of the matter is that I had to get used to my new friend Jenni. But at the same time, my mother never failed to punish me, advise me, protect me, take care of me or control me. We were friends, yes, but only for short periods of time, because Jenni had always been a great mother to me, right up until the very end.

  And maybe it’s because Jenni was too Jenni for Ferny, a kid from the streets of the San Fernando Valley, that their relationship became a bit of a tug-of-war, as had happened before. Ferny would disappear for days before coming back looking skinny and with a distant look in his eyes, as if he were a zombie. That, combined with my mother’s character, which was never passive, and her career, which was becoming more successful by the day, resulted in explosive fights.

  And as she always did with the men in her life, during one of those arguments, my mother said no más and kicked him out of her life. But not completely.

  Ferny was relegated to the lover or friend with benefits who would step in between the future boyfriends, breakups and reconciliations. This guy from the streets of the Valley had worked his way so deeply into my mother’s heart that she never stopped loving him. Fernando, her pelón.

  Those were some eventful years, living in that house on the hill. Years that I remember fondly every time I drive down the 91 Freeway.

  But it was also during our time in Corona that we received some other devastating news: the ghost of my father was not far away. It was so close, in fact, that we couldn’t believe it—just off that same highway! This ghost who, after disappearing completely for all those years, was coming back into our lives to reopen old wounds and cause even more harm. It was inevitable.

  9.

  MORE KISSING THAN TIME IN BED

  I met him at that house in Corona, while my mother was living her own great love story during those crazy years.

  “Chiquis, you’re in charge of calling everyone, scheduling the DJ and ordering plenty of beer,” my mother said, laying out the instructions very clearly. “But I’d better not catch you flirting with any of his buddies!”

  This, of course, was regarding the birthday party she wanted us to organize for her beloved Ferny.

  It was 2004, and at eighteen, I was more celibate than a nun. Between my fears of the past, and taking care of the house, the kids and my mother’s career, I just didn’t have any time for going out with guys. And, needless to say, my momma protected me like a South Central pit bull. No guy was good enough for her! But I think it was just her fear of me getting hurt.

  I spent that whole week getting ready for the barbecue on Saturday, and that’s when Héctor appeared.

  Héctor had been invited by one of Ferny’s friends, but he wasn’t a direct friend of the pelón, so technically he was outside the scope of the limits my mother had set up.

  Just like it happens in the movies: he looked at me, I looked at him and bam! Love at first sight.

  “Can I help you with the cake?” he offered quickly, and helped me set things up in the backyard.

  Early on during the party, I didn’t dare talk to him much. Plus, I was super busy attending to all the guests. Including the strippers that Héctor himself had invited!

  The girls were starting to get really annoying, especially when they started asking me to let them into the house so they could get ready. They complained about being outside in the yard, and demanded that we move the whole party and all the guests inside so they could perform their dance in the living room.

  They made their way inside and that made me snap. “Everyone outside! On the patio now!” And with that, they went back outside.

  “Why’d you throw them out?” Héctor immediately protested.

  “Because nobody’s allowed inside. Party rules. Patio yes, house no,” I said, fuming.

  “But they’re cold!”

  “I don’t care! That’s their job, to get naked wherever they are!” I wasn’t about to budge. Rules are rules, and those girls were acting like they were the shit.

  Héctor looked at me like he wanted to shove me into the pool for running my mouth off, but he decided it would be better to go and try to calm down the strippers, who were now threatening to leave without performing.

  In the end, they did their dance in the backyard, and went off to take their show elsewhere. Later on, after midnight, when the party was starting to die down, I felt bad about what had happened and went to apologize to Héctor.

  “Can I get you a drink?” I asked him, peacefully this time.

  “Okay, but only if you let me take a picture with you,” he answered, all serious. “I just need some help finding the batteries to my camera. I think I left them in the car.”

  I think it was just a line to get me away from the crowd, because once we got to the car, he got right into it: “Give me your number,” he asked, not wasting any time.

  “Why don’t you give me yours?” I countered.

  “Here,” he said, handing me one of his business cards.

  “Oh, shit!” I exclaimed when I saw he worked for Estrella TV. “My mom’s not gonna like this!”

  “We’ll see,” Héctor said, crossing his arms like a totally flirtatious little cholo.

  It was a month before I could admit to my mom that I was going out with Héctor.

&nbs
p; When she found out, she said, “That dude just wants to date you because he works on TV and you’re the daughter of someone famous. He’s out to get something.”

  “No, Momma. I swear he’s a good guy. Please, please, please,” I begged.

  “Okay. Invite him over for dinner on Friday. We’ll double date: you with him and me with Ferny.”

  Hmmm. It wasn’t like my mother to agree so easily. I knew her too well. Clearly she was up to something. My momma was an expert when it came to strategies and surprises.

  That Friday, Héctor came over wearing a nice black sweater and carrying a six-pack of Michelob Ultra, my mother’s favorite beer. He looked scared to death, but she made an effort to make him feel at home. She fixed steak and shrimp for everyone, but still I couldn’t stop sweating throughout the entire meal, waiting for the bomb to drop.

  Near the end of the evening, my mother fired the shot: “Look, son, if you want to be Chiquis’s boyfriend, I don’t see a problem with that. But you’ll have to give up your television job first.”

  No sooner said than done! A few weeks later, Héctor left Estrella TV, and not only that, he started working with my mother on a couple of projects. He was very smart for a twenty-two-year-old: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em! That’s how he got not only the daughter to like him, but the mother as well.

  Héctor and I were truly in love. I was dying to get closer to him physically, and yet I was terrified. We spent months just making out.

  Héctor was very patient, and he proved to me that not everybody who comes into your life is there to hurt you. He already knew something about my past; I think Ferny told him some of the rumors, but he didn’t seem concerned about that. Much to the contrary, in fact. He said he understood, and that he was willing to wait until he’d earned my trust.

  And he did.

  It happened one night at his house. I worked up my courage and said to myself, It’s now or never. I even asked if we could leave the lights on. I couldn’t let the darkness of the past ruin such a beautiful moment.

  It wasn’t the sexiest chapter of my life, or even the most exciting, but still I cannot describe the feeling it gave me to have Héctor there, beside me, hugging me, even after we finished. In my mind, I thought that once he finished, he’d just get dressed and leave. That’s how I thought sex worked: first I use you, and then I leave you. And why wouldn’t it be like that, if that was how I’d been treated my entire life? It was with infinite tenderness that Héctor taught me that two people can actually respect each other and each other’s bodies. But even with so much love, it still took me almost two full years until I learned to relax enough to be able to enjoy some intimacy. Bless my Héctor and his patience.