Forgiveness

by Chiquis Rivera

  My private pain was about to become public. Social media, magazines, television. Now, it wouldn’t be just my mother and my family who hated me. Now the world would hate me as well. Good luck, Chiquis, I thought, trying to encourage myself. You overcame the ordeal with your father and you can overcome this. I knew what was coming: the comments, the criticisms and the scorn. And I would face it all with dignity, just as I had before. Just as she had taught me to do.

  I was left with the task of understanding how my mother came to the sickening conclusion that Esteban had cheated on her with me. I could understand the bullshit with Elena: the attempted kiss, the compliments and the jealousy of that clown of a girlfriend she had. But Esteban? Who could have invented the filthiest rumor of all? How? I had to find the answer . . .

  18.

  SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO BE CRUEL . . .

  I started to pray with your tía Ramona and I asked God to give me a sign,” my grandma told me over the phone. “And I know that you didn’t do it, because I feel a great sense of peace in my heart. That is the sign. Just give your mother some time, mija.”

  My grandma Rosa was one of the few who didn’t believe everything was that was being said out there. She’s a woman of instinct and faith, and both of those indicated to her that neither Esteban, nor I, were capable of such things.

  “But why can’t you convince my mother that she’s wrong?” I begged her.

  “Because she doesn’t want to talk about it. She would fly into a rage. You know how your mom can be.” And with that, my grandma broke down crying.

  I calmed her down and promised her that I would go see her just as soon as I could. Though the truth was that I didn’t even have the courage to leave my apartment. And why would I? Talking to another Rivera would only cause more harm. Some of them weren’t even speaking with me.

  Tía Rosie would still call me from time to time, but she was more playing the part of a good sister than a good aunt. Her words were comforting, though from afar. She took on the role of referee between mother and daughter—always a scary proposition.

  My mother even warned her, “You’re either with me or against me.” Rosie was walking on eggshells and she knew it. Everything was black and white as far as my mother was concerned. There were simply no gray areas.

  “No, Chiquis, I don’t feel that you did such a thing. My heart tells me now, but you have to understand my situation. She’s my sister, one of the people I love most in my life.” With these words, my aunt made it clear that—although she wasn’t going to condemn me—she wasn’t going to throw me a lifesaver to rescue me either.

  And I was drowning. Slowly. Very slowly. Drowning alone, trapped in that tiny little garage.

  My tío Lupe was having his own problems with my mother around that time, and they weren’t speaking. He encouraged me to fight for my innocence and suggested I take my version of the story to the media.

  “No, tío. You’re crazy,” I replied. “The world doesn’t know that my mother accused me of sleeping with her husband. All they know is that they’re getting a divorce. That’s it. Bringing that part of it up would be suicide!”

  “That may be, Chiquis, but knowing your mother, everything will come out sooner or later.”

  Tío Lupe had his doubts, but to me it was clear: bringing everything to light was deadly poison. Poison that someone else was going to provide me with.

  One morning, determined to exhaust all my options, I went to see my tío Pete at his office on Market Street in the old Long Beach neighborhood. Rosie was waiting there with him.

  “Let’s run a lie detector test,” my uncle suggested. In fact, there were many members of the Rivera family who were feeling desperate and who wanted to cure this cancer that was eating away at our family.

  “Are you willing to take one?” he asked. “I’ll find an expert to administer the test and I’ll pay for the costs.”

  “Yes, of course! Tell my mother to send us an e-mail with the questions she wants answers to, and I’ll answer them all, in front of the machine and in front of you all,” I replied without hesitation. “I have nothing to hide and nothing to fear.”

  A few minutes later, instead of receiving a list of questions from my mother, what we got was a text sent to my tío Pete’s phone. It read: TELL HER SHE NO LONGER HAS A MOTHER. FORGET ABOUT ME. AND PETE, IF YOU WANT TO BELIEVE HER, THEN GO AHEAD AND BELIEVE HER. I DON’T NEED ANY MORE FAMILY, AND I DON’T NEED A LIE DETECTOR TEST.

  With tears in her eyes, Rosie said to me, “I’m afraid to admit it, but I think my sister has gone crazy. She just told me to throw a Bible at your face, and that if you don’t accept what you did, you’ll never be able to enjoy God’s blessings in this life.”

  “But how can I admit something I didn’t do? That’s a sin! That’s lying to God!”

  “I know, Chiquis. I just don’t know what to do. I don’t want to lose her. I wouldn’t be able to live without her. The day she wasn’t speaking to me I was devastated. And that was only one day.”

  “But what about me? I have to live without her and my brothers and sisters for the rest of my life?”

  “I know, baby. I’m sorry. All I ask is that you give her time. I’m sure the wounds will heal eventually. I’m begging you, just be patient.”

  I’ll never forget that moment between my aunt and me. That bittersweet moment. I could feel all her love and her desire to protect me. However, at that moment I knew that she wasn’t going to go to bat for me the way I had gone to bat for her many years ago during the trial against my father. It went against my heart to testify, but Rosie and my mother begged me to do it to bring Rosie peace and justice, which I felt I was being denied of in this situation. I was disappointed and very much alone with nobody taking the stand for me.

  And that’s when it dawned on me: I wouldn’t be winning this battle with the help of any family members.

  I left Tío Pete’s office seeing things more clearly. Nobody was going to bite the hand that fed them. And they’re not to blame. Jenni Rivera was the one who financed everything. I saw for myself the monthly donations my mother made to Tío Pete’s church, of which my tía Rosie was also a part. Envelopes with twenty, forty, even sixty thousand dollars at a time, which I sometimes delivered in person. My mother, like any good daughter, took care of all my grandma’s expenses, as she did with everyone. And I can’t criticize them for it, but this makes for a complicated relationship. At some point, she’s not just their sister. She’s their boss. And I couldn’t compete with the boss.

  The only one who didn’t seem to be intimidated by his sister, again, was my tío Juan, but there was little he could accomplish on his own. He begged me to just forget about it, to keep moving forward, and not to expect anything from anyone.

  “Chiquis, here’s the situation,” he said to me that same night, trying to open my eyes. “Your tío Pete thinks that you did betray your mother with Esteban.”

  I asked, “Why? How? What do you mean?”

  “He said just by looking at you he could tell. Don’t waste any more of your time talking to him.”

  Sadness flooded me to the core. Were those the judgments of a man of God? Of a pastor? With those words, my tío Pete had thrown the stones that the Pharisees didn’t even dare to hurl at Mary Magdalene. He had condemned me as just another prostitute in a matter of seconds. And unfortunately, I didn’t have Jesus with me to draw a line in the sand.

  Even so, I love my tío Pete a lot, and I know he’s a good man. He just got caught up in the circumstances, like so many others did during those days of contagious madness. And eventually he would sit down and listen to me, and he came to see that I was not guilty of such a terrible sin.

  But for that month of October, there was no Jesus and no solace for me. The next flying stone to hit me in the head was thrown directly by my mother’s hand, but it didn’t hurt, because money was the least of my concerns.

  It was October 12. Columbus Day. The Day of Disinheritance.

 
; The legal proceedings to remove me from my mother’s will had been finalized, with a simple amendment to the original document she had prepared just months earlier.

  “I exclude you to assure myself that, if you decide to kill me, you will not receive a single cent after my death.” Those are the words that my mother communicated to me through my tía Rosie.

  Kill her? How could she think I was capable of doing such a thing? A daughter killing her mother over an argument based on nothing but rumors? No, these words were clearly directed toward my boyfriend. Since my mother always believed the rumors that he was some kind of a mobster, I’m sure it crossed her mind that he could be capable of such a barbaric act. She really has gone crazy, I thought at that moment. There really was no other explanation.

  With that as the backdrop, I started to forget about the Riveras, as they did me. Said and done. Over the next few weeks, Tío Pete stopped replying to texts. Understood. Rosie took longer to return calls. Message received. Chiquis was officially excluded. Chiquis had been forgotten.

  The saddest part of this whole convoluted story is that everyone was so afraid of losing their sister that nobody would so much as lift a finger to help me. And two months later, we lost her forever. We all did.

  Sometimes I wonder if God sends us hidden messages but doesn’t give us time to understand them until it’s too late.

  Once I resigned myself to the fact that none of my aunts or uncles were willing to help open the door for me back into Encino and into my mother’s heart, I lay down on the bed in my tiny little apartment and I didn’t get up for days. I fell into a deep depression. I went for what seemed like ages without speaking to my siblings. Mikey secretly came to see me once with his girlfriend, but was always afraid that he’d get caught. From my dear Jacqie there wasn’t a peep. That was the most disappointing thing to me. Jacqie was twenty-three, she was married, she was an adult who could make her own decisions, and she could have come to help me or console me if she’d wanted to. But she didn’t. If she had confessed to killing someone or committing some other horrible crime, I would have embraced her. I wouldn’t have pushed her away.

  Jacqie slammed the door in my face. She did that to me, the sister who always got her out of trouble in school or saved her butt a thousand times at home. Without getting too much into it, I was the one who had helped her break the news to our mother that she’d gotten pregnant. Every time Jacqie needed someone to stand up for her, I was there. I was always willing to do that, and I would have willingly given my life for her, if that had ever been necessary.

  Instead, Jacqie decided to totally take my mother’s side, and enjoy her time playing the part of the oldest daughter.

  Jacqie and Jenni: the new dynamic duo. I admit, I was very jealous. I couldn’t help it. The difference is that God gave me the opportunity to get my Jacqie back and regain her trust. And for my part, she regained all of the love that I had for her. When it came to my mother, on the other hand, destiny had something else in store for us.

  One afternoon, lost between the jealousy and solitude that had taken over my life, I felt like I’d hit rock bottom. Suddenly, I remembered the two handguns that were still in my possession, since someone had broken into the house in Corona. My mother was so scared that she insisted I learn to shoot and got me a permit. She bought the guns herself and hid one at each end of the house. She was worried about leaving us alone on that hill, with no neighbors nearby. But now I was the one who was worried, because these guns were within reach, and I told Dayanna I was having crazy thoughts. I was losing my will to live. My friends—my only supporters during that time, along with my boyfriend—scrounged around every square inch of that apartment until they found the two guns, and they took them away from me. Gerald and Dayanna were so concerned about me that they wouldn’t leave me alone for even a moment, let alone when there might be weapons around. That was the first time in my life when such a thought even crossed my mind. With everything that I’d been through in life, that was only time that I ever thought death might actually be better.

  Those October nights were my nights of terror. But the real horror would come to me in a magazine.

  Up until that point, the world remained oblivious to my drama, my exile and my depression. Jenni Rivera Will Not Discuss the True Motives Behind the Divorce, the headlines simply said ever since she announced her divorce from Esteban.

  Hmmm . . . My mother is being very discreet with the media, I thought.

  But that discretion lasted a mere twenty days. Just until October 23, when “somebody” leaked the true family drama to TVNotas magazine. As they say, the shit hit the fan, and we all ended up getting splashed.

  According to the magazine, “Jenni filed for divorce because she caught Esteban stealing money and having sex with her daughter.” Me! When I read those words on the Internet, it felt like fatal poison coursing through my veins. And there you have it. My true agony can now begin, I thought. I tried to find an upside to it, but there wasn’t one.

  The publication cited a mysterious source close to my mother: in other words, one of those toxic voices that was constantly buzzing around her, telling her that Esteban had financial problems. It said that my mother noticed money missing from her accounts and that she installed a camera to try and see whether he was the one who was stealing from her. According to her, she saw Esteban stealing cash on camera, and later she saw the two of us leaving the bedroom, fixing our clothes in some suspicious manner. For the love of God! What outrageous, horrific accusations!

  Is that alleged recording from the night she left us with the children after the movie? Ridiculous! I was in the bedroom for not even five minutes, and that was to say good-bye! I had proof that I was sitting on the damn stairs the entire time, talking to my uncle and my boyfriend on the phone!

  Who? Who could have said all those things to TVNotas? If my mother wanted to remain silent—which is what she stated in the only interview she gave to the media about the divorce—then whoever this whistleblower was had really messed up. That much was clear, unless my mother, deep down, really didn’t care about keeping it a secret.

  I have a pretty good idea about who opened her mouth. What I’m not quite as sure about is what they stood to gain by doing it. Elena’s ghost had come back to haunt me once again.

  Instantly, my phone began ringing and vibrating like crazy with tweets, texts, messages and e-mails. They were rolling in by the dozens! Within a matter of minutes, my in-box and social media pages were flooded with the most horrible insults I’ve ever read, and which I’ll never read again (because now I just delete such things outright). “You fucking whore. How could you do that to Jenni? I hope you die.” That was one of the kinder ones that I remember.

  At first, I made the mistake of answering a few of them. I thought it was only fair. I defended myself. But soon enough, I realized that it was useless. My words only added more fuel to the fire. So I stopped completely. What a feeling of powerlessness to hear all these atrocities and not be able to proclaim my innocence to the world!

  But, leaving the disgusting tweets and haters aside, my immediate concern was for my mother. It wouldn’t take her long to respond. Would she deny these allegations or come out with her guns blazing to give me the final death shot?

  The first ones to start launching missiles were the paparazzi. They started to follow me everywhere, and would even station themselves outside my salon for hours, waiting for me to appear.

  “If they can find you, some crazy fan could find you too. Someone could follow you home one night, and who knows what they might do!” my publicist, Iris Corral, said.

  Iris was truly alarmed. As a professional, she’d never seen such aggressive bullying. Neither of us took the messages “I hope you die” or “You deserve to die” lightly.

  She advised me not to go to the salon for a few days. I really wasn’t in the mood to work, but it was—and is—my business, and I was handling it personally.

  Thanks to my fabulous te
am, led by my manager, the salon was able to stay open and do business as usual, despite the swarm of photographers camped out on the sidewalk.

  During that time, Iris became my constant, inseparable friend. I was already accustomed to facing the public, being the daughter of La Diva, but this time was different. I couldn’t do it alone. I needed someone who could help me deal with such blatant hatred and, of course, with the media.

  Obviously, every station wanted to interview me, but only to humiliate me more, not to listen to what I had to say. Everyone wanted a piece of me to hold up like a trophy: “Here’s the one they banished!”

  That’s why we decided to give just one single interview. An interview of our choosing, where I knew I would feel respected. We would not have a list of conditions. Everything was fair game, but we demanded respect and the freedom to say whatever we had to say. By that point, all the media outlets were completely on the side of my mother, even though she was still maintaining her silence. No journalist wanted to offend her. They needed her exclusives to keep their ratings high and she knew that as well.

  Iris and I chose Telemundo, because of the good relationship I had with Mun2, and Azucena Cierco, because she had always been gentle and polite with my family.

  The interview was scheduled for the last week of October. It would be conducted in Los Angeles. It was terrifying to think about how my mother might react, but on the other hand, my hope was that if she saw me on TV, her heart would soften a bit and she would give me the chance to speak with her in private. It was my way of crying out to her, of begging her, “Please, Momma, listen to me.”

  We arrived at the hotel and Telemundo already had everything set up. Azucena and I prayed together before we began, and I told her, “I’m going to say whatever my heart dictates.” There was no script, no prepared questions.