Forgiveness

by Chiquis Rivera

  Okay, that was clear. I’d move out of my apartment in Van Nuys and start my new life taking care of the kids and the house just like old times. Just that this time, my mother wouldn’t be here, and there would be new tenants in her place: my tía Rosie and her family.

  “You knew that, right? She also handed custody over to Rosie.” My tío Juan had warned me about that several days earlier, even though I knew all the legal details of my mother’s will, which was read to us once it had been confirmed that she hadn’t survived the accident.

  My mother named her sister Rosie as the executor of her estate, but what really broke me was that she also named Rosie the guardian of Johnny and Jenicka. I couldn’t believe my mother would be so vindictive. We all went to the reading of the will, where I was handed the amendment cutting me out. I was still in shock from my mother’s death, but what shocked me most was that everyone told me that they didn’t agree with my mother’s decision, but nobody stood up for me or suggested that it be corrected. Not my uncles, not my tía Rosie. Nobody.

  My mother had always been a great businesswoman, very organized and very prudent. As such, a few months earlier, she’d formed a trust so that she could be sure that her children would benefit directly and for their entire lives from everything she had worked so hard to earn. My mother always said that all her hard work and all her sacrifices were for her children. My grandma and grandpa weren’t even included in the will for this reason. However, my tía Rosie was also put in charge of the administration of this trust for life.

  I can’t deny the fact that being left out of my mother’s last will made me feel even more awkward about being in that house. What was I, then? A guest? Someone on the lease? A roommate?

  “Who cares what’s in those papers?” Johnny said. “In this house, you’re Chiquis.”

  Yes! I didn’t need to have my name listed in some document to be with my babies, so I resigned myself to a life of uncertainty in exchange for the chance to be with them. Tía Rosie was busy enough with her own husband and daughter, besides being pregnant again, so from day one I put myself in charge of the kids, just as I had been since the day they were born. Only now, I would have to ask my aunt for permission for many things.

  It was strange, and I have to say it did create some tension. I had to consult with her on everything, from school to groceries to the daily expenses of running a household, which was new for her as well, since she had never lived with us before. The simple task of taking the kids to the doctor became incredibly complicated.

  One night Jenicka was having a very severe panic attack, but when we got to the hospital, they told me, “I’m sorry, but we’re going to need her guardian to sign off on this.” I had to get Tía Rosie out of bed in the middle of the night, and I felt next to useless.

  But that didn’t matter. The children were well worth hassles like this, and many more.

  And my mother’s will and custody issues were not the only legal issues we had to face. With the accident came more lawyers, lawsuits, investigations and bureaucracy than we ever thought imaginable. Saying good-bye to Jenni Rivera had kicked up a riot!

  The private Learjet, which took off from Monterrey en route to Toluca, crashed on December 9 between 3:10 and 3:20 a.m. near Iturbide. And there was no contact with the control tower before the plane suddenly disappeared from radar screens ten minutes after takeoff. Those are the only things we know for certain. Everything else was and is pure speculation. There were seven families desperately seeking the truth, and each of them believed in what gave their hearts the greatest amount of peace.

  “Stop torturing yourselves. Our Chay is resting in peace. Let’s leave the truth in God’s hands,” Tío Pete begged us.

  Wise words. Nothing was going to bring back the mother, the sister or the daughter we’d lost. Nothing was going to bring back our Jacob, our Arturo, our Mario nor either of the two pilots. Not even the truth would be enough to ease this pain.

  Arturo, Gigi and my dear Jacob had been working for my mother for years. My mother’s success was theirs, and they shared in her pain, her joy, her laughter, her battles, her jokes. They would even share a glass of water. They were on that plane because they were a part of Jenni Rivera. I know she loved them, that she was passionate about them. They made sure that Jenni’s engine was up and running each and every night.

  I also know that my mother could be a very demanding boss, but when it came to birthdays or Christmas, she wouldn’t allow anyone to buy presents for her team. That job belonged to her, and she didn’t spare any expense. Nothing was too good for her team.

  I don’t know. Maybe it was time for all of them to go, together, as part of God’s great plan, which we can’t even begin to understand.

  Even so, I ask the other six families for forgiveness if you felt at any moment that my mother was the cause of your pain, or if you felt she was the only one for whom tears were shed. My mother was just one member of this group, and they all deserve to be mourned equally. I keep you all in my prayers. I know that my mom is up there in heaven, surrounded by her best teammates.

  Leaving aside that mess of investigations and lawsuits that some of the families of the victims filed, in the brand-new year of 2013, I would have to face a great hell of my own: how to survive in a house where I felt like an intruder.

  Since that beautiful message of “Don’t worry” and “Don’t back down” that I heard on the stage at her Celestial Graduation and that dream before Christmas where she embraced me, I hadn’t felt either her warmth or her presence. My siblings dreamed about her all the time, and constantly felt her touch. But not me.

  But that first night when we left the couch in favor of our own bedrooms, I felt it again.

  That night, I turned out the light, and—worn-out from so many emotions—I called out to her. “Momma, where are you? I can’t do this anymore; I can’t deal with so much pain, so much guilt, so many new challenges that I have to face.” That time I didn’t hear her voice, but I felt her lay her hands on my head. She caressed me so gently that I was able to fall asleep like a baby. It was her way of saying to me, “Welcome home, this is where you belong, so don’t feel bad. You never should have had to go, my princess.”

  I woke up with peace in my heart, ready to fight for my kids and work on ways we could go back to being a united family again. I wasn’t about to let wills, documents or lawyers tell me what I had to do. No way!

  The next night I went back to my bed hoping to feel her presence again, but there was nothing. I fell asleep without having her near me. Not that night, nor any other. After that one tender night, it seemed as if I was being shunned yet again.

  “Dayanna, my mother has taken me back. I know it sounds crazy, but I can feel her energy in that house. When I go in her bedroom, I know that she’s there,” I desperately confessed to my friend. “I know she’s watching over me—over all of us—and opening up good opportunities and things for our future, wherever she may be. Just like she’s always done. But she’s not reaching out to me!”

  “Hmmm, sister.” Dayanna thought. “I also feel that she has made peace with you, and that she isn’t holding any grudges, and that she wants you to be in that house. But sometimes I wonder, have you really forgiven her, Chiquis?”

  “I love her! I love her! I love her! There’s no doubt about that!” I shouted, somewhat upset.

  “Loving and forgiving aren’t the same thing, sister,” she said. And with that answer, my faithful friend got me thinking:

  Oh, shit! I still felt resentment toward my mother. I was hurt because she left me in the middle of the worst chapter of my life, when it was she who could have written a happier ending. I remembered all those nights when she turned down my offer of a kiss or a hug, and it made me angry. Two months after she left us, and I was still blaming her for my pain and my problems, and that wasn’t fair.

  I felt like I couldn’t breathe and I started to cry.

  “I hate you and I love you, Momma. Why did you have
to go like that? Why did you leave me like this? Why did you do this to me? Why didn’t you just let me talk with you, hug you and kiss you, explain everything to you? Why? Why!”

  Dayanna didn’t know whether to hug me or grab me by the shoulders and shake the oncoming panic attack out of me.

  “Listen, Chiquis. You forgave your father, you forgave so many people, so don’t tell me that now you can’t go and forgive your mother as well.”

  “You´re absolutely right. I was even able to forgive Elena’s girlfriend for having gotten caught up in the rumor mill that started this whole nightmare. I swear I forgave her months ago. The poor thing was pissed that Elena paid so much attention to my mother and me, and just got eaten up with jealousy. I’m not holding any grudges. We’re all guilty of the sin of jealously at one point or another in this life, sister. But with my momma it’s different . . . It’s a thousand times stronger, and to top it all off, she’s not here. How are we gonna fix this?” I answered, supremely frustrated.

  “Look for her, sister. Look for the way. It’s not impossible.”

  “Okay.” I promised Dayanna that I would try, and I dried my tears with the sleeve of my pajamas. “Her pajamas!” I shouted.

  “What are you talking about? Are you crazy?” Dayanna had really been spooked.

  Suddenly I had remembered that that morning, Mercedes had come back to work with us at the house. Melele, as we affectionately call her, had been our loyal employee for many years. She cooked, cleaned, ironed, gave us the occasional scolding and told us stories about when she was young and used to fight with her sisters-in-law. And Melele loved to do the laundry!

  I ran down to the kitchen and there was our Melele, with a mop and chlorine in hand.

  “Melele, don’t touch my momma’s bedroom!” I said desperately.

  “But, mija, the dust is up to here!”

  “No. Leave the sheets and covers exactly the way they are. And don’t wash her clothes.”

  The two of us went upstairs, and as soon as we entered her room, Melele tried to negotiate with me.

  “Okay, Chiquis, I won’t touch the bed or the clothes. But you have to let me dust.”

  “Fine, but just a little bit,” I agreed. “But don’t touch those pajamas there at the foot of the bed.”

  Melele gave me a hug, and that’s when I saw the tears welling up in her eyes.

  “Oh, Melele, how are we ever gonna get through this?” I said as we held each other in our arms.

  But I already knew the answer. The only way was through forgiveness.

  23.

  THE DAMN VIDEO

  Cuz, it’s time to see it.”

  I went in my mother’s office and stared at the enormous desk there in the middle of the room. The seat was empty. Nobody felt strong enough to fill that position quite yet.

  “See what, Chiquis?” my mother’s cousin Tere asked while she was organizing some papers off in a corner.

  During those last few months of my mother’s life, Tere had been acting as her secretary. We needed her help to finish up some things that had been left half done. And I, more than anyone, needed to close up what had been left open for me.

  “The video, prima. The video.”

  “But why, Chiquis? Don’t do this to yourself. It’s over now. Everyone’s forgotten all about it.”

  “That’s a lie. The public hasn’t forgotten about it. I’m still getting insulted on Twitter. And every time I see my aunts and uncles, I still don’t think they’re convinced of my innocence. They say they believe me, but I still have my doubts and that’s no way to live!”

  “Okay, then, here it is. Now you’ll know . . .” With hesitation, she opened a desk drawer and took out a tiny black USB drive and handed it to me.

  My hand was shaking when I took it. Finally, here it was: the damn video that had caused me so much pain. Only my mother, her stylist and friend Vanessa and Tere had seen it. Not even Tía Rosie had had the opportunity. Every time Rosie asked my mother to watch it, my mother came up with some excuse.

  I went straight to the computer and opened the file. It took me four hours to review each and every second of footage taken by three separate cameras on that fateful night: one from my mother’s closet, one from the hallway that leads to my mother’s bedroom, and one from the main entrance to the house. Nothing. Nobody. Empty hallways, empty spaces. I saw the top of my head while I was sitting on the stairs talking on the phone to my tío Juan and my boyfriend. I saw myself going in her room to say good night to Esteban, and I saw myself leaving, completely normally, just five minutes later. I saw myself walking out through the front door, and two minutes later, Esteban came down to turn out the lights before returning to his bedroom.

  Half an hour after I left—on the camera my mother installed in her closet to keep watch over her safe—you can just barely make out Esteban heading in the direction of the bathroom. A little while later, he walks back, this time wrapped up in towels. For obvious reasons, there were no cameras in the actual bedroom itself. And the view inside the closet was cloaked in darkness. The light from the nearby bathroom was all that illuminated it.

  After Esteban got out of the shower, there were hours and hours of absolutely nothing.

  “Prima, I’m in shock. Where did she come up with this story based on this video? There is nothing here, just as I have told everybody all along,” I said to Tere.

  “I know, but I don’t want you obsessing over this video the way your mother did. She spent hours going over it. And she told me, ‘You see? You see that shadow? That’s Chiquis; she came back to the house and snuck back into the bedroom.’ But I swear to you, I didn’t see anything like that.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” I demanded angrily.

  “Chiquis, I’m sorry. I tried to, but she got so mad at me that I was afraid she’d fire me.”

  My family stayed silent, and the bullies and haters continued to tear me apart on social media. There were even some journalists who must have been hallucinating because they spoke as if they had seen the damn video with their own eyes: “Here you can see Chiquis buttoning her blouse as she leaves, and Esteban pulling up his pants, his dark-colored jeans,” I heard one report say. Another one seemed to know all the details, because it reported that, “What you see here is a threesome with her mom’s friend Elena.” Not even out of respect for the memory of my mother—may she rest in peace—would they refrain from talking all this bullshit.

  That same day, I called my grandma and said, “Abuelita, this Sunday, I want everyone here at the house. Help me get everyone together. It’s about time they gave me the opportunity to speak. I’ve been denied that chance for a whole year now.”

  My grandma Rosa agreed to convince everyone to attend. This just couldn’t go on any longer. I needed to tell them my version of the events, and explain how my mother had made a tragic and terrible mistake.

  That afternoon, the entire family was together for the first time since the day of the funeral. And they sat down to watch that infamous video. Nobody could make it to the end of the recording. They’d lose interest, they’d get up to use the bathroom, or they’d just talk amongst themselves. Part of me thought that they didn’t want to watch it, because then they would feel guilty for how horribly they’d treated me during those days. Obviously, nobody saw anything that was cause for alarm, and no one could understand where such rumors could have come from.

  I also took the opportunity to show them the evidence I had gathered for my mother. I first showed them my phone bill statements, so they could see for themselves who I was talking with on the stairs, what time I left the house, what time I got to my apartment and what time I called my boyfriend before going to sleep. How I wish I could have shown those cell phone records to my mother. Ever since the scandal broke, the only thing I wanted was for her to just listen to me. My mother was never able to do that, but at least the rest of my family could, even if it was too late.

  “Chiquis,” my tío Pete said, hi
s voice filled with love and tenderness, “we don’t care about that video. Forgive us if we ever doubted you. It’s clear you could never do such a thing. We love you, Chiquis.”

  Everything was all hugs and kisses, and I appreciated it. For the first time in quite a while, I felt supported, respected and loved. But even so, I still wasn’t quite satisfied. Nobody doubted me, but nor was anyone willing to step up and defend my reputation publicly.

  “Okay, Chiquis, it’s true. There’s no physical evidence, despite what your mother swore,” Tía Rosie explained to me. “But how does that matter anymore? She’s no longer with us. Why keep pushing?”

  I couldn’t believe it. They were still afraid of her, even after she was gone! They’d rather leave me swimming with the sharks than contradict my deceased mother. Incredible!

  Maybe, if I were able to piece together all the bits of rumor, I’d be able to remove the proverbial scarlet “A” from my chest, the mark that was suffocating me and keeping me from moving forward with my life. If I could complete the puzzle, I thought, I could earn the forgiveness of the fans, and—more importantly—I might even be able to forgive my mother. That was something I really needed to feel. She was watching over me and guiding me, but from a distance. A very long distance. And every time a cousin or sibling said they dreamed about her or felt her presence in a certain song, I would be dying of envy. I had to forgive her, and in order to do that, I had to understand.

  “Vanessa, how are you?” When she heard my voice, it took her a couple of seconds to answer.

  “Good, good, Chiquis. What a surprise. And you?”

  Vanessa—my mother’s stylist and closest friend during the last few months of her life, the one who almost choked me with a look back during Jenicka’s quinceañera—was the only one who could help me complete my double mission: get that scarlet letter off my chest, and get me to feel my mother’s presence again, even if it was only in my dreams.