by Jenni Rivera
“No. Why?”
I told him that I knew everything he had done. I told his family the whole truth, including details that are too horrible to admit in writing. His family got upset, calling me all sorts of names and telling me that I was a liar. I had said all I needed to say. I stood up and walked out the front door as they continued to hurl insults at my back. As I walked out, Pete walked in and delivered the papers to Esteban.
As I drove away from Esteban and back to my home and children, my own lyrics played back to me. I realized that I hadn’t just written these songs for other women. I wrote them for me too. I started writing songs because I wanted the world to know that it was good to be a woman and it was okay not to have the perfect little life. It was okay to be beautiful in your own way, to be strong, get an education, pursue your own career. It wasn’t shameful to be a single mother. There is pride in getting up every morning, pulling your kids through, and living for them. I wanted to make that all acceptable. I wanted women everywhere to be able to say, “Hey, I can do this.”
I can do this, I repeated to myself. But inside I was still crumbling. Something about this divorce was different from the others. Maybe it was because I thought I was older and wiser and I wouldn’t let this kind of shit happen to me anymore. Or maybe it was because Esteban had pretended to be one man and was another man entirely. Over the next few weeks I found out he had betrayed my trust in so many ways.
I just wanted my mother. I drove to her neighborhood and circled her house, but I could not find the courage to go inside. I was so afraid of her seeing me in so much pain. I called Rosie to tell her where I was. Rosie was living with Mom, and I thought that if there were any two people I wanted to be with at that moment, it was them. But I also was afraid of showing them my weak side. I had always been the strong one, and now I felt so helpless.
“Come in,” Rosie said.
“I don’t want you to see me like this. Don’t lose respect for me. I think this is what is going to break me.”
“Never. Nothing will break you. Come here, please.”
“I don’t want Mom to see me cry. I’m afraid if I fall in her arms I will never stop crying.”
“Don’t be scared for Mom. She is strong. She can handle it.”
As I turned the corner once more and headed for my mother’s driveway, I saw one of her friends pull up. I drove past the house and back onto the freeway.
The following day I got a call from Pete Salgado telling me that not one but all four networks wanted my sitcom. Ten years earlier when I was driving around dropping off my demo tapes and having doors slammed in my face, I said that one day people were going to believe in the little Mexican girl from the LBC. As I climbed the ladder of my career step by step, I saw that come true. But I never imagined that four of the mainstream networks would offer me the chance to be the first Mexican woman to star in my own sitcom. This was it. This was my exit route. As I told my family, I was still in shock. I said with tears in my eyes, “They love me. They really love me.”
Three days later I had one of the most beautiful and joyful days of my life on October 6, when I threw Jenicka her quinceañera. I got to give her the quinceañera I never had, with three hundred people at a beautiful hall in Montebello. Jenicka is the one child who has never made me cry. She is this incredibly bright, sweet, beautiful person, and you can’t help but feel joy when you are around her. That’s how I felt that whole day as we were surrounded by so much love. In the midst of one of the saddest periods of my life, I was reminded that God always provides a light.
On Wednesday, October 3, I announced the news about my sitcom and my divorce on my radio show. I was not going to give the media the control or benefit of telling my story. I was going to tell it my way. I chose to keep the details of my divorce private. I said only, “The television and news reports about the cause of the split are not true.” I admitted that I wished I had never married him and that he had done something terrible to me and I wouldn’t stand for it. But I refused to go any further into the details. To defend Esteban would be a lie. To tell the truth would be too horrible.
I missed Esteban as a companion, but I thanked God that I didn’t truly love him. If I had, his betrayals would have broken me. I was sad and hurt, but because he never truly had my heart, I knew that I would be okay.
My family had all thought this time the marriage would be forever. I said, “I have an eight-year track record. Trino was eight years, Juan was eight years. Maybe I knew Esteban wasn’t going to last forever, but I thought we would at least get the eight years.”
When we were going through the divorce, I took off my diamond wedding ring, but I still wore the black-diamond engagement ring.
“Why are you wearing that?” my family would ask.
“Because I always knew I would be a widow.”
“But he’s not dead.”
“He is to me.”
I wanted to auction off my engagement and wedding rings to save my friend Chava’s life. He was an ex-employee and so dear to me. He had leukemia and needed $200,000 for a bone-marrow transplant. I announced the auction on my radio show with so much joy, and then Esteban’s attorney called my attorney and stated that I could not auction it. They were still negotiating the details of our divorce, and the rings could end up belonging to Esteban. I cried not to be able to hold the auction for Chava. I couldn’t believe Esteban would do such a thing, but it only confirmed to me that he was not the man I thought he was.
On December 3, 2012, I delivered a donation check to the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. I was wearing my most ghetto overalls, held together with a safety pin, as I handed over the check. I was so sad about everything that was going on in my life, and it was the one moment that made me feel as if I still had a purpose.
When I left the hospital, my car somehow made its way to Fernando’s apartment in Hollywood. I sat out front with my car still in drive, debating whether I should call him. I had not seen him since I’d married Esteban more than two years earlier. Through all of our drama, Fernando was the one man I could talk through all my shit with, and I knew he would never judge or shame me for my mistakes. More important, he was the one man who never betrayed me. On that day, I needed to remind myself that such a man existed. I needed him.
I put the car in park and called him, praying that he’d pick up.
As soon as I heard him say “Hello” I got a lump in my throat.
“Where are you?” I said.
“I’m home. Why?”
“Good. Come outside.”
He came outside and got into my passenger seat. I was crying by then.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m divorcing Esteban.”
I’m sure he already knew either from his mother or from seeing it all over the media. But he didn’t ask me what had happened or why. Instead he made me laugh. Of course.
We got Subway and ate it on the roof of his building overlooking Hollywood and Highland. I told him everything that was going on, down to each embarrassing detail. Though he knew I should never have married Esteban, he never said it. He just let me talk. And then he leaned in and kissed me—a sweet, tender, honest kiss. Sometimes that’s all you need from a man: a good kiss, some Subway, and an ear to listen to all of the shit rattling around in your head.
Two days later I went into the radio station to do the weekly show with Rosie. We had our dad on the show that day as a special guest. We reminisced with him about “the good old days” of growing up poor in Long Beach. The Saturdays at the swap meets, selling buttons at concerts and during the 1984 Olympics. He told us again about how he had made it to America and the man at the gas station in San Diego who gave him $20, which made the rest of his life and our lives possible. Afterward Rosie and I went to the swap meet to visit the world we once knew so well, the world that helped to shape us into the adults we became.
As we walked through those old rows of tables, we talked about the sitcom deal. “How is it that thes
e strangers see something in me that is worthy of love, but not the men closest to me?” I asked Rosie.
“You will find love one day,” she said. “A true, enduring love.”
“You’re forgetting, Sister. I already found that love onstage. My fans give me that love.”
As we walked the old path that I used to run between my parents’ booths, I remembered the simplicity of my childhood. I remembered the years when we had no money and were barely getting by, but we had each other, and that was all that mattered. It was still all that mattered. I was so looking forward to Christmas that year. I wanted everyone to be together again, despite any arguments or differences that we may have had—I wanted every Rivera to be in the same place at the same time. I needed them all. I would always need them all.
In the middle of my reminiscing I turned to Rosie and asked, “Do you want Chinese food? I bet your baby wants Chinese food.” What that meant, we both knew, was that I wanted Chinese food even though I was on a diet.
“Yes, I think the baby does want Chinese,” Rosie said, since she knew how to play this game so well.
We ordered Chinese food and ate it in my car in an empty parking lot as we talked for hours about everything that was important and not important in life: love, sex, babies, men, a new Runner Boy, God, music, childhood memories, drunken memories, and the dreams of what was still to come.
On December 9, 2012, after performing at a concert in Monterrey, Mexico, Jenni Rivera passed away in a tragic plane crash along with four beloved members of her team—lawyer Mario Macias, publicist Arturo Rivera, makeup artist Jacob Yebale, and hairstylist Jorge “Gigi” Sanchez—as well as the pilots of the plane, Miguel Perez and Alejandro Torres. Jenni had been writing this autobiography for years, but always refused to let it go to print because she didn’t know how it should end. The truth is, the story of Jenni Rivera was never meant to have an ending. As with all true icons, her legend will endure for many lifetimes. They will be forever telling the tale of la diva de la banda, la reina de reinas, the rebel from Long Beach, la mariposa de barrio, the badass mother who could not be broken.
MARIPOSA DE BARRIO
Aquí estoy vengo desde muy lejos,
el camino fue negro pero al fin ya triunfé,
Me arrastré, viví todos los cambios,
y aunque venía llorando mis alas levanté.
Mariposa de barrio, la que vive cantando
La oruga ha transformado, su dolor en color.
Mariposa de barrio que vuela del aplauso
Porque fue donde encontró el verdadero amor
Vive en los escenarios.
Tócame, soy como cualquier otra,
me conquista una rosa aun creo en el amor
Ahora estoy, entre luces hermosas,
mas cuando estaba sola, sé que Dios me cuidó
Mariposa de barrio que vuela del aplauso
Porque fue donde encontró el verdadero amor
Vive en los escenarios.
Porque fue donde encontró el verdadero amor,
mariposa de barrio.
MARIPOSA DE BARRIO
Butterfly of the hood, singing live
the caterpillar has transformed her sadness into color.
Butterfly of the hood, flying from the applause
because it is where she found true love
live, onstage.
Touch me, I am like any other
a conqueror, a rose who believes in love.
Now I am among the beautiful lights
but when I was alone, it was God who took care of me.
Butterfly of the hood, singing live
the caterpillar has transformed her sadness into color.
Butterfly of the hood, flying from the applause
because it is where she found true love
live, onstage.
Because it is where I found true love,
butterfly of the hood.
Todo lo puedo en Cristo que me fortalece.
—Filipenses 4:13
I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength.
—Philippians 4:13
Acknowledgments
Mariposa de Barrio:
“Thank you, God . . . and thank you, my fans. Gracias a ti, mi público, mi gente, gracias por tu cariño, por tu apoyo, por tu amor, por tú también ser parte de esta, mi vida loca.”—Jenni Rivera
Pilly, Gus, Pupi, and me
My brother Juan and me
Mom and me
Daddy and me
Me at Video One
Garage where I lived with Chiquis
Chiquis’s baby shower
Chiquis, Jacqie, Mikey, and me
My little soldier Johnny and me
My princes, princesses and me
My beautiful Jenicka wearing her quinceañera dress and me. Thanking God for that special day.
Rosie, Jacqie, Chiquis, Jenicka, and me
With my daughters and my granddaughter Jaylah
At a concert in the Querétaro Fair in Mexico with over 80,000 fans
Jenni’s handwritten manuscript pages
JENNI RIVERA (July 2, 1969—December 9, 2012) was one of her generation’s most popular artists, both in Mexico and the United States. She sold out performances in venues such as the Staples Center, the Dolby Theatre, the Nokia Theatre, and the Gibson Amphitheatre. She was the winner of 15 gold records, 15 platinum and 5 double platinum records, and in 2009 earned a record-breaking 11 Billboard Award nominations, becoming the first female regional Mexican performer to be honored with so many nominations.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
SimonandSchuster.com
Facebook.com/AtriaBooks
@AtriaBooks
We hope you enjoyed reading this Atria Books eBook.
* * *
Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Atria Books and Simon & Schuster.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2013 by Jenni Rivera Enterprises, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Atria Books hardcover edition July 2013
and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Stage photographs by George Cruz
Personal photographs by Rosa Rivera
Permission to reprint lyrics: “Las Malandrinas,” “Dama Divina,” and “Mariposa de Barrio” by Cintas Acuario Publishing
Designed by Dana Sloan
Jacket design by James Perales
Jacket Photograph by Brian Guilliaux
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4767-4607-4
ISBN 978-1-4767-4475-9 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4767-4476-6 (ebook)