Forgiveness

by Chiquis Rivera

  But that night, after returning home, my biggest fear was no longer the touch of my boyfriend’s hand, it was whether or not my mother would find out! She could tell just by looking me in the eye. Jenni the FBI special agent. Luckily, nobody was awake at that hour and I could go straight to sleep.

  Time went by, and while my momma must have been worried that I’d eat the cake before dessert and get knocked up, she never mentioned anything about it. That’s how much she loved and respected Héctor. Her maternal instincts were telling her that her daughter was in good hands.

  My romance with Héctor lasted for several years, including the typical breakups and separations that happened every once in a while. We were still so young at the time. At one point, he asked me to marry him, and I, being young and foolish, said yes, even though deep down I knew I wasn’t ready. I felt somehow obligated, perhaps because of all the patience and understanding he’d given me. And in the end, we never even set a wedding date. All of our joint promises and plans were broken off when we both ran out of patience and love.

  During that time, my mother’s career was demanding more and more of our time, and there came a point where I felt I had to choose between Héctor and my mother and siblings. There just wasn’t enough time for everybody! Eventually, he couldn’t wait any longer, and I didn’t have the strength to continue on the way we were, and our separation was official.

  “One day your mom’s gonna give you a swift kick in the ass, and then you’ll realize what you missed out on,” Héctor said, very upset. And he was right, because that kick did come, and it hurt even more than he had predicted. Still, though, I don’t regret the decisions I made. My mother and my family always have and always will come first and foremost.

  And that’s how I left the man who taught me to love fearlessly.

  But there was one more love that I haven’t talked about from those years we spent in the house in Corona. And this one was especially unique.

  During one of my breakups with Héctor, early on in our relationship, we stopped talking for a number of months and I devoted myself to spending more time with my girlfriends. One of them was named Karla, and I used to go out with her a lot.

  “What’s up with Karla?” my mother asked, shooting from the hip as she always did, though still with great accuracy and without me ever seeing it coming.

  “Nothing, Mom. She’s just a friend. My best my friend right now,” I replied, super nervous.

  “I hope so, mija. I hope so.”

  Yikes. I swear that sometimes my mother had a sixth, or even a seventh, sense.

  Karla (let’s call her that to avoid bringing up any trouble from the past) and I met through my brother Mikey. She was two years younger than me, but infinitely more intelligent and intellectual than the rest of my friends. Even so, my mother never liked her from the day they met. She thought she was a smart-ass, a know-it-all and a bit tomboyish.

  With or without my mother’s blessing, we started texting one another. The texts gave way to long talks on the phone. We ended up talking for entire afternoons or nights.

  I don’t know at what point we realized that this friendship was turning into something deeper. We both felt confused by it all. She had never kissed a girl before, and neither had I. And then suddenly, we did. It was a beautiful, honest kiss that left us feeling scared and excited at the same time. After that, it was several days before we saw each other again. I swear, we were both so embarrassed.

  But the need to keep talking to each other won out in the end, and we ended up together, spending hours and even days cuddling on the couch, watching movies and looking for a love that we didn’t know where to find.

  To be honest, during those early months of my relationship with Héctor, I had failed to satisfy him sexually, the way he’d hoped and deserved. That was the reason for our breakup at that time. I was still very traumatized and I felt that this new love with Karla didn’t require the bed part, which I wasn’t ready for.

  We never got to the point where our platonic romance became something sexual. We never went past kisses, and we were so platonic, in fact, that we loved writing long letters to each other in which we’d confess the most beautiful feelings. I hid these letters in my room, buried under mountains of boxes and coats, but my mother, the Russian spy, didn’t take long to uncover them during one of her secret operations in my closet. And we were screwed: with that, our relationship was over.

  As usual, my mother had her strategy all planned out, and she waited until the perfect time to confront me, one evening when we were alone in the house.

  “I’m going to ask you again, Chiquis, what’s going on with Karla?” she asked, out of the blue, while putting on her makeup in her bedroom. “If you continue seeing her, I’ll take away all the benefits you enjoy as my daughter. As long as you live under my roof, you’ll respect my rules.”

  “Momma, it’s not fair,” I protested, because at this point it was useless to deny anything. “You have a lot of gay friends. Don’t come at me with this now.”

  “I don’t judge or condemn them, but in my house, I’m telling you no. I have a lot of lesbian friends and I love them all, but I have also seen how much they suffer, and I don’t want that life for you. I don’t want to see you cry.” My mother finished putting on her lip gloss with an emphatic flourish and blew a kiss into the mirror. End of discussion.

  The next day, I told Karla that we needed to end things. She was angry, she didn’t understand and she told me to go to hell. I was heartbroken, but I knew my mother only too well. To keep seeing Karla would have started World War III. And after all, I wasn’t even sure about my own feelings. It was better to leave this as what it was: a simple adventure.

  Now Karla has a fantastic boyfriend, and even though we didn’t end up being the best of friends, we both know that what happened to us back then happens to plenty of girls. It’s a part of adolescence, part of beginning to uncover who you are. Neither of us regrets what happened or feels ashamed about it, and this episode is part of my history, and—of course—hers.

  After Karla, I never again did I feel attracted to another woman. The mini-romance I had with her helped me to clarify the fact that I like men. It’s true that it was a woman who made me “play house.” It’s true that I grew up with a lot of doubt. But that doubt had finally disappeared.

  However, this episode never fully left my mother’s mind, and it would—during our final days together—rouse suspicion and a strange sense of jealousy, along with our most brutal and final fight.

  10.

  HOW TO JUDGE A BROKEN HEART

  The phone next to the bed rang very early that Saturday morning in April of 2006.

  I was in Vegas, which is where I always seem to be when the most intense, shocking news breaks.

  “Mija,” said the voice on the other end of the line. It was my mother, and she sounded serious. “I just want you to know that they arrested your father.”

  Héctor saw the look on my face when I hung up. At this time Hector and I hadn’t yet broken off our engagement. Immediately he hugged me. He could tell that another great wave of torment was heading for my family and me. I was nearly twenty-one years old, and I was about to resurrect something that I’d left buried away since I was twelve.

  Later that same night, back home, my mother told me everything: about how he’d been seen several times in the past year, once driving down the 405, and how my tío Lupe chased after him, but he managed to get away. The next time, it was my tía Rosie. She ran into him at a NORMS in Lakewood. Rosie was petrified with fear, and he ran out of the restaurant as soon as he saw her. Everyone knew that he was somewhere in the vicinity and that it was only a matter of time.

  This encouraged my mother, who decided it was time to use her well-earned fame as La Diva de la Banda to close the outstanding account with the law. That year, my mother was enjoying success on an international level, with thousands of fans following her from here to Mexico. It wouldn’t be hard to put her
army on the alert.

  After asking Rosie and me for permission (I agreed, but only very reluctantly), my mother revealed in a radio interview that her former partner, José Trinidad Marín, was a fugitive from the law and facing criminal charges for having abused us. She asked anyone who saw him to immediately turn him in to the authorities. The repercussions this had throughout the media were the size of the fear itself! Jenni Rivera’s former husband was a pedophile!

  A few days later, after another radio interview, a man called my mother to say: “I am an agent of the United States government, and I am at your service. We’re going to find him. I promise you that.”

  Nobody had bothered to tell me that, with this call, the family had accepted the help of no more and no less than the FBI. They kept that totally secret from me.

  This mysterious agent managed to track down some vital clues, and thanks to a tip from another fan, he was soon able to obtain an address.

  Early that morning, Trino went out to water the yard at the address in question. He had no idea that he was already being watched. He was very well groomed, as usual, and they arrested him right then and there. He didn’t put up much of a fuss when they slapped the handcuffs on him. The crazy thing is that he was living just three exits down from the road that led to our new home in Corona, right there in Riverside County. We were practically neighbors! And all this time, we thought he’d run off to another state or was in hiding out in Mexico!

  He’d been there for two years, living and working under one of his brothers’ names. Life had treated him well. He owned several apartments and had fathered a daughter with Dora, the same, faithful girlfriend we already knew.

  “Now he’ll pay for everything he did to us.” Those were Mikey’s words to me when he saw me arrive that night, back from Las Vegas.

  “Why the hell didn’t anyone tell me anything? What’s with this family? Isn’t he my father?” I yelled at everyone.

  I was furious and felt deeply betrayed.

  Jacqie was silent. She was very young when the abuse had taken place and she never stopped loving our father; or rather, she had never stopped needing him. Like me, she never dared to tell anyone that we still loved him in our own way. Clearly, we were the only two people who were not happy with the news about his arrest. Would people see us as some kind of monsters for thinking and feeling this way? Jacqie was the only one who understood me. We didn’t even need to talk about it. An exchange of glances was enough for us to know how much this news hurt us. That’s why love and hate are such strange emotions. They don’t make any sense, much less in the heads of two young girls.

  In Tía Rosie’s mind, however, it was all very clear. Now was the time to demand justice. She had witnessed the arrest that morning herself, sitting in a van with dark, tinted windows alongside the FBI agent. She was scared to death, but she also felt sorrow for my father’s youngest daughter, who was also there, sobbing inconsolably. After it all went down, the agent gave Rosie the handcuffs they’d used during the arrest and she decided to keep them. That bothered me. What a strange trophy! Why would she want to keep a memento of that dark day in her dresser drawer? The worst part about it is that she gave them to my mother a few months later, so that morbid souvenir ended up somewhere in my own house, who knows where.

  By saving them, you’re putting these handcuffs on your own soul, I thought, but I didn’t dare criticize them. I, more than anyone else, knew how much Rosie had suffered. I had been the silent witness to the transformation of my aunt into a bitter, sad and reclusive teenager—all for the man who gave me life, and who would later destroy it for both of us.

  The next day, when the arrest of Jenni Rivera’s ex-husband broke all over the news, I became the most famous victim of sexual abuse at the time. My name and my face were everywhere, right next to my father’s mug shot.

  “Why did you do this to us?” I screamed at my mother while scanning the awful headlines on the Internet. “And don’t tell me it was to stir up publicity for your career!”

  “How dare you think that! All I want is justice. That asshole has to pay. I won’t let him lay a finger on another girl ever again. It’s about justice, mija!” she repeated one last time. Her eyes were ablaze like those of a fierce lioness, while mine were filled with the tears of a lost cub.

  “But, Momma, do we really have to go through with all of this? I mean, it was over ten years ago. Dad already has another daughter who’s gonna miss him just like we did. They could just let him go.” Nobody seemed to understand that my heart was divided: he was the assailant, but he was also my father!

  “No, Chiquis. At this point, it’s out of my hands. There’s no turning back now. It’s the law.”

  Over the next few hours, as news of the scandal grew and the paparazzi began to surround our house, my grandma Rosa, with her love and prayers, made sure that I understood everything:

  “Do not judge your mother. You must accept the righteousness of God. Do this for all three of you: for Jenni, for Rosie and for you too. In this, you are all suffering equally.”

  Okay, then. I accepted my fate. We would take this to court. My grandma was right about everything. In the midst of my own pain, I lost sight of the fact that I wasn’t alone in this boat. God would take care of us and he would take care of my father as well.

  Three days later, we were summoned for the arraignment at the city courthouse in Long Beach.

  “Chiquis,” Rosie whispered in my ear when we pulled into the parking lot. “I want him to publically ask us for forgiveness. You too, baby. The two of us deserve that much.”

  I gave her a hug, and we walked, hand in hand, up those cold stairs to the second floor. The circus would begin when the judge brought down his gavel.

  My father came into the room wearing the orange jumpsuit that country prisoners wear. He was surrounded by guards, and they sat him near his family and friends. On the other side of the courtroom sat the Riveras, enraged, waiting like caged tigers.

  I panicked when I looked him in the face. He looked good, serious and relaxed, sitting there in front of his wife and daughter. Suddenly, just like that, out of nowhere, I thought to myself, Has he missed us? In all this time, has he missed us?

  The hearing that day lasted only an hour and ended relatively calmly after the nine criminal charges were read, which included statutory rape, aggravated assault and continued sexual abuse of a child. It was all more or less what the attorneys had told us to expect. My father didn’t seem surprised by the long list of offenses; in fact, he looked emotionless, and he didn’t turn to look at us even once, not even when he was being led, in handcuffs, out the door.

  The trial itself began four months later, in the summer of 2006, and it would last for over ten months. During that time, I would become the most hated being on the planet when it came to my father’s family, who looked at me with such disdain and disgust that I felt paralyzed. I swear, I couldn’t even feel my legs every time I saw them.

  The legal process also began to have an effect on the relationship between Rosie and me. Rather than uniting us, which is what I thought would happen, it began to drive us apart. Her thirst for justice was obsessive, whereas I couldn’t bring myself to hate my father, no matter how much I tried, and no matter how much she tried to convince me. Also, that same year, my aunt had gotten deeply involved in my tío Pete’s church, and had decided to give her heart over to Christ. Why can’t she take some of those lessons about mercy and pity and put them into practice? I would ask myself.

  Clearly, I had tried to put myself in her position, but she was making no efforts to walk a mile in the shoes of a confused, conflicted daughter. Oh well. The show must go on. The curtain has already been raised.

  Next, the depositions began. Growing up, Rosie and I never shared even the tiniest detail about the abuse we had suffered at the hands of the same man; shame prevented us from doing so. And during the trial, we didn’t listen to one another either. When she gave her testimony, I would be led out
of the room. When it was my turn to take the stand, it was her turn to wait outside. That’s what the law required. Rosie was called to testify first.

  Am I sick? Did I just make all this up in my head? Maybe it never happened! After all, at the end of the day, Trino was a good dad! These thoughts were driving me crazy while I waited there, alone in the hallway, for my turn. I felt a thick fog enveloping my brain, keeping me from remembering anything. My mind went completely blank.

  Half an hour later, they brought me back into the courtroom. I sat down next to Rosie. Now it was my father who was on the witness stand. And all of a sudden—when I heard his voice after all those years, and I heard him accuse me of being a liar—the clouds disappeared from my mind. He repeated the word three times: Chiquis lies, lies, lies. Half from sheer courage and half out of pure shock, all the memories flooded clearly back into my mind. Down to the last detail. His touch, his manipulations, his lies. Even those blue metal bunk beds that used to taunt me. And in the midst of all those images bombarding my mind, one in particular surprised me: I saw myself in the backyard at my grandparents’ house on Gale Street. I pictured it so clearly that it gave me the chills. I couldn’t have been more than three years old. I was wearing a pink dress. Of course I would have a dress like that! My father would sit me on his lap and caress me underneath that dress. I remembered just a few seconds of touching, and then he would let me go. How was it possible that I never remembered that happening before that very day, sitting in court? But, more importantly, it meant that the day after the beach was not the first time. There had been previous attempts, and who knows why he would let me go. Oh no, no way was I crazy. I wasn’t making up anything. That dress confirmed it. It had all been real, and now they were going to hear me out.