Fate also had something in store for my mother and me. The phase of our lives as super friends there in Corona was about to get complicated.
I remember one night when she had a concert in Los Angeles and Johnny asked me to take him. That night, I put on a pair of jeans and a blazer that showed a little bit of cleavage. The show—like all my mother’s performances—was intense and passionate. Only my momma can bring so many emotions to the stage, I thought as I applauded there, from the first row. Jenni had become La Diva, the lady who owned the stage.
When the concert was over, we went backstage to congratulate her and so Johnny could give her a hug.
My mother was there, changing clothes, surrounded by her manager and assistants. She didn’t even look at Johnny. She strode toward me, looked me straight in the eye, and slowly said, “You’re not the star here. I am.”
She looked disapprovingly at my neckline, spun around on her heels and disappeared into a cloud of fans waiting to take pictures.
Being separated from Juan and the romance with Ferny had certainly brought something out in her. But while there were times where it was fun to have a young and crazy mother, on other occasions, like that night, it hurt.
“Mom is really busy,” I said to Johnny. “Come on, we’ll see her tomorrow.”
We walked away, hand in hand, trying to avoid the hundreds of fans trying to sneak backstage to see her, and we went straight home.
Although I was used to outbursts like that from my mother, that night I had a restless sleep, thinking about what had happened. I woke up the next morning wondering, Is my mother jealous of me because we’re so similar, or am I jealous of her? But then I thought better of it: no, I’d never felt jealous of her career or of the fact that we were so close in age. I never felt as if we were competing in the same league. The only thing she had that I wanted was her attention. I have to admit that I suffered from that silly bit of jealousy ever since I was a little girl. I always wanted my mother all to myself. I didn’t like her being surrounded by dozens of other people, some of whom I didn’t even know. I wanted my friend, my sister, my momma at home, but as her fame grew, we saw less and less of her.
People always say, be careful what you wish for. I wished with all my heart for my mother to be a successful performer, and yet sometimes I find myself wondering whether it would have been better to be the daughter of a real estate agent.
The only certainty was that her success was unstoppable. There was no going back, and it wasn’t always easy being Jenni’s daughter—or Chiquis’s mother, for that matter, because I was no saint either. I admit that my love of shopping was out of control, and that really annoyed my mother, who worked hard for every dollar she earned. She was always the saver, while I was the spender. But she was never stingy. On the contrary, she was always super generous with us, our aunts and uncles, our grandparents and even her friends. And I was the one who abused that generosity a bit.
Money was always burning a hole in my purse, and like my grandma, I was more than happy to check out each and every store I could find. A lot of those silly purchases were made with the company card—Jenni Rivera Enterprises—and that got me into a few problems.
As the person in charge of running the house, I paid the bills and the taxes and made sure there was always money in all of the accounts. I was very careful about my responsibilities when it came to balancing the checkbook, but when it came to whatever extra amount might be left it was fiesta time! And whenever my mother would find out, it made her sick.
But my passion for shopping wasn’t the only problem. Money attracts a lot of bloodsucking flies, and they were always swarming around the house, smelling the millions.
I see these flies hovering around all sorts of famous people, and personally I keep a close watch on them. All sorts of people are attracted to power and fame, and the level of attraction they have toward celebrities is obsessive. To make themselves feel important, and perhaps even to become indispensable, they start spreading gossip—some of it true, some of it twisted—so they can earn a few extra brownie points from their idol. It’s sick!
These toxic voices started popping up back at the house in Corona in the form of friends, employees and even some other relatives who showed up simply to kiss my mother’s ass. But the worst would come a few years later, in the new home in Encino, when the flies would be spreading even more gossip and make my mother’s last few days on Earth a time of misery. They were the worst thing that could have happened to us.
Meanwhile, the circus back in Corona was growing. New faces were showing up every day, along with new friendships that were not always to my liking. And behind all that, the battles between mother and daughter played out like background music.
I was as hard on her as she was with me. That’s just how we were as mother and daughter: we each wanted what was best for the other, and from that we somehow became two of the most ruthlessly judgmental people in the world.
“That dress doesn’t look good on you.” “That video clip isn’t all that cool.” “Don’t say things like that, it doesn’t make you look good.” I hammered away at her relentlessly. I wanted the world to know the same person who I knew: the mother with a golden heart, the honor student, the sweet, mischievous, enterprising woman. But my mother somehow managed to work it so that everything that appeared in the media had to do with this other Jenni: the argumentative, bold and somewhat crazy Jenni.
One Saturday afternoon during a little cookout at the house, one of her friends joked: “Hey, don’t toss any beers at Jenni . . . she’ll kick all our asses!”
Everyone burst out laughing.
That was just after the time my mother had made headlines in all the magazines. She had hit one of her fans who’d thrown a beer at her during a concert in North Carolina with her microphone.
And there you have the great Diva Circus, with clowns laughing at all her antics. The problem was nobody had the balls to tell her the truth: that it’s never okay to attack a fan! Never!
I didn’t laugh; I remained serious, and my mother noticed it. She glanced at me, but didn’t say a thing. She knew what my opinion was going to be before I even opened my mouth. But I opened it anyway: “Momma, you’re a public figure. I’m sorry, but you have to learn to turn the other cheek in situations like that, and not respond with an attack of your own.”
“I’m sorry, mija,” she quickly countered, “but that’s something I haven’t quite learned how to do just yet. And until that happens, I’ll keep doing the one thing I have learned how to do ever since I was little: defend myself, by force if necessary.”
My comment had come as a surprise to her, and after all the guests had left, she confronted me in the kitchen.
“Chiquis, I can’t be myself when you’re around me. You’re my worst critic!” she said angrily. “You think you’re so perfect! Just let me be who I am! And I’m not like you!”
“No, Momma, you’re the one who’s always on my case. You nag me about everything!”
Nothing ever came of this argument. We both thought we were in the right. And we were! My mother was my toughest judge. She could ruin my entire day by firing off a single nasty comment: “You’ve gained weight.” “You’re always doing that wrong.” “So-and-so is taking advantage of you.” “You look ridiculous in that dress.” And her opinion mattered so much to me that I couldn’t live without it. Apparently, she couldn’t live without mine either.
That night, we both went to bed angry.
That was around the time the sex scandal exploded: some idiot uploaded a video to the Internet of my momma having sex with one of her musicians, whom she dated for a few months. It was in late 2008, after she had broken up with Ferny and was back out getting in trouble.
This time, I didn’t attack her, criticize her or anything. She came home that night defeated and ashamed.
Many people thought it was just a publicity stunt, because that same month her album Jenni’s Hits reached the top spot on the Billb
oard charts. But the truth was that my mother felt so mortified she wanted to die. This guy posted that video without her permission, and I swear to God, that was one of the few times I’ve ever seen her that crushed.
“It’s gonna be fine,” I said, offering her a big hug of encouragement. “Don’t worry, Momma.” This time it was my turn to use her famous Don’t worry, mija line that gave me so much strength during the times when I needed it most.
Of course, after the scandal broke, she put her best foot forward, faced the public lashing with her head held high and even cracked a few jokes about it to the media to downplay the whole thing. But behind the façade, Jenni the mother—Jenni the woman—felt like dying. I did too. And needless to say, I never even saw that stupid video.
Luckily for us all, Christmas was coming soon, and Santa brought us the solution to all this chaos: Loaiza.
My first impression of Esteban was, This guy’s a stuck-up asshole.
The day we met him was cold and dark. My mother was all decked out in a beautiful black dress, waiting nervously for her date to arrive.
“He’s a famous baseball player, very attractive. He asked me out to dinner,” she told us excitedly.
I was the one who opened the automatic gate and went out to meet him. I wanted to be the first one to get a sense of this guy’s intentions. A black Escalade with black rims and everything else slowly pulled around, and out stepped a tall, thin man with a huge gold ring, a diamond bracelet and a massive watch. Very flashy. Hey, this guy has money. He’s not like all the others, I thought to myself with a smile. Ever since my mother had broken up with Ferny, she had been dating nobodies who were only after her money. Ferny, at least, never asked her for a cent, and was never starstruck by her fame.
Esteban shook my hand, all serious, and I invited him into the kitchen, where the rest of the family was waiting. He sat down, looked at us one by one, and then, with an arrogant attitude, he put his feet up on the table.
Who does this guy think he is? I thought to myself, about to have a heart attack.
Just then my mother came out already wearing her overcoat, and shot him a deadly look. Immediately Esteban dropped his feet from the table and jumped up. He took my mother’s arm and quickly said good-bye to all of us. Jacqie couldn’t stop laughing.
“If he wanted to make an impression, he sure did. He’s so rude!” I said, once we were all alone.
“That guy is a total cock! What an asshole,” Jacqie replied, still a bit stunned.
The two of us stayed awake until our mother came home. We couldn’t wait to hear how everything went during dinner with such a conceited man.
“He’s very nice, very handsome,” she told us as soon as she came in the door, before she even finished taking off her enormous leather coat. “He paid for everything. It feels weird not having to be the Bank of America for once!” she joked.
Yes, Esteban paid for dinner that night, and for many others. That arrogant, stuck-up prick turned out to be a complete gentleman, and we all had to swallow our comments. Poor Esteban! I’m sure his nerves got the best of him on that first date. My mother may have intimidated him a bit, and I think, over time, she became even more intimidating.
Days and weeks went by, and Esteban began to visit us more and more often. We learned that he actually treated my mother like a queen. He was very patient, both with her and with us. He never cursed, but what I liked the most about him is that he paid special attention to Johnny, my baby. Johnny was going through a bit of a rebellious phase. Visiting his father in prison was affecting him more and more; Esteban understood this, and disciplined him with love.
With a new love in my mother’s life, Christmas of 2008 was looking up for all of us. We had a massive tree, over six feet tall, surrounded by piles of presents. It would have been perfect if not for another case of Rivera family drama: my grandparents announced they were separating. My grandma caught my grandpa with another woman. This had happened before, but this time he had gotten the woman pregnant and there was no turning back from that. The children and grandchildren were all very sad. Adiós, four decades of seemingly peaceful marriage. When they signed the divorce papers a few months later, I felt as if I’d lost a huge part of my childhood. It would never be the same, visiting my grandma without the smell of my grandpa’s cologne in the bathroom or the pot of beans waiting for him there.
Now it would be a new home with new smells that awaited us. My mother, frightened by the fact that our house in Corona had been robbed twice and tired of driving the forty miles back and forth every day, decided to start looking for a new house closer to Hollywood. She found one quickly, early in 2009, but then it took her another six months to renovate it and make it completely to her liking. During those six months, we weren’t allowed to set foot in it even once, until finally, one afternoon in early June, we all piled in the car, and—just as she’d hoped—we were shocked.
“Welcome to Encino!” she exclaimed proudly, after we had passed through two security fences and two sets of automatic gates to arrive in front of a real mansion.
Her initials adorned the wrought-iron doors and were worked into the granite floors. The railings along the stairs were adorned with iron butterflies that she’d imported directly from Cuernavaca, Mexico. On the second floor were five bedrooms: one for every family member. Each room had been designed and decorated according to each of our individual personalities. Needless to say, mine had the biggest closet imaginable. To achieve this, my mother didn’t hesitate to have an entire wall knocked down to make two rooms into one.
“It’s beautiful, Momma. It’s a total dream, just like in the movies,” I said, taking it all in as I walked through the vast room with its soaring windows.
But the welcoming party in Encino wouldn’t last long. Within two weeks of moving in, my stepfather, Juan, who was still incarcerated at the time, was diagnosed with acute pneumonia. He was taken from prison to the hospital, but in a matter of just fifteen days, he passed away. My immediate reaction, besides the infinite sadness, was one of pure rage! Rage at the knowledge that my beloved Jenicka and Johnny had been left without a dad. Rage because it seemed as if we were destined to never have a father figure in our lives. None of us had experienced that joy for quite some time.
I think my mother realized just how much she still loved Juan during those last few hours in the hospital. She spent his final night there, beside his bed, with Johnny and Jenicka alongside her. My Johnny was crying silently, like a little man, stroking the feet of his beloved dad. There’s always been something of an old soul inside of that boy, who seems to see things that others just don’t perceive. Jenicka, however, lost control, and her screaming and banging on the walls could be heard echoing throughout the hallways. My little sister has always been Daddy’s little princess. It broke my heart to see them so distraught.
The memory of those evenings in Compton, ironing Juan’s pants, rushed back into my mind, along with my own tears and pain. I’d bought his shirts and washed his clothes, and he’d always thanked me for it.
“I’ll get clothes for him for the funeral,” I offered to his family, with whom we always got along quite well. “I know how he would have liked to say good-bye.”
I went to the store and chose a pair of white linen beach-style pants, which he loved, along with a baby blue shirt of the same fabric and a white undershirt. Baby blue was his favorite color.
Before leaving for the funeral, I took one last look at him to make sure he looked perfect. Our Juan deserved nothing less. Oh, shit! I screwed up! I said to myself. I forgot his socks! I didn’t bring any socks! Since I’d been told that I didn’t need to buy shoes, since you can’t put them on a deceased person’s body, I hadn’t even thought about the socks. But it didn’t matter, because he’d only be seen from the waist up in the casket. I kissed him on the forehead and then I let him go. It was time to welcome the friends and family, and to comfort my siblings. I had to console myself too, because life had taken away my se
cret accomplice, the man who used to smuggle me brownies.
My mother stood next to me, and thinking about her own death, she said, “I never want an open casket. When it’s time to go, Chiquis, I need you to be strong and to represent me well. With integrity, and with your head held high. Promise me you’ll do that for your brothers and sisters, princess.”
“I promise, Momma. But I’m going before you do. I just couldn’t stand seeing you go,” I answered, tormented by the mere idea of losing her, and forgetting that one of life’s laws is that daughters mourn their mothers.
Chinese was all I heard over the airplane’s loudspeakers. I was still mourning the loss of my stepfather, but there I was, fastening my seat belt, sitting on a plane to China.
A few months earlier, I’d had the idea of launching a line of perfume under the Jenni Rivera brand name, and my mother had given me her blessing.
“But, Momma, how can I manage all that?” I asked. “Where do I even start?” I had no idea about how to combine spices and floral scents, or how I could ever come up with a fragrance that both my mother and her fans would like.
“Figure it out, princess,” she replied, simply enough, with that trademark “you’ll manage” attitude that she loved to challenge us with.
“Well, I’m off to Guangzhou, then.”
“Guangzhou it is, mija.”
I think my mother was getting tired of Chiquis the housewife, always depending on others. She wanted her daughter to really sink her claws into life. And this trip to China was, indeed, my first step into the world of business. I had spent many great moments with my mother during her rise to fame, and there would still be great moments yet to come, but that trip was one unbelievable experience. In three short weeks, I learned more about myself than I had in my previous two decades combined.
With my passport in hand, my twenty-fourth birthday just recently behind me and more suitcases than Mariah Carey, I embarked on an adventure where my only option was to return triumphant. The Riveras don’t go to such extremes only to return empty-handed. No way. I had learned that lesson only too well, back in the days on Gale Street.
Forgiveness Page 9