Forgiveness

by Chiquis Rivera

  “I need to see you,” I said. “Please, you’re the only one who can help get me out of this.”

  Vanessa had greeted me at my mother’s graduation ceremony, and given me a reconciling hug, but we both knew that there was a conversation we still needed to have.

  “Of course, Chiquis. I was thinking it was time for us to talk as well. Come over to my house. I’ll cook up something delicious.”

  That’s just how we Mexicans are. No open, heart-to-heart conversations without some food on the table. A good beef or chicken stew can fix everything. Even the strongest enemies of the past will crumble like queso fresco.

  “First, Chiquis, I want to apologize. I also watched that video your mother had, and I didn’t see anything suspicious. Forgive me, but I just didn’t know how to convince her,” she told me, her voice choked up with tears as soon as I got to her house. I squeezed her hand tightly from across the table so she could feel my love. I wasn’t there to pass judgment or interrogate her. All I wanted to do was relive my mother’s last few days through her eyes and her memories.

  Vanessa was the last person my mother spoke with before heading off for Monterrey. If anyone could help me solve this mystery, it was her.

  “Your mom insisted that after Esteban got in the shower, you snuck back into the house without turning on any of the lights and hid in the closet, waiting for him to come out of the bathroom. And that’s how it happened. There was no debating it; she was very adamant about it,” Vanessa said, detailing each and every one of my mother’s words and reactions. “And I told her, ‘Jen, if they knew there was a camera right there in that corner of the closet, why would they pick that place to do it? They’re not idiots. They could have done it in the bedroom, where there aren’t any cameras at all. Of all the places in your home, the closet is under the most surveillance.’ And you can just imagine how your mother reacted to that. She was on a rampage! I didn’t want to fight her on it.”

  “But did you at least try to talk some sense into her?” I asked.

  “Yes, twice, and on both occasions she flew into a rage. One night, on our way back home from the airport after missing a flight, she cried and cried behind the wheel, saying, ‘I can’t believe it, my own daughter . . .’ So I asked her again: ‘Are you sure, Jen? Because I just don’t see it . . .’ Your mother started pounding her fists on the steering wheel; she was furious, and she shouted at me, ‘If you don’t believe me, then fuck you and fuck them . . . You’re just like all the rest, all those sons of bitches . . . If you don’t believe me, then why are you trying to be my friend?’ ”

  Vanessa paused and started to cry again. Those memories hurt her as much as they hurt me. Then she continued:

  “So after that, I said, Fuck it! If my friend wants to be wrong, then fine, but I’m not going to lose her, I’m not going to leave her on her own. Better just to keep my mouth shut. But then, everyone started pouring more and more fuel on the fire, and I swear I even started to believe it myself. Then all the suck-ups started saying, ‘Oh yeah, I always thought something was going on, I saw them talking in secret . . . I saw them getting out of a car . . . I saw them doing this, I saw them doing that.’ Those asslickers, as you call them, turned suspicion into reality. What started in your mother’s mind ended up on everybody’s lips.”

  “But why, Vanessa? Why would family and friends want to cause so much harm?” It was hard for me to understand how the evil in some people could spread so far.

  “Nothing, Chiquis, other than to gain favor with your mother. And I suppose there are one or two who were happy to see you separated and estranged. When you were at the house, everything was all, Chiquis Chiquis Chiquis, and your mother consulted with you on everything. But after the split, they were happy you weren’t influencing things, and that she was leaning more on them.”

  “That’s awful, Vanessa. I swear, all this fame has come at a heavy price. But didn’t my momma realize what was going on?”

  “No, Chiquis. At the time, your mother wasn’t the same, she wasn’t her usual self. She was lonely, so lonely; she was in an emotional place where nobody could reach her. I think Jenni was going through a stage where she just felt exhausted and thought that the whole world had failed her, or robbed her, or betrayed her. I think stress hit her really hard. The stress of working fifteen years without a break, fifteen years of planes, hotels, shows, concerts, perfume, tequila, television shows and a thousand different business endeavors. And to top it all off, your mother was on a very strict diet, she wasn’t sleeping much, and when you walk around hungry and tired it’s easy to get all pissed off and blow up at the smallest thing. She was irritable, and snapped at every little thing. My poor Jen, she just couldn’t handle it anymore, and as usual, there was the family, bitching and moaning with their arguments, and her brothers were always causing her problems.”

  “Yes, I remember back then she wasn’t speaking with my tío Lupe,” I interrupted.

  “That’s just it, Chiquis. She told me she was tired of being the police officer, keeping everyone from fighting and not getting anyone angry because she gave more to one of them than the others. And you all at the house, you had her on her last nerves. Johnny with his antics, Jacqie with her pregnancy, Mikey and the fallout with that underage girl, and you, Chiquis, you were the one she suffered the most with.”

  “But how? If I was the one who helped out the most and worked the hardest?”

  “Because of your boyfriend, Chiquis. Jenni and your boyfriend were on an equal playing field when it came to competing for your attention. She felt that he wasn’t the right man for you, and jealousy was eating her up inside because he was going to take you away from her. This guy wasn’t like your other boyfriends, who would obey her every word.”

  “I know she was on hormone therapy for a year,” I mentioned. “Who knows, maybe that affected her too.”

  “I think it was mostly stress. My poor friend and those ghosts from the past that always seem to creep back into her life. Your mother never forgot how much the men in her life had made her suffer, along with what happened with you and Rosie. It’s all tied together. And with Esteban, she felt defeated. She didn’t love him and didn’t want to admit to the world that yet another marriage was going to hell. Just one more failure! Yes, the great Diva was a huge success onstage, but when it came to her personal life, she felt as if everything was going down the drain. She isolated herself so much emotionally that not even her best friends were able to get inside her heart. It was solitude: that’s what was eating away at her, Chiquis.”

  “I understand her suffering, but I still don’t see why she took it all out on me.”

  “Me either. It was too much. Even after filing for divorce, she still spoke with Esteban. He even came to the house to collect a few things and she was sweet to him. I kept asking myself, why doesn’t her own daughter get that same opportunity to speak, even over the phone?”

  Suddenly it hit me, and a huge smile lit up my face, much to Vanessa’s surprise.

  “Chiquis, that should really bother you, that he was on speaking terms with her and you weren’t.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand, Vanessa. You just confirmed the one thing that mattered most to me: that my mother never really believed that I slept with Esteban.”

  “Huh? I don’t understand.”

  “She might have somewhat believed it in her head, but not in her heart. I know her. You know her too. If she really believed it, she never would have let Esteban come pick up his things. She would have burned them all out in the yard like she did with Juan. She never would have let him near that house. You know my momma!”

  “Wow, you’re right!” Vanessa said, suddenly seeing it too. “She would have fucked him up and she would have kicked your ass. I’m sorry, but your mother never would have let you out of her life without giving you a couple good slaps to the face.”

  “Exactly! So my mother didn’t leave this world thinking I’m a whore. That’s enough for me.”<
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  “And there’s more, Chiquis,” Vanessa said, her eyes filling up with tears once again. “Your mother was at my house on Thanksgiving when Rosie forwarded her your e-mail. She read it in front of me, on her BlackBerry. And while she was reading it, she couldn’t stop crying. I said, ‘Listen, Esteban is just one more man, but your daughter is your daughter. I want you to answer this question, and be completely honest with me: If your daughter did sleep with Esteban, would you forgive her?’ Your mother bowed her head and said, very softly, ‘Yes.’ And if she never slept with Esteban, would you ask her to forgive you for what you’ve done? And without lifting her head, she answered again, ‘Yes, but I need just a little more time. Give me some time.’ ”

  “Damn time. Fucking time. We never had enough!” I felt rage coursing through my veins. Rage against life itself, which took her away from me before her time. That was all my mother had asked for: time. And that was the one thing she was never granted.

  “Don’t be angry, Chiquis. That was what God wanted. It was His will,” Vanessa replied, interjecting some calmness.

  “I know, I know, but it still hurts. It’s hard for me to accept that. She was trying to teach me a lesson, in a very strange way. And now I understand, Vanessa. She was losing me and couldn’t bear it. I know she was going to let me back into her life and that she just wanted to teach me a lesson, just like the first time she stopped talking to me for two months when I was fourteen. It was a lesson from a mother to her daughter, to let me know how much it would hurt to lose her. That was it, Vanessa. I can see it all so clearly now. I wasn’t the best daughter, and I didn’t make it easy for her, I admit.”

  “I know,” Vanessa said. “I could see for myself how much you loved each other and how much you hated one another at the same time. Jenni was jealous, I won’t deny that, but you were too. And with the two of you being so close in age, it couldn’t have been easy living under the same roof with another woman and not compete over the silliest things: jeans, girlfriends, jokes. You were both really bitchy toward each other—I heard how each of you spoke—but you couldn’t live without each other.”

  “Yes, that’s true, everyone in this family can get jealous. Seriously jealous! We’re just like any other family: the little one is jealous of the bigger one, and the bigger one is jealous of the little one. But I swear, we all love each other so much!”

  “But this time the jealousy had been building up, and there was a man in the middle of it. I noticed it when you went out to eat with Esteban and the kids at Las Islitas. Your mother wasn’t too happy about that. And she didn’t like leaving Esteban alone with her assistant Julie. I don’t know. Life had left her jealous when it came to men. It wasn’t her fault. They’ve betrayed her time and time again, and they’ve done much worse.”

  Three bowls of soup and three hours later, we finally got to the heart of the issue:

  “There’s no doubt about it,” Vanessa insisted. “It was exhaustion, it was jealousy, it was stress and it was those damn rumors. All just stewing in that pressure cooker of hers. But I swear, she cried over you, and never stopped loving you. Not even for a second.”

  “Thanks, Vanessa. I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve said to me. Now, if you would just tell me this: that final night with her, I want to know what she did, what she said, what she ate. Everything!”

  “It was the Thursday before the accident. She came by the salon to surprise me; she was wearing all black with a lovely hat and a great pair of boots, and she asked me to go to the mall with her. We went to Topanga; we laughed, we talked and we went through all the stores. I never saw her spend so much money. She bought Christmas presents for all her employees in Mexico and for your cousins. Twenty-five thousand dollars in a couple of hours. Then we went back to her house; she fixed me some huevos rancheros, and then we went up to her room so I could help her pack. She had to be at the airport in just a couple of hours and be on the way to her last two concerts. ‘I think I’ll take all my most expensive jewelry,’ she said. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because they’re mine, hahaha!’ she replied, and looked at me as if to say, ‘Fuck it!’

  “After we were done picking out the dresses and shoes for her to wear for the two shows, we stood there looking at the two massive pieces of luggage. Your mother was exhausted. She propped her foot up against the wall, shrugged her shoulders and after a deep sigh she told me, ‘After this trip, it’s over, girlfriend. I’m tired of this shit. Why don’t you sleep here tonight.’ I said that I couldn’t because I had to work early the next morning. And with that, she lay down on the bed and curled up like a little ball under the covers. It broke my heart to see her like that.”

  Vanessa was a little choked up, remembering her friend curled up on that enormous bed, remembering all that grief, and she had to take a deep breath before being able to continue:

  “I stroked her hair and said, ‘Don’t worry, everything is going to be alright. You come back on Tuesday, right?’ Your mother responded without words, with her eyes closed and barely nodded yes. That kinda freaked me out. I gave her a kiss on the forehead and said, ‘Okay, I love you, bye,’ as I turned out the lights. As I was leaving her room, I heard her say, ‘I love you too,’ in the softest voice. I felt that I was leaving her very much alone. In that house filled with people who loved her, at the height of her fame, with thousands of adoring fans . . . and yet alone. I stood outside of her door for a few minutes and something just didn’t feel right. It felt like that was the last time I was going to see her. I should have just stayed with her.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Vanessa. You did what you could. I’ll always be grateful to you for being there for her, through the good times and the bad. Thank you.”

  It was time to get up from the table and say good night. The memories and the confessions had left us both completely exhausted, but with much peace in our hearts.

  “Forgive me, Chiquis. Again, I’m so sorry that I judged you instead of defending you,” she repeated, giving me one last hug. “I wish we had spoken sooner. I would have found a way to fix all this. The lesson I learned is that from now on, I should always follow my instincts and not stay quiet, because who knows if we’ll be here tomorrow to share that one last I love you. I love you, Chiquis.”

  “I love you too, Vanessa.”

  I jumped in my car. It was already dark, and the cold February air was still hanging on to that part of the San Fernando Valley. And I thought, as I was driving back to Encino, that in the aftermath of that colossal nonsense, things were finally all starting to make sense.

  24.

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM

  I’m not asking for jewels

  Or furs or palaces . . .

  Sitting there, during the flight from New York to Los Angeles, I couldn’t get that song by my mother out of my head. Six months after she left us, it was the only one I could listen to without bursting into tears. And I still couldn’t watch any of her videos.

  I hope you understood

  That I am desperate . . .

  Every verse spoke to me, every chorus was dedicated to me, the pariah, the poor little princess, unwelcome in her mother’s castle, and still, it never kept me up at night. My desperation came from somewhere else.

  I had just cohosted The View, alongside some of the great legends of journalism and entertainment like Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg. And, of course, Barbara was not cruel in the least. She handled the issues of family abuse and the loss of my mother with such delicacy and elegance that any nervousness I felt simply vanished as soon as I looked into her eyes.

  That same week, I had been offered two other very tempting television projects. It was clear that my mother was watching over me and opening doors for me. I wasn’t completely alone, but there was still that chilly sense of distance between the two of us.

  Her birthday was coming up, along with my own and that of my tía Rosie. The first time I would spend them without her. So I just dreamed about her. I dreamed about
her during those days in New York. And in those dreams, she neither kissed me nor hugged me. She seemed very tired, looked ragged and unkempt, was very thin and she told me that she wasn’t dead, she’d been kidnapped. I can’t quite explain it, but she seemed somehow lovely in the midst of all that pain. In one dream she said, “Don’t sell the house. I know you’re under pressure, I know the house scares you and that it’s worth a lot of money, but don’t sell it, Chiquis. I’m with you there. You’re going to be fine.” I tried to move toward her, but no matter what I did, she always seemed to remain at the same distance. Such a weird dream! But like in the previous instances, she seemed calm, at peace, with an immense love for me, while still just out of reach.

  It was just a short dream, but it confirmed for me that she was still showing me the way. Maybe our plan of having you manage my career is being fulfilled in this strange way, Momma, I thought to myself as I leaned back in my seat on the flight home. As soon as we landed, there was another difficult task awaiting me: our attorneys had informed us that Trino, my father, had filed an appeal to his sentence. He’d be appearing before a judge, and I would have to be present there as well, whether I liked it or not.

  In one of life’s great ironies, the date of the appearance was set for June 26: my birthday. Does he remember? I wondered as I sat down on those cold, wooden benches.

  A few minutes later, he entered the courtroom through one of the side doors. He was handcuffed and wearing his orange jumpsuit, and accompanied by two court officers. He looked old, worn-out, with a lot of gray hair and a huge belly. Clearly his days as a dashing young man were behind him. His attitude, however, had not changed: he never turned to look at me, and his body language was arrogant. Suddenly I realized that my feelings about him had, in fact, changed: I still didn’t hate him, and my forgiveness was constant, but I no longer felt sorry for him. And I didn’t feel a need for him to accept me, speak to me or even look at me.