To Selena, With Love (29 page)

“You’re going to be okay,” she reassured me. “I can’t wait to hear it.”

We went into San Antonio and recorded the instrumentals for
Amor Prohibido
. Then Selena went in separately to record her vocal tracks. When I heard it all put together, I remember thinking how incredibly mature Selena’s voice sounded. There was a noticeable difference between her voice on this album and
Entre a Mi Mundo
, especially.

I can’t say it was an improvement, exactly, because I always thought that Selena’s voice sounded incredible. It’s just that her voice was richer and more mature than before, and her singing was more emotional and powerful as a result.

“The fans aren’t ready for this one, Selena,” I told her.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“This is a different kind of album, in a good way,” I said. “You sound incredible, and A.B. is right. This is going to be a major hit.”

It was. Songs from
Amor Prohibido
were all over the radio as soon as the album was released. The title track catapulted to number one on
Billboard
’s Latin chart to become the biggest hit yet in Selena’s career. That song, along with “No Me Queda Mas,” became the most successful singles of 1994 and 1995 in both the U.S. Latino communities and Mexico.

Amor Prohibido
went on to win Album of the Year at the 1995 Tejano Music Awards in January, where Selena was awarded top honors in six of the fifteen categories, including Female Vocalist for an unprecedented seventh year in a row and Female Entertainer of the Year. “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” won as Song of the Year.

We were truly on a fast train now, and there seemed to be nothing but more success in our future. Every now and then, though, I’d look at my gorgeous, talented wife, and wish that I could take her back to Jamaica, where we could be alone again on the beach by the light of the moon.

It was during this frenzied time in 1994 that Selena and I hit the only truly rough patch in our marriage. Like most young couples, I suppose, we were making the adjustment from the novelty of living together to the reality of handling the pressures of daily life long term. In our case, the pressures were more extreme, perhaps, because of our intense work and travel schedules—Selena’s, especially.

Because Selena now had Yolanda to accompany her on trips, I sometimes was able to stay home, as I did when Selena had to fly to Los Angeles to make the music video for “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” or
when Selena and Yolanda had business to conduct for the boutiques. Selena wasn’t so lucky. She never, ever caught a break.

At times, everyone in the band was so tired that we had to operate on autopilot just to get through our days. The music video for “No Me Queda Mas” was filmed in San Antonio, thankfully, so nobody had to travel far. The band shots were of us playing inside the train station, where Selena sang on a stairway wearing a white dress. She had also done a full day of shooting the day before on the Riverwalk, however, so she was beat.

After we completed the video shoot at the train station, we all had to drive home to Corpus. Abraham had the tour bus there. I could have stayed at my mom’s, but the lure of my own bed in Corpus made me decide to drive my truck back behind the bus.

“You go on ahead on the bus and get some rest in your bunk,” I told Selena, because she looked so drained. “You don’t have to ride in the truck with me.”

“Really?” she said. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’ve got the radio.”

“Thank you, Chris,” she said with a sigh, and kissed me good night.

All the way home, I followed the bus on the highway and imagined Selena crashed on her bunk, her hand tucked into the pillowcase. I’d never been more exhausted in my life. A part of me wished right then for simpler times.

That kind of travel exhaustion led to the worst fights of our marriage. Selena liked to just go into the house and go back to sleep whenever the tour bus dropped us off after a show, leaving me to do whatever was necessary to wrestle our luggage into the house and check on the animals.

One night, coming home from a tour, we were both in a bad mood. Selena liked to be awakened gently, but on this particular occasion, I was out of patience with everything and everybody, so I just shook her shoulder and said, “Hey. It’s time to get off the bus.”

Selena woke up angry. She got to her feet and said, “Get out of my way, Chris. I’m going inside.”

I was trying to retrieve something out of the bunk across from hers. Selena came down the aisle fast, no doubt focused on getting into the house and crawling into bed, and barreled right into me.

“Hey, what’s wrong with you?” I demanded, stubbornly blocking her path. “You almost knocked me over! Just wait a minute and let me get my stuff.”

“No,” she said. “I want to go in now.” Selena pushed me aside and stomped toward the door leading to the front lounge area of the bus.

I thought her tantrum was funny and started to laugh. Big mistake. That pushed Selena’s buttons and made her even angrier than before. She turned around and came at me again, intent on pushing me or something, just as the bus driver was walking up the steps.

Just as Selena reached me, I turned sideways and she completely missed. She lost her balance and fell down in the aisle.

The bus driver took one look at what was going on, turned around, and walked off the bus. I helped Selena up, shaking my head. “Great,” I said. “I hope you’re happy. Now the driver thinks I’m abusing you or something.”

Selena just shrugged me off and went inside.

I don’t get angry easily, but my nerves were already frayed from
performing and traveling, I really lost my temper at that point. I started yanking our luggage off the bus as fast as I could, fuming about how unfair it was that Selena always got to just go inside and crash after a trip, while she took it for granted that it was my job to unload the gear and take care of everything else. She wasn’t a diva with her fans. Why was she acting this way with me?

I had just gotten this beautiful two-thousand-dollar guitar and it was in a gig bag; it was the last thing I brought inside to the house. I set it on the sofa and then went into the bedroom and put something of Selena’s on the bed. Then I went back into the living room to get my guitar.

All of a sudden, I heard a crash from the bedroom. I knew right away what Selena had done: she had kicked her stuff off the bed. I rolled my eyes and thought,
Oh, really? She’s going to be that way?

I got my guitar and came back into the bedroom. I set the guitar on the bed, not anywhere near her, and went back out to the living room to retrieve one more bag. I heard another “boom” and thought,
No way was that my guitar!

When I rushed back into the bedroom, I saw that Selena had, indeed, thrashed out with her legs and kicked my guitar right off the bed and onto the floor—something that she would have had to really go out of her way to do, since I’d put the guitar on the opposite side of the bed.

I went into a rage. “What is wrong with you?” I shouted.

Selena sat up in bed and we started yelling at each other like a couple of toddlers. “You pushed me on the bus!” she shouted.

“I did not! You were coming after me!” I argued. “You know that’s the truth. All I did was sidestep when you were attacking me!”

Looking back on this moment now, I know that it was just two
people in a bad mood. Yet the argument escalated until I got so angry that I told her, “You want to start kicking shit around with me? Fine, then. Here!”

I grabbed my guitar up off the floor and hurled it right over her legs and into a table across the room. It knocked the table down and broke several things that had been on top, but I didn’t care.

“I’m sick of this, and I don’t need this hassle! I’m tired of it!” I shouted. Then I turned around and walked out of the room.

I made it as far as the living room. I was seriously prepared to walk out of that house. I had never been so upset with my wife. How dared she treat me like I was always going to be her servant?

I was just about to open the door when Selena came up behind me and grabbed my arm. She was crying. “I’m sorry. Don’t leave,” she begged. “I didn’t mean to act that way!”

“Then why did you?” I said, giving her a hug. “I don’t mean to act like that either. It’s just that there’s only so much I can take. I have to unload all of my stuff and yours, too, every time, while all you have to do is get off the bus and come inside. I don’t mind doing that, but you have to realize that I’m tired, too.”

We made up, then, and things were fine. Much later, after Yolanda had shot and killed my wife, she would say to the press that our marriage was on the rocks and that Selena had been prepared to divorce me. She concocted some story—one of many lies that Yolanda told over time—about how I had even punched a door and then pulled it right off its hinges.

It is true that Selena and I sometimes argued, but I don’t think that she and I ever experienced anything out of the ordinary. Most couples whose marriages last reach some point in their lives together—or maybe many points, if the marriage is long
enough—where they have to decide that they’re still committed enough to stay in the relationship.

During this rough patch of ours, a friend of mine said, “Man, you can’t break up with Selena! She’s like the ultimate rich and beautiful trophy wife!”

“That’s not how I see it,” I told him. But then I stopped talking about it with him, because I was at a loss for words.

How could I possibly explain that, even though I admired the talented person Selena was onstage and her voice went straight to my heart, that’s not why I was in love with her? I loved the real Selena, the silly Selena with the contagious laugh and her love of dogs and kids, the woman who wrapped a bandanna around her hair while she cleaned the house, the daredevil who rode my motorcycle with me at night around the bay. I loved my wife.

Yet, in the worst stress of trying to manage our performing schedule, the house, and Selena’s new business, there was a brief time when both Selena and I had thoughts about whether we should just move on. We weren’t really arguing at that point; it was more like things had just stopped clicking.

Both of us had reached a point in our relationship—and in our lives—when we were feeling disconnected emotionally, and asking ourselves whether we wanted to do something else. I didn’t want to cling to her.

I think that, had I been as old then as I am now, I might have felt differently and worked harder. As it was, though, I didn’t feel I should stand in the way if Selena wanted to live on her own for a while.

During this whole rough patch, which didn’t last more than a few weeks, we danced around the idea of separating, even while we
were still thrown together all of the time because of our performances. At one point, Selena and I were seated next to each other on an airplane talking about trying life apart for a while.

“Look, if this is what you need, you know that I’m not going to stand in your way, but it’s not my first choice,” I said.

“Yeah, I know,” she said.

Selena was serious enough about possibly separating to discuss it with A.B. He told me later that she had come to him to air her frustrations and doubts.

“Okay, then,” A.B. said to her. “This is what I’m going to ask you, and it’s the only thing I’m going to ask you. How would you feel if you decided to separate or get a divorce or whatever, and then you saw Chris walking around with some other woman?”

“Oh, no, that’s not going to happen!” Selena answered.

Shortly after that conversation with her brother, everything came back around. To Selena, I said, “I don’t want to keep fighting like this. I love you. But if I can’t make you happy, you deserve to go find your way and be happy with someone else.”

She started crying. “I don’t want to be happy with anyone else,” she said. “I just want to be happy with you.”

I pulled her close. “Then let’s be happy together,” I whispered into her hair. “We can do it. I know we can.”

The odd thing was that, after that one short, rough patch, everything between us was even better than before. It was as if we were newlyweds again, loving each other and finding our way together in the world as a team.

We decided that it was time to take the next step in our relationship and move away from her parents. We wanted to buy land and build a house of our own, so that we could be ready when it was
time to start a family. Selena was still talking about five kids. Even crazier than that were the names she wanted to give those children of ours: long, fancy names like “Sebastian.”

“That’s crazy. Think about what a tough time our kids would have in kindergarten, trying to spell their own names,” I teased. “I think we should just give our sons regular-sounding names, maybe like ‘Eric’ or something.”

One thing we definitely agreed on, though, was that we wanted to buy a big piece of property that was still close to central Corpus Christi. There weren’t many properties that fit that bill, so it didn’t take us long to look.

Fortunately, after seeing just a couple of tracts of land, we found the property that spoke to us. “This is it,” Selena declared, the minute we stepped out of my truck and started following the Realtor around to see the property lines.