Unbreakable: My Story, My Way (23 page)

The morning of July 1, I got a call telling me that things had taken a turn for the worse. I went to visit Juan, and as I walked into his room I saw his sister Erika sitting there with a pale face. Immediately I knew something was terribly wrong. I turned to see Juan lying in the bed, his hands cuffed to the metal bars. His eyes were open halfway. His body was shaking left and right. It seemed as if the medical instrument he had going through his mouth, down his throat, and into his lung was pumping oxygen so heavily it made his entire body shudder. His arms and legs moved from side to side as his chest pumped up and down. The look in his half-open eyes told me so much. Yes, he was in a coma, but for some reason his eyes had opened due to the swelling in his face. It was a terrible sight.

“What’s wrong with him!” I suddenly screamed. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” said his sister. “The nurses aren’t telling me anything.”

“What do you mean, they’re not telling you anything? Where the fuck are they?”

A nurse stormed in as she heard me screaming out of control. I had to be quiet or I was going to be asked to leave, she said. She walked me out of the room and into the hallway, where I had left Johnny and Jenicka.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” they asked. “What happened to Daddy?”

I hadn’t been this upset on any of the other days we had visited, but I just couldn’t hold it in this time. How the fuck was I going to tell my babies that their father might not make it? They were so close to him. Even after he went to jail, I would bring them to him and they maintained a beautiful bond. I put my face against the hallway window, not wanting my kids to see me cry.

I grabbed my BlackBerry from my purse and dialed Chiquis’s number.

“Mama, what’s wrong?” she asked as soon as she heard me crying. “Why are you crying like this? How’s Dad?”

I told her he was very sick and that I knew he didn’t want me to leave. I told her how he looked and asked her to come and pick the kids up at the hospital. I also asked her to cancel the dinner party and to let our guests know that I was going to spend the rest of the day at the hospital with Juan. That night at midnight my hairstylist, Ivan, and his boyfriend, Rafa, came to visit me as I sat with Juan in the hospital. Elena, my jeweler, and her girlfriend, Zuleyma, showed up as well. Though I had broken up with Esteban two months earlier, he drove all the way from San Diego to be there. They brought cake and mole and sang “Happy Birthday” to me.

The next day, on my actual birthday, it was just my seven-year-old son, Johnny, and me sitting next to Juan in room 233 of the intensive care unit at Lancaster’s Antelope Valley Hospital. He wanted to be
with his dad. “Thank you for spending your birthday here with my daddy,” Johnny said to me. “You’re a good mommy.” Johnny cried so much that day. He held his father’s hand and prayed, “Please, God, save my daddy. Let him live. I promise to be a good boy. I won’t say bad words anymore. I’ll do my homework and share my PlayStation with my sister. I’ll pray every night. I’ll do my chores. God, please let my daddy live.” It broke my heart in a million pieces and I felt so powerless.

I had been through so much with Juan. Now this. Could it be that I was going to have to take our kids to their father’s funeral? No. I couldn’t live through that.

At 11:00 p.m. I was still getting birthday texts and phone calls. Johnny was asleep in a chair in the corner. Earlier that day the nurse told me Juan only had a 40 percent chance of living. As I watched Johnny sleep, I tried to come to terms with having to step in and be his father as well as his mother. Neither of my sons would grow up with his father, and I had to fill that role. It scared the shit out of me. To comfort Juan, I sang his favorite songs, and at the sound of my voice, tears rolled down his face. In this way, I said my last goodbyes to the father of my children, my ex-husband, and my great friend.

On July 14, 2009, Juan died in his hospital bed in Lancaster, California. He was all alone. The hospital was mobbed by the press. I was not allowed to go see him. Neither were Johnny or Jenicka, his sisters, his parents, or his girlfriend. I knew it was my fault. He had married and had kids with a celebrity, and for that he had to pay the unfair price of being alone on his last day on earth.

Before Juan passed, I asked him what he wanted his funeral to be like. He told me he wanted his favorite singer, Coyote, to be there, so I made sure it happened. In my mind it was the only way I could make
it up to Juan, because I felt such guilt that he crossed over without anyone by his side.

My whole family attended his funeral as though he were still my husband and he were still their brother. Juan had been a handsome man. But by the time he passed, after so many days spent at the hospital, he was so swollen. He looked many pounds heavier.

“This is not Juan,” I told Chiquis as we knelt in front of his open casket. “He wouldn’t be happy with the way he looks. When I die, I want a closed casket. Promise me, princess. Make sure it’s a closed casket if something happens to me.”

Juan’s passing changed me in so many ways. It gave me a perspective on what was important. By this point in my career I was selling out every concert, and all my albums were going gold and platinum. I was dominating the regional music industry, and I had achieved all I had dreamed of and even more. Yet all I wanted was to be home with my kids. I decided that I was not going to miss another birthday, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s Day. It didn’t matter how lucrative the opportunity was or how prestigious. I was going to be with my family.

Shortly after Juan died, I got back together with Esteban. I was willing to forgive him for lying to me, but I told him that there could be no more secrets between us, no matter how small. He agreed to the deal and treated me even better than before. He took care of my every need and showered me with gifts.

Once he came home with three Louis Vuitton purses for no reason. My closet started to overflow with the designer shoes and high-end clothes he loved to buy for me. “Babe,” I told him, “thank you, but I don’t need all this.” He didn’t listen. He wasn’t just generous with me, he was the same way with my kids and my family. Whatever anyone wanted, Esteban would provide. Every day he walked in the door with
more and more bags. Though I begged him not to get me anything else, it did feel good to have a man who could spoil me so horribly. I mean, I wasn’t going to say no to another Louis Vuitton bag. (But, really, who needs fourteen fucking pairs of sneakers?)

On July 29, my family and I had an interview with Piolín on the radio station La Nueva. Some family members were in the studio with me and some were on the phone. Piolín was asking my mom and dad, “So when is your daughter getting married to Esteban?”

“Whenever she wants,” Dad responded.

“So you’d be okay if she married this guy?”

“If she wants,” my mother said.

Then Esteban called in to say hello, and Piolín asked him straight out, “When are you going to propose? We asked her parents and they said it was okay.”

Esteban said, “Really, you’d approve if I asked?”

“If you love her, go for it,” both my parents said.

My dad added, “But you shouldn’t sleep with a man before you are married.”

A little late on that advice, don’t you think?

About a month before Juan’s death, Jacqie, who was then nineteen, came to me and told me she was pregnant. The first words out of my mouth were to tell her that she didn’t have to move out. I had promised myself that if one of my daughters told me she was pregnant, I would not make the same mistake that my parents and so many parents of their generation made. “He can move into this house if he wants,” I said. “But you should stay here with that baby.”

On November 17, 2009, Jacqie went into labor. I coached her through every step of the way, telling her, “You don’t need an epidural. You can do this shit on your own.” And she did. A few hours later I
met my first grandchild, Jaylah Hope, and I knew right then that my life would never again be the same. Nothing made me prouder than being a mother. Nothing made me softer than being a grandmother. Jaylah changed my world in so many ways; one of the biggest was that she strengthened my relationship with Jacqie. Jacqie is my rebel child, the one who cannot be tamed or told no. Just like her mama. Because of this we clashed a lot during her teenage years, but when Jaylah came along, Jacqie and I grew so close. She is still my rebel child and will always be. I hope that Jaylah turns out to be just like both of us so Jacqie can know how wonderful and frustrating it is to have a daughter who cannot be told no.

22

The Fairy Tale and the Reality Show

Well, they’re flickin’ on the bar lights

Band’s playin’ one last song.

—from “You Don’t Have to Go Home”

_{A few months after}
the interview with Piolín, someone in my family heard that Esteban was shopping for a ring. When one Rivera hears something, every Rivera hears it.

Rosie approached him and asked him straight out, “You’re going to ask my sister to marry you, aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” he told her.

“Are you asking her because you love her or because you feel pressure from the media? Don’t do it because of that.”

“I’m asking her because I love her.”

On January 21, 2010, Esteban took me and my five kids out for sushi. Halfway through dinner he pretended something fell on the floor, and he went to pick it up. When he got back up, he had a ring in
his hand. “I love you,” he told me. “I love your kids and your family. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”

I was in shock and didn’t speak at first.

“Answer him, Mom!” my kids yelled at me.

Once I said yes, he put this incredible ten-carat ring on my finger. He said, “I brought the kids because I know I am not just marrying you, I am marrying them too.”

I called my sister, my brothers, my mom, and my dad to give them the news (though I’m sure they all saw it coming before I did). I was so happy and so excited. I had never been proposed to before. And I certainly hadn’t received a ring like that before.

A month later when we were planning our wedding, I called Rosie to ask her to be my maid of honor.

“Really?” she said. “You want me? With all of your famous friends, you pick me?”

“Well, yeah. Who the fuck else would I pick?”

Around that time Esteban’s mom told me, “You are taking a good man.” It felt as if she were punching me in the gut and telling me that I was not good enough for her son.

“Yes,” I said, “he is a good guy. And I’m a good woman.”

The conversation bothered me for a few days, but then I forgot about it until one day, as we got closer to the wedding, Esteban asked me for a prenup. I was completely thrown off. I’d never once asked him how much he made or how much he had in the bank. I never asked to look at his finances. I didn’t care. I had my own money.

That’s when I remembered my conversation with his mother and I understood the prenup was her idea: she thought I wanted him for his money.

So I went back to Manley Freid, the same attorney who had helped
me settle my divorce with Juan and helped my mother in her divorce from my dad. I told Manley I needed a prenup. Manley and Esteban’s attorney worked on that prenup until the day before the wedding.

Something about the prenup pissed me right the fuck off and made me nostalgic for the relationship I had had with Fernando. Sure we fought, but we had passion and fire and we trusted in our love. And we didn’t make each other sign any fucking legal document to prove it.

I called Fernando up and demanded, “Are you ever going to get your shit together? Because if you don’t, I’m going to marry this guy.”

“So marry him.”

“I’m serious. I’ll do it.”

“Go ahead. Do it. What do I care?”

Esteban and I were married on September 8, 2010, at Hummingbird Nest Ranch, in Simi Valley. Everything about the wedding was gorgeous and perfect. And decadent. I flew in aboard a helicopter wearing a custom-made Eduardo Lucero dress. We had eight hundred guests and a ton of security so that nobody had to worry about getting his or her picture taken. Every detail was thought out and taken care of. During her maid-of-honor speech Rosie said, “You met Runner Boy, Sister. He really exists.”