To Selena, With Love (11 page)

“What do you want to talk to Selena about?” Abraham demanded.

“Girlfriend problems,” Jesse said. This was the truth.

“What about your friend Chris?” Abraham asked. “Is he still seeing Selena?”

“I don’t know,” Jesse said.

“Come on,” Abraham said. “You’re best friends, right? I know Chris tells you everything. Don’t try to bullshit me.”

“What do you have against them being together?” Jesse asked.

Abraham laughed. “Chris has nothing to offer. He’s got no money and no future. He’s just a bum musician.”

“He’s my friend,” Jesse said. “I don’t want to hear you talk that way. And he and Selena love each other.”

“Chris and Selena aren’t going to be together!” Abraham shouted, as Jesse turned away to leave.

Because I was no longer with Los Dinos, Abraham had no way of keeping tabs on me. Selena told me that the band members, though supportive of us as a couple, were frankly relieved that I was off the
bus. A.B. had hired back their old guitarist and that was that, or so everyone thought.

I knew that Selena and I were going to stay together. I wasn’t thinking about marriage at that point—Selena and I were still kids—but I definitely knew that I was in love and wanted to be with her.

Back in San Antonio, I continued living in my father’s apartment and playing music. I felt free now to tell everyone about my relationship with Selena and what had happened with her family. It was odd, in a way, to find myself surrounded by people who loved me. I had been immersed in Selena’s family and in Los Dinos for so long that I’d forgotten what it felt like to have so much support. I was reminded of how good my friends and family are.

I started playing music with my friends Rudy and Albert. We managed to land some gigs, and I made decent money. All in all, I was doing fine. More than fine: for me, the pressure was off. I talked to Selena regularly on the phone and we saw each other whenever and however we could. She was still on the road a lot, but that was okay; I was busy working on the weekends and she was, too. We still had our weekdays together.

Freed of that nerve-racking situation with her father and the other members of Los Dinos, I started to enjoy my life again. Selena, though, was still suffering, having to live with the guilt of sneaking around with me behind her father’s back. She was filled with that same nervous energy I’d been feeling before I got out of the band.

Selena had always been a risk taker, but that energy compelled her to do some even crazier things while we were apart. One night, for instance, Selena called to say that she’d hurt herself bungee jumping.

“You did what?” I frowned at the phone receiver, sure I’d heard her wrong.

I hadn’t. Selena had been at a carnival with friends. One of the attractions was a tall platform where you could climb up a ladder, put on a harness attached to a bungee cord, and jump off. Selena had twisted her back in the fall; she even went to see a chiropractor, yet the pain was still acute.

“What the heck were you thinking, doing something that dangerous?” I asked. “What was going through your head to make you want to do that?”

“They dared me,” she said.

I had to laugh. As I’d discovered with Selena, it was a mistake to dare her to do anything, because ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, she would take the dare.

“So how did it feel to do it?” I asked.

“It was pretty scary jumping off and going toward the ground,” she said. “But the really scary part was, just when I was breathing a sigh of relief, the cord pulled me back up and I knew I’d have to come down again. The second time was definitely worse than the first. I will never do that again!”

About a month after leaving Los Dinos, I spent the day in San Antonio with Selena. We went out to eat, did some shopping, and then hung out at my mom’s house. In just the short time I had been with her, I could feel myself opening up, becoming more loving and generous with everyone I knew. I always told my mom and dad that I loved them now, just as Selena did with the people she cared about. I even bought small gifts for people on impulse, because I’d seen
how happy those gifts made Selena feel when she bought them—and I’d experienced the joy my friends felt when I remembered them. I never in a million years would have become a generous person if it hadn’t been for Selena showing me the way.

That particular day, Selena had escaped to see me in San Antonio by explaining to her family that she needed to run some errands and would eat dinner with some girlfriends. I had to push her to leave my mother’s house, finally, because I didn’t want her driving late at night and getting questioned at home.

“Let me take you back to your apartment, at least,” Selena said, wrapping her arms around my waist.

“No, no. I’ll call Jesse to come get me,” I said. “It’s already getting late. Plus I want to be on the phone with you when you’re driving back.”

Selena and I could talk for hours; within a few minutes of Selena leaving, we were deep into our phone conversation. Suddenly, my mother’s doorbell rang. It was after dark. Nobody ever came to my mother’s house this late.
Who could it be?
I wondered.

I was still on the phone with Selena. “Hang on,” I said and walked over to the window to peer through the blinds.

Abraham’s car was parked out front. I panicked. How had he tracked me down here? Then I remembered that I’d put my mother’s address on the payroll forms when I joined the band.

“Oh my God,” I said to Selena. “Your dad is outside.”

“What?” she shrieked. “What’s he doing there?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to hang up and find out. I’ll call you back,” I promised, and started down the hall, the phone still in my hand.

Clearly, Abraham was here to confront me. Maybe he was even checking to see if Selena was here.

Before I could make it down the hall to the front door, my stepfather opened it. I came around the corner of the hall and saw Pops with the front door slightly open. He had poked his head outside a little.

“Can I help you, sir?” Pops asked in a stern voice.

That’s when I saw that Pops had a gun in his hand. The pistol was older than I was and I’d never seen him use it; he kept that gun around only to scare intruders.

Pops had met Abraham before and knew who he was. He knew what Abraham was doing to Selena and me, too, and he didn’t like it. I guess this was his way of showing his displeasure.

“Hey, Abraham, what’s going on?” I called from behind my stepfather.

Pops turned around and said, “Oh, you know this man?”

“Yeah, Pops,” I said, keeping one eye on the gun. “That’s Abraham, Selena’s dad.”

My stepfather opened the door a little bit wider and moved out of the way. Still, he kept looking Abraham up and down, his face saying,
Just try something. Go ahead
.

I didn’t like it that my stepfather was carrying a gun. At the same time, I thought it was great that Abraham—a man so used to intimidating others, a man accustomed to having the whole world revolve around him—was seeing that I had friends and family, too.

I didn’t invite Abraham inside. I walked down the front walk toward his car, knowing he’d have to follow me, and said, “What’s up, Abraham?”

“Have you spoken to Selena?” he said.

His voice was surprisingly friendly, but maybe that had something to do with the gun. “No,” I said. “Why?”

I felt terrible for lying. At the same time, I didn’t want to make things harder on Selena than they already were. I wasn’t about to tell Abraham that I’d spent the whole day with his daughter and that he’d missed her by just a few minutes.

“She’s supposed to be home, that’s all,” Abraham said. “I was worried.”

“I’m sure she’ll be home soon,” I said. “You would have heard if something had happened.”

We had reached Abraham’s car, and that’s when I saw the map folded on the front seat in that awkward way maps get folded when people are in a hurry. This guy really had hunted me down. He wasn’t about to give up trying to destroy whatever was between Selena and me. He just had no idea that our love would be such a formidable opponent.

Courtesy of the author

S
elena and I were in a holding pattern for the next couple of months. Her father continued to see me as a threat, she said. Abraham was worried that if Selena was with me, I might pull her out of the band, and all of the work he’d done would “go down the tubes,” as he put it to Selena. He showed no signs of relenting no matter how much Selena argued, begged, or cried.

Then, on April 2, 1992, I woke up in a Corpus Christi hotel room to the sound of someone pounding on the door.

I had seen Selena the night before and spent the night in Corpus because we were out until late. My hotel, the Gulf Beach II on Surfside Boulevard, was on the other side of the harbor bridge from the city, and I usually stayed here whenever I visited Selena. We felt safer and more secluded if we were on the other side of the bridge from her family.

In fact, nobody we hung out with in Corpus ever crossed the bridge much, so I didn’t have to worry about somebody seeing my car and word getting back to Abraham that I was in town. I had the feeling that he probably drove around to every hotel in
Corpus Christi, Texas, looking for Selena and me whenever she wasn’t home at sunset. For that reason, she never spent the night with me.