Unbreakable: My Story, My Way (10 page)

By the time Rosie walked into the office I was sitting at my desk drinking water, trying to make it to the sixty-four ounces that my gynecologist insisted I drink each day. When Rosie sat in the chair across from me, I sensed something was off. “What’s up, Sister? How was school today?” She sat quietly. She seemed sad as she stared down at the floor. With Rosie you never knew how she was feeling on any given day. She was so quiet sometimes, and she kept to herself.

“Rosie, what’s wrong? I feel like you have something to say but you’re scared to tell me.” I looked her straight in her beautiful, big brown eyes. “You know you can tell me anything. You can always trust me. I will never judge you.” She still didn’t speak. “Are you holding back on telling me something because I am pregnant? Whatever it is, I can take it, Rosie.” She began crying and my heart broke. “I can take it, Rosie,” I said again as the tears rolled down her face.

“Yes, I have something to tell you,” she said. “For many years I have wanted to tell you but I couldn’t.” She was sobbing.

“Yes?” I asked, though I was scared to hear whatever was coming.

“Since I was seven years old, I was sexually abused. It stopped when I was eleven, but I never had the courage to tell you.”

My body went numb. I don’t know if my heart started beating faster or if it stopped beating altogether. “By who? Who did it?”

She brought her hands to her face. She wouldn’t respond.

“Do I know this person?”

She nodded her head yes.

I started to name people and finally she stopped me and said, “Trino.”

“How? When? Where?” I sobbed. Rosie seemed unready to tell me all the details, but I had no doubt that he had done it. The son of a bitch had committed the unforgivable.

How could he do this to my sister? He knew how much I loved her. He knew how much she meant to me. Why would he do this?

Rosie said, “Wait. There is more.” I looked at her face and she said, “Where is Chiquis?”

I could not breathe. I knew what that meant. I thought my heart could not break any more until that moment. My two babies. How could he have done this to my two baby dolls?

I dropped to my knees and screamed without pause. I screamed so loud that my parents heard me from the offices of their record label across the street, they heard me at the apartments next door, and all throughout the building. Rosie was terrified of my reaction. She ran outside to meet everyone who had run across the street to see what had happened to me. I ran after her. Then I ran back in the office and back out. I didn’t know what to do. Ramona, my brother Pete’s wife, was the first one on the scene. My brother Lupillo followed her, and then my parents and the employees at the record label and the neighbors at the grocery store next door. I couldn’t speak. It was too much for me to handle. The pain was unbearable. The tough girl I had been all my life was breaking into pieces. I needed more than valor and bravery. I needed direction.

“God. Dear Lord, please help me,” I prayed. “I need you. Please show me what to do. Take this pain from me. I can’t handle this alone. Please don’t abandon me now.” I was shaking, crying, and dying inside.

Chiquis was at the library, and I sent my sister-in-law Brenda to go get her. Chiquis walked into the office and she seemed to know what was going on right away. She saw the tears. She saw the commotion. I asked everyone to leave the room. I needed to be alone with my daughter. She was only twelve years old, but she was mature beyond her years. She sat in the same chair Rosie had sat in, knowing something was terribly wrong. I sat at my desk across from her.

“I need you to tell me the truth,” I told her.

“This is about my daddy, right? It’s about what he does to me.” She spoke in a soft voice; her little sneakers were shaking on the ground.

I tried to be strong for her. Though I was broken inside, I couldn’t show my baby. “Yes. Don’t be scared. Mommy will understand.” She was so brave as she told me the hell she had been living through since she was seven years old. I hugged my daughter close and kept repeating to her, “Mama is going to fix it. Mama is going to make it okay.”

Both Chiquis and Rosie told me in detail when, where, how much, how often, and since when it had been happening. Everything. They both knew all about sex. Trino had done it all. He had taken their innocence since the ages of seven and eight. It had gone on for four years each. Where was I? Why hadn’t I figured it out? Why hadn’t they ever told me?

Suddenly my sadness and pain turned to anger. I ran out of the office looking for my brothers. I wanted to kill Trino that very day. I wanted to beat him with a baseball bat. Lupillo and Juan agreed with me that we should get rid of him ourselves, but Pete, Gus, and our parents told us that was the worst thing we could do.

Ramona prayed for us to understand that we had to file a police report. We had to do things right. I was too filled with anger and thoughts of revenge. Fuck the cops. I was going to kill that sick fuck myself. I threw a baseball bat in the trunk of my car. I was on a mission, but then my father pleaded with me not to leave.

“I don’t want any of my children incarcerated for homicide,” he said. “That’s not in my plans for my family’s life. We have to be civilized and allow this to be dealt with legally. The police will take care of him.”

My mother echoed his thoughts. “Your father is right. The vengeance is not yours. It is God’s. He will take care of it. Please don’t make this worse than it already is. We cannot suffer more tragedy.”

My parents’ tears and visible pain held me back.

We went down to the station to file a police report. I sat in the room with Rosie and then with Chiquis as they told the officers, in detail, what Trino had done to them. It was horrific to listen to, but I had to be strong for them. I had to show them that they were safe and they needed to tell as much as they could remember. Trino had started with Rosie one night after he and I got in a huge fight. After that Trino would come for her every time we had a fight. It was as though he was trying to get back at me through my beloved sister. I couldn’t breathe thinking back on all the fights we had through the years and the fear Rosie must have been feeling each time. The guilt was crushing me. Trino had told Rosie that he would kill me and our whole family if she ever told anyone, so she stayed quiet. He stopped with her once she developed pubic hair, which apparently grossed him out, she said. And that’s when he started on Chiquis, or so we thought. Chiquis could remember it starting at seven, but afterward I took the girls for physical examinations and the evidence suggested that he had molested her as early as two years old. I had my second daughter, Jacqie, examined as well, and there was the same evidence, though thankfully Jacqie had no recollection of any abuse. I truly believe that God protected her from the trauma.

When we got back to our house in Compton, Chiquis told me why she’d never confessed what had been happening to her. “I knew you would kill him. I know you, Mom. Then I wouldn’t have a mommy or a
daddy. He would be dead and you would be in jail. I learned to forgive my daddy for what he would do to me. Pastor Tin would say that God wants us to forgive. That’s what I learned from church, Mommy.”

I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t know what was right or what was wrong. I was going crazy.

That night my insanity became even more intense. The kids and Juan were all asleep, but I was wide awake at 3:00 a.m., sitting on the couch in front of the TV, holding a butcher knife in my hand. I wanted to kill him or myself that night. I didn’t want to live anymore. What was the use? The domestic violence. The difficulties of living on welfare and the constant struggles. The rape. Now this. How could all of this happen in one lifetime? How could this be happening to me and my family? This was the kind of stuff I had watched on
The Cristina Show
or
Oprah
, but I had never expected to live it myself. I didn’t know how to overcome this. I didn’t know if I could.

I cried like a baby that night and many nights to come. Where was God? Why did He allow this to happen? I thought He never gave us more than we could handle? How did He expect me to handle this? What could I possibly learn from such a horrifying experience? What was the lesson behind it?

I didn’t even want to know the answers to my questions. I just wanted the pain to go away. I wanted to take my life. But God had other plans for me. He did not let me go that night. He gave me the strength to move forward, slowly, with a heavy heart and heavy soul.

Every time Trino was supposed to take the kids, I would make up some excuse so I could have the time to press formal charges. After a few weeks Trino caught on, disappeared, and became a fugitive from the law.

I wouldn’t lay eyes on Trino again until nine years later, but my brothers never ceased to be on the lookout for him. My brothers know
everyone underground. People would say to them, “Trino is going to be at this party on this day and at this place.” One night we all went to a house in Long Beach where Trino was supposed to be. My brothers were all outside waiting for him. I was nervous. Part of me didn’t want him to show up because I knew my brother Juan would kill him. Trino was always afraid of Juan. Though he was the youngest Rivera, he was also the biggest and the toughest. When it comes to protecting his family, he does not hold back. We waited for a while but Trino didn’t show up. That probably saved Trino’s life and saved Juan from being put behind bars.

Another time I was having a barbecue and Lupe was late. We were calling him, but there was no answer. Finally Lupe got to my house, flustered and out of breath. He had seen Trino on the freeway. Lupe started chasing after Trino in his car. For a good thirty minutes they were on a high-speed chase on the freeway before Lupe lost Trino. We knew Trino was in the area, but he had once again escaped.

I can say that when I found out what Trino had been doing to my babies, everything changed for me. My joy, my motherly dignity, my will to live, were ripped away from me. Though I had experienced difficulties in my life previously, I found out then what true suffering meant. Every day, every minute, every second hurt. The pain and trauma of that time is indescribable.

As a result of my stress and mental exhaustion, our baby girl, Jenicka Priscilla López, was born a few weeks early, on October 3, 1997. I had once prayed for a child who looked like me, and my prayer was answered with Jenicka. The second people saw her they said, “She’s your twin!” (And they still do.) She was so perfect, so sweet, and so easygoing. From the time she was an infant I called her Shaniqua.
Don’t ask me why. I gave all of my kids (and anyone else close to me) crazy nicknames that make sense only to me. Jenicka got the most: Shaniqua, Shanisse, Chantilly Lace, and Ebatanisha Washington.

I tried my best to be a happy mother to my newborn girl and my older children. I pushed myself to continue being a devoted wife to my new husband. I still sold real estate and worked part-time at my father’s record label just as I did when I was pregnant. I cleaned the house and woke up at 4:00 a.m. to cook my husband’s breakfast and lunch for the day before he left for work at 5:00 a.m. I tended to my husband’s needs as best I could. I wanted him to be proud of me. I needed his love and support more than ever before, and I didn’t want to fail as a wife once again.

Unfortunately, by the time November came around, only a month after Jenicka was born, something did not feel right. Juan wasn’t as attentive or caring toward me. He seemed distant and began acting weird. He wasn’t as happy to spend time with me as he was before. Making our relationship work was no longer his priority and focus. At first, I wanted to shrug it off and act as if I hadn’t noticed the changes. I continued to be affectionate toward him although he wasn’t affectionate in return. I feared that he would stop loving me. I cried on my knees in desperation as I prayed to God every night: “Please, God, not that. I can’t go through this right now. Please make him love me like he did before.”

We began fighting about everything. Everything I did bothered him. From the words I said, to going to church, to the music I listened to. He didn’t like me playing Tupac or Biggie when he was around. I would change it to something more romantic, such as Sade or Kenny G, but that would only make things worse. We had to listen to the shit he wanted to play. The cooking wasn’t good enough anymore. The sink wasn’t clean enough. The kids weren’t quiet enough. I wasn’t good enough either.

One night the kids and I were sitting in the living room of our Compton home watching the Grammys. Juan wasn’t there. He had been spending a lot of time out of the house, and I had started to wonder whether he was cheating on me. He’d go to work early, nicely dressed and smelling good. But Juan has always taken care of himself, I told myself. And he loved me. And he knew how much I was going through. He wouldn’t dare put me through more. I was dealing with Trino and the girls. We had just had a baby, and we had gotten married to save him from deportation. All of these thoughts were going through my head as I was watching the winners walk to the podium to give their thank-you speeches.