Unbreakable: My Story, My Way (2 page)

I vowed that I would never tell anyone of my shame. They say that when you keep a secret, it eats you up inside, but I felt that it was better that way. I wanted to appear strong in front of my children and my family. I didn’t want anybody to know. And I wanted to maintain my persona as Jenni, the Rivera rebel who had never lost a fight. But deep down inside I knew I had lost a piece of myself that I would never recover. My soul had been shattered, but to the outside world I did just as I had been taught since I was a little girl: I kept my head up and continued forward. It is, after all, the Rivera way.

The Rivera Way

Que no hay que llegar primero

Pero hay que saber llegar.

(
You don’t have to arrive first

but to know how to arrive.
)

—from “El Rey”

_{My father, Pedro Rivera,}
first came to the United States in the sixties. He left my mother, Rosa, and my two brothers, Pilly (Pedro) and Gus (Gustavo), behind in Sonora, Mexico, with the promise to return for them when he had enough money. He headed to California in hopes that he would find work. He crossed the border illegally with three other men in a dangerous and risky passage. When they finally made it to San Diego, the other men wanted to sleep, but my dad is one of those people who always has to keep working. If there is one thing he doesn’t know how to do, it’s rest.

Dad left his three companions sleeping in the shade and walked to the nearest gas station. He asked the man at the counter if there was somewhere he could work. The man told him to go to Fresno; that
was where the work was at the time. “Great,” my dad said. “How do I get there?” The man told him to take the Greyhound bus. The problem was, by the time my father made it to San Diego he had only sixty cents in his pocket, which was not enough to pay the Greyhound fare. When he told the man that he had no money, the man paid for his bus ticket and gave him an extra $20. To this day, my dad cries when he remembers that moment. It changed his life.

So my father followed the man’s advice and went to Fresno, where he started to pursue the American dream. He worked in the fields, picking grapes and strawberries. For the first few months, he lived with friends he had met there. He finally saved enough to rent a little apartment and then return to Mexico to get my mother and brothers.

But while my parents were in Mexico getting ready to leave for the United States, my mother became pregnant with me. She was twenty years old and terrified. She was leaving for this new country where she didn’t speak the language, they didn’t have money, and she already had two young children. The last thing she wanted or needed was another mouth to feed. So she tried, in every way possible, to abort me. She threw herself into burning-hot water. She moved the refrigerator and other heavy furniture, hoping that the pressure and strain would terminate the pregnancy. She drank teas and other home remedies that friends told her about. Nothing worked. Many years later, when I was sitting at her kitchen table and telling her I was about to give up on life, she told me this story. She said that back then she knew that I was a fighter, that I would always be a fighter.

I was born on July 2, 1969, in the UCLA hospital, the first Rivera born on US soil. The hospital was new and they had a program through which it only cost $84 to have a baby. Thank God, since my parents did not have health insurance. When I was growing up, my father would always say I was their cheapest baby. They named me
Dolores, after my maternal grandmother. My middle name was going to be Juana, after my paternal grandmother. Dolores Juana. Can you imagine? Ugliest name ever! My mother had the good sense to say, “We can’t do this to her. Isn’t there an English version of Juana we can use? Or what about using your cousin’s name, Janney?” My father caved and I was christened Dolores Janney. Still not exactly the most beautiful name you’ve ever heard. I never let my parents off the hook for that one. “I was a baby! How do you give a child a grown woman’s name?” I would say. I never went by the name Dolores (though if my brothers and sister wanted to piss me off, that’s what they would call me, or Lola). As a child, I was always Janney or Chay.

I was a fair-skinned, redheaded baby. My parents said that when they brought me home my older brothers, who were five and three, instantly fell in love with me. Pilly and Gus were instructed to protect me and care for me. I was “the queen of the house” and “la Reina de Long Beach,” as my father said. If anything bad ever happened to me, it was on them. So they treated me as if I were another little boy. Since they had to protect me, they wanted to make sure I was tough enough to defend myself.

Financially, things were not good during those first few years. My parents moved us from Culver City to Carson to Wilmington and then to Long Beach. We were constantly on the move because we were always being evicted. My mother told my father that she would not have another baby until she had her own house. That’s when they bought the small two-bedroom on Gale Avenue near Hill Street on Long Beach’s West Side. The area was known for gang warfare, but it was the first place where the Riveras finally had a plot of American land to call their own. It was home.

I was almost two when we moved into that house, and my mother immediately became pregnant with her fourth child. Soon after she found out that she was pregnant, she got the news that her father
was dying in Mexico. She couldn’t go back to see him because there was no money, and because if she crossed over the border again, she might not have been able to come back. One of the dilemmas of pursuing the American dream is that you sacrifice being able to ever see the friends and family you left behind. Back then I never realized how hard it must have been for my mother to be living in this new country, barely getting by financially, with three young children and another on the way. But how could I have known? My mother never let on that anything was wrong. She kept her chin up and acted as if everything were just fine, so we did too.

Mommy would have me rub her belly to get me acquainted with the little girl that was on the way. She wanted to have a baby girl so I could have a sister and we could grow up together and be lifelong friends, just like her and her sisters. It would be perfect. Two boys and two girls. But my mother’s wishes didn’t come true. She ended up having a little boy with huge brown eyes and beautifully formed lips. They named him Guadalupe Martin Rivera, and he was born on January 30, 1972. As a little boy we called him Pupi, and then later on we called him Lupe.

When Pupi was a baby, I didn’t want anything to do with him. When he cried, my mom would say, “Jenni, can you calm the baby?” I would go over to his crib, pat him for a few seconds, and say,
“No ores, no ores,”
which means “Don’t pray. Don’t pray.” I was trying to say
“No llores”
(Don’t cry), but I couldn’t pronounce my
l
’s. Either way it didn’t matter what I was saying, he would never listen to me. He just kept on crying. I’d get frustrated and I would storm out of the room and yell, “Fine! Pray then!” And that’s pretty much how our relationship has always been. Because we were so close in age, we shared a special bond. We would get frustrated with one another, we would torture each other (I used to get him naked and lock him outside the house
quite often), but in the end we always came together as partners in crime.

My new little brother was an attractive child with a special charm. My mother always reminded us that even though Pupi had my father’s body type and character, he looked like her handsome brothers, especially Tío Ramón. I sometimes think that this was why Pupi was her favorite, or at least that’s what we all thought. He always received tons of attention from my mom and the rest of us because he was the baby for so long. He was the reigning king for six years until my mother was pregnant once more.

At that point I was nine years old and I was so sick of boys. I told my mother, “You better have a girl.” On the day she left for the hospital I said, “If you don’t have a girl, don’t bother coming back.” But out came this beautiful, ten-pound baby boy.

My mother called the house and said to me, “
Mija
, I’m sorry, but the hospital we came to only had boys.”

I screamed at her, “Well then, why didn’t you go to a different hospital?”

“It was too far away. We didn’t have time.”

That wasn’t a good enough explanation for me. “Don’t come back!” I told her, and hung up the phone.

Two days later she returned home with this bundle in her arms, my brother Juan. Lupe didn’t want him either. How dare anyone take his title as the baby of the family? Lupe wouldn’t even look at him, but I eventually gave in and said, “Fine. Let me see him.”

Mom knelt down and pulled the blanket back.

I saw this gorgeous little face. I fell completely in love. “He’s beautiful! I’m going to call him Angel Face.”

“So we can keep him?” Mom asked.

“Yes, we can keep him.”

He was so perfect that I fully forgave him for being a boy, even though this meant I was the only girl in a family of four boys. I became a tomboy by necessity. I never played with dolls because my brothers would ruin them if I even tried. For a while my mother bought me every new doll that she could afford, and within a day or two the boys would cut off its head or arms. They would hide the dolls or bury them in the backyard. My mother would ask me where they went, but I’d never tell. We never told on each other. That was an unwritten rule. Instead, I asked for cars and marbles, just like the boys. One year I even asked for a lawn mower. I learned to play baseball, just like the boys. And I learned to fight, stick up for myself, and take no shit, just like the boys.

By the time I turned eleven, my mother was pregnant once more. On July 2, 1981, the day I turned twelve, I was having my birthday party. It was not exactly a huge affair since the only guests were my parents, my brothers, and two girls from the neighborhood. I was always the oddball and the bookworm, so I didn’t have a group of friends to invite. We were just about to cut the cake when my mother’s water broke. Everyone sprang into action to get mom out the door while I sat there with my cake and made my wish. “Please, God, bring me a sister,” I begged. Hours later, we got the phone call. My wish had come true. I finally got my real-life sister, my baby doll that my brothers could not destroy. At that moment, Rosie was the greatest birthday present that God had ever given me. I adored Rosie like no other and spoiled her in every way that I could. When she was a little girl, she hated to brush her hair and wear clothes, and it would make my mother upset. I would say, “Leave her. Let her be naked. Who cares if her hair is uncombed? It only matters that she is happy.” I was her protector and she was my shadow, following me everywhere I went. I made it my mission to shield her from anything bad and give her everything I hadn’t had as a child.

We grew up on the West Side of a racially divided Long Beach, and that meant fighting was a part of life. It was the only way to survive in the barrio. From an early age I remember witnessing the rumbles in the streets. I also remember being aware of the way girls were treated and perceived in the neighborhood.

On my first day of school at Garfield Elementary I saw the boys coming up behind the girls as they bent over to drink from the water fountain. They would grab them by the waist and pretend to hump them. It looked a lot like what the male dogs did to the female dogs in our neighborhood. How gross! That the girls didn’t do anything about it made it even worse. I told myself that if any boy ever tried to do that to me, I would knock him out, just as my brothers had ordered.

When I was in first grade, Arturo, the boy I had a crush on, asked me if it was okay to put his hand up my dress. His daddy had told him that was why girls wore dresses and skirts. That was the end of my crush on that little punk and the last time I wore a dress to school. For years my mother would fuss over my tomboy clothes, but I never told her why I refused to wear girlie skirts and dresses. I did tell my older brothers, Pilly and Gus, about Arturo’s request. They warned me that they didn’t want to hear from their friends that their sister was being “felt up on” by the boys at school. “If we’re going to be hearing rumors, it better be that you socked them or kicked them in the balls!” they warned me. “And don’t you dare come home crying either!”

I remembered their words one afternoon when I was walking home from school with my mom and Pupi. I was nine and my little brother was seven. My mother was holding Pupi’s hand and I was next to them. All of the sudden I felt a hand swipe the bottom of my butt and then work its way up before I turned around to face Cedric,
a black boy from the neighborhood. I didn’t even think about it. I was swift. All the wrestling my brothers had taught me came in handy. I grabbed him by his Jheri curls and slammed him to the ground, sat on him, and got to punching. I could hear Pupi’s cheering and my mother screaming for me to stop. No way! I was enjoying it too much. “Say you’re sorry, punk,” I demanded. I didn’t stop punching until Cedric finally apologized. When I got up, Pupi yelled, “Now stomp on his balls!” So I did.