Free Unbreakable: My Story, My Way by Jenni Rivera

don’t fuck with the Riveras.
    Breaking away from the heavy chains that attached me to Trino was one of the smartest moves I ever made. It was also one of the hardest. I truly loved him, but I loved my children more and I could not go back to him again.
    About a year after Trino and I separated, the real estate market took a negative turn once more. Meanwhile, the album I had recorded for Balboa Records was going nowhere fast because they refused to promote it. I was in deep shit and struggling to keep up the house payments while supporting the kids on my own, since Trino refused to help financially. I was forced to put my pride on the shelf and go on welfare, which was demoralizing.
    One month I couldn’t pay the water bill, so I told the kids they could only use the restroom at school. But one day Chiquis forgot. She pooped in the house and couldn’t flush it. I saw her dart out of the bathroom and down the hallway. I knew something was up. I walked toward the bathroom, where I found Jacqie eating her sister’s poop. She was covered in it. The hairbrush was covered in it. It was smeared across the bathroom tiles. I screamed in horror. I had no way of cleaning her up, and she just kept saying, “I’m sorry, Mommy. I’m sorry.” I couldn’t help but laugh. I threw away her clothes, the brush, and the bathroom towels, and then washed Jacqie with the neighbor’s hose.
    Although times were difficult for me economically, emotionally I was much more stable. I was free from Trino’s control, from his constant judgment and put-downs, his narrow-mindedness, and his volatile temper. Then the universe threw me a bone and the real estate market picked back up, even stronger than before. I went from beingon welfare to making as much as $24,000 a month. For the first time in a long time I felt as if I could breathe again.
    On February 25, 1995, I went out with a friend to El Farallon. Marisela, Chalino Sánchez’s widow, had become a close friend after his death. We became each other’s confidantes and shoulders to cry on when we needed support. Just as I had been there for her after Chalino’s death, she wanted to be there for me during my hardships. My brother Juan, who was sixteen years old at the time, had been arrested and convicted for the attempted sale and transportation of narcotics. Marisela knew my brother was my angel baby. He was my “roll dog.” I’d sneak him into the clubs and bars and anywhere I went to have fun. He was my homey, my Angel Face, and my protector. When Trino came around to my house on Fifty-Fifth Street to try to beat me up, I would call Juan. He would run the three blocks from my parents’ house to my house with a baseball bat in his hand. He’d defend me and scare Trino away. He would tie a naked man to a tree to defend my honor.
    I was devastated that I wouldn’t see Juan for six months while he did time at Camp Mendenhall at Lake Hughes. I broke down when I heard the news from my sobbing mother. Marisela wanted to make sure that I didn’t stay locked up in the house crying, so that night she took me out to see El Puma de Sinaloa, my favorite local artist, who would be performing at El Farallon.
    I still wasn’t giving my music my full attention because the money was so unstable and the industry was so unreliable. From the time I was a child, I have been a businesswoman before all else. I was making a great living in real estate. I had purchased a home in Compton on Aprilia Avenue, where I lived with my three children, and I didn’t have to worry about whether I was going to be able to pay the water bill anymore. I wasn’t about to give all that up and fall at the mercy ofa shady, often cruel industry. Not until that shady, often cruel industry offered to promote me and pay up. So even though Marisela and many others believed in me and tried to get me to focus on my singing, I just couldn’t do it. It was still a secondary concern.
    However, a corrido I wrote called “La