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A few months after we returned from the promotional tour for Resurrection, I got a call early one morning from my friend Rhonda.
"Oh, my gosh! Congratulations, Selena!" she said.
"Rho, do you know what time it is?" I said, looking hard at the clock as I rocked Rumi who had woken up a good hour before her older brother.
"Yeah, girl, I'm sorry. But I wanted to be the first one to congratulate you."
"For what?" I asked. "What are you talking about?"
"Y'all are nominated for nine freaking GRAMMYS, Selena!" Rhonda said. "You know if you won all of them, you'd break Michael Jackson's record! THE Michael Jackson!
"Rho, shut up," I said. "I thought you can't be nominated for a GRAMMY until you've got three or four CDs. That's why it took Adonis so long to get one. It's impossible."
"Um, whose husband was the one to say the impossible is always possible?" Rhonda shot back at me.
She had a point.
"Rho."
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry," she said. "I guess I screwed up."
"Where did you hear this, anyway?" I asked.
"I'm on their website. The nominations came out today," Rhonda said.
"Well, you must've read it wrong," I said.
We hung up, but of course I had to go and check it out for myself. Sure enough, there was my name on the list. I immediately called Rhonda right back to apologize.
"Oh, my gosh! Rhonda, you were right! We were nominated!"
She laughed. "I told you, pendeja (means idiot, fool, or dummy)."
"Yeah, well. It doesn't matter, because look who we're up against," I reminded her. "We're never gonna win. I mean maybe just one, but I highly doubt we'll get all nine. Still, it's an honor to be nominated, right?"
I called everyone in the family and the band and told them the news. We decided to fly out to Los Angeles for the ceremony and just watch the show and enjoy the ride.
When we walked into the theater, I suddenly felt like I shouldn't be there at all. Whoever nominated us must have made a mistake. These other people had put out lots of albums; I hadn't worked nearly hard enough yet to deserve this honor. For some strange reason, the only thing I could think about was Rumi and Sir. I was stressing over the fact that I left them back home with Mama and Marcella, and I felt guilty for doing so, but at the same time, they were the only thing that could calm me down.
