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Joel Gabriel Garcia Molinero is born in Arauco, Chile on September 26th 1970 to parents Luis and Isabella Molinero. When he is four years old his father, who has been working in Texas on a work visa for the past three years, gets a promotion and starts the laborious process of applying for US citizenship and bringing his wife and son up to join him.
When Joel is five years old he moves to Beaumont, Texas where his father is now a site manager at the oil fields. The pay is good and it comes with benefits, which is more than Luis can say for any job he had back home. Isabella, who barely speaks a word of English, is devastated to leave her home and family but she tells herself it is all worth it when one year later Luis buys a house with a garden in some quite suburb and she is blessed with another perfect son.
Joel is six he gets a baby brother. Tomás Micheal José Molinero is born on May 3rd 1977, the first in his family to be a natural born US citizen. The name on his birth certificate reads Miller. Luis is proud and gruff and Isabella cries. Joel sits quietly in his parents bedroom with his squalling brother in his arms and is overcome with a feeling of love that stuns him. He has been so lonely since they left home, slow to make friends through the language barrier and his own innate reserved nature, but he remembers having the house full of cousins and aunts and uncles back in Chile, and he thinks a little brother is a good place to start to fill that hole.
For three years life moves along. Isabella, who was always religious but never strict, finds a community in the Spanish speaking catholic church and throws herself into it heart and soul. Eventually one of her older brothers and her youngest sister both make the move to the US as well, but the church remains her primary community for a long time. Luis works long hours and comes home smelling like crude oil, but on the weekends he throws a baseball with his sons and works on his wood carvings, a skill which he learned from his father and which he has started to teach to Joel. He is proud to be an American and proud to provide for his family and proud to be a man.
When Joel is nine his father is injured on the job. He spends two weeks in the hospital and when he comes home he is given a prescription for pain medication and a permanent limp. He gets a hefty pay out from his boss and a sincere get well soon card, but everybody knows that he won’t be working with heavy machinery ever again. The loss hits Luis hards. He finds work at an auto shop that pays ok, but he starts coming home drunk and he never gets off the pills. What was once the occasional temper turns into a constant low simmering rage that can be sparked into a flame at the slightest provocation. Isabella picks up work as a maid to help cover the bills and Luis never forgives the slight to his masculine pride. His displeasure blooms across her skin like sickly blue flowers.
Joel learns very quickly how to fill in the gaps. Luis is too drunk and Isabella suddenly too busy so it falls to Joel to make sure his brother has lunch money and clean clothes and to make sure that his homework gets done. When Luis slaps his wife across the face for leaving dirty dishes in the sink, Joel starts taking care of that too. It becomes a compulsion that haunts him the rest of his life, the panic attacks sparked by a messy room one of the many legacies that his father bestows on him. A fear that he has the same potential rage in him is the other.
When Joel is ten he makes the mistake of practicing his guitar while Luis is hungover. It had been a gift for his ninth birthday and he spends more time practicing then he does on any of his school work. That morning he’s working his way through the Beatles’ Blackbird when his father comes crashing down the stairs and beats the guitar in over his head.
When Joel is 14 he tries to fight back. He has been getting bigger and stronger everyday, already tall for his age, but his father has always been a beast of a man, even drunk and lame he sends his son to the hospital with two broken ribs, a broken arm, and a severe concussion. Tommy, eight years old but pulled along to translate for his mother, watches the still form of his older brother laying on the hospital bed and wonders why his mother is telling the doctors that his brother fell out of tree. He may be little but he knows that this is something that his father could get into trouble for, the police kind of trouble that might even get him taken away for a long time. He doesn’t understand why his mother doesn’t want that. Joel is always protecting him from schoolyard bullies and their own father, if he had the chance to return the favor he would do it in a heartbeat. But his mother swears up and down that it was an accident and Tommy tries not to resent her for it.
When Joel is 16 Isabella gets sick. He drops out of school and his uncle pulls some strings to get him on full time on the construction crew even though he is two years too young. He was supposed to be the first in his family to graduate high school, but that honor will have to fall to Tommy. They still have some money left over from when Luis was laid off, and between that and their meager health insurance plan they should be able to cover the hospital bills, but Luis is hardly ever home these days and someone has to keep food on the table and the lights on in the house. Their aunt Lisa helps drive their mom to and from doctor appointments, but she works part time and has three kids at home, so Joel learns to juggle work with getting Tommy through school and helping their mom though bouts of sickness or when she’s too weak to get out of bed. He never resents her for the extra work, he’s just happy to be needed.
Isabella survives her first fight with cancer, but when Joel, her reliable, responsible son, comes home at 18 with the news that he got his girlfriend pregnant, she almost wishes she hadn't. The values of the church have sunk deep into her heart, and the idea of her first born living in such sin as to have a child out of wedlock, and with a none catholic girl at that, sends her into tears. Until then Joel had always been good about attending Sunday church for his mothers sake, but after the fight that follows his announcement he stops going and starts looking for an apartment to rent. He doesn’t tell his mother that he would marry Joanna in a heartbeat if he thought it was something she wanted, and ignores the part of his brain that tells him he should take Joanna’s resistance to marriage as a warning.
Joel met Joanna when he was still attending school and they kept in touch even when he dropped out. The third child of five, Joanna was thrilled to be going out with a boy her college educated parents were bound to hate. Joel was handsome and strong and swore and drank like someone much older then their tender teenage years should know how. He was all rough hands and awkward words, kind eyes and a beat up truck she would sneak into on weekends. He would take her to see the city lights and she would dream of him driving her all the way out of Texas and away from her dull suburban life. He would sneak into her bedroom on weeknights and pretend he wasn’t starving from giving his last meal to Tommy when she would sneak him up food from her parent’s overstocked pantry. He would dream of giving her a house of their own with enough food to feed his whole family. They were both in love but not with the right version of each other.
The pregnancy is a surprise to both of them, but Joel never once considers walking away. The cramped one bedroom apartment in Beaumont was not what either of them had in mind, but when Joanna told him she was pregnant and keeping it, he thought there were worse ways to start a family. So they were a bit young, so his mother wasn’t talking to him and his anxiety was keeping him up all night and his little brothers’ teenage rebellions were toeing the line into real trouble, Joel was ready.
Joel is nineteen when he is remade. Sarah Grace Isabella Miller is born on July 2nd 1989, and the second he lays eyes on her Joel knows that nothing will ever be the same. There is a new center of gravity to his world, and every single part of him is better for it. So consumed by love for his new daughter, Joel doesn’t notice the growing distance in Joanna’s eyes until its too late. He had heard of postpartum depression, of course. Had read about it in one of his anxiety fueled spirals, but he always thought that with a little care and support Joanna would get better. He didn’t complain about taking on the brunt of the baby care duties even though his work only offered two weeks paid leave and he had to burn through all of his sick days and saved up vacation to stay home with Sarah for as long as possible. He doesn’t complain about Joanna going out with her friends even though its been months since they’ve had any time alone together as a couple, doesn’t say anything when she claims headaches with increasing frequency to get out of taking care of Sarah. He knows that the tiny apartment and his subpar cooking isn’t the glamorous life she wants, but he knows that if he just keeps working hard that in a few short years he’ll be able to afford a place of their own, a real house with a real garden and a room for Sarah to grow up in and Joanna can go to school and get a degree and their life together will get better. She’ll get better. He doesn’t see how everything he keeps striving towards just pushes her further away. Joanna doesn’t want the house and the nine to five and the baby she can barely comprehend as her own. She is nineteen and she feels ugly and lame and old when her life was just supposed to be getting started. Her ticket out of here ended up being just another tie holding her in place and its not long until she finally snaps.
Joel is a 20 year old father with a ten month old infant when he comes home from work to an empty house and a single note. He never sees Joanna again.
Isabella shows up the day after Joanna leaves and bullies her son into moving back in with her. She thought it was wrong for Joel to live so freely with a women, but seeing her son drowning under heartbreak and single fatherhood is more than she can bare. She tells her church friends to hold their tongues and stops listening when they offer their coundolescense. She knows she wasn’t always there for her sons, but this she can do. There are worse fates, she decides, then to be a grandmother at 39.
When Joel is 22 Isabella gets sick a second time and dies within months of her diagnoses. The cancer this time as swift and deadly as it had been mild last time. Tommy is sixteen and wild with grief. Sarah is two and confused why her abuela is no longer there to take care of her. Joel puts his grief in a box and buries it deep. He has a family to take care.
Luis has been dead for two years, died somewhere in a ditch after a drunken brawl, so Joel sells the house and moves the family to Austin. There are too many bad memories in Beaumont for them to linger, and besides Austin has much better schools and opportunities for Sarah. He gets a job with a bigger construction company and after years of pinching pennies and going hungry so his daughter and little brother can eat, he starts buying name brand cereal instead of off brand and on sale.
Joel is 24 When Tommy graduates from high school. He takes a week off work and takes his family down to Galveston and feels an inordinate amount of pride when he can splurge on an ocean view hotel room. A week later Tommy breaks the news that he’s signing up with the Army. They have a fight but Joel interrupts his own rant with a panic attack at the thought of his little brother so far away and without his protection and doesn’t talk to Tommy for the rest of the day. When it comes time to drive him to basic he spends the night crying in the safety of the bathroom. Tommy had always been a wild child, prone to partying and the kind of rash decision making that thought dropping illegal fireworks into the water tower was a smart idea. But Joel always thought that he would be there to pick up the pieces and clean up his bloody knees. He’s hurt and angry and terrified that he’s failed Tommy somehow. That it’s his fault his brother his leaving him when he has always been the most steady constant in his life. Tommy doesn’t know how to tell Joel that it has nothing to do with him and everything to do with Tommy needing to get out of the shadow of his own life. Abusive dad and sick mother and protective but overbearing older brother and somewhere in all that mess is a little boy who just wants his life to mean something. He’ll explain it all to Joel when he gets back.
Joel is 28 when he gets his brother back from the Army. He has a basement in his house that he renovates into an apartment for Tommy. He’s been his own boss for two years and he has a job held open for his brother whenever he’s ready. What he doesn’t have is a magic wand to make all the damage go away. Tommy was always a gentle touch. Empathetic and kind where Joel was closed off and rough. It seems a particular kind of cruelty to Joel to have such a gentle kid go off to war, regardless of how strong he knows his little brother to be. He does what he can and tries not to feel like the little brother he knew is sand slipping through his fingers. He picks up his passed out form from bathroom floors and strong arms him into going to therapy. He does his best to hide the worst from his daughter but still keeps himself up at night with the guilt. But the thought of not being there for his little brother, his first responsibility even if Sarah is his most important one, is unthinkable. And besides, Tommy loves his niece almost as if she were his own, Joel knows that if there is anything that can pull his brother back from the brink, it will be that.
Joel is 32, soon to be 33, and he almost thinks he might be happy. Lord knows he works too much and can’t always remember the shopping list and he misses more of Sarahs’ soccer matches than he’d like to admit, but he’s beginning to let himself belief that he got at least some things right. He has a daughter who is smarter and kinder and funnier than he ever could have hoped for, she’s the top player for her soccer team and president of her student council and somehow doesn’t hate him for all the late nights and burnt meals and all the things she’s had to do for herself that he should have been there for. He has a brother who finally moved into his own apartment and hasn’t been arrested in at least a year. His construction company has finally started to really take off and he’s thinking about bidding on some bigger projects next year, get in on all the massive development projects that are taking over Austin. Just because he hates the condos don’t mean they don’t make good money building them.
He finally got his anxiety diagnosed when a bad episode had him yelling at a four year Sarah for leaving her clothes spread as a tripping hazard over the floor and the guilt over loosing his temper had him so worked up that he ran out of the house in his pajamas and accidentally locked himself out, forcing him to break into his own home at 10 pm while his daughter cried bloody murder on the other side of the door. The medication isn’t perfect but it helps. He thinks life is starting to settle down around him, and if he can keep coasting in this good fortune until Sarah inevitably goes off to college and throws his life into a tizzy all over again, then he’ll be more than happy. He has never been a man of ambitions or aspirations. He doesn’t need a higher purpose than caring for his loved ones and he’s never sought after glamour or thrills. All he wants his exactly right here. Now it can only start getting better.
Joel is 33 for a day when his world ends. The rest of the world is burning all around him but he only has eyes for the little girl in his arms. He’s failed, he’s failed, he’s failed.