The Man of the Casa

Written in response to the news of May 11, 2011

In the news today, they did not tell the story of Juan Miguel Carlos D’Arcy, a fifteen-year-old youth smuggled from the tenements of Mexico City to the Mission district of San Francisco and so scared his stomach hides behind his ribcage. Juan D’Arcy, sent by his widowed, walking-dead mother to make money so she can pay the rent and help his three baby sisters feel full and cared for and pretty. As soon as Juan tastes the salt in San Francisco’s sea air and sees the outside of the lopsided apartment — painted purple, green and brown — that he will share with his Tío Ricardo Alejandro Perfecto Lopez and his large family, Juan knows two things for sure. First, Juan knows his Tío, a painter, is terrible at his profession and second, Juan knows he will not be happy in this place. The dreaded inkling that had dogged Juan for weeks is confirmed now by the pattern of watery, yellowed circles on the apartment’s curtains, like moons trying to be suns.

In the news today, they did not tell the story of Juan’s murdered father, John James Paul D’Arcy, killed when Juan was twelve-years-old, shot to death in a bar in Mexico City by Oscar Cesar Martinez after a fight broke out because Oscar called Juan’s Irish father, ‘Mick.’ That last, fatal night in the bar Oscar Martinez said ‘Mick’ like it was not a name but a brick he’d fired. Oscar slapped John’s back like it was another brick landing and his sour mouth came too close to John’s neck, said again, “Mick.”

Juan’s mother maintains she is not angry with Juan’s father because he’s dead or was too quick to anger, but because he was so careless of his life, of leaving her and his four children. She tells Juan and his three baby sisters that the greatest thing their father left them was his memory and his name. D’Arcy, a name that is, she repeats at every opportunity, proud, noble, and fierce. In the few hours since Juan’s arrival to San Francisco, his Tío Ricardo has already set him to work sanding rich people’s walls. Tío Ricardo has also managed in so short a time to repeatedly spit out the name ‘D’Arcy’ like it’s a rotted, broken tooth and has twice said, “Your mother, my sister, should have stuck with her own kind.”

In the news today, they did not tell the story of Juan’s oldest San Francisco cousin, Kira Maria Esmerelda Lopez. Juan’s first night in San Francisco, Kira is forced by Tío Ricardo to take Juan with her for Friday bowling night. Really, Kira takes Juan to Ocean Beach where almost a hundred of the city’s high schoolers have gathered to drink beer, swallow pills, and watch a bonfire of driftwood and dreams. As soon as Juan steps out of the Lopez family’s battered Honda that Kira shouldn’t be driving, he’s swallowed by fog. Juan thinks if he were ever to meet his father’s ghost, it would be here, inside this thick, damp mist. Maybe his new life won’t be so bad after all. Kira pushes her face so close to Juan, he can smell witch hazel from her pores and the ginger lotion on her shiny body.

“Don’t fuck up down here,” Kira says. “Don’t embarrass me.”

“I’m not going to say anything,” Juan says.

“Good, not even your name.”

“My name?”

“Don’t say the last part, the Irish bit.”

“D’Arcy?” Juan asks.

“Yes D’Arcy. What’d you think?”

“What’s wrong with my name?” Juan asks.

“It’s stupid, that’s what. Juan Miguel Carlos D’ARCY.”

Juan thinks even his tonsils are quivering with temper. “You won’t disrespect my name. No one disrespects my name.”

Kira’s black eyes narrow, like two poison darts. “What? You’re your dumb daddy now? You going to die over your name? It’s just a stupid name, five little letters and that weird squiggle like a tadpole.” She bends and scoops a handful of gravel from the parking lot, fires the tiny stones at Juan’s chest and face. “Even these pebbles are older than letters, than your sad little name.”

In the news today, they did not tell the story of how the moon’s glow spills over San Francisco Bay like the flowers Juan’s mother loves so much, huele de noche. Juan hesitates before following Kira down onto the beach, closes his eyes and imagines he can smell the perfumed huele de noche and his mother’s sulfur breath. Really, his nostrils are filled with sheetrock dust and paint fumes from his first day of work in not so sunny California. Juan recalls his mother’s soothing voice and her overworked hands, rough as the sandpaper he’d used on the walls earlier. She strokes the side of Juan’s busy head and her bony fingers knot with his hair.

Earlier, Juan’s Tío Ricardo said his sister, Juan’s mother, was a fool to never remarry and get in another man of the casa. “Sticking with a pile of bones, where’s the sense in that? That didn’t put food in your mouths, did it? Too late now,” he finished.

Juan pushed back his shoulders and made fists that weren’t nearly big enough, “I’m the man of the casa.”

Tío Ricardo laughed like a cat hacking up a fur ball.

“What the fuck?” Kira mutters, pulling Juan back to the present.

“Come on,” Kira says louder and tugs on Juan’s denim sleeve. “And remember, don’t do anything stupid. I’ve a reputation to uphold.”

Juan hates how the sand doesn’t feel firm under his feet, how he’s unsteadied. The bonfire’s already raging orange and blue and there’s too much smoke, too loud music from stereos, and too sharp laughs from so many large, steel-filled mouths. Juan continues through the crowd and to the ocean.

“Ignore him,” Kira says from behind Juan. “He’s nobody.”

Juan should have told both his Tío Ricardo and his cousin Kira today that the Irish fought side-by-side with the Mexicans in the War of Independence, that the colors on the two countries’ flags are almost the same and that the Irish are also obsessed with killing the snake. Straight away though he knows what Tío Ricardo and cousin Kira would say.

“But John James Paul D’ARCY didn’t fight in no war, did he? He fought and died in a BAR.”

Juan draws from his inside jacket pocket the map of Ireland he’d stolen from the rich people’s home today. He’s seen maps of Ireland before, but only the overview ones where Ireland is shaped like a side view of a sitting bear. He unfolds the thick rectangle of map in his hands, a detailed Rand McNally road map where Ireland despite its tininess is made to look huge and interesting. The map stretches to almost the full span of Juan’s arms and shivers on the air. In the darkness, Juan struggles to find Salthill again on the map, the seaside town where his father was born and raised that’s inside Galway and next to the Atlantic. Juan cannot imagine what would bring his father from the trouble of his country to the worse trouble of ruined and landlocked Mexico City. Juan’s mother said his father was an adventurer, that the world couldn’t hold him, that he’d also wander in heaven.

Here to San Francisco, to the ocean, this is the furthest so far that Juan has traveled. Juan shakes and the map trembles in his hands. He’s almost blinded by the darkness and can’t find the pale blue dot on the map from earlier he needs to see so badly again. He crushes the map to his chest and lets out the noises that have wanted to get outside of him all day, all last night, all these weeks and months and years. The map moves and moans in time to the heave of Juan’s body. Juan hopes Kira and the other partygoers are too far away to hear him. He thinks about tomorrow and the rich people’s house and wonders what else he can steal. The need to take overwhelms him and he can’t wait until tomorrow and instead gets on all fours and grabs at the sand dollars and other shells scattered along the shoreline. Juan fills his pockets, the bounty of seashells mostly broken now, but he doesn’t care.

Juan dives into the freezing green ocean, clothes and sneakers and all. He trashes through the rush of water and gnashes his teeth at the white-capped, black-green waves, heavy in his clothes and his rage and with the realization that not even all the world’s water can wash away the pain — an ache he doesn’t know where exactly begins or ends. He thinks people weren’t meant to be in the sea and that makes him want to spread himself bigger, to take up as much space in this forbidden kingdom as he can, to feel like he’s at last scored against the Maker. A cloud kills the moon. Clots of brownish seaweed snatch at Juan. Juan thinks about sharks and other terrible sea creatures. The party noises and flickering flames from the bonfire seem a long ways off and Juan feels alone in the wet dark, his teeth chattering an SOS and heart splashing the water.

In the news today, they did tell the story of Bristol Palin’s face surgery, of Newt Gingrinch’s 2012 presidential run, of Libyan rebels takeover of Misrata airport, of two earthquakes in Spain, of Mississippi’s flood, of more. However, if Juan Miguel Carlos D’Arcy could read English or had other access to the news, the story today that would have most taken his attention is that of the ten-year-old boy in California who intentionally shot and killed his father. That story above all others in the news today would have amazed and shaken Juan, but he doesn’t know about that story or any other news story today. Instead, Juan feels amazed and shaken by something altogether different. Juan remembers that a witness to his father’s murder said John D’Arcy lost so much blood that night, lost a sea of blood, must have lost every last drop of blood. Juan knows his father did not lose every last drop of blood that night. His father’s blood runs in Juan’s veins, in the veins of Juan’s sisters. Thus today Juan D’Arcy feels struck, will forever feel struck, by how inside the sea, inside water, he suddenly doesn’t feel like he’s in pain, like he’s alone, like he’s been left behind, like he’s trespassing somewhere people aren’t supposed to go, like he’s defying nature and God. Rather, Juan Miguel Carlos D’Arcy feels right as he should be and for the first time since his father’s death, he’s no longer so afraid he wants to climb inside himself and hide behind his bones.