Manica Series#1

My grandmother--phenomenal woman, Manica, a legend awaiting proper treatment in biography that I have every intention of making for her, celebrates her birthday today. Everything about her has always been legendary including the way she eats a chicken and the way she gets sick.

Firstly, about the ailments. Manica never has normal diseases—only obscure variations of them. A case in point was when I was about 8 and she had an ear infection. But she didn’t just have an ear infection, she had, what was in my child's mind, the Worse Disease In The World. She had an ear infection so brutal that it filled her ear cavity and surrounding area with disgusting secretions, it deformed her face, it caused swelling that shut down on side of her face, it put pressure on her brain, it made her delirious and outright nasty looking for us little kids in the house who were forced to go in every night and give her kisses goodnight. It put her near death. The Ear consumed the house and populated with it with girlfriends, who moved in to serve tours of duty as caretakers to her and to us, her now orphaned husband, children, and grandchildren.

My room’s door was by the staircase and it felt to me like this staircase always had two women on it: one coming up to keep watch, and one coming down from keeping watch. Most often the one coming out would fall into the arms of her replacement, in tears and in terror. They would whisper. I would watch this turning of the guard, and think in my tiny trembling heart, “is she going to die?”. The impossible had never seemed so close.

The Ear also made it necessary for her father, the progenitor legend, the Most Famous Doctor In The Land, to begrudgingly allow an inferior human being—meaning, a surgeon other than himself—to perform this life threatening surgery on his daughter. He did not allow this because he was her father and too emotionally involved. He only allowed this because a stroke years back had given his hands a tremor, and he knew steady hands were vital to avoid permanent facial nerve damage.

Legend tells of this conversation between my great-grandfather, the eminent Dr. Fonseca and the poor man who would operate on his daughter. It has been said that Dr. Fonseca threatened physical harm should his daughter come out of surgery with even the slightest permanent paralysis. Threat or no, the surgeon performed with my great-grandfather calling the shots in the room. My grandmother had surgery and The Ear was healed. But not before we had another scare because Manica has violently unsafe reactions to general anethesia. The way her father put it, "whenever we put her out, we risk not being able to wake her up."

Secondly, about the chicken. My grandmother eats everything a chicken has to offer except its head (as far as heads she only loves them on fish). Growing up it could be hard getting through chicken soup dinner because her own bowl would always have two chicken feet sticking out. To me, they looked like little children’s hands with overgrown nails. Her bowl would bring to my mind the little children from the story, who are kept in captivity and fattened for the witch who will eat them. The nails had grown long in captivity, you see. My grandmother would relish the sucking and chewing of those chicken feet. The noise like a horror movie soundtrack. My grandmother would next attack her chicken's bones with her teeth and commitment. Her chicken bones were completely consumed, the plate cleaned, like chicken never happened. Through a methodical succession of tactics to tear, crack, and chew bones, my grandmother incinerate her chicken. Often, her enthusiasm would lead her to choke. Her doctor sister, the younger but no less legendary Dr. Fonseca, would admonish, her face a complete dead ringer for her father's, “Nica, one day you are going to really get in trouble with a bone.” The choke was always an operatic, tragedy of a choke—a choke with flailing arms, tears, red face, hacking. Those were the longest few seconds when I would ponder, again in my tiny trembling heart, “is she going to die?”.

Today on her birthday, I got word from Cape Verde that while Manica is doing great, she just had emergency surgery to remove a chicken bone that was stuck in her throat.