T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

“Go on now.” The guard pointed down the street. “Go on, zigga, get.”

Hearing zigga again, Achilles felt loose-limbed, like he could jump on this kid and bite his fucking nose off, and if the kid hadn’t had a gun, he might’ve done it. But who was he fooling? Last time he was faced with a gun, he’d run, and run some more. “Fuck you, zigga. Zigga,” said Achilles, his mouth burning with the word. He waited for a reaction, refusing to back down twice in the same night. He knew he should let it go, but he didn’t. This was why they always took turns being first through the door. Every contact — even peaceful ones — got them pumped up, and if you were first through the door twice in a row, you were liable to shoot somebody just because it felt like it was time to. “Yeah, zigga. Fuck you.” He spat.

For a moment there was nothing to hear but the air vents and the fryer and the beeping cash register. All else had stopped, as if, as Achilles had always expected, that word was an irrevocable curse, a chant calling for destruction.

“You still here?” The guard shrugged. “Fuck you too, zigga.”

And that was it. He’d used the word for the first time, against another person. Achilles had expected more. Anger, acknowledgement, maybe even fear, yes, fear, because for Achilles to use that word he had to be serious, dead serious.

Asked if her order was to eat in or take out, the lady at the counter popped her neck and said, “Zigga, I look like I can eat all that?” drawing the guard’s attention.

The cashier yelled, “Bitch, I don’t know your life!”

Achilles turned and walked away. Behind him, someone said, “Nawww! Let that zigga go. Something wrong with him, all bugged out and shit, all fly-eyed. He might even have the virus.”

“Look at him, thumping his chest like a dumb monkey.”

Achilles hadn’t realized he was automatically reaching for his weapon sling, expecting it to be there to guide his thumb down to the butt of his machine gun. Two weeks ago, they’d all have had a boot on their backs and a steel circle in the base of their necks, except the one with the gun. Wages might already have shot him. Achilles turned to go.

“See him walking? He can’t even return his serve.”

“Clark Kent — looking zigga.”

“Erenge” soda, pants drooping, oversized shirts. He wouldn’t have fit in even if he hadn’t been bloody. He didn’t belong in there anyway, eating nasty, cholesterol-laden ghetto food. Halfway down the block, Achilles turned back to face them and screamed, “Bitch, you don’t know my life!”

But they couldn’t hear him. All three were inside, sliding into a booth. The one who sat alone facing the others scooted all the way to the inside of the bench, as if he was making space for someone. They laughed and dapped, slapping hands front and back. They were roughly the same height, all of their heads long and peaked at the top, their eyes round and deep-set, so much so that he wondered if they even had to use their hands to shield them from the sun. They had the same rawboned cheeks and satchel mouths. They weren’t friends. They were brothers, the ziggas.

Who was a zigga? Was he the bobble-headed, loose-lipped brother posted up on the corner eating fried rice from a paper cup? The lifer who converted to Islam, finding in prison a newfound sense of security? Was it reserved for men, hulking, shifty, flitty-eyed simian males? Or was it the woman working the alley behind the head shop who started out cute, who blushed when her pimp complimented her bone structure, who lost fifteen pounds and three incisors in two months? Was it the elderly housekeeper, unless, of course, she was your housekeeper? Was it reserved for the servile and chimp-lipped? Or could white people really be ziggas, as Achilles had so often heard? Was it simply reserved for the fringe, those night eaters the mayor once referred to as soap scum because “They live at the edge of society and, ironically, the harder you clean, the more there are’? Or could it really be the first black executive of a major bank? What about Wesley Snipes? When he’d packed his bags for basic, Achilles would have said none of the above. Merriweather said all .

Ziggas! Zigger? Zigga. To form the word, the tongue curls up, then out, like it’s releasing a burning seed. In Goddamnistan, kids working as street vendors often cried out, “Brother, Brother! My zigga, my zigga!” Achilles ignored them. Troy laughed. Wages looked embarrassed. Ramirez answered, “Que pasa, vato?” Wexler complained that they weren’t black. But Merriweather would smile, give them high fives, say, “What’s up wit you, my zigga?” Merriweather’s reply to Wexler’s complaint was always “Half of these ziggas darker than you, Mr. Love-Sexy.”

Achilles admitted that much — Wexler resembled Prince and was light-skinned, while the Afghans were often brown from so much sun. Some even looked Asian. But overall, while Afghans and Iraqis couldn’t pass for black, they certainly weren’t white. He was stunned the first few days, discomfited by the sensation of being in a country where most people looked somewhat like him and the youth hailed him as a brother. It was more pronounced during their week in Baghdad, where he actually saw people with brown skin and kinky hair. What if his primary objective hadn’t been to discern who among all these eerily familiar faces was evil? What would it have felt like to be, for once, among the majority? What if the question of black and white hadn’t been so neatly replaced by brown and green?

But they were all the same to Merriweather: ziggas. Anytime they weren’t fighting, that was how he greeted the young males, enveloping their limp hands in his huge paws, two quick pumps and a What’s up, my zigga? They responded with smiles, as if they and Merriweather shared some common bond. They probably didn’t completely understand what he was saying but recognized the tone as friendly, like dogs reacting to pitch. And his was so casual. What were they? Waiters? Sir, would you like a side of shrapnel with that grenade? Achilles wanted that confidence and connection, Merriweather’s habit of acting as if theirs was the most normal job in the world, but he didn’t have Merri’s aw-shucks grin and using that word in front of other people didn’t jive with him. He couldn’t apply it to so many people, and make it sound natural to do so. A farmer is beating his mule: That zigga’s getting it. A kid meandering through the market slips an apple up his sleeve: That zigga’s got skills. A goat darts into the road and gets hit by a car: Achilles and Troy eye each other; laughing, Merriweather says, That zigga got fuuuucked up. The president fails to approve the budget for new safety gear: That zigga better get on his job.

Merriweather explained it: “Dick and W are obviously ziggas. They’re like pimps, players, like the old Ice Cube song, “Who’s the Mack?” The rest of these motherfuckers — well, if they ain’t ziggas, they got no excuse to be treated this way. Look around. Their shit’s all tore up, they keep their women in check, they live ten to an apartment, they roll six deep, everyone else thinks they know what’s good for them, and every time they get a leader we cut him down. Who’s that remind you of, except the pork thing, right? But even we got some crazy ziggas won’t eat bacon,” thumbing his nose at Jackson, who was a Seventh-Day Adventist.

Merri’s talk greatly offended Ramirez, who said that the Afghans could blend into the barrio and accused Merriweather of being like a black politician and trying to claim everything for himself.

Merri looked to Achilles for support. “I’m like Paul Mooney. I say it a hundred times every morning to keep my teeth white.” Pointing at random objects as he spoke, he said, “Say it with me, Connie: zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga, zigga …”