Hold It 'Til It Hurts Read online

  He is Bud, Lex, the shiftless kid in the Afro waving wildly at Wages. He is the teens hanging on the corners in southwest DC, drug dealers, death dealers. The man who mugged Achilles and his mom. Men who think that fucking makes fatherhood.

  He is the other Achilles.

  Face blank and black as a TV that has lost its signal, Blow writhes and coils, his limbs twitching as if electrified. And, and squeezing, and the other Achilles keeps squeezing, squeezing so tightly Blow’s skin presses through his fingers like dough; squeezing until Blow, in his panic, bites the tip off his tongue; until Blow’s movements are weak and dreamy; until his twitching is only an occasional jerk, like a lazy swimmer barely staying afloat; until his eyes bulge and his pupils zoom out and a shroud of calm seals his face and even his acne scars smooth out, and he stops crying, and even Achilles, finally satisfied, has stopped breathing.

  He hears a shot. Lex stands at the top of the stairs, waving a pistol, his left eyelid curled around the mechanical pencil that pins it shut.

  “Daddy, he’s killed me,” whispers Blow.

  Lex fires again. Achilles scrambles out of the stairwell, down the hall, and through the back door. He runs down the alley, away from the car, and doesn’t stop until he’s sure he isn’t being followed, by which point he is lost, wandering one dark unnamed street after another.

  His stinging eyes made stars of the streetlights. He tried blotting his face with his shirt, but that didn’t staunch the flow. He knew that head wounds bleed easily, so he wasn’t worried by the blood or the bruises. When he stopped to study his reflection in the window of a rim shop, his head was framed in faint silver. But he deserved no halo. He had cut and ran. His shirt was sticking to his back like a wet rag. In the distance, blinking red and yellow lights. He limped down the deserted street in the direction of the neon oasis, a Kikkin Chikkin. Chikkin indeed sounded Kikkin, Praise Jesus. He pushed the door open. A blast of cold air. A golden bell jangled. Time for school, Sunday school, Praise Jesus. The security guard, hands out as if he were afraid to touch Achilles, escorted him back outside before he could get to the bathroom. He promised to buy something, offered to pay first, but the guard pushed him out. “Not like that you don’t. You could infect somebody. No one wants to eat around you looking like that. Go on now. Get.” The guard had the same New Orleans accent as Bud and Lex and Blow: “gone” instead of “go on,” “git” for “get.”

  Achilles stood at the door. A woman at the counter ordered a large bucket of chicken, half mild and half kikken, all dark meat, a dozen biscuits, macaroni on the side, and a few of those peppers. Orange or red? She couldn’t decide on the drink. Achilles drooled. The scent of fried chicken was strong now. The guard stood in the doorway, flanked by two friends, the smells and cool air wafting around them.

  “Orange,” the woman at the counter said, flipping her hair. “Large orange drink.” She pronounced it “erenge.” She wore a shiny black sleeveless shirt and her bra straps hung by her armpits. Handprints were painted across the back of her jeans, one on each cheek. She was dark-skinned with platinum dreads, heavy in the legs and ass. The last thing she needed was fried chicken. She was about one two-piece dinner away from the ripcord being pulled on her raft. Merriweather would’ve liked her, being a thigh man. Achilles usually preferred drumsticks, and wasn’t into women like her, but between the arch in her back and her manner of sashaying even as she stood, his gaze was drawn back to her again and again. She was scrappy, spunky, but he could easily see her kneeling, hunched over with her head to the floor as if praying to Allah, naked, slathered in Crisco, with an apple jammed in her mouth like a gag ball.

  “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 …”

  “Alright! I got it,” Achilles had yelled.

  “Leave him alone,” said Wages.

  Merriweather continued, “It’s a beautiful word. It’s our word. That’s what connects us. You might think you’re different or lighter or darker or smarter or better-talking, but to a racist motherfucker, we’re all ziggas. That’s why we’re lucky. We only have one enemy. These poor ziggas got us here, the whole of Europe, plus they’re fighting each other. Know-whatta-mean?”

  Achilles didn’t, but thought that one day he might, that he would feel a click, a switch flipping, and be able to speak this new language with new freedom. But after using the word at Kikkin Chikkin, all he felt was dirty, like he’d admitted to understanding something he didn’t want to, the same way he’d felt for clearing up the confusion when the chaplain said he was going to try the Donkey Punch on Friday night. He brought it on himself by saying things like “I’m God’s inbox,” or “The Bible is God’s Myspace,” but it was still disrespectful. Achilles didn’t know who was feeding the chaplain that misinformation, but the poor old man (who was Achilles’s father’s age and looked somewhat like him, except that both of his arms were covered in tattoos) thought that felching, the Rusty Trombone, and the Statue of Liberty were all New York cocktails. He imagined the chaplain inviting an infantry dog hot off a fireworks show back to the tent for a Rusty Trombone. To save him the embarrassment of actually hearing the acts described, Achilles informed Chaplain Weidman that they were slang for drugs and that someone was playing a joke on him. When the word got around that Achilles had said this, they started calling him Urkel and Carlton and every other black television character known as an oreo, but no one called him a zigga.

  He removed his shoes and wrapped his damp shirt around his head before entering Wages’s house. He went straight to the bathroom to wash his face. His left cheek was raw from being dragged against the wall, his right eye rimmed with blood. Raw hairless patches dotted his scalp; the right side of his face was a rainbow of black and brown bruises. Then there was the limp. He didn’t know when or how he’d started limping. He shouldn’t have come back. Wages couldn’t see him like this. It wasn’t pride. He simply didn’t want Wages involved. If his friend saw Achilles like this, he’d get sawed off.

  Blood dotted the porcelain sink, one spot then another, then another and another in greater concentration, until it was dappled like the ground under sudden rain. When he tried to clean up, the drops streaked across the bowl, long stripes trailing. He needed more water. Dots now stripes, stripes now streaks. Blood splattered on the toilet seat. On his arm, a gouge he hadn’t noticed before.

  As he undressed to shower, the locket dropped to the floor, hinges twisted and glass cracked. The photo of his mother’s father, now badly scratched, popped out of the frame. Gliding through his slick fingers as he tried to reassemble it, the locket fell again, this time breaking open and revealing a small crucifix wrapped in cotton and hidden behind the photograph. The back of the cross was engraved AHC for AHC. He often forgot that he and his mother, Anna Holt Conroy, shared the same initials. He rubbed his finger across the tiny golden Jesus he had unknowingly carried around the world—and he’d thought his mother’s faith was a new thing.

  After his shower, he quietly opened the bathroom door and slipped into the hall. Wages was mopping the living room. Achilles reached for the mop, but Wages insisted on continuing, which was unusual. People should clean up their own messes, he always said, especially when anyone mentioned the possibility of being transferred to Iraq.

  “Bethany’s going into labor if I don’t get this up. She’s sensitive about blood being scattered around. Germs and all.” He laughed. “She thinks I’m paranoid about not sitting with my back to the door or going to the window twenty-nine times a night, complains I sleep like a baby, up every few hours, but let her see someone eat without washing their hands. Boom!” He waved his arms around to indicate an explosion.

  While Wages mopped, Achilles sat, curling and uncurling his fingers, stretching his toes, checking in with his battered body. After a few minutes Wages asked, “So what the fuck, dude?”

  Achilles told as much of the truth as he thought it prudent to share: No, Troy wasn’t at that house, though there was a guy named Tony who looked similar enough to confuse an old man with cataracts.
r />   Wages wasn’t convinced. “Does this have anything to do with why Troy was in that line? Is he into some shit?”

  “No, he’s not into anything,” said Achilles.

  “And you?” asked Wages.

  “Just a barroom brawl.”

  “I knew that guy was a fucking cruncher,” said Wages.

  “Cruncher?” asked Achilles.

  “You know: crunch, candy cane, Cindy.” said Wages. When Achilles said nothing, he continued. “It’s what every addict wants for Christmas, the perfect drug. They say it’s not addictive. You can smoke it, eat it, snort it, or just hold it too long. It’s what everyone’s on. It gives them those cracks and crevices in the face. Fucks up your skin.”

  “This didn’t have anything to do with that.” Achilles had never even heard of crunch before. Sure, Blow had shallow fissures in his cheeks, but they’d looked like acne scars. If they were into crunch, how’d they lure Troy into a drug house? Probably the same way they’d lured Achilles in: Troy asked after his parents, and Bud took him to the green camelback.

  “Come on, man. This is the first time you’ve showered in three days. You’re living like you’re on active. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re sleeping in your boots. You’ve gone Renzo.” Lorenzo hadn’t showered or shaved for days at a time and ate raw garlic, claiming he wanted to smell like the Taliban, not like Ivory Soap. “What the fuck is up?”

  “Nothing. I told you everything. I need to sleep.” Wages left. It was obvious he hadn’t bought the story.

  Achilles felt riven, anxious, as if he had lost something, broken a bone that couldn’t be set. Shame menaced him that night, shadowing him as if it had a life of its own. He had never lied to Wages about anything before, not even minor shit like farting. Sure, he’d never told Wages he was adopted, but that was different, private. He told himself that lying about the fight with Blow was an act of kindness, of consideration for Wages’s new life. Wages would have demanded involvement—the starfish handed out more than plastic forks.