I’M NIGGA

DAMIEN BELLIVEAU

March, 1990. The fog was wet, thick, and everywhere. The dirt field was riddled with gopher holes. We were crouching in a huddle. Terry was quarterback, and between his dark brown hands he held the pebbled leather football. Jheri curl activator dripped across his broad shoulders as he spoke to us. His braces gave him a soft lisp, but even that couldn’t hurt his cool.

“Dee,” Terry said, “you want the ball this time?”

“Nuh-uh,” I said, shaking my head.

Terry sucked his teeth. He was the type of dude that made an effort to include people, even shy kids like me. Terry was a leader: confident, tall, outgoing and charismatic. He was everything I wasn’t. And he was black, real black. James Brown and Miles Davis black. Black-Is-Beautiful black. African-ancestors-goingall-the-way-back black. “Dee, listen,” Terry said, “you gonna be ready when I throw to you?”

I was scared to say No, but terrified to say Yeah.

“Come on, Dee,” Terry reassured me, “it ain’t nothing. I’m just gonna fake one direction then hand the ball off to you.”

Terry delivered a final slap to my back and then nodded at everyone else in the huddle. He clapped his hands and we broke into formation.

“Hut! Hut! Hike!” Terry stuffed the ball into my chest. I ran. I was sprinting down the field, slipping people’s outstretched hands, taking step after confident step. For the very first time, the plastic flags on my hips were whipping and popping like everyone else’s. I noticed some Filipino dude gaining on me. He reached for one of my flags. I batted his hand away. I knew this was illegal, but I risked it anyway. The kid threw his hands up in protest and Coach DiMaggio blew his whistle. Everyone on the field slowed to a trot.

“I had his flag,” the kid moaned. “He blocked my hand.”

DiMaggio approached, his head nodding like, Yeah, I know. “Belliveau,” DiMaggio shouted, “you can’t block someone’s hands like that. The hell’s wrong with you?” Coach reached for the ball and I handed it to him. I dropped my head, disappointed in myself. DiMaggio fell in line beside me as we walked back a few yards. He

patted me on the back. “Good run,” he said, and set the ball on the ground. “Let’s take it from here. First down!”

Returning to the huddle, Terry offered his fist for a dap. “Damn, Dee, you did alright, boy. What was you worried about?” I shrugged and smiled, and just like that I was Roger Craig. “Well, all right, y’all,” Terry said. “We gonna give it to Dee right here again. Just block his little ass as he run it.” Terry clapped and we fanned out. The Filipino kid lined up directly across from me. He was eyeballing me, trying to be intimidating, but I was Roger Craig and this fool couldn’t fade me.

“What?” the Filipino kid said. “You think you cool now?”

“Shut up,” I mumbled.

The kid stood up, cocked his head, and repeated my words back to me. “Shut up?”

Damn. I’d been the hero for less than a minute and already someone was trying to step. I started to feel the familiar pull of the coward inside of me. The pride and confidence that had been coursing through my body started to turn, and the poisonous rush of fight-or-flight adrenaline made the fluids inside my head pound. “What is you, anyway?” the Filipino kid asked. “Albino?”

I didn’t know what “albino” meant, but I could tell that he was trying to clown on my ethnicity, my ambiguous background, my complete lack of Terry-like blackness. I had already done a lot to be blacker – sagging my Dickies, rocking my oversized windbreaker confidently, wearing beanies and pulling them low on my head – but the one thing I couldn’t change was my half-black skin. I might’ve walked around in the gangsta rap uniform and kicked it with Ray and them fools from Clarinada, but to anyone who looked at me, my light skin and European features were confusing. They couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make the leap from what they saw to what I showed them.

I raised my eyes, looking the Filipino kid up and down. Then, loud enough for everyone to hear, I declared, “I’m nigga!”

N.W.A gave birth to the word nigga: five letters related to but independent from its ancestor, nigger. Over the past several months at Westmoor, I’d grown accustomed to hearing nigga out the mouths of black kids all day, every day. But not only black kids. Samoans and Latinos and Filipinos, and even white kids who were down said nigga all the time. Not only to the black kids, but to each other too. If you were down, if you were hard, no one even tripped off you saying nigga. Nigga was no different than saying dude, or blood, or cuz, or homie. It was the same as those words, but more. Nigga was dynamic. It could do anything.

Nigga could be a threat: “Nigga, what?”

Nigga could be an embrace: “My nigga!”

Nigga could be imploring: “Nigga, please.”

Nigga could be disappointed: “Damn, nigga.”

And if you changed the inflection on any of those, nigga was funny.

Nigga was flexible and fluid and adaptable. It could do whatever you needed it to do. Nigga accompanied degrees of authenticity and quality, such as Real niggas and Fake niggas; Hard or Soft niggas; Smart niggas and Dumb niggas and Rich niggas and Broke niggas. Nigga could be deployed in all kinds of ways, in seemingly endless situations. I might’ve been ignorant of most of the uses, but one thing I knew for sure was that nigga and nigger were different and should never be confused with each other. As far as I could tell, nigga was never an insult. Nigga was never demeaning. Nigga was never intentionally hurtful or terrorizing. Nigga was never a demonstration of power. Nigger was all of these things.

So, there I was, before a dozen classmates, claiming what I believed to be my rightful blackness: “I’m nigga,” I said proudly.

This was not the first time I’d said the word. I’d been rapping along to Ice Cube and Eazy-E for a long time. At home, alone in my bedroom, I’d tried the word out plenty. But this was the first time I’d said it out loud, at school, in front of kids I did and didn’t know. As soon as it came out of my mouth, I felt tough.

The chuckles and snickers bubbled up slowly. Heads swiveled left and right, kids exchanged confused looks, hesitant smiles spread across faces. The tension was thick, heavy like the fog. The Filipino kid, my antagonist, started laughing, a big laugh, a wide-mouthed laugh, a laugh that was equal parts amusement and ridicule. With this laugh he was trying to punk me even more. Finally, I stood to face him. Other kids began to react with Oohs and Aahs, hoping for that one thing that every high school kid is dying to see: a fight.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Coach DiMaggio called out. “Enough grab-assing!”

“Chill, Dee,” Terry said. “Don’t even trip, homie. Don’t even trip.”

Under DiMaggio’s bloodshot eyes, we relaxed. The game continued. We ran a few more plays, but Terry didn’t give me the ball. Coach DiMaggio didn’t offer any more encouraging words. No one did. Everyone looked at me differently, looked at me sideways. Then the bell rang. I walked off the field, towards the locker room, head down. My classmates bumped past me, but the water in my eyes didn’t fall. Instead, a frustrated heat settled in my chest. As awkward as my attempt at self-defense may have been, for the first time, I’d stood up for myself. I held onto that sliver of pride.

On the way to the bus stop after school, I told Ray what happened. As my only friend and confidant, I hoped he’d understand.

“You said, ‘I’m nigga’?”

I nodded, embarrassed. But also confused, like, why didn’t that work?

“You dumb, blood,” Ray said. He chuckled, but didn’t follow through with his usual big, loud laugh. I could see that he actually felt bad for me. “What was you trying to say? ‘I’m nigga’? The fuck that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Like, I’m black.”

Ray shook his head. Then he threw a quick fist hoping to catch me slipping. I dodged the chin-check easily. Ray’s eyes went wide and he giggled, impressed. “You silly, Dee,” Ray said. “Don’t be saying stuff when you don’t know what the fuck it is that you tryin’ to say. All right?”

I kept my eyes pinned to the sidewalk, but I nodded and said, “Yeah.”

Ray threw another jab. He caught my chin and my head rattled. “And keep your head up, blood, damn. I can’t be walking around with no crying ass nigga!” At his own joke, Ray laughed for real and lunged a few steps ahead of me. I put my fists up, ready to slap box, and Ray sprinted down the block, his laughter skipping across the air. His backpack bounced wildly as he looked over his shoulder at me, waiting for me to chase him. I smiled and rubbed my chin, walking on at my own pace. I knew that I’d catch up to him. Eventually.