Welfare Wifeys (5 page)

By the time Jada made it to her door she was tired, irritated, and starting to get musty. All she wanted to do was take a shower and crawl into her bed. She had longed for the peace and quiet of her bedroom for the last fifteen hours, and when she opened her front door she sighed heavily because she knew she wasn’t going to get it there. The sounds of Lil Wayne’s “Mr. Carter” blaring from the stereo speakers battled with the television, which was also turned all the way up, and tuned to The Steve Wilkos Show. Clothes were hanging on lines of rope that crisscrossed the living room, drying in the intense
project heat
coming from the pipes. Weeks-old newspapers were stacked on the coffee table and chairs, while toys littered the chipped tiled floors. In the center of all the craziness, ironing a dollar bill on a towel was the patriarch of the family, Patricia Butler.

“Hey, Grandma.” Jada threw her purse on the plastic-covered couch.

“Umm hmm,” Ms. Pat mumbled and continued her ironing. The smoke from the Kool cigarette dangling from her mouth wafted up over her glasses and over her stocking cap-covered head.

“What are you doing?” Jada asked, looking at the rows of pressed dollars.

“That lil Charlie done let me wash his pants without making sure he emptied his pockets first. Now I got to press all these damn singles ’cause you know I ain’t wasting no change round here.” She flapped the dollar in one of her meaty palms to sort out the wrinkles before placing another wet one on the towel to be ironed. “I wonder where the hell he was at to have all these singles anyhow.”

“Probably the strip club,” Jada commented.

“And speaking of whereabouts, where have you been?” Ms. Pat looked at Jada over the rims of her bifocals.

“Oh, I told you me and the girls were going out for drinks,” Jada said innocently.

Ms. Pat stopped her ironing and looked at her granddaughter seriously. “Girl, that was two days ago, so don’t come in here calling yourself being cute. Now I’ve been in here chasing behind your bad-ass kids and I done missed out on I don’t know how much money because your wayward ass is hindering my movements.”

“Sorry, Grandma.”

“Sorry is a dog with three broken legs trying to crawl to a cool drink of water on a hot day. You’re just trifling.” Ms. Pat waggled the iron in her direction as she spoke. “Now you done had your fun so I think you best tend to your business before you try to pull another disappearing act.” Ms. Pat went back to ironing the damp bill.

“Grandma, why don’t you stop acting like that, you know I be making moves,” Jada said, pulling the wrapper off another lollipop and sticking it in her mouth.

“Moves, my ass, I hope that lollipop was the only thing you were sucking on while you were out in them streets.” Ms. Pat thought on it for a second. “As a matter of fact, don’t even answer that. And while you’re in the move-making mood, why don’t you move your ass around the house and clean up after them kids of yours?”

“A’ight, Grandma.” Jada waved her off.

There was a soft knocking on the door, two quick taps then a dead slap. Ms. Pat expelled the smoke through her nose and twisted
her lips. Mumbling under her breath she put the iron down and shuffled to the door, pausing to check the small derringer she kept in the pocket of her floral duster. Pushing her glasses up on her forehead she peered through the peephole to see who it was before undoing the multiple locks on the door. Ms. Pat snatched the door open and immediately tore into the young man standing on the other side.

“What you knocking on this door for, lil nigga?” She tapped her foot impatiently waiting for him to answer.

“Ah, how you doing, Ms. Pat? I . . . ah,” the boy stammered.

“What is that some new slang that y’all kicking these days? Speak English, boy. What the hell you want?”

The boy looked around cautiously before whispering, “I came to get some smoke.”

Ms. Pat’s eyes went wide. She peered down the hallways in both directions before snatching the boy by the front of his jacket and pulling him into the apartment. Ms. Pat shoved him against the wall and began patting the frightened boy down while Jada looked on in amusement. “You the police or something?” She ran her hands along his thighs, grazing his testicles one time too many.

“No, ma’am,” the boy said, looking at Ms. Pat as if she’d lost it.

“Well, if you ain’t the police then you must be a fool because everybody knows Ms. Pat don’t sell weed, I sell advice. I got
kind words
for five dollars,
sound advice
for ten, and a
good talking to
for twenty. Now if you’re really in need of help then you may be interested in the Ms. Pat special, where every half hour starts at fifty dollars.” Ms. Pat was talking so fast that the boy looked baffled. “What are you special? What you need, boy?”

“Ah, I’ll take some sound advice,” he said, holding out a twenty-dollar bill.

“Bet.” Ms. Pat snatched the money from him. She reached into her duster and gave the boy a ten-dollar bag of weed and a five-dollar bag. “Check it out, young’n, since I’m just opening up shop, I’ll give
you some sound advice, throw in that kind word and a box of slow death for the twenty and we square,” she offered.

“That works,” the boy said eagerly. He’d only intended on spending ten dollars with Ms. Pat, but with cigarettes being almost ten dollars in the store he couldn’t pass up the play.

Ms. Pat went into the kitchen and popped open her deep freezer, where there were several cartons of cigarettes packed in with the food. She put one of the frosty packs of cigarettes in his hand, but held it for a minute and looked into his eyes. “I’m serving you this time, but if you ever pop up at my door again without an invitation we’re liable to have a misunderstanding”—she patted the pistol in her duster—“ya dig?”

“My fault, Ms. Pat, I didn’t know,” he apologized.

“Don’t worry about it, baby. Next time just hit me on the chirp.” Ms. Pat waved her Boost phone. After giving the boy her information she ushered him out and relocked her door. “Some of these boys ain’t got the good sense God gave ’em when they slid they black asses into the world,” Ms. Pat said to no one in particular when she came back into the living room.

“Grandma, you better be easy with having people knock on the door like that. You know we already got issues with the city,” Jada reminded her.

Ms. Pat looked at her seriously. “Child, I been getting it how I live for longer than you or ya daddy been alive, so don’t come around her trying to tell me how to conduct my business, ya hear? And if we got any problems with the city it’s because you brought them here, so don’t get me started, Jada Butler. I’ve been in these projects for forty-six years and ain’t ever had so much as a complaint filed against me with housing or nobody else.”

“Because there isn’t anybody bold enough to want a problem with your crazy self.” Jada laughed.

“Call me what ya want, but you won’t never call me no punk-bitch. I know you looked at ya granddaddy and my boys as the
heads of the Butler family, but don’t never forget it was the Butler women who gave them power.”

Jada sucked her teeth. “Listen to you, like you were out there popping your guns with the fellas.”

“Not at all, but I was sure the one getting rid of them when they came home dirty,” Ms. Pat shot back.

Before the argument could go any further the sounds of tiny running feet filled the hallway. Three faces that looked much like Jada’s came rushing into the living room and swarmed her. “Mommy!” they screamed in unison.

“Thank the Lord,” Ms. Pat said under her breath.

Jada ignored her grandmother and hugged her kids. “Hey, I missed you guys.” Jada beamed as she kissed each one of her kids on the forehead.

“It’s hard to tell. The way you hang out all night you would never know that you were a mother, let alone had three of these little devils,” Ms. Pat said.

It was true; Jada partied like a rock star while her kids spent most of their time with Ms. Pat or other relatives. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her kids, but she didn’t know any other way to be. She had always watched her mother and father party while leaving her with Ms. Pat so she ended up repeating the cycle with her own kids. Ms. Pat was a godsend as far as keeping the kids out of harm’s way, but with all the stuff she had going on out of the house she hadn’t set the best example for her kids either.

“Where ya been, Mommy? We missed you,” Jalen asked. She was the middle child and Jada’s baby girl.

“Mommy was out with some friends,” Jada told her.

“Grandma says you were out sacking,” Davita capped. She was Jada’s oldest, fourteen years of pure attitude.

“What’s sacking?” Miles asked. He was Jada’s youngest and the one who looked the least like her.

Jada cut her eyes at her grandmother, who was going about her
ironing as if she hadn’t heard a thing. “Sacking is just another word for partying,” Jada told the little boy.

“When I get older I wanna go sacking just like Mommy,” Jalen said proudly.

“And I’m sure you will,” Ms. Pat offered.

“Okay, you kids go play while Mommy gets in the shower. When I come out I’m gonna make your breakfast,” Jada told the kids.

Ms. Pat put her iron down again. “They had breakfast thirty minutes ago. Y’all kids go on and get ready for school.” Ms. Pat shooed them out.

“I’m going to wash up,” Jada said to no one in particular.

“Yes, wash them streets off yo ass. Jada, don’t sneak outta here without coming to talk to me. There are some things I wanna say to you,” Ms. Pat told her.

“Whatever.” Jada shuffled down the hall. She unlocked her bedroom door and slipped inside, peeling her clothes off as she crossed it. She searched high and low for her lavender Donna Karan bathrobe but couldn’t find it anywhere. Tiring of looking for it she wrapped a beach towel around herself and headed to the bathroom for her shower only to find it occupied. Ms. Pat was in the kitchen and her kids were gone so she knew it had to be one of the wayward freeloaders that her grandmother couldn’t help taking in every so often.

Jada banged on the door like the police and it was almost a full five minutes before she finally heard the lock being undone. She drew her lips back, prepared to black out on whoever had been hogging the bathroom, but her jaw dropped when she saw who it was. He had put on some weight since the last time she saw him, but he still had that same scurvy hunch to his back, like he was always skulking. A green do-rag was tied on his head, with the flap hanging down his neck. Draped over his wet and naked body was Jada’s Donna Karan robe.

“Oh, hell no!” Jada placed her hands on her hips.

When he smiled the bathroom light glistened off the gold tooth in the front of his mouth. “What’s the matter, baby girl? Ain’t you glad to see your Uncle Mookie?”

If you looked up the word
goon
in the dictionary you’d see a picture of Uncle Mookie, beaming like a kid at graduation. Morris Butler a.k.a. Mookie was the second oldest of Ms. Pat’s sons and by far the biggest headache to fall off the Butler tree. He wasn’t the largest man, standing at five-eight and weighing a shade less than 180 pounds, but his appetite for destruction was enormous. Mookie was a shifty man who was quick to violence and only played for keeps. Had it not been for Mookie’s violent temper he might have actually been somebody in the streets, but he couldn’t stay out of jail. Since he was a kid Mookie had loved to fight and stay in the mix. Beef was his drug of choice and he looked for any excuse to get high. When Jada’s father was on the streets hustling, Uncle Mookie and his crime partner Fish had been right there in the trenches with him, dispatching enemies of the Butler family and intimidating other dealers in the area.

When Jada’s father was sentenced it fell to Mookie to keep the operation going, but with his poor head for business it was only a matter of time before the well went dry. With his meal ticket gone Mookie did what to him was the most logical thing, picked up his pistol and robbed everything moving. Mookie and Fish hit the streets with a vengeance and demanded that all the dealers who now got money in what was once Butler territory paid a street tax to keep doing business. The smart ones paid and the not so smart wound up in the trunks of cars or local emergency rooms. It got so bad that the only time the dealers could get money untaxed was the period of time between Mookie’s and Fish’s prison stints.

“Somebody must’ve left the monkey cage open at the zoo.” Jada snaked her neck and looked her uncle up and down.

“If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were happy to see me.” Mookie bopped out of the bathroom.

“Mookie, if your ass escaped from jail again you better get outta here. I got kids in this house and an ACS investigation going on, so I don’t need the police kicking Grandma’s door in.”

Mookie sucked his teeth. “Ain’t nobody escape from nowhere, I’m out on work release, so I swung by Ma’s to take a shower, and what the hell do you mean you’ve got an ACS case pending? Jada, don’t make me fuck you up for beating my nieces and nephews all extra and shit.”

“Please, ain’t nobody beating these bad-ass kids, even though I should from all the hell they give me. One of these hating ass bitches was trying to be funny and called them on me. That’s my word, when I find out who it was imma slay one of these hos.”

Mookie shook his head. “Just like a Butler, always ready to kick ass first and take names later.”

“You’re one to talk.” Jada rolled her eyes. “If I recall correctly the last charge you caught was for assault.”

Mookie downplayed it. “That wasn’t nothing but a little misunderstanding.”

“You call putting forty-two stitches in someone’s head a misunderstanding?”

“Hey, if he hadn’t pulled that pistol on me I wouldn’t have had to clobber his ass with it. The lil niggaz of this generation have a serious lack of respect for the O.G.s.”

“What the fuck ever, Uncle Mookie. And why do you have your jailhouse ass in my robe? You know how much that shit cost?”

Mookie sucked his teeth. “A’ight, a’ight, don’t get ya drawers in a bunch.” He slipped out of the robe and stood in the hallway as naked as the day he was born. “I’m done with it anyway.” He tossed it to her and shuffled down the hall, leaving Jada holding the damp robe with a disgusted look on her face.