Welfare Wifeys by K'wan Read Free Book Online

“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