Welfare Wifeys

by K'wan

  Malika was at peace, lying across the futon watching Lonette McKee working the sexy red dress across the stage. She didn’t get this kind of solitude with Solomon’s antics and staring at the drab yellow walls of her apartment and it felt good. Without even realizing she had done so she snuggled closer to Teddy.

  “I miss this,” Teddy said, sealing the ends of the joint he was rolling.

  “What, Sparkle?” Malika looked up at him.

  “No, this.” He motioned to them. “Remember when we used to do this all the time, lay around and watch movies?”

  “Yeah, it would be nice until your phone would ring and you’d go in the bathroom to take the call.” Malika sat up. “Teddy, I didn’t really come over here to go down memory lane. I have enough negative stuff running around in my head already without adding our failed little romance to it.”

  “Malika, how can you call something that was never given a chance to work failed? When things were good between us they were really good. Don’t you miss it?”

  “Yeah I do,” she admitted, “but I’m not willing to pay the price tag you’re trying to hang on it. Yo, men continue to baffle me with the way they move. Y’all can have something that’s priceless and you still want more. Why can’t you ever be satisfied with just one chick?”

  “Because we’re greedy,” he said honestly. “Now before you go all Shirley Chisum on me, let me explain. Men, we’re like animals, meaning we move off instinct instead of thoughts. No matter how much a dude loves his girl, he’s always gonna lust after other chicks, it’s just how we’re wired. But this doesn’t mean we always gonna act on it. Our base desire to conquer women is why it’s so hard to be faithful, but it’s not impossible to be with one woman.”

  “So then why did you make it seem so impossible?” she asked.

  “Because back then I didn’t have that kind of discipline.” He gave her a sincere look. The pain Malika saw behind his eyes caused her to turn away but he made her look at him. “I’m a different man now.” He kissed her lips softly and ran his hand down her back.

  “Teddy, don’t.” She pulled away, but it was halfhearted. It had been so long since she had been touched by a man that it felt almost electric. She wanted to give herself to him, but she was afraid.

  “Malika, you don’t have to carry your burdens anymore.” He kissed her again and this time she kissed him back. “Let me help you carry them.”

  Time wrapped in on itself blurring the lines between seconds, minutes, and hours. It felt like Teddy had one thousand hands as he seemed to touch her everywhere at once, lighting small fires under her skin and deep in her gut. She floated down onto the futon and let him command her body. Teddy slipped between her legs, kissing her neck and stomach while he worked her pussy moist with two fingers. His penis felt heavy in his hand when he pulled it out and tried to glide it inside Malika. He had almost penetrated her when she stopped him.

  “I know you got a condom?” She looked up at him with intoxicated eyes.

  “Come on, baby, you know me.” He pleaded, feeling like he was going to cum prematurely.

  “Teddy, I’m already feeling like this is a mistake, so if I were you I’d wrap this pickle before I change my mind.” She reached down and stroked his thick penis, dripping pre-cum onto her thigh.

  Teddy grumbled something and rolled off her and walked to the bathroom with his rock-hard dick slapping his thighs. A few seconds later he came back holding up a Magnum package for her approval.

  “That’s more like it,” Malika said with a smile.

  Teddy rolled the condom over his throbbing manhood and lowered himself on top of Malika again. She was tight, so tight that even with her own moisture and the lubricant from the condom he couldn’t get it in without hurting both of them. Teddy parted her legs and lowered his face to her vagina where he proceeded to work his tongue inside her, sending jolts of pleasure through her limbs. Malika dragged her nails across the back of Teddy’s scalp while he worked her to a nice lather. She stared up at the ceiling as spots danced before her eyes while Teddy continued to lap her like a thirsty kitten. Her heart screamed “no,” but her body barked “yes,” and she tried to shove Teddy’s whole face inside her. All of her fears and apprehensions faded away leaving only the longing to feel Teddy inside her and she let him know by reluctantly pulling his face free of her vagina.

  Teddy’s goatee was slick with Malika’s juices as he looked down into her hungry eyes. He knew just what she wanted and intended to give it to her. Now that she was wet enough it was a little easier to enter her. Teddy slipped a little of him at a time into her tight glove, silently calling on God and every other saint he could think of. Malika’s pussy was like a beam of sunshine shining down on his face on a summer day. With every pump inside her sweetness Teddy could feel her walls tightening around his shaft, making him want to go deeper. He held out for ten minutes before the buildup became too much for him and he exploded inside the condom. Teddy continued pumping as the cum kept spurting from his dick, eventually spilling out over the rim of the condom and dripping onto the futon. When he felt the last of it and his strength faded he collapsed on top of Malika, sucking his thumb like a baby.

  Chapter 21

  Ms. Pat blew into the living room like Hurricane Katrina. She was dressed in a deep purple skirt with a purple and yellow top, accented by the matching wide-brimmed purple hat. From behind her purple bifocals she glared at everyone assembled. Mookie and Fish sat at the coffee table trying not to look guilty of whatever they were up to. By their glassy eyes and stiff jaws, everyone in the house already had an idea. Miles and Jalen ran around the living room screaming and throwing socks at each other and bumping into Ms. Pat’s china cabinet, while Davita lounged on the couch, texting on her phone like she didn’t notice.

  “Y’all don’t hear the door?” Ms. Pat asked.

  “No, Mama,” Mookie said with a glassy look to his eyes. He and Fish had been sitting there stuck on stupid since they’d walked in almost an hour prior.

  “I know it ain’t for me, so why bother?” Davita rolled her eyes and went back to texting on her phone. Her little brother and sister never broke their stride as they continued running around the coffee table, knocking one of Ms. Pat’s glass figurines to the floor and shattering it.

  Ms. Pat’s glasses fogged up as she walked calmly into the kitchen and came out with a glass of water, which she sipped gingerly. She snatched Davita’s phone, mid-text, and dropped it into the glass of water, then tossed the water and phone onto the table between Mookie and Fish. Without missing a beat she tripped the running Jalen and snatched Miles by the back of his shirt and flung him on the couch next to his sister. Now that she had all their attentions Ms. Pat spoke.

  “Heavenly Father you have surely blessed me with a house full of the laziest, most useless creatures you have ever seen fit to breathe breath in.” Ms. Pat shook her head. “You lazy souls eat, sleep, shit, and pluck my nerves rent-free and I can’t even get you off your asses to answer the door?” Davita opened her mouth to say something but Ms. Pat silenced her with a pointed finger. “I wish you would open your smart-ass mouth so I can send them rotten-ass teeth on an all-expenses-paid trip down your throat.” Davita folded her arms but didn’t say anything. “See”—Ms. Pat took slow steps toward Davita—“that’s ya problem now, your mouth spends more time open than ya ears. If you’d spent as much time paying attention in school as you did talking slick you might not be getting left back.”

  “Again,” Mookie added.

  “And you.” Ms. Pat turned her attention to her son. “I don’t know what you and that extra thick Negro sitting next to you are planning, but it had better not go down in my house or in my hood. Y’all know I’m getting money outta this house and you always bringing the law calling. Shit, you probably didn’t answer the door ’cause you was scared it was them warrant boys,” she scoffed.

  “Again,” Davita mumbled.

  “Shut up before I come across your mind, Vita
,” Ms. Pat warned as she headed to answer the door. She was still mumbling to herself when she opened the door to find Gucci and Tionna. “Oh, damn, let me get my winter coat,” she said, looking Gucci up and down.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Gucci asked.

  “If you’re coming by my house then it must be snowing in hell so I gotta dress warm,” Ms. Pat said with a smile. “Bring your narrow ass in here and give ya auntie a hug.” Ms. Pat grabbed Gucci in a warm embrace. “Girl, you looking good.” She spun Gucci around and slapped her on her ass. “And look at all that junk in your trunk. Animal must be knocking the lining out that young stuff. Ask his pretty ass if he got a brother.”

  “Auntie, your ass is still crazy as hell.” Gucci laughed. “Oh, you remember my girl, Tionna, don’t you?”

  Ms. Pat peered at Tionna over the top of her glasses. “The hustler’s wife. How could I forget?” Ms. Pat had never too much cared for Tionna because of the way she had carried herself when she was doing slightly better than everyone else. No matter how well off Ms. Pat and her husband were back in the days they never acted like they were above their neighbors because they knew that the same people you saw on the way up were the ones you saw on the way down. This was a lesson Tionna had to learn the hard way.

  “How are you, Ms. Pat?” Tionna asked.

  “I’m fine, child. I was just in here getting after these no good ass offspring of mine. Y’all come on in out of the hallway.” Ms. Pat stepped back to let them inside.

  “Is that my baby cousin?” Mookie got up and smiled at Gucci.

  “Hey Mookie,” Gucci said, giving him a halfhearted wave.

  “That ain’t no way to greet your big cousin. Come here.” Mookie embraced her. There was something about the way he was running his hands up and down her back that made Gucci feel violated so she pushed away from him. “Girl, you look good, and I see you shining something fierce.” He examined her jewels.

  “I’m doing a’ight,” Gucci told him, running her hands up and down her arms from the chills his stare was giving her.

  “Um hmm.” Mookie sucked his teeth sneakily. “Looks like you doing better than a’ight. I see Big Dawg’s newest pup is taking care of cuz-o.”

  “All them chump ass niggaz is shining like new money,” Fish said in his slow drawl. “Them boys getting all that scratch in Harlem but ain’t kicking nothing back to the house. I don’t know how I feel about that, how ’bout you, Mookie?”

  Mookie took his time before answering. “I don’t know, Fish. Seems to me like common sense would tell them that a full wolf is a lot less of a headache than a hungry one, but you know what; I think Don B. is a reasonable man who if we sat down with we may be able to get him to see things our way.” He turned to Gucci. “What you think, cousin?”

  Gucci took her shades off and stared at him with unwavering eyes. “I think that if you fuck around with my man or his peoples auntie will be saying her good-byes through a box because there ain’t gonna be enough of you left for an open casket funeral.”

  Mookie’s cheek twitched once, before a lazy smile appeared on his face. “That’s how you know you’re my blood, because you’re loyal to your man. She get that from you, Ma,” he told Ms. Pat.

  “Boy, please, the only thing Gucci got from me is this damn seat cushion.” Ms. Pat slapped her on the ass again. “All that predatory cunning come from her mama and them. Veronica and her sister Peaches used to have these boys out here fighting like cavemen. They’re the reason they closed down that crack spot we were around the corner from when we lived on 113th and Lenox.”

  “What crack spot?” Gucci asked.

  “You know the one in the candy store around the corner, Nuclear.” She tried to jog Gucci’s memory.

  “Do you mean Nucleus?” Tionna corrected her. “Ms. Pat, that was a weed spot, they didn’t sell crack.”

  “We don’t believe you, you need more people,” Ms. Pat sang. “Little girl, I’m a weed smoker and that shit wasn’t kosher. One time I bought two nickel bags of that shit from them foreign bitches and had to go to the emergency room after I blazed the first one. There ain’t no way you supposed to be that high for five dollars. Now what brings you ladies of the evening into the abode of this old woman?”

  “Their habits,” Jada said as she appeared in the living room. She had traded in her birthday suit for a pair of jeans and a turtleneck. She had pushed her weave back into a ponytail that showcased her pretty face. “Gucci, your ass called me this afternoon and you’re just getting here?”

  “Cuzo, you know I had to touch the town right quick before we came down.” Gucci embraced Jada.

  “Tionna, what’s good?” Jada greeted Tionna.

  “You.” Tionna looked her up and down. “You sure don’t look like a kid with three kids!”

  “You know the Butlers are naturally blessed with figures,” Jada said.

  “We sure nuff are,” Ms. Pat said while adjusting her large, saggy breasts inside her bra. “Now, if y’all have come down for more than my company then you might as well carry ya asses back to where you came from, cuz ain’t nothing popping.”

  “Auntie Pat, what you mean ain’t nothing popping? This is ya niece!” Gucci declared.

  “Shit, I got a bunch of nieces, but that don’t change the fact that I can’t go to church tonight with a transaction tainting my soul.” Ms. Pat adjusted her hat in the dingy mirror hanging next to the front door.

  “Auntie, it’s Thursday,” Gucci pointed out.

  “And? Ain’t no rule that says you can only worship the Lord on Sundays. Me and Ms. Martha attend night service up in the Bronx on Thursdays.”

  “Smelling like nothing but the chronic,” Davita said as she passed.

  Ms. Pat threw her hands in the air and uttered a prayer. “Father God, merciful God, please put a clamp on my granddaughter’s mouth and spare me a one to three in prison for assaulting this wench, amen!”

  “Davita, you better watch your fucking mouth,” Jada warned. Davita just rolled her eyes and kept going into the bedroom, with her brother and sister hot on her heels.

  “Don’t tell her nothing, Jada. She got one more smart thing to say and it’s gonna be Wrestlemania fifty in this piece,” Ms. Pat said. “Fooling with these damn kids done got my pressure up,” Ms. Pat said, fishing around in her wig and producing a wrinkled joint. “One of y’all kids give me a light.”

  “Mama, didn’t you just say you was going to church and said you didn’t wanna be tainted?” Mookie asked.

  Ms. Pat eventually found a lighter and lit her joint. She took a deep pull and expelled the smoke through her nose before answering Mookie. “I said tainted from a transaction, I ain’t said nothing about consumption. Now stop minding grown folks’ business and hand me the ashtray.”

  Gucci took one whiff of the pungent smoke and knew that her aunt was blowing some serious green. “Auntie, why don’t you let ya niece hit that one time.” Gucci reached for the joint, but Ms. Pat snatched it away.

  “Little girl, we cool, but we ain’t friends. Ain’t no way in the hell I’m gonna be in here smoking with you. But if you wanna buy some bud that’s a horse of a different color.”

  “Mama, you said you wasn’t selling no bud before church,” Mookie reminded her.

  Ms. Pat flicked her ass in a soda top and glared at her son. “Boy, why don’t you stop telling me what I said? You say a lot of things that you don’t stick to. I’m gonna get a job, Mama; I’m gonna take better care of my kids, Mama; I ain’t going back to the pen, Mama; nigga please. Instead of signifying you and Simple Jack,” she motioned toward Fish—“need to start getting yourselves ready to go; I gotta get off to church.”

  “We was just gonna kick it around here for a lil while,” Mookie said.

  “Mookie, you know ain’t no way I’m leaving two crackheads in my house while I ain’t here. Do like Big Tymers and get ya roll on.”

  “A’ight, Mama. Let’s go, Fish,” Mookie said and reluctantly headed fo
r the door.

  “Bye, Auntie.” Fish kissed Ms. Pat on the cheek. For as brutish as he was he had always had a soft spot in his heart for the Butler clan.

  “Take care, Fish, and make sure Mookie gets back to the halfway house before curfew because I sure as hell don’t want the police coming around here. I got too much going on for y’all criminal activities to be cramping my style,” Ms. Pat told them as they were leaving. “I love them boys but Lord knows they ain’t got a whole brain between them. Now what you heifers want?”

  “I need some of whatever it is you’re smoking right there.” Gucci pointed at the joint.

  Ms. Pat went to her china cabinet and knocked twice on the bottom shelf, revealing a hidden compartment. Using a key that hung around her neck she undid the lockbox inside the space and retrieved her stash. “I call this here Spider Man,” Ms. Pat said as she laid several bags on the coffee table. The buds were a bright shade of green with orange fuzz.

  Gucci picked one of the bags up and could smell the weed without opening it. “Damn, this is that bomb,” Gucci said, smelling the bag. “How come you call it Spider Man?”

  “Because that shit is so good you’ll be climbing the walls after you smoke it.”

  “If that’s the case then give me a twenty.” Gucci placed a twenty on the coffee table.

  “Me too.” Tionna added her twenty to the pot.

  “Yes, yes, all money down is a bet.” Ms. Pat picked up the money. “Since I fucks wit y’all I’m gonna give you a play and let you get three for fifty.”

  “That sounds good to me. Jada, you got the extra ten?” Gucci asked.

  Jada patted her pockets and shrugged. “I’m tapped out.”

  Ms. Pat shook her head. “Granddaughter, you’ve gotta be the brokest whore I know. If I ain’t taught y’all girls nothing else it is to not come home with a wet pussy and an empty pocket, but apparently you were sleeping in class.”