I interviewed Miss JoJo at the courtesy window of the ghetto supermarket where she is employed, asking her casually about her food stamp cycle two full days after the EBT rush reached its crescendo on Wednesday the 16th.

“It was pretty much your usual, threw out my back lifting hundreds of forty-two pound boxes of chicken wings at the register. A lot of your normal EBT bullshit with the customer putting two-hundred dollars more on the belt than they have on their card. Most of the people are pretty nice. We did have this one ghetto bitch with her gangbanger boy friend who was a dollar twenty-nine short. She looks at her old man and says, ‘I need two dolla.’

“He just looks at her, and she keeps asking rudely. Eventually she says ‘please’ and he pulls out this knot-roll of money as thick as your fist and peels off two ones; five-hundred and forty dollars of my tax money so that this drug dealer with ten grand in his pants can eat steak and shrimp. It’s kind of sad that so few EBT people can add, not even up to five dollars. The women are the dumbest by a long shot and they’re generally callin’ the shots because they have the card. I guess if you get pregnant when you’re twelve that’s pretty much it.

“The only ones that really get to me are the giant fat sweaty mammas who lay on their cart, sweat running down their face in sheets. This one bitch, when it came time for her to pay the taxable balance, reaches into her shirt, under her bra, underneath her sweaty watermelon titties, and pulls out this flattened wad of folded bills that is literally dripping with sweat. She flicks her hand so that the sweat sprays across the belt and then hands that shit over and I’m supposed to count it! Their breasts are like the community bank. As soon as they grow tits their shoving money and everything else down there.

“Last Sunday, just after noon ,this boy came in scared to death. He is a regular, lives five houses down the street with his mother and little brother. They are eight or nine. We never see her. The boys come in and buy milk and bread during the week. Well he was terrified, ‘Miss JoJo you got to help me! This man is chasing me with a stick!’

“I took him into the booth with me and called his house—no answer of course. Mamma’s not home. I took him out to Big Roy [the security guard] and now it was black on black so I just stepped back. Roy scowls down at him and points his big finger and says, ‘Boy, you better not be lyin’ ta me!’

“The poor kid breaks into tears, ‘No, I wouldn’t be lyin’ ta you, no sir!’

“Then Roy gets the description and it’s this dirt bag black panhandler, one of the crazies that run the street and gives everybody shit. The kid accidentally bumped into him and he went off trying to beat him with a stick. Big Roy walked him home and told me he knew the guy, that he was a low life, and that he’s going to whoop his ass for going after the kid.

“It’s so sad. These kids shouldn’t have to raise themselves. They should get some time as children before the world shits all over them.”