After a half hour of wandering, I find myself on a busy street. The traffic pulses past, fumes gusting into the air as cars slow down at the lights.
I duck into a corner store. Rusting bars on the doors and windows make the place look like a prison. Inside, one wall is plastered with cell-phone ads, all in Chinese. A tall kid with his baseball cap on backward leans on the counter. His jeans hang so low that his underwear balloons over the waistband. It’s like looking at an accident. Gross. But hard to keep my eyes off.
“What are you staring at?” A girl—whoops, his girlfriend, I guess—glares at me. Her eyes are rimmed with black liner. Her dyed gray-blond hair stands up in all directions.
“Nothing. ”
The guy turns on me. “Do we know you?” He looks at the girl. “Do we know her?”
“I dunno. Do you go to Henry Blackwell?” she asks me.
I guess that’s her school. “No.”
“I don’t know you. So quit eyeing my boyfriend.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Can I help you?” the woman behind the counter interrupts. “You go now, Dylan. See you tomorrow, Mara.”
The girl and her boyfriend glance at the woman and then push past me to head out the door.
“They no trouble,” the woman tells me. “I know them, so they no trouble for me.”
“Okay.” At least Mom isn’t here. She would have started a fight right here between the canned spaghetti and toilet paper.
“Can I help you?” the woman asks me.
“How much are they?” I point at the box of individually wrapped cookies on the counter. Oatmeal with chocolate chips. Or maybe they’re raisins. Though, by the state of this place, they could be flies.
“Forty-five cents. Three for one dollar.”
I dig some change from my pocket. “Would you take seventy-five cents for two?” It’s a habit. Bargaining for almost everything. One that makes me squirm a lot of the time. But also gives me a buzz when I pull it off.
She nods without giving it a second thought. “You take three. And I got milk day old.” She looks toward the grimy cooler. “Milk and cookies very nice. Even better if milk free.” She grins at me.
I grab one of the two cartons with an orange twenty-five-cent sticker, close the cooler door and thank her on my way out.
I check that Mara and Dylan aren’t still around. It’s easier to be anonymous in big cities. In smaller places, strangers stick out. I’ve been heckled, pushed around and beaten on by neighborhood bullies more times than my mother has missed doctor’s appointments.
But there are only a teen mom pushing a stroller and a woman hauling a huge red-and-blue-striped bag. She could just be shopping, or maybe she’s virtually homeless too.
I stay out as long as I can, wandering the streets, keeping my head down. It’s almost dark by the time I get back to the motel. The neon sign flickers on and off, sending weird shadows across the parking lot.
Inside our room, I grope for the lamp switch. Mom is fast asleep. She mutters something and turns away from the light. She’s still fully dressed, with her jacket around her shoulders and the covers slipping off her legs. She rarely gets right under the covers. Wary of bed bugs, she says.
One shoe is upside down on the floor, the other still on her foot.
I straighten her covers and put a cookie on the table next to her. I kick off my runners and prop up the pillows on my bed. I stretch out and lean against the headboard.
I watch Mom’s chest rise and fall. I’ve spent hours doing this, in one badly lit room after another. It amazes me that her heart and lungs ignore the mess in her head. Her chest rises. Her chest falls. Over and over, one breath follows the other. Sometimes I count her breaths until I fall sleep. And when I wake up, I check again to make sure she’s still breathing.
Most of the time I live in fear of her dying on me. The rest of the time I wish she would disappear.
Thinking like this always rattles me. And once I get stuck on thinking about all this stuff, I feel like a gerbil on a hamster wheel, going round and round and round with no way off.
I head into the bathroom. Hot water gasps and sputters out when I turn on the bathtub taps. I strip and lay my clothes on the toilet-seat lid. I make sure there is a towel on the rail, flick the knob to turn on the shower and step in.
Only a trickle comes out of the showerhead. The rest spurts from the tap and out of the tub. “Crap!” I bundle myself in the towel, leap out of the tub and drag my clothes back on without bothering to look for clean underwear.
It’s been ages since we’ve been anywhere long enough to do laundry. I may have grown up with thrift-store clothes, but I draw the line at wearing cast-off underwear.
In big department stores, I wander through the fashion departments, trying to imagine myself with new clothes. Grand will foot the bill for lots of things, but clothes are hardly on his radar. While I’m there, it’s not hard to stuff a couple of pairs of undies into my jacket sleeve or down my jeans.
When I come out of the bathroom, Mom’s purse is still wedged under her pillow.
Maybe the lottery ticket is in her jacket. She’s too out of it to notice me taking it off the bed. I’ll be very careful and slow—
“What?” Her flailing hand catches the side of my chin. The impact wakes her. She hauls herself up.
“Shh, Mom. Go back to sleep.”
“What you doing?” Her voice is thick.
“I tried to have a shower. It doesn’t work.”
“I’d like a bath.” She struggles off the bed, mumbling, “It’s cold in here.”
While she is in the bathroom, I find enough tissues in her pockets to carry the bubonic plague. I dump them in the garbage. Her duffel bag holds a sweater, three stained T-shirts and a pair of pants that are too long.
Poor people give themselves away without even opening their wallets. Ill-fitting clothes that aren’t washed often do it every time.
I’m trying to figure out where that ticket might be—if it really exists—when I almost trip on her shoe. I peer inside it. I notice the crease in the sole. I peel it back.
Would you look at this? The ticket! Not that finding it makes Mom any less crazy.
I’m trying to make some sense of the numbers—7-11-23-29-37-49—when she comes back into the room. “Give me that!”
I hold the ticket out of reach. “We should get it checked out.”
“I did already.”
“Worth millions?” I study the numbers again.
“Maybe not millions. But a lot.”
“How much of a lot? By the way, you might want to do up your pants.”
As she checks her fly, I jam the ticket in my pocket. When she looks up again, I pretend to be straightening the sole of the shoe. I hand it to her. “Put this on. The carpet’s probably not been cleaned in years. I see you changed your mind about the bath.”
“I’m hungry. Let’s go find a sub or something.” She slips on her shoe, then frowns at her other bare foot.
“In the bathroom maybe?” I say.
As soon as she leaves the room, I tuck the lottery ticket deeper into my pocket. It’s probably worth nothing. But just in case.