Three days before she died, she asked me to sit on the bed with her.
She was so small by then. Eighty-one pounds. Her hair was gone. She wore a pink scarf my daughter Tessa knitted in home economics.
She took my hand.
“Patty,” she said. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course, Mama.”
She looked at me for a long time.
“I’ve watched you,” she said. “Thirty-two years. Since you were born. And for the last fifteen, I’ve watched you with Gary.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You put everybody’s name first,” she said. “The kids. Gary. Me. June. Your boss at the health department. The church. Everybody.”
She squeezed my hand.
“I’ve never once seen you put your own name on anything,” she said.
I didn’t understand.
“What do you mean, Mama?”
“The house is in Gary’s name,” she said. “The truck is in Gary’s name. The bank account says Gary and Patricia Dunn. Gary first. The Christmas cards say The Gary Dunn Family.”
She smiled. A thin, tired smile.
“Even your mailbox,” she said. “DUNN. In Gary’s handwriting. He painted it.”
“It doesn’t matter, Mama.”
“It does,” she said. “It matters.”
She was quiet for a long time.
“I did the same thing,” she said. “With your daddy. Forty-one years. I let him put his name on everything. And when he died, I didn’t know how to write a check. I didn’t know what bank we used. I didn’t know what the mortgage was.”
She looked at me.
“I was sixty-four years old,” she said, “and I had never once in my life signed my own name on something that was just mine.”
“Promise me something,” she said.
“Anything.”
“Find one thing,” she said. “Just one. Something small. Something that’s just yours. And put your name on it.”
She squeezed my hand.
“Every week,” she said. “So you don’t forget you have one.”
She died three days later.
At 4:15 in the morning.
I was holding her hand.
The first Friday after the funeral, I drove to the gas station.
The Highway 41 Gas & Go. On the south side of town. Out past the Walmart. Where 41 meets the interstate.
I’d been going there for gas for ten years. It was owned by an Indian family. The Mehtas. They bought it in 1996. Mr. Arjun Mehta worked the register most days. A thin man with gray hair and gold wire glasses. He always asked about my kids by name.
That Friday, I filled up my car.
I went inside to pay.
I stood at the counter.
And I saw the lottery machine.
I’d never bought a ticket in my life.
My daddy said gambling was for fools. Gary said it was for suckers. My pastor said it was a tax on people who can’t do math.
I stood at the counter.
Mr. Mehta looked at me.
“Mrs. Dunn,” he said. “I am so sorry. About your mother. I saw it in the paper.”
“Thank you, Mr. Mehta.”
“She used to come in,” he said. “On Tuesdays. For a newspaper and a Moon Pie. She always paid in quarters.”
I started crying.
Right there at the counter.
Mr. Mehta came around the counter. He handed me a tissue from a box he kept by the register.
He didn’t say anything.
He just waited.
When I could talk, I said, “Mr. Mehta. How do you play the lottery?”
He blinked.
“The lottery?”
“I’ve never done it,” I said. “I want to try.”
He showed me.
The Fantasy 5. Five numbers. One through forty-two. Two dollars a ticket. Drawings every night. The jackpot rolls over until somebody wins.
He handed me a little slip. A play card. With rows of numbers. And a tiny golf pencil.
“Pick five,” he said.
I stood at the counter and thought about it.
Then I picked.
3. For Robby. Born March 3rd.
11. For Tessa. Born November 11th.
22. For Kyle. Born June 22nd.
16. For my wedding anniversary. June 16th.
14. For my mother. March 14th.
I bubbled them in.
I handed the slip to Mr. Mehta.
He ran it through the machine.
The ticket came out. Pink and white. Shiny.
He handed it to me.
I looked at it.
At the five numbers. My children. My marriage. My mother.
Then I turned it over.
On the back, there was a little box.
Signature. And Name. Address. Phone.
I’d never noticed it before. I’d never held a lottery ticket before.
Mr. Mehta saw me looking at it.
“You should sign it,” he said. “Right away. In Georgia, the ticket belongs to whoever signs the back. If you lose it and somebody finds it, and it’s not signed, they can claim it. If it’s signed, it’s yours.”
It’s yours.
I looked at the little box.
Signature.
Find one thing. Just one. Something small. Something that’s just yours. And put your name on it.
I took a pen off the counter.
A ballpoint. Blue. With HIGHWAY 41 GAS & GO printed on the side.
And I wrote my name.
Not Patty Dunn.
Not Mrs. Gary Dunn.
My whole name. The one my mother gave me.
Patricia Ann Whitmire Dunn.
Whitmire. My maiden name. My mother’s name. My daddy’s name. The name I hadn’t written since my wedding day.
I looked at it.
Then I did one more thing.
Under my signature, in small letters, I wrote:
Week 1. For Mama.
Mr. Mehta was watching.
He didn’t say anything.
He just nodded.
Then I asked him something.
“Mr. Mehta,” I said. “Would you do me a favor?”
“Of course, Mrs. Dunn.”
“Would you initial it?” I said. “Next to my name. With the date. So somebody else knows I signed it. Here. At the counter. The day I bought it.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
He didn’t ask why.
He picked up the pen.
Next to my signature, he wrote:
A.M. — 3/24/06.
“Thank you,” I said.
I put the ticket in my purse.
I went home.
I stuck it on the refrigerator.
Under a magnet.
A pineapple.
Yellow and green. Plastic. Kind of ugly. My mother bought it at a gift shop in Tybee Island in 1987. On the only vacation she and my daddy ever took. It had been on her refrigerator for nineteen years.
I took it from her kitchen the day after the funeral. 