The Winner: Part Five

"Why should I help you?" she spits back at me. "You were mean to me this morning and threw cereal all over the carpet. You have to clean that up when you get home."

I groan. "Mom...I'll clean up the fuckin' cereal, just listen to me. This is an emergency."

"Don't swear. Praise be," she says. "What's the emergency? I don't have any money to bail you out of jail. My check from the county doesn't come for another couple of days."

"I don't need your money," I say, quickly weighing how much of this I should reveal to her. "It's my pants, Mom. See, I had an accident in them earlier..."

"What sort of accident?"

"I crapped in them," I sigh. "And I had to go buy a new pair..."

"Don't swear. Praise be," she interrupts.

"'Crap' isn't a swear word, goddammit! Would you please let me finish?"

Silence on the other end, but I can still hear her labored breathing.

"So I crapped in my pants. I went to Wal-Mart to buy a new pair, but when I was changing them, store security threw me out and I no longer have my old pants, which has something very important in them and I need you to come over here and get them for me because if I go anywhere near that Wal-Mart, I'm gonna get arrested and have my parole violated and then I'm fucked. THATS the situation."

"Poopy..." she says, drawing out the disappointment in her voice. "I thought I potty trained you better than that..."

"MOM! WOULD YOU GET YOUR FAT ASS OUT HERE? IT IS IMPORTANT THAT I GET THOSE PANTS!"

"No! You're being mean to me. Besides, what's so important about a pair of shitty pants anyway?"

I take a deep breathe. I know that telling her about the lottery ticket is a mistake. But she's going to find out sometime anyway, and she's my only hope in retrieving the ticket at all. So I quickly tell her about the lottery ticket and crapping my pants and how I needed to get downtown asap.

"Poopy, is it true" she says after a long silence. "You really did win the jackpot last night? Your not joshing me...right?"

"Yes mom, I swear. I found out right after I left the house and checked the numbers. I even called the number on the ticket and they verified that I'm the winner."

"All right then, dear...I'll help you," she says. I tell her to meet me at the 7-11, and she says give her a little time to get ready. So I hang up and wait for her.

I end up waiting almost two hours. During those two hours, the bum I'd given three bucks to comes back and hits me up for change again. He so drunk he doesn't remember who I am and I'm in a much fouler mood than I was earlier so I tell him to get lost. He curses me under his breath and stumbles away, but I don't give a fuck. I use some of my remaining money to buy some food. I eat three pickled sausage sticks and was most of my way through a 42oz pina colada Slurpee when I saw the bus pull up by the street and my mom waddling unsteadily down its steps, purse slung over one shoulder and her oxygen device slung over the other. I drop my nearly empty Slurpee on the ground and run up to her.

"Thank god you're here," I say. "Come on. We've gotta hurry over to Wal-Mart. I'm sure they've thrown those pants in the trash by now."

"My dear Poopy," she says with unusual concern (well, not so unusual once you consider that her son was now a millionaire and she was likely to get something out of this) "What happened to your chin? You've got a big bruisey on it."

"Those dickheads over there threw me on the ground. They thought I was shoplifting."

"Were you?"

"NO!" I say, trying to hurry her over to the crosswalk. "I just won the lottery; I don't have to shoplift. I showed them my receipt, but they still acted pissy with me and threw me out of the store."

"Okay, let's go." My mom looks at the length of the parking lot and whines, "It's so far away."

I want to scream that it wouldn't be so far if she didn't have to lug around four hundred pounds, but I need to be civil to her for the time being.

I walk with her until we are about halfway across the lot, which is probably about as close as I should get in case those loss prevention guys are looking out for me. I look over at my mom, who is nearly winded by this short walk. "Listen, I'm sure they threw the pants in the trash by now. Just tell them that you need to know where they threw them out and go look in that dumpster. Okay?"

"Poopy," my mother says. "You seriously want me to dig through garbage?"

"Eyes on the prize, mom..." I say through gritted teeth. "Just do it and I'll be sure to get you something really special for Christmas this year. The ticket is in the left pocket, be sure you get the ticket. I already called the lottery commision office and they are expecting me, personally, to bring the ticket to get authenticated," I say, just in case she's getting it in her head to take the ticket in on her own and stiff me.

"Okay, my dearest Poopy..." she says, touching my face. "I think I can do it."

As she heads into Wal-Mart, I head back to the sidewalk where I can keep an eye out for my mom while not being technically on their property. I stand around and the tension is unbearable. I am so close and yet so far from my three-million dollars that I don't know whether to cheer or scream.

I mew around for about twenty minutes (which feels more like twenty hours) before I see my mom waddling out of the main doors of the store. Her face is red and she's breathing even more heavily. My heart drops when I see she does not have my poopy pants in her hands.

So I run over to her. "Mom! What happened?" but before she can catch her breath enough to tell me, she pulls a slip of paper out of her purse and puts it in my hand. It is...YES! It's the ticket, and it's still legible, though slightly more crumpled than it had been. I hug as much of my mom as I can, which is something I don't think I've done in years.

"I'm...sorry I...can't talk, Poopy" she wheezes. "I got...myself all worked up...in there."

"What happened? Was this hard to find?" I ask. I wait for about a minute for her to catch her breath before she explains.

"I went up to the customer service counter and just started yelling," she says. "I yelled, I even used curse words, praise be, telling them that I was going to sue them for the way they treated my sweet dear son. Soon a manager came down and had some of the dirty Mexicans who work there go and get your pants from the trash. He even gave me some gift certificates, I raised such a stink. Twenty dollars worth."

I look at the winning ticket and grin. "Don't worry. We don't need no fucking...I mean no stinking gift certificates from them now that we have this."

My mom continues. "Once I got the ticket, I just left your poopy pants on the floor of the store for them to deal with. You don't need them, do you?"

"Hell no!" I say. "All I need is this. I gotta head down to the lottery commision office with this before they close. Do you want to come with me?" Suddenly, I was feeling quite grateful to my mother. She did what was needed, kept the whining to a minimum and didn't fuck up. Maybe I should lighten up on her some and let her share in my moment of triumph.

"Okay Poopy," she says. "I'll come with you." Then she pinches my cheek. "I'm so proud of you son."

So we walk back to the bus stop and she takes her oxygen tube out of her nostrils so she can smoke a cigarette while we wait. A bus comes shortly and I pay my $1.75 and she flashes her bus pass she gets for free from social services. It isn't too crowded, so we both sit in the back where we can take up all the seats.

"Mom," I say to her once the bus gets rolling. "I owe you big time on this one. What would you like, now that your son's a millionaire? I'll get you anything you want, just name it." I was willing to do almost anything for her that didn't involve sending money to Pat Robertson...

But she shocked me when she said. "Nothing. I don't want nothing from you, Poopy."

"C'mon, be real..." I say. "I wouldn't be here with this ticket without you."

"You don't owe me anything, Poopy. If anything, I'm the one who owes you. I know I done wrong by you growing up, and I don't blame you for hating me. I hate myself sometimes. Some days I pray to Jesus everyday to be forgiven for the things I done. I'm just grateful that the good Lord gave me the opportunity to redeem myself for you, my son. That's all I need."

I feel touched by this. This is the first time in many years that my mother and I have had a serious talk. I almost want to cry, but I stop myself. "Screw that religious crap, mom. C'mon, what do you want? I know, I'll buy the house for you. Then you don't have to worry about where you're gonna live."

She shakes her head. "I don't need that Poopy. Besides, the state pays for my rent because of my disability. Really, just atoning to you is all the worldly gift I need."

"Jesus Christ! Listen, if you really want to make up for my childhood, I'll tell you what you need to do. You need to stop eating yourself to death. Seriously, you're gonna die if you keep up the way you do. Do that, and you'll make it all up to me."

She starts crying. "But it's sooo haaard!" she wails. "I've tried dieting, you know I have. It doesn't work because of my metabolism! And I can't starve myself. I just can't!"

This is, of course, nothing I haven't heard before when the subject of dieting comes up. I usually start telling her she's weak and has no willpower when she pulls this shit, but I'm feeling very loving towards her right now. "Look, I'll help you mom. I got money now. How about we get you that gastric bypass surgery? Then you can start feeling good about yourself again."

She looks at me through her tears. "Isn't that the same surgery that Al Roker had? If it is, I'll do it. I'm tired of being a fat."

I put my hand on her shoulder. "After I get the money, we'll go an see a doctor about it," I say.

Then we hug each other silently and nearly miss our stop downtown. We shuffle off the bus and head towards Stephenson Plaza, which is a block away. It is about three o'clock now and as we're riding the elevator up to the lottery commision office, I look over at my mom and say "I love you."

"I love you too, son" she says squeezing my hand.

We walk up the lottery commision office and I go up to the receptionist. "Hi, my name is Mr. Peanutz. I was told to come down here to claim my prize."

"We've been expecting you," she says. "Did you bring the ticket with you for verification?"

I hold it out to her and smile. "Here you go, ma'am."

"Thank you, please have a seat in our lobby and we will be with you in a few moments."

I find a chair to sit in while my mom sits down on the couch. Ten minutes pass and I'm wondering what the hold up is, when finally a man in a gray suit comes into the lobby. He holds out his hand. "Are you Poopy Patrick Peanutz?"

"Yes sir," I say, standing up to shake his hand.

"Congratulations Mr. Peanutz," he says. "The ticket you provided us has been verified to be authentic and unaltered. You are now officially the winner of last night's lottery jackpot. Will you and your mother please come with me..."

"Of course," I say beaming. Finally, something has gone right for me in my life.